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Storytelling, narrativity, and “revelations” of divinity in the urban media today
Last modified: 2011-05-05
Abstract
How do religion and media connect in a different environment such as the one which exists now in urban life? Is there any relation between ordinary lives of people in the city, projections that exist from those lives through the media, and religions in general?
A possibility of connection could reside throughout narrativity, storytelling, that is written, audio or video representations of different patterns of life, these patterns being reflected through the media throughout reconstruction of reality with symbols, rites and rituals. Symbols, rites and rituals are always very near to religious demonstrations.
A new way of approaching things would be to ask the question: could urban religious “revelations” presented in media symbolic reconstructions – through different genres – be put in relation with official “Revelations” proposed by mainline religions, in particular in the three monotheist religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?
These social reconstructions of reality – which always exists in media production – can be analyzed from different approaches. On one hand, we can ask if those life “revelations” can stand best from the points of view of journalists, whose function is primarily to describe, as impartially as possible, events, facts or situations that exist in daily life of a city or of a country. On the other hand, we can ask if these kinds of “revelations” of the divine could exist in imaginary productions in the media. At that point, could we ask which one is nearer to spectator’s intimate spiritual reality: journalistic description, or esthetical imagination?
About the media, many authors mention the “threshold” experience, which happens when a receiver is projected into a kind of new reality, a new challenge that can changes his or her life. When media productions succeed that kind of transactional transformation in one person, could it be because of these possibilities of “revelations”?
Finally, is the city in particular a relevant situs for that kind of “revelation”, because of its extraordinary potentialities of reflecting the diversity of human stories, which can finally become through the media vehicles of new “revelation” of the divine?
A possibility of connection could reside throughout narrativity, storytelling, that is written, audio or video representations of different patterns of life, these patterns being reflected through the media throughout reconstruction of reality with symbols, rites and rituals. Symbols, rites and rituals are always very near to religious demonstrations.
A new way of approaching things would be to ask the question: could urban religious “revelations” presented in media symbolic reconstructions – through different genres – be put in relation with official “Revelations” proposed by mainline religions, in particular in the three monotheist religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam?
These social reconstructions of reality – which always exists in media production – can be analyzed from different approaches. On one hand, we can ask if those life “revelations” can stand best from the points of view of journalists, whose function is primarily to describe, as impartially as possible, events, facts or situations that exist in daily life of a city or of a country. On the other hand, we can ask if these kinds of “revelations” of the divine could exist in imaginary productions in the media. At that point, could we ask which one is nearer to spectator’s intimate spiritual reality: journalistic description, or esthetical imagination?
About the media, many authors mention the “threshold” experience, which happens when a receiver is projected into a kind of new reality, a new challenge that can changes his or her life. When media productions succeed that kind of transactional transformation in one person, could it be because of these possibilities of “revelations”?
Finally, is the city in particular a relevant situs for that kind of “revelation”, because of its extraordinary potentialities of reflecting the diversity of human stories, which can finally become through the media vehicles of new “revelation” of the divine?