Hollywood and the Catholic Church
Title | Hollywood and the Catholic Church PDF eBook |
Author | Lester J. Keyser |
Publisher | |
Pages | 344 |
Release | 1984 |
Genre | Performing Arts |
ISBN |
Reforming Hollywood
Title | Reforming Hollywood PDF eBook |
Author | William D. Romanowski |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 329 |
Release | 2012-06-14 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 0199942587 |
Religious Communication Association's Book of the Year Hollywood and Christianity often seem to be at war. Indeed, there is a long list of movies that have attracted religious condemnation, from Gone with the Wind with its notorious "damn," to The Life of Brian and The Last Temptation of Christ. But the reality, writes William Romanowski, has been far more complicated--and remarkable. In Reforming Hollywood, Romanowski, a leading historian of popular culture, explores the long and varied efforts of Protestants to influence the film industry. He shows how a broad spectrum of religious forces have played a role in Hollywood, from Presbyterians and Episcopalians to fundamentalists and evangelicals. Drawing on personal interviews and previously untouched sources, he describes how mainline church leaders lobbied filmmakers to promote the nation's moral health and, perhaps surprisingly, how they have by and large opposed government censorship, preferring instead self-regulation by both the industry and individual conscience. "It is this human choice," noted one Protestant leader, "that is the basis of our religion." Tensions with Catholics, too, have loomed large--many Protestant clergy feared the influence of the Legion of Decency more than Hollywood's corrupting power. Romanowski shows that the rise of the evangelical movement in the 1970s radically altered the picture, in contradictory ways. Even as born-again clergy denounced "Hollywood elites," major studios noted the emergence of a lucrative evangelical market. 20th Century-Fox formed FoxFaith to go after the "Passion dollar," and Disney took on evangelical Philip Anschutz as a partner to bring The Chronicles of Narnia to the big screen. William Romanowski is an award-winning commentator on the intersection of religion and popular culture. Reforming Hollywood is his most revealing, provocative, and groundbreaking work on this vital area of American society.
Hollywood Censored
Title | Hollywood Censored PDF eBook |
Author | Gregory D. Black |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 354 |
Release | 1994 |
Genre | Performing Arts |
ISBN | 9780521565929 |
After a series of sex scandals rocked the film industry in 1922, movie moguls hired Will Hays to clear the image of movies. Hays tried a variety of ways to regulate movies before adopting what became known as the production code. Written in 1930 by a St Louis priest, the code stipulated that movies stress proper behaviour, respect for government, and 'Christian values'. The Catholic Church reinforced these efforts by launching its Legion of Decency in 1934. Intended to force Hays and Hollywood to censor films, the Legion of Decency engineered the appointment of Joseph Breen as head of the Production Code Administration. For the next three decades, Breen, Hays, and the Catholic Legion of Decency virtually controlled the content of all Hollywood films.
Hollywood and Catholic Women
Title | Hollywood and Catholic Women PDF eBook |
Author | Kathryn Schleich |
Publisher | iUniverse |
Pages | 212 |
Release | 2012-03-23 |
Genre | Performing Arts |
ISBN | 9781469782171 |
In this second edition of her exploration of Catholic women in film and television, author Kathryn Schleich presents an in-depth, feminist point of view while addressing important questions about the role of women in both the Church and Hollywood. Throughout Schleichs extensive research, she noticed that themes of fear, mistrust, and even hatred of women were prevalent. While examining such deeply ingrained attitudes, it soon became evident to Schleich that Catholic women still have a long way to go in Hollywood. As she carefully explores the sexual tension between Sister Benedict and Father OMalley in The Bells of St. Marys, the brutal murder of Theresa Dunn in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and the stereotype shattering Grace Hanadarko of Saving Grace, Schleich offers an insightful portrayal of womens oppression within the Catholic Church and explores whether Catholic women are better off today. This study encourages contemplation of the place of Catholic women within the ever-changing spheres of cinema and television, ultimately encouraging movement toward the goal of achieving equal status for women in all realms of life.
Miracles & Sacrilege
Title | Miracles & Sacrilege PDF eBook |
Author | William Bruce Johnson |
Publisher | University of Toronto Press |
Pages | 541 |
Release | 2008-01-01 |
Genre | Performing Arts |
ISBN | 0802094937 |
Tracing the development of the Church in the United States, Johnson discusses the reasons it found The Miracle sacrilegious and how it attained the power to persuade civil authorities to ban it.
Catholics in the Movies
Title | Catholics in the Movies PDF eBook |
Author | Colleen McDannell |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 377 |
Release | 2008 |
Genre | Performing Arts |
ISBN | 0195306562 |
Catholicism was all over movie screens in 2004. Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ was at the center of a media firestorm for months. A priest was a crucial character in the Academy Award-winning Million Dollar Baby. Everyone, it seemed, was talking about how religious stories should be represented, marketed, and received. Catholic characters, spaces, and rituals have been stock features in popular films since the silent era. An intensely visual religion with a well-defined ritual and authority system, Catholicism lends itself to the drama and pageantry of film. Moviegoers watch as Catholic visionaries interact with the supernatural, priests counsel their flocks, reformers fight for social justice, and bishops wield authoritarian power. Rather than being marginal to American popular culture, Catholic people, places, and rituals are all central to the world of the movie. Catholics in the Movies begins with an introductory essay that orients readers to the ways that films appear in culture and describes the broad trends that can be seen in the movies hundred-year history of representing Catholics. Each chapter is written by a noted scholar of American religion who concentrates on one movie that engages important historical, artistic, and religious issues and then places the film within American cultural and social history, discusses the film as an expression of Catholic concerns of the period, and relates the film to others of its genre. Tracing the story of American Catholic history through popular films, Catholics in the Movies should be a valuable resource for anyone interested in American Catholicism and religion and film.
The Catholic Church and Hollywood
Title | The Catholic Church and Hollywood PDF eBook |
Author | Alexander McGregor |
Publisher | I.B. Tauris |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2013-06-15 |
Genre | Performing Arts |
ISBN | 9781848856530 |
During the 1930s, the Catholic Church in the US was engaged in a metaphorical 'war' against the increasingly modern and secular values of the American public. Alexander McGregor offers a detailed account of how the Church, feeling itself to be under siege, used the media- and particulalrly cinema- to reach out to Americans. The 1930s were the 'golden age' for Hollywood, and the Church saw the film industry as an opportunity to engender a pro-Catholic social moral code amongst the US population. McGregor examines the ways in which the American Catholic Church sought to directly influence film production through its involvement with censorship bodies such as the Legion of Decency. Led by two senior bishops, the Legion of Decency's self-appointed task was to police the censorship process of Hollywood films and ensure the moral exactness of the final product. McGregor furthermore discusses wider themes in this struggle for influence over the public sphere, such as the representations of sex and sexuality in the media, and representations of Americanism and patriotism in popular culture. He thus highlights how the American Catholic Church represented itself and its values, as well as how it perceived its opponents. Finally, 'The Catholic Church and Hollywood' investigates the apparent contradiction at the heart of this attempt to influence the public through the medium of cinema: that a religious group, claiming to be beholden to a higher law and power, would at the same time seek to merge its public identity with secular institutions. McGregor thus scrutinises the claim that in the American polity, state and religion are completely separate. Focusing on the Church's contempt for the public's newfound interest in science, wealth and sexual liberation, Alexander McGregor sheds light on both the social mores of the Catholic Church and wider American society during this crucial period.