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lecture 9 “Into the Spider-Verse”

Slide 2 REVIEW “Religion and Material Culture”

Material dimension, what people like, associate meaning to product or make own stuff

Not static objects, play with or make us happy or collect, money

Value system, meaningful, nostalgia, valuable, function, relation to other objects

Slide 3 REVIEW What is “Material Culture”?

Putting characters on products

Slide 4 review

Sacred product, religion in pop culture

Slide 5 David Chidester’s Authentic Fakes (2005)

coke

Slide 6 Chidester’s “functional definition of religion”

Religion: way of being human in human place

Meet companies standards to slap logo on

Authentic fake? Just put label or real, function, utility

Don’t need batman toothbrush to brush teeth but like it

Like character

Slide 7 Cosplay and Conventions

Engage, embody

Slide 8 Toys and Material Culture

Be Real life/live action toys

Signal belonging to community

Toys beyond ordinary, valuable

Slide 9 Chidester on “Religion”

Transcendent, ultimate, sacred, doesn’t need to be rigid

Indicate stuff is important to us, ideas, values

Slide 10 Anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s  Definition of Religion

No one size fits all definition, need weight, functional, analysis, compare

1. Symbols

2. Moods

3. Existence

4. Fact

5. realistic

Slide 11 Examining Marvel’s Brand

Fetish, mood and motivation

Slide 12 Examining DC’s Brand

Dc more gray, consequential?

Slide 13 Commodity Fetishism

Spiderman young like diapers

Different ages/audiences different fetishes? Happy meal

Commodity fetishism, something cool, wanna have, not generic/store brand

Slide 14 Is lucky hat or shirt an example of a fetish?

Own meaning to stuff relationship, favourite stuff, why, cool, subjective

Slide 15 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Real spiderman?

Authoritative version of text, real or not, approved?

Best stuff, how to engage, golden age of comics, different versions

real , fake, less? Updated version for different time, star wars prequels

Slide 16 The Amazing Spider-Man

Stan lee

Spiderman different image, younger relate

Canon in 1960s and build

Slide 17 Animating the Amazing SpiderMan

Voice act, bring to life, change actors, audience closer?

Slide 18 Different Animation Styles, Different Universes 

Alternate storylines in same world, 4th wall

One and only? Lonely to be hero, secret identity, keep from close people

Slide 19 Choosing to be the hero

Hard to grow up, don’t wanna do what told to do, mistrust

Wear symbol and logo, own control, choose how to control yourself

Slide 20 “Can I return it, if it doesn’t fit?”

React to death, stan lea cameo

Creator meet created, heartfelt, nod

It always fits in, follow through actions, path dependency

Slide 21 Peter Parker’s Death

Consequences, spider man can die, human, hero or villain

Slide 22 The One and Only Spider-Man?

Maybe more, intros, pick up different versions

Slide 23 My name is Peter B. Parker 

Washed up, alpha and beta? Want beta, maybe no new version

Slide 24 “You’re like me!” Finding a mentor

Recognition, let go, solitary, wouldn't normally encounter

Slide 25 Learning the Ropes

Webs, not bound, different rules than humans, freedom/liberation

Slide 26 “Hello My Name Is…

Universe populated, commonality becomes community

Want understanding, desired, understood, hear

Slide 27 Miles Morales has invisibility and electric shock, in addition to web-slinging and “spidey senses” 

Lenses change, psychological, ethics other stuff, community

Good or bad, always superlatives?

Slide 28 Faith in Oneself

Show something’s happening, out of time, aware of smt, like mystical

Spidey senses tingle, fear and danger, villain or bad luck

Slide 29 Peter B. Parker’s Fears of Inadequacy 

Think can’t do it, no longer, divorced

Slide 30 Getting a little help from your friends

Community, friendship, duty to friendship, getting together

Better collective than individual, collective effervescence-right place right time, magic

Slide 31 Miles’ Leap of Faith

Feel better, take leap of faith, higher power/certainty

Miles leap to believe in himself

Do what others can’t

Slide 32 The Villain’s Backstory

Steal lost family from other universe, strife

Slide 33 I’m Spider-Man (and I’m not the only one…)

What do we wanna be, not alone 

Clashing universe aesthetics/animation and stuff

Chaos is messy style feel more jarring, clashing

Class opinion

Slide 34 What’s a Superhero?

