Stefanie Knauss’ Religion and Film: Representation, Experience, Meaning offers a thorough introduction to its stated topic, providing a wide-ranging survey of scholarship in theology, religious studies, film studies, and cultural studies. It should be required reading for any academic daring to step into the domain of religion and film because it provides example after example of what not to do as a researcher in this field. This being said, it is remarkable more for its breadth than its depth, and the text is perhaps most valuable for the survey of extant scholarship it provides rather than any single specific methodological insight.
The text is composed of four sections: the first three discuss specific scholarly approaches to film, highlighting positives and negatives in this scholarship. The first of these discusses the approach of reading “film as text,” an approach derived from literary criticism that focuses primarily on characters, dialogue, and plot, and which many have argued is inadequate for the medium of film, as Knauss notes. There are still insights to be gained from the “film as text” approach, but, as the author suggests, it is important that “scholars increasingly pay attention to how visual elements, music, or sound function in representing religious or theological elements” (8). To illustrate this, Knauss provides an expansive overview of scholarly approaches to films, recounting examples of scholars who approach film narrowly as text and others who have expanded their interpretive approaches.
The second section moves to a discussion of those who actually watch these movies, the audience, and their experience of, engagement with, and response to film. Questions include: Can a film serve as a religious experience in itself? When a film offers a religious message, what is the connection to the institutional religion? How have members of religious institutions approached the portrayal of religion in film? Once more, the method is to provide extensive engagement with a wide range of scholarship on the study of audience experience of film. In the third section, a final step is made to discuss the cultural significance and presence of film, with a survey provided of forms of scholarship which seek to measure cultural impact, whether through hard data or less scientific approaches.
This brings us to the final section, which offers Knauss’ account of theory and method, although her prescriptions are rather brief. In the introductory abstract Knauss indicates that this final part of the book “will make explicit some of these underlying assumptions to serve as a starting point for a more sustained reflection on the theories and methodologies of the field, and it will highlight some of the pitfalls we encounter if we are not methodologically and theoretically precise in our work” (1). And as advertised, this section is very much a starting point for further reflection, so persons looking for a fully formed method for approaching religion and film will not find it here; to me, this is not a deficiency of the text, as Knauss’ survey reveals that the world of scholarship on religion and film is too large to be reduced to a single methodology.
If any criticism of the text is to be offered, it emerges here—in Knauss’ method of wading through a seemingly endless stream of secondary literature. The chapters run through issues quickly, referencing one paper or book, offering a response or criticism, perhaps citing another positive or negative source on the same topic, and then hurriedly moving to the next matter. As an example, Knauss recounts Christopher Deacy’s work Screen Christologies: Redemption and the Media of Film (University of Wales Press, 2001); while she acknowledges that Deacy’s approach is positive in that it celebrates “film’s constructive contribution to theology,” (23) she is critical of Deacy for inadequately acknowledging the influence of a specific theological position in his understanding of redemption. Knauss suggests that Deacy’s insights are “ultimately limited to affirming an already existing, if less prominent, strand in the theological tradition, namely the ‘low’ Christology of the Antiochean school with its emphasis on Christ’s humanity,” with the unfortunate result that “other more positive cinematic images of redemption” are excluded from his study (24).
This discussion is accomplished within two paragraphs, and I do not think it is an overstatement to suggest that there are over a hundred other discussions of this sort contained within the text. If one is unfamiliar with the literature covered, as is almost inevitable given the range of disciplines included, it will be unclear if Knauss’ accounts are fairly offered, briefly drawn as they are. But this is also the strength of the book—the extensive bibliography and discussion of the material set up the reader to find the sources necessary for further inquiry. After reading this volume, one will know the lay of the land so they can pursue their own questions, and it is this mapping that is the great strength of the book.
Matthew C. Kruger is associate professor of the practice in the Theology Department at Boston College.
Matthew Kruger
Date Of Review:
November 30, 2022