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The Fantastic of the Everyday: Re-Forming Definitions of Cinematic Parables with Paul Ricoeur

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 December 2020

Joel Mayward
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Abstract

Recent publications on theology and film attempting to explain what a parable is remain less clear about how or why a parable works for cinema, and many definitions do not fully take into account the formal dynamics of film qua film nor parable qua parable. I seek to demonstrate the benefits of a more precise conception of cinematic parables by utilizing philosopher Paul Ricoeur's understanding of “parable” to make theological interpretations of film that take audio-visual aesthetics into consideration. I conclude with three recent examples of cinematic parables in order to demonstrate this Ricoeurian parabolic hermeneutic: Asghar Farhadi's Iranian melodrama, A Separation (2011), American filmmaker Anna Rose Holmer's enigmatic The Fits (2016), and Aki Kaurismäki's droll Finnish comedy, The Other Side of Hope (2017). Ultimately, I make a case for film as theology, what I am calling “theocinematics.”

Keywords

film and theologyPaul Ricoeurhermeneuticsparableallegorymetaphortheological aestheticstheocinematics
Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , December 2020 , pp. 283 - 314
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Copyright
Copyright © College Theology Society 2020

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References

1 See Johnston, Robert, “Film as Parable: What Might This Mean?,” The Covenant Quarterly 3 no. 4 (2014): 19–32Google Scholar; Walsh, Richard, “Now That Was a Nice Hanging: The Hateful Eight as Parable?,” Journal of Religion & Film 2 (2017): 1–20Google Scholar; and Rindge, Matthew, Profane Parables: Film and the American Dream (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016)Google Scholar.

2 May, John R., “Visual Story and the Religious Interpretation of Film,” Horizons 7 no. 2 (1980): 264CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 I have previously published on this Ricoeurian parabolic hermeneutic: see Mayward, Joel, “The Borders of Wakanda: Otherworlding, Immigration, and Alterity in Black Panther as Cinematic Parable,” ARTS 2 (2019): 54–71Google Scholar; and Mayward, Joel, “Parabolic Transcendence in Time and Narrative: Shane Carruth's PRIMER (US 2004) and UPSTREAM COLOR (US 2013) as Post-Secular Sci-Fi Parables,” Journal for Religion, Film and Media 6 no. 1 (2020): 17–36Google Scholar.

4 Adolf Jülicher, Die Gleichnisreden Jesu, 2 vol. (Tübingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1888, 1899).

5 Dodd, C. H., The Parables of the Kingdom (London: Nisbet & Co., 1935), 16Google Scholar.

6 Snodgrass, Klyne, Stories with Intent: A Comprehensive Guide to the Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 8Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., 19.

8 Ibid., 16.

9 Ibid., 9.

10 Parables “can and must be understood as falling within precisely the Jewish prophetic tradition … And sometimes, particularly but not exclusively within ‘apocalyptic,’ we find what we can only call allegories.” Wright, N. T., Jesus and the Victory of God (London: SPCK, 1996), 177Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., 178. For example, on page 133, Wright states that the Parable of the Prodigal Son “points to the hypothesis of the prophetic son: the son, Israel-in-person, who will himself go into the far country, who will take upon himself the shame of Israel's exile, so that the kingdom may come, the covenant be renewed, and the prodigal welcome of Israel's god, the creator, be extended to the ends of the earth.”

12 “Allegory,” in The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, ed. Ian Ousby, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

13 Kreglinger, Gisela H., Storied Revelations: Parables, Imagination, and George MacDonald's Christian Fiction (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013), 40Google Scholar.

14 Levine, Amy-Jill, Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi (New York: HarperOne, 2014), 8Google Scholar.

15 Crossan, John Dominic, The Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge Press, 1988), 83Google Scholar.

16 For further analysis of mother! as allegory instead of parable, see Joel Mayward, “Darren Aronofsky's mother! and Cinematic Parables,” Transpositions, November 20, 2017, http://www.transpositions.co.uk/darren-aronofskys-mother-cinematic-parables/.

17 McFague, Sallie, Speaking in Parables: A Study in Metaphor and Theology (London: S. C. M. Press, 1975), 49Google Scholar.

18 Metaphor “is a way of knowing, not just a way of communicating. In metaphor, knowledge and its expression are one and the same; there is no way around the metaphor, it is not expendable.” See McFague, Speaking in Parables, 4.

19 Ricoeur, Paul, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Buchanan, Emerson (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 16Google Scholar.

20 Ricoeur, Paul, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” Semeia 4 (1975): 30, 33Google Scholar.

21 Kearney, Richard, Anatheism: Returning to God after God (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 103Google Scholar.

22 Ricoeur, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” 32.

23 Ibid., 127.

24 Paul Ricoeur, “Listening to the Parables of Jesus,” in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: An Anthology of His Work, eds. Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), 239.

25 Ricoeur, Paul, “The ‘Kingdom’ in the Parables of Jesus,” Anglican Theological Review 2 (1981): 167Google Scholar.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 André Bazin, What Is Cinema? vol. 2, ed. and trans. Hugh Gray (London: University of California Press, 1971), 16.