Peter b wants to save, self sacrifice

Homage to people from before

Awards, good animation

superhero does helps cus right, open ended definition, anyone can be

Fill void of possibility

Slide 35 Acknowledging those that came before us

Thank stan lee, acknowledge humanity, other people, cameos

Pass the torch, not only one interested

Slide 36 Authenticity? Authentic Fakes?

Who’s real spiderman, not only one, room for colliding viewpoints

Aunt may helps

Slide 37 Experimenting with Animation 

Where are we in action, lots happening

Slide 38 Experimenting with Animation Styles in Into the Spider-Verse

Push boundaries, go too far? Uncomfortable with clashing or cool

Accessibility, flashes, epilepsy

How express ourselves

Look for next big thing

Slide 39 This Week’s Assigned Reading

Humanness of spiderman, history, backstories

Why created, younger, less powerful, not sidekick, own person, flawed, dismissed

Just a kid

Superhuman vs human, merge what’s possible

Human but does the right thing, 

community

Lecture 10: Self and Other” or “Getting By With A Little Help From Your Friends

Slide 2 marvel studio’s black panther (2018)

Black panther star of show, black director

Resources for own safety and people

Present themselves in false light, thought poor farmers but rich

Assume colonized so poor

Keep hidden so not exploited, no war/violence

Slide 3 african diaspora and afrofuturism in film

Why interesting in 2016 

why does comic character spark imagination

Real black panthers-civil rights

Diaspora-dispersed, try to come back into a community

Imagine and feeling reunited

Afrofuturism-

• themes of no apartheid, 

• living better off from tech advancements, 

• Sci-fi

• No problems of today

Slide 4

Wakanda-

• unconquered, 

• kept from the world, 

• no one knows how advanced, 

• low profile

• Spies but don’t reveal hand

Slide 5 T’Challa returns to his homeland after the death of his father, King T’Chaka

Crisis of succession

Tchala

Step into role cus death

Slide 6 If T’Challa’s claim is recognized, he will become King of Wakanda and receive the power of the Black Panther

T'challa step into father’s shoes

Capable individual

Seen as legitimate?

Rituals

Return to be judged, fill the role of king, expected

Doubt, other contenders

Slide 7 but others will rise to challenge him for that role

Contrasting views 

Killmonger wants to open up

Two views of utopia

Killmonger grew up outside

T'challa wants to maintain father’s status quo, stay closed

Killmonger says wakandans are not to be messed with

Cousin not same life, has claim to same resources

Slide 8 stories of promised kings: considering ethiopia for the rastafari

Descendents of slaves-unbroken tradition?

Ethiopia

Slide 9 the rastafari movement

Marcus Garvey tells african people to take pride even if brought to jamaica and not connected

Look for unconquered king-prophecy

Worthy of self governance, african king

Slide 10 Ras Tafari Makonnen (1891-1975)

See unconquered place

Expect for king, look for promised person, like jesus, christian colonized context

Black messiah

Slide 11 Haile Selassie I Emperor of Ethiopia (1930-1974)

Haile selassie (formerly Ras Tafari Makonnen) crowned emperor of ethiopia

Prophesied king from unconquered nation (ethiopia)

Slide 12 the rastafari movement in jamaica

Greater than human

Invite to visit

Slide 13 rastafari worldview

New idea, ethiopia is promised land

Powerful god, like jesus for christians

Slide 14 T’Challa’s story inspires much like the story of Haile Selassie

T'challa like haile selassie

Black superhero own movie-not side character

THE black panther movie-magnum

Emphasise hebrew not christian bible

Slide 15 African Diaspora and Afrofuturism

Fictitious, unconquered land

Slide 16 Reactions to the Release of Black Panther in 2018

Snoopdog buys out theaters to inspire young black children

Rolemodel-

• not enough for perfect figure, 

• needs to be human, 

• aspiration, 

• connection

 Hope, community

Slide 17 In America, Members of Black Churches Organized Screenings of Black Panther

Church goes to watch movie

How important?

Transcendence, sacred, ultimate

Collective effervescence, hope, joy, already established religious community

Pop culture in religion/ vice versa

Slide 18 Godlike Superheroes?

