Journal for Religion, Film and Media (JRFM)

“Jesus Was a Good Gangster”

Christian Feichtinger — 2024-11-14

In May 2022, the YouTube channel Grim Hustle launched a series of short videos containing life advice, rules for life, and motivational speeches by a “Russian mafia boss”. Although the protagonist was soon identified as an actor, the channel gained more than one million followers within eighteen months of its launch. The channel’s main narrative is the call for a return to traditional values and habits, most notably honor, as an antidote to a modern, “broken” society that is dismissed as corrupting and oppressive. Traditional religion is promoted by the channel as a vital part of old values and habits. The article focuses on the representation of religion in the channel’s videos and how it is shaped by the underlying concept of honor.

The Making of a King through Space and Time

Caroline Kloos — 2024-11-14

This essay analyses the BBC’s live coverage of King Charles III’s coronation ritual, emphasising the interdependence of the British monarchy and the media. Drawing on the theoretical background of ritual as performance, it examines the King’s portrayal as a transcendent figure shaping social order. It offers a close reading of the ritual’s key moments according to film analysis methods. The discussion shows the coronation to be an event meticulously orchestrated between the monarchy and the media. In progressing through different spaces, the King is shown undergoing an ontological transformation linking past, present, and future. The BBC’s use of various filmic techniques constructs a narrative that connects the King with divine forces. The mediatisation of the coronation ritual thus portrays King Charles III as a transcendent figure beyond time and space. At the root of British society’s cosmology, he is depicted as legitimately representing and shaping British social values.

JRFM — 2024-11-14

Make the Impossible Possible

Anna-Katharina Höpflinger — 2024-11-14

The editorial sheds light on some important aspects of the motif of time travel and introduces the articles of the issue.

Call for Papers

JRFM — 2024-11-14

Call for Papers for the spring issue 2026.

Front Matter

JRFM — 2024-11-14

Series Review. YARATİLAN (CREATURE, Çağan Irmak, Netflix, TR 2023)

Zekiye Tamer Gencer — 2024-11-14

Series Review of YARATİLAN, a Turkish adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Music Review. On the Artist

Reinhard Kopanski — 2024-11-14

Review of the work and life of German Gospel Rapper Niels Petersen, aka R.E.A.L.

Film Review. DUNE: PART TWO (Denis Villeneuve, US 2024)

Lavinia Pflugfelder — 2024-11-14

Review of the science fiction drama DUNE: PART TWO (Denis Villeneuve, US 2024).

Book Review. Serge Goriely / Jean-Luc Maroy / Arnaud Join-Lambert (eds.), Visions et apparitions au cinéma

Elie Yazbek — 2024-11-14

Review of the anthology Visions et apparitions au cinéma. L'instant de la révélation (2023) by Serge Goriely, Jean-Luc Maroy, and Arnaud Join-Lambert.

Conceptions of Time Travel in Literature for Children and Young Adults

Sabine Planka — 2024-11-14

This article explores the motif of time travel in children’s and young adult literature. After a brief overview of the origins and development of this motif, the article focuses on three books: Todd Strasser’s The Beast of Cretacea (2015), Alex Scarrow’s TimeRiders (2010), and Torben Kuhlmann’s all-age picture book Einstein. The Fantastic Journey of a Mouse Through Space and Time (2021). While the time travel in all three books requires technical equipment, the reasons for undertaking this travel differ, connected to various topics that affect the readers. Time travel is evidently a flexible and adaptable motif. As the article shows, it can be connected to memory studies.

Bodies in Space and Time

Jochen Muendlein — 2024-11-14

This article discusses the motif of time travel in the science-fiction film Interstellar (Christopher Nolan, US/UK 2014). Time travel is a common motif in modern science-fiction films and series. The discussion here focuses on the anthropological dimensions of time travel from a hermeneutic perspective. Interstellar contains both a climate catastrophe and a technological optimism that enables time travel. The pseudo-scientific time travel is connected with symbols from the Christian tradition. Intriguingly, time travel is portrayed in light of indirect physical communication. From an anthropological perspective, pseudo-scientific time travel reflects and explores identity issues. The crossing of space and time and their simultaneous constraint lead the viewer to reflect on their own cultural life-world. In Interstellar, time travel is a journey into the past that locates the traveler back in the present and brings hope for a better future.