29 Kracauer, Siegfried, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 28Google Scholar.

30 André Bazin, What Is Cinema? vol. 1, ed. and trans. Hugh Gray (London: University of California Press, 1967), 37.

31 Ricoeur, “The ‘Kingdom’ in the Parables of Jesus,” 168; Ricoeur, “Listening to the Parables of Jesus,” 241–42.

32 Ricoeur, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” 99.

33 Paul Ricoeur, “The Logic of Jesus, the Logic of God,” in Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, ed. Mark I. Wallace, trans. David Pellauer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 281.

34 Ibid.

35 Ricoeur, “The ‘Kingdom’ in the Parables of Jesus,” 168.

36 Baracco, Alberto, Hermeneutics of the Film World: A Ricoeurian Method for Film Interpretation (Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 See Johnston, “Film as Parable,” 25–28. See also Johnston, Robert, Detweiler, Craig, and Callaway, Kutter, Deep Focus: Film and Theology in Dialogue (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), 136–41Google Scholar.

38 “Magical realism” is a distinct mode which employs a “matter-of-fact realist tone … when presenting magical [supernatural] happenings.” See Maggie Ann Bowers, Magic(al) Realism (London: Routledge, 2004), 3.

39 It's worth noting here that Walsh structures his whole assessment of The Hateful Eight upon a misquote: Walsh titles his 2017 article and builds his argument upon Samuel L. Jackson's character saying “now that was a nice hanging,” when the actual line is, “now that was a nice dance.”

40 I concede that About Schmidt may be considered a cinematic parable using the Ricoeurian definition I've proposed.

41 Gordon Lynch describes an “applicationist” approach as the following: “Popular culture is subjected to a critique on the basis of certain fixed theological beliefs. A basic assumption of this approach is that it is possible to identify core theological truths from a particular source (e.g., the Bible or Church tradition) and then apply these critically to the beliefs and values of popular culture.” See Understanding Theology and Popular Culture (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 101. In response to an early draft of this article, one anonymous reviewer repeatedly insisted that I should “Stay. With. Ricoeur.” in the analysis of the three films, suggesting an anticipation of an applicationist method. I am not using the films to illustrate Ricoeur's thought. Rather, I am employing a Ricoeurian hermeneutic to make audiences more aware of how the films generate their own theological insights.

42 Tina Hassannia, Asghar Farhadi: Life and Cinema (Raleigh, NC: The Critical Press, 2014), loc. 69 of 1821, Kindle.

43 Quoted in Joseph Burke, “Rediscovering Morality through Ashgar [sic] Farhadi's A Separation,” Senses of Cinema 61 (2011), https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2011/feature-articles/rediscovering-morality-through-ashgar-farhadi%E2%80%99s-a-separation/.

44 Hassannia, Asghar Farhadi, loc. 84–97.

45 Robert Sinnerbrink, Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film (London: Routledge, 2016), 114.

46 Asghar Farhadi, “Director's Statement,” A Separation Press Kit, Sony Pictures Classics, https://www.sonyclassics.com/aseparation/.

47 Ricoeur, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” 99.

48 Sinnerbrink, Cinematic Ethics, 95–102.

49 Zimmermann, Ruben, Puzzling the Parables of Jesus: Methods and Interpretation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015), 177–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 “Golden Bricks,” Filmspotting.net, https://www.filmspotting.net/bricks.

51 Anna Rose Holmer, “Director's Statement,” The Fits Press Notes, Oscilloscope Laboratories, http://thefits.oscilloscope.net/.

52 See Cooper, Sarah, The Soul of Film Theory (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), 39–40, 72–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Brittany Stigler, “What Do You Know about It? Anna Rose Holmer's The Fits,” The Brooklyn Rail, June 3, 2016, https://brooklynrail.org/2016/06/film/what-do-you-know-about-it-anna-rose-holmers-the-fits.

54 Patricia White, “Bodies that Matter: Black Girlhood in The Fits,” Film Quarterly 3 (2017), 31.

55 M. Shawn Copeland, Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 2, 7.

56 Holmer, “Director's Statement.”

57 Ibid., 8.

58 I borrow the phrase “aesthetics of contagion” from Rizvana Bradley, “Black Cinematic Gesture and the Aesthetics of Contagion,” TDR: The Drama Review 1 (2018): 14–30.

59 J. Kameron Carter, Race: A Theological Account (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 258.

60 J. Kameron Carter, “Black Malpractice (A Poetics of the Sacred),” Social Text 37, no. 2 (2019): 91.

61 Ibid., 74.

62 Karen Baker-Fletch, Dancing with God: The Trinity from a Womanist Perspective (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2006).

63 Thomas Austin, ed., The Films of Aki Kaurismäki: Ludic Engagements (New York: Bloomsbury, 2018), 1.

64 Girish Shambu, “The Other Side of Hope: No-Home Movie,” Criterion, May 14, 2018, https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5662-the-other-side-of-hope-no-home-movie.