Gods?, too big to be mere mortals? Deities? Mythic?

Difference between god and human, where does superhero/demi-god fall, mutant

Retelling old mythologies?

Bast, indian haruman figure? appropriation?

Slide 19 yoruba religious traditions

Real world inspo

Orishas-lower gods, more able to engage with humans, intimately 

Humans take attributes and become gods through connection

Black panther taking on previous black panther powers

Slide 20 yoruba african orishas

Inspo from orishas

Real human models posing as and depicting gods

Subconscious images, inspiring

Small and big screens: art gallery and movie

Political and social

How people choose to go to movies?

Barbie phenomenon-dressing in pink, going with friends

Play with religious imagery

Slide 21 Assigned Reading

Who’s main figure

Motivated by black panther

Slide 22 René Girard (1923-2015)

One boy looks at giraffe if wanna play, other boy comes and sees and wants it

1st doesn’t wanna give cus 2nd one wants, thinks there’s value/desire

Be good, virtuous if act like jesus

Slide 23 W. E. B. Du Bois (ca.1946)

Systems of power, self preservation

Dual perspective, see through other’s pov

Aware of power dynamics, social institutions

But still human

Slide 2 review

Superhero merch/objects and stuff, private collection or show-off, costumes/cosplay

Virtue signalling

Ninian smart 7 dimensions of religion

• Practical and ritual

• Experiential and emotional-music

• Narrative and mythic-

• Doctrinal and philosophical

• Ethical and legal

• Social and institutional

• Material-audience themselves, making stuff to consume

Slide 3 review Superheroes and Villains in Film

How heroes are presented against each other, thor and loki siblings, valkyrie an asgard

Slide 4 review “That’s what heroes do...”

What heroes and villains make us think about, want to be hero, how

Humans interpret stuff, how act

Slide 5 REVIEW Ethical Considerations “What Makes Someone a Villain?

Is joker villain

Slide 6 “Religion” and “Material Culture”

Material grounds in current time, references, embody as human, 

perceive objects: colours, aesthetics, why like/buy

Slide 7 Examples of Material Culture

Halloween costumes as heroes, presentation of character, 

Not necessarily a mask but highlight texture and colour, given costume

Props like fake weapons, not normal everyday stuff, let kids have it normally to play

Transgress social norms, playing, expressing themselves in different roles

Slide 8 What does it mean to “play the hero” or “play the villain”?

Maybe don’t want to play villain, not supporting role, want to be main hero, change narrative, villain save the day, against canon, batman and joker together

Explore stuff outside norms, allowed to be aggressive and domineering

Can be actors and make stuff, extending child’s playing

Halloween wear what you want, girl’s only chance to be slutty without being judged

Alternate self, many to choose from, spirit halloween

Slide 9 costumes

Cosplayers do it year-round, make themselves maybe

Slide 10 Cosplay and Conventions

Extend childhood play, performative art, take time to perfect details

Allusion or make real, not real materials like metal, adamantium doesn’t exist

Different budgets, still achieve good illusion, prosthetics, what’s fake or authentic

Slide 11 Toys and Material Culture

Why like toys, ritual-act of play, spontaneous or script, get ready to con or party

Buy stuff

Slide 12 What is “Material Culture”?

Brand partnerships, coke, mcdonalds, regulated, like food and kinder eggs, 

maybe disappear, limited edition, 

like religion/mythical experience, 3. Transiency-temporary

Slide 13 Assigned Reading

Try to define religion, cross-promote

Slide 14 David Chidester’s Authentic Fakes (2005)

Oxymoron? What’s valuable, timing of produce, who determines what’s religion 

Slide 15 Chidester’s “functional definition of religion”

Way of being human in human place, looked in unexpected places

Slide 16 Chidester on “Religion”

Religious way of being human, 

be transcendent-above ordinary

Sacred-apart from ordinary, mcdonalds coffee vs espresso, tv dinner vs thanksgiving

Ultimate-final, unavoidable limit of ordinary concerns, death

Slide 17 Chidester’s Examples of Religion in America

Coke, baseball, rock’n roll

Don’t need coke, no nutrients, some people need it like coffee

Promote is as needed during a break, has a fizz, sensory stimulation, thirsty, sweaty celebs, ritual to share

Slide 18 Anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s Definition of Religion

1. Symbols

2. Make moods and motivations

3. Make order of existence

4. Make like facts

5. Moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic

Subconscious level

Slide 19 Authentic? or Fake Religion?

