{"id":702,"date":"2014-03-08T15:16:28","date_gmt":"2014-03-08T23:16:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=702"},"modified":"2020-10-18T11:57:50","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T18:57:50","slug":"from-bible-stories-to-science-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2014\/03\/08\/from-bible-stories-to-science-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"From Bible Stories to Science Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Following up Thursday\u2019s post, San Francisco Chronicle\u2019s Mark Morford (via <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alternet.org\/latest-pap-christian-movie-industry-or-how-sucker-billion-christians\">Alternet<\/a>) explains the motivations behind the latest Christian movie, Son of God.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThere is tremendous money to be made endlessly reinforcing what the masses have already been told to believe, in keeping millions addicted to the very same drug they\u2019ve been taking for millennia (hi, Fox News). Conversely, there is less money to be made \u2013 though much more fun to be had \u2013 sparking religious controversy, or at least trying to create something, you know, incisive, spiritually messy, or artistically interesting.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>With some discussion of the Christian backlash against Martin Scorsese\u2019s The Last Temptation of Christ (before any of the protestors had even seen the movie).<\/p>\n<p>Morford concludes, <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nIs there any other way? Sure. You may, if you are so inclined, create something that subverts religious dogma, by either exploding it with wild, Monty Python-grade satire or smartly undermining it with fantastical literary genius (ref: Kazantzakis, or even something like Philip Pullman\u2019s brilliant His Dark Materials). Of course, doing so will only please those who already get it, who are educated and therefore capable of complex, nuanced, abstract critical thinking. In other words, exactly not the millions of literalist faithful one might hope to entice to begin to think for themselves.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The reference to Pullman is a reminder that there *are* substantial SF and fantasy works on religious themes \u2013 but of course by their very nature they are not the simple, reassuring reiterations of familiar Bible stories. The SF Encyclopedia\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sf-encyclopedia.com\/entry\/religion\">entry on religion<\/a> even begins, \u201cFamiliar Definitions of SF imply that there is nothing more alien to its concerns than religion.\u201d As usual in SFE, the article is exhaustive and detailed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following up Thursday\u2019s post, San Francisco Chronicle\u2019s Mark Morford (via Alternet) explains the motivations behind the latest Christian movie, Son of God. There is tremendous money to be made endlessly reinforcing what the masses have already been told to believe, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2014\/03\/08\/from-bible-stories-to-science-fiction\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,12,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-religion","category-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=702"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":705,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702\/revisions\/705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}