Description
Book SynopsisPhillip Maciak examines filmic depictions of Jesus to argue that cinema developed as a model technology of secularism, training viewers for belief in a secular age. Cinematic depictions of an appearing and disappearing Christ became a powerful vehicle for Americans to navigate a rapidly modernizing society.
Trade ReviewClearly written and carefully argued,
The Disappearing Christ offers an insightful reading of secularism—and rightly of both religion and race—in American film and visual culture. In doing so, Maciak opens up exciting new space in the study of the secular. -- Josef Sorett, author of
Spirit in the Dark: A Religious History of Racial AestheticsIn developing the idea of an aesthetics of “spectacular realism,” Phillip Maciak offers an indispensable account of early cinema’s imbrication with secularization in the United States. With keen attention to matters of form and sensitivity to historical discourses of faith, spectatorship, and modernity,
The Disappearing Christ changes our understanding of film history and theory by excavating the forgotten yet crucial dynamic of religion and secularism so central to early cinema and its world. -- Allyson Nadia Field, author of
Uplift Cinema: The Emergence of African American Film and the Possibility of Black ModernityWith great agility and persuasive writerly verve, Maciak brings the conceptual idioms of postsecular critique to bear on the aesthetics of early cinema. In its attention to cinematic form, to aesthetic and intellectual history, and to the shifting terrains of religiosity,
The Disappearing Christ is a fine achievement. -- Peter Coviello, author of
Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American SecularismThe Disappearing Christ retells the story of secularization, firmly placing visual media within that narrative. Maciak alters the ongoing conversation on secularization for the present day. -- S. Brent Plate, author of
Religion and Film: Cinema and the Re-Creation of the WorldMaciak expertly argues for modernity making miracles rational. . . Recommended. * Choice *
I recommend
The Disappearing Christ. * Journal of Religion and Film *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: The Disappearing Christ and Other Stories
1. A Rare and Wonderful Sight:
Ben-Hur’s Historicism
2. Looking Sideways: Media Theories of Jesus Christ
3. Tricks and Actualities: The Passion Play Film and the Cinema of Attractions
4. The Double Life of Superimposition: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Black Christ Cycle
Coda: Resurrectionists: Toward a Post-Cinematic Postsecular
Notes
Bibliography
Index