Holy order of cheeseburger, taken down

Coke and cheeseburger, combo

Started as satire, make fake religion as protest

Religious none’s still means you practice religion, like christmas or meditation/yoga etc

• With family but not in organized social institution

Real religion? 

Slide 20 Authentic? or Fake Religion? Contd

Flying spaghetti monster-religious parody, pastafarianism, colanders on head, hijab

Slide 21 What is a “brand”?

Intended audience, embody ideas or what consumers admire or want to be, costumes

Fanatics, only wear a brand, only drink coke, fast fashion and ethic, who to support

Identity brands: help consumers assert identity or who they are, 

Iconic brands: contribute to the identify of a whole community

Slide 22 Examining Marvel’s Brand

Avengers movie, gender roles, off-brand stuff, 

product placement, real or not, wayne enterprises or real brands, create realism

Slide 23 Licensed Products from Marvel

Lego stuff

Slide 24 Examining DC’s Brand

Impression of stuff, products with superheroes to be chosen by children

Marvel lets images be everywhere, disposable objects, diapers? Kleenex?

Team Thinks where images are, no cigarettes etc, taboo or not

Slide 25 Commodity Fetishism

Sexual proclivity, over-fixation, “excited”

Want to consume products, iphones, cocke, type of lifestyle, identity or iconic brands

Beep at same type of car

Object has supernatural powers

Slide 26 Is a lucky hat or shirt an example of a fetish?

Same ritual, minimize risk of changing variables, 

associate supernatural stuff with objects

Slide 27 Interacting with Objects

Actor-network theory (ant)

Objects influence humans, everything in relationships, same level

No external forces, only network, not only humans who influence

Slide 28 “Religion” and “Ritual”

rituals

Slide 29 recommended reading

Ronald L. Grimes’ article on “Ritual” in Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief vol. 7, iss.1 (2011), https://doi.org/10.2752/175183411X12968355482097 Ron Grimes

Pass around wooden egg, like talking stick, develop relationship, got power

Didn’t want to throw out the egg at the end of class, extraordinary, found in attic

Students imbued it with value

Slide 30 ​​Tutorial 3 Today (November 5)

Together with your TA, you will consider an example of material culture associated with the Marvel or DC brand

1. How is this object meant to be used?

2. Who might be interested in purchasing this product?

3. Is it appropriate to apply the term “fetish” to this product?

4. Is this an example of “Popular Culture” (produced by the people)?

5. Who might this object be understood an example of an “identity brand”? or “iconic brand”?Slide 2 Thor: Ragnarok (2017) “Old Gods, New Myths”

Self-identify as god, not lord, like dr strange not mr strange, positions of prestige and power

Source materials that inspire, myths, what’s canon, can’t alter

Slide 3 REVIEW Captain Marvel (2019) “Bad Girl” to “Superheroine”?

Colonialism, defender of earth

Add to MCU canon, story arc, infinity saga,

intertextuality, materials interact

• Characters in own world and narrative

• Alliance and conflicts, blurry good and bad, communities/nationalities

• Meant to manipulate? Fuzzy memories, limit info, harness to weapon

• Need more weapons to defend?-avengers initiative to protect, need heroes

Slide 4 Captain Danvers/Captain Marvel

Feminine archetypes, liability? No solo films

Captain marvel in touch with emotions, ethical

Slide 5 Defender of Earth and the Skrull

Many films/characters, characters retire for new ones, when too many, what’s justice

Slide 6 The Skrull in Search of Homeland

Skrulls look frightening/non-human, otherness, play up few features, potential enemy

Differentiate between enemy and ally

Slide 7 Review Post-9/11 Cinema and the Marvel Cinematic Universe

American identity, always good, 

others bad, conceptualizing terrorism, infiltrate, lizards/reptilian, secret lizards

False idea, jude law plays good people

Slide 8 Enemy Invasions?