Time Travel as Living History

Monika Weiss — 2024-11-14

Audiovisual time travel is not restricted to fiction productions, for it can also be found in non-fiction programming. When the Living History format appeared on the international television market in the early 2000s, it was already an established practice in museum education. A group of volunteers travel back in time to a historical period. They act and learn, fail and succeed, not only for themselves but also for the viewers. The programmes are based on the coupling of past and present: during the time-travel experiment the volunteers remain people of their own time and reflect on the historical living conditions from today’s perspective. This article explores the nature of time travel within Living History and how everyday life, values, and norms of the present as well as images of the past are discussed within this framework. Contemporary ideas of historical life have expanded and changed with each representation and interpretation. So, does time travel take place only in our imagination of the past? And what effect does it have on the present? The following productions are analysed here: THE 1900 HOUSE (Channel4, GB 1999), FRONTIER HOUSE (PBS/Channel4, US 2002), SCHWARZWALDHAUS 1902 – LEBEN WIE VOR 100 JAHREN (SWR, DE 2001).

Time Travel as Homecoming

Haotian Wu — 2024-11-14

Time is an essential issue in phenomenology and existential philosophy. In this article, I argue that Μια αιωνιότητα και μια μέρα (ETERNITY AND A DAY, Theo Angelopoulos, GR 1998), the masterpiece of the understudied auteur, contributes to this scholarship by showing us two modes of time experience: depressive time and narrative time. In the light of Paul Ricœur’s, Matthew Ratcliffe’s, and Thomas Fuchs’s phenomenologies of time, I will show how the film delineates the phenomenological contours of depressive time and narrative time with the protagonist poet Alexandros’s last day sojourn in the world on the one hand and a series of his time travels on the other. Overall, I frame this new phenomenology of time with Angelopoulos’s cinematic thinking on home. I argue that depressive time underlies the time experience of homelessness while narrative time reorients us towards homecoming. Hence, Eternity and a Day not only contributes to the phenomenology of time but also constitutes an existential philosophy that addresses and redresses what Georg Lukács calls “transcendental homelessness”, the fundamental alienation of modern humanity.

Time Travel and Bodily Epistemology in Ava Duvernay’s SELMA (FR/UK/US 2014) and Haile Gerima’s SANKOFA (BF 1993)

Temitope Abisoye Noah — 2024-11-14

This article explores the seminal films of two black filmmakers of different generations: Haile Gerima’s SANKOFA (BF 1993) and Ava DuVernay’s SELMA (FR/UK/US 2014). It suggests that in creating SELMA, DuVernay uses time travel and “bodily epistemology” (Lisa Woolfork) as first deployed by Haile Gerima in his 1993 film to offer 21st century viewers glimpses of the African American slave past. DuVernay’s regressions in time are particularly bound up with those of Gerima in her film’s most talked about scene: “Bloody Sunday”. Several critics denounced the grotesque violence of “Bloody Sunday”, failing to recognize that DuVernay crafts the episode to evoke the past in a new way. Her innovative way of transcending the art of the time-travel narrative is influenced by several of her predecessors, including Gerima.

Journal for Religion, Film and Media (JRFM)

“Jesus Was a Good Gangster”

The Making of a King through Space and Time

Table of Contents

Make the Impossible Possible

Call for Papers

Front Matter

Series Review. YARATİLAN (CREATURE, Çağan Irmak, Netflix, TR 2023)

Music Review. On the Artist

Film Review. DUNE: PART TWO (Denis Villeneuve, US 2024)

Book Review. Serge Goriely / Jean-Luc Maroy / Arnaud Join-Lambert (eds.), Visions et apparitions au cinéma

Conceptions of Time Travel in Literature for Children and Young Adults

Bodies in Space and Time

Time Travel as Living History

Time Travel as Homecoming

Time Travel and Bodily Epistemology in Ava Duvernay’s SELMA (FR/UK/US 2014) and Haile Gerima’s SANKOFA (BF 1993)