65 Andrew Nestingen, The Cinema of Aki Kaurismäki: Contrarian Stories (New York: Wallflower Press, 2013), 15.

66 Jaakko Seppälä, “The Camera's Ironic Point of View: Notes on Strange and Comic Elements in the Films of Aki Kaurismäki,” in Austin, The Films of Aki Kaurismäki, 83–85.

67 Aymeric Pantet, “A Constellation of Heterotopias? Qualifying the Concept of Heterotopia in Aki Kaurismäki's Films,” Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 1 (2018): 53–69.

68 Andrew Nestingen, “Kaurismäki's Musical Moments: Genre, Irony, Utopia, Redemption,” in Austin, The Films of Aki Kaurismäki, 137, 141.

69 At the 2017 Berlin Film Festival, where he won the Best Director award, Kaurismäki stated that this will be his last film, leaving incomplete the planned “ports” or “refugee” trilogy he began with Le Havre in 2011.

70 Kearney, Anatheism, 129–30.

71 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 78–79.

72 Volf, Miroslav, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1996), 17Google Scholar.

73 Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 172.

74 For further consideration of a cinematic realized eschatology, see Deacy, Christopher, Screening the Afterlife: Theology, Eschatology and Film (London: Routledge, 2012), 77–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 For a fascinating theological inquiry into the spiritual significance of our canine friends, see Andrew Root, The Grace of Dogs: A Boy, a Black Lab, and a Father's Search for the Canine Soul (New York: Convergent Books, 2017).

76 “Avoiding overt ‘God-talk’ is an important strategy that Jesus employs [in parables]. By luring the reader into thinking the parable is just about everyday life, the defense mechanisms of Jesus’ religious audience are down, and they are tricked into an understanding of God that is at least surprising, but often shocking and seemingly unacceptable.” See Kreglinger, Storied Revelations, 48. Of course, a few of Christ's parables have cosmic or divine aspects (e.g., the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16:19–31), but actual “God-talk” is still strikingly absent.

77 Ricoeur, “Listening to the Parables of Jesus,” 242.

78 Ibid., 243.

79 See Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film, enlarged ed. (London: Harvard University Press, 1979); Stephen Mulhall, On Film, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2016); and Sinnerbrink, Robert, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images (London: Continuum, 2011)Google Scholar. For more examples of film as philosophy (film-philosophy), see Daniel Frampton, Filmosophy (London: Wallflower, 2006); Wartenberg, Thomas E., Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yacavone, Daniel, Film Worlds: A Philosophical Aesthetics of Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rupert Read and Jerry Goodenough, eds., Film as Philosophy: Essays on Cinema after Wittgenstein and Cavell (Basingstok, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

80 See Loughlin, Gerard, Alien Sex: The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Brown, David, God and Enchantment of Place: Reclaiming Human Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am indebted to Brown's work on sacramentality for my theocinematics approach: see also Brown, David, God and Grace of Body: Sacrament in Ordinary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and God and Mystery in Words: Experience through Metaphor and Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

82 Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers who requested that “theocinematics” be more extensively explained here. These can only be preliminary remarks on what is ultimately a book-length project on film as theology.

83 Wilder, Amos, Theopoetic: Theology and the Religious Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976)Google Scholar.

84 ARC, “What do people mean by ‘theopoetics’?” https://artsreligionculture.org/definitions. For a helpful introduction to contemporary theopoetics; see the special “Theopoetics” issue of Literature and Theology, ed. Heather Walton, Literature and Theology 3 no. 2 (2019).

85 Brown, David, “Why Theology Needs the Arts,” in Divine Generosity and Human Creativity: Theology through Symbol, Painting, and Architecture, eds. Christopher R. Brewer and Robert MacSwain (London: Routledge, 2017), 24–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

86 See, for example, the subtitles for Johnston, Robert K., Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2000)Google Scholar; Clarke, Anthony J. and Fiddes, Paul S., eds., Flickering Images: Theology and Film in Dialogue (Oxford: Regent's Park College, 2005)Google Scholar; and Vollmer, Ulrike, Seeing Film and Reading Feminist Theology: A Dialogue (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Stefanie Knauss’ helpful critique of “dialogue” methods in Religion and Film: Representation, Meaning, Experience (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 82–85.

87 Bazin, What Is Cinema? vol. 1, 25.

88 Ricoeur, Paul, Time and Narrative, vol. 3, trans. Blamey, Kathleen and Pellauer, David (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 157Google Scholar.

89 Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, IV/3, eds. T. F. Torrance and G. F. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961), 113Google Scholar. Barth notes two types of secularism, one “pure and absolute” and another “mixed and relative.” He argues that Christ can raise up witnesses speaking “true words” in both spheres (118–20).

90 Ibid., 114–17.

91 At the time of this writing, the COVID-19 pandemic has led us to rely on screen-based audio-visual (i.e., cinematic) communication perhaps more than ever before in world history.

92 Detweiler, Craig, Into the Dark: Seeing the Sacred in the Top Films of the 21st Century (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 42Google Scholar.

93 MacIntyre, Alasdair and Ricoeur, Paul, The Religious Significance of Atheism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 59Google Scholar.