Soldier’s role

Slide 9 Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas 

lithuanian philosopher in jail during WWII

• Ethical duty/imperative for someone different

• Don’t harm Others when you see their face, doesn’t need to be like you

• want to be good to people like us, try harder to identify with Others

• Ontological

• When you see face, easy to recognize as individual

• When covered, shadow, or less-than human, easier to do harm, not person

• Who has right to exist

Slide 10 This Week Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Not earth, asgard, alien civilization, powerful, like gods

Mythical source material

Preconceived notions of Thor, succession

Slide 11 New Text for Consideration

Theology and the Marvel Universe

Slide 12 Assigned Reading

What’s myth, narrative archetypes and tropes

Myth in religion: not false story, important, resonate with culture

• Some constant

• Timeless, human concerns-old way, primordial way

• Has individual creativity in retelling, what’s appropriate or resonates

Copyright to heroes, money to produce, original creativity, break 4th wall, memes

Hero talking to you in movies, want to resonate, solidify memes/internet culture, trope

Fit into culture

Slide 13 “Religion” and “Myth”

Narrative or mythic dimension, identity, shared past/community

Slide 14 Mythic Reinvention in Wonder Woman (2017)?

Diana prince, related to artemis/roman/greek myths, mix greek and roman

Mix troy and aeneid, no difference to audience, all ancient the same

Gods are supernatural, maybe mistake aliens for gods-scifi/fantasy, magic or god

Bridge between other/ancient to our world, suspension of disbelief

Slide 15 Ancient Archetypes and Old Gods

Mix contemporary with ancient, familiar/recognizable

Slide 16 Recommended Reading

Old gods and film, different interpretations, something new but packaged familiarly

Slide 17 This Week: Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

popular

Slide 18 Thor’s Films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

In thor universe, character development

• How he understands, where he comes from, with avengers

Thor’s role, prophecy/vision/dreams, looming threat, ragnarok/doom, mythic theme

Duty, right ruler, hammer as source of power

Slide 19 Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Directed by Taika Waititi

Comedic and light hearted, korg

Slide 20 Asgard, an Ancient Alien Civilization

Larger than life kingdoms, myth, idealized, paradise, peace, no crisis

Untouched heaven, outside of mundanity

Slide 21 Odin, The All Father

Strong patriarchal figure, armoured, weapons, peaceful but can squash problems

facade

Slide 22 Sons of Odin

succession crisis, 

Slide 23 Brothers Thor and Loki

away from asgard on earth, Odin dies, doesn't want to live, 

Slide 24 Ragnarok: Prophecy of the Fall of Asgard

Gonna end world, apocalyptic, prophecies in myths, world start and end

Norse characters, wrong roles, no hulk etc

Slide 25 ragnarok:

Maybe try to stop as hero, save the day, “that’s what heroes do”, what do they do?

Be strategic, new allies

Slide 26 Odin Chooses to Leave the World

Succession, leader gives up, go elsewhere

Slide 27 Hela Goddess of Death

Hela is coming after odin dies, fight valkyrie, only 1 survivor, power from asgard like thor, civil war, usurp authority

Slide 28 Asgard’s Forgotten History

Not all good, golden, result from war,

Hela mighty, goddess of death

Slide 29 Hela, First Born of Odin Takes the Throne of Asgard

Bad mood in kingdom, hela becomes absolute monarch, execute

Slide 30 Thor’s Hair is Cut

Thor and loki new world sakaar, loki gain favor with magic, thro with strength

Thor not champion, just contender, no identity, just lord of thunder

Slide 31 Sampson, Hero of the Hebrew Bible (Judges 13-16)

Cut hair, lose identity, like samson, very strong but can’t cut hair-achilles heel

Not as strong as they think, vulnerable, be careful

Slide 32 Cameo by Marvel Creator, Stan Lee

Hommage, respect to creator, source of material, he can take part

He cuts hair, control character like writing him

Slide 33 Thor Discovers A Missing Ally: Dr. Bruce Banner/Hulk

Storytelling, thor sad, different light,

Pass the torch of source material from stan lee to MCU

Thought he’d be friends with hulk but not remembered

Slide 34 Who’s the Strongest Avenger?

Could’ve won if not restrained

Slide 35 Finding a way back to Asgard and Earth

Stony thinks hulk is strongest, thor is butthurt, needs to be believed as strongest, identity

Thor’s point break not quarterback

Slide 36 New Ally? Valkyrie?

Doesn’t recognize asgard, doesn't want to go back

Slide 37 Working Together

Asgard not saveable

Slide 38 To Destroy Hela, Asgard Must Be Destroyed…

Thor tells loki to start ragnarok to destroy asgard so hela has no power

Slide 39 “Are you Thor the God of Hammers?”

Remember identity not tool, thunder not hammer

Slide 40 “Asgard’s not a place. It’s a people.”

Resists, no final battle, lets ragnarok go, keep what matters, the people

Thor not real throne but on spaceship’

Reimagine prophecy and fate, flexibility between roles assigned

Slide 41 “That’s what heroes do…”

Shame valkyrie from running away, don’t rebel in sakaar, stand up and fight

Heroes should fight to stop ragnarok but thor abstains instead, vulnerable and clever

Utilitarianism, ethics

Looks like odin, patch on eye, rule with sacrifice, less hubris, Still hero if run away?

People in diaspora, maintain identity and community as refugees, 

• No access to history and geography

• Lose place, lose self?

Slide 42 For Next Time… “Religion” and “Material Culture”

Ritual: throne, coronation, scene in front of people, acknowledges as leader, don’t need hymns, oils, etc, different rituals

Material culture everywhere

Slide 43 Material Culture

Maybe toy, make them interact, in context, assign value

ritual/narrative creativity, make own stories, memories, and stuff

Objects in physical world, still engage with stories

Slide 44 Examples of Material Culture

Ritual: put yourself in action

Dress up, physically, feel powerful, try on different persona

Excuse to engage physically, fight, mimicry, liberating, aspirational, imagination

Dramaturgy-roles, parts, actors, scripts, etc

Knock offs, bound in brands, fetishize, desirable, self-identify, collect, obsession

Express ourselves through collection and clothes

Intrinsic and extrinsic value, sentimental, memory, nostalgia, childhood with objects

promote/restrain, different kind of interpretations

Slide 2 Captain Marvel (2019)

Trauma, reevaluate role, identity narrative, like dr. strange and surgeon to wizard

Slide 3 REVIEW Dr. Strange and the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Trauma from hands, how memory loss lets character continue

Reigned in with devices for own good, not dangerous, access to power

Earn power/gift? Not what appears to be

Slide 4 Critiquing Presentations “East” and “West” and “Magic”

Systems of viewing world, east and west outdated but orients discussion in universe

Strange looks for answer in east, bruce wayne outside gotham

Mystical with east, medicine and science with west, eurocentric

No knowledge forbidden, only practices

Ancient one is hypocrite

Slide 5 Strange’s Bandaged Hands Turning the Prayer Wheels

How to orient with powerful sources, strange has superficial wheels, prayer wheels

Not processing, not saying mantra, stumbling through ignorance

Slide 6 Separating Body from Spirit

What’s real/reliable, what exists, body or spirit?

Slide 7 REVIEW Metaphysics

Strange shifts between worldviews

Substance-no change

Process-change

Materialism-only physical matter, what strange thought

Idealism-only sprit, lsd

Dualism-matter and spirit, final, astral

Metaphysics to explain worldviews

Slide 8 REVIEW On “Religion” and Emotion

No definition of religion but has aspects, ninian smart’s 7 dimensions

Practical, emotional, narrative, philosophical, ethical, institutional, material

Who’se representing, aesthetics, “sexy” superheros for halloween

Slide 9 This Week’s Discussion Captain Marvel (2019) “Bad Girl” to “Superheroine”?

First female superhero solo film in mcu, wonder woman 1st overall

How is feminism presented, fem fatale? Surviving horror movies?

Good or bad in action?

Slide 10 Set in the year 1995… “Nostalgia” and “Mistaken Memory”

Before main mcu and avengers

canon=accepted stuff for rest of story, stan lee 60s stuff, more weight and authority

Stan lee cameos! Authority dies, how to continue canon, stan lee death

How to present characters correctly, sacred/important, explain differences

Nostalgia and crash in blockbuster, when first encountered comics when young

Indicate different/past world, cus blockbuster obsolete, different tech and elements

What was past like? Who started avengers, heroes not weapons, who to call

Incomplete past, limited/mistaken memory and nostalgia, memory of real world

Believe viewpoints

Slide 11 “Vers of the Kree Starforce” “Is this C-53?”

Not expected captain marvel, different suit colour, green not blue and red from poster

Slide 12 Final Heroic Form

How get to final form, what evolution

Slide 13 Change and Metamorphosis

Change and rites of passage, what they lose, heal and search for answers

Come out on other side changed

in-between/liminal period, beginning, middle, and end

Slide 14 REVIEW Ritual Theory and Rites of Passage

Arnold van gennep, separation, liminality, incorporation, change stages

Slide 15 REVIEW Ritual Theory and Rites of Passage contd

Victor turner, liminal between before and after, what believe 

Slide 16 Victor Turner’s “Liminal Stage”

Role of emotion

Slide 17 Considering the edited volume Marveling Religion (2022)

Slide 18 Assigned Reading

Jordan mcdowell, how engage with superheroes, not just entertainment

Critically engage and critique, why and what’s pop culture, what to do with trends

Fine art only for elite in middle ages, leisure time and money to view and collect

Engage with art, what’s valuable, rah rah nationalism

Slide 19 Ace Pilot to Planetary Defender

Pilot Get power from alien scientist

Slide 20 Defender of Earth (C-53) and the Skrull

What’s human, only captain marvel defend earth, ronan come back for her

Slide 21 Dr. Wendy Lawson/Mar-Vell

War going on, what’s lawson/var vell doing

Slide 22 Mar-Vell/Captain Marvel

recast/reenvision from captain marvel, gender switch

Slide 23 Captain Marvel in the Comic Series

Man vs woman in power on screen, maybe feminist stance, 

strong powerful woman=palatable for masses and fandoms

Slide 24 Yon-Rogg, Leader of the Kree Starforce

Jude law plays romantic leads, casting decisions, 

• Bad not really bad, good not really good

Slide 25 “Nothing is more dangerous to a warrior than emotion”

Twist, what to believe, who/what am i, loss of identity, existential, liminal stage

Jude law wants to harness power, “gifted” power but really from lawson, inherited

Is emotion a problem in action, life and death

Slide 26 Enemy Invasions?

In tech, green

Slide 27 The Skrull Threat

Skrull also green, menacing, tech, preparing for mission to find vers and tesseract

Become surfers, cold war enemies look just like you

Slide 28 A New Ally? Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Vers blends into shield, who to trust, how much to trust, 

mutually exploit for what you want, allies, start of friendship

Slide 29 “You are Carol Danvers”

Doesn’t know who she is, rambeau’s daughter choose USA colours for suit

Signalling previous films, top gun maverick, cat is goose like copilot from film

macho

Slide 30 Get Up!

Flashbacks to stay/fall down, crash go kart, pushed, admit defeat, but get up

Slide 31 Bruce Wayne Batman Begins

Fall to learn to pick ourselves up advice from father, when fall down hole

Why bad things happen to good people, meaning of pain

Experience but not end of story, persistence, no quitting

Slide 32 Integration of Identities: Wearing Pilot’s Jacket Over Modified Starforce Suit

Not fully in cree suit, jacket associated with past as pilot

Identity combined in new way, inherit past with suit and jacked,

Slide 33 “I have nothing to prove to you.”

Yon-rogg wants man to man, no powers but cause he’s weak, baiting, doesn’t accept

Can’t be manipulated anymore, doesn’t need to prove with just aggression

Rising above, stepping out of abuse/exploitation

Slide 34 “We need to find more...heroes”

External threats, why fury makes avengers, 

need to identify, need more heroes not weapons,

Heroes real people not weapons, choose when to act, keep humanity

Don’t hurt same, hurt others cus don’t understand, different

• Ontology-duty to do no harm

Skrulls look menacing and green, extraterrestrial, “threat and terrorist”

Then danvers sees humanity like children and wife

What counts as innocent or victim, post 9/11, bogeyman or terror

Responsibilities of engaging, nations and institutions, duty with power to act

Slide 35 The Marvels (2023)

Kamala khan, ms marvel, young person, less responsibilities

Opposite of captain marvel, 

young=not yet, fill role, role model

Monica as scientist thrust into role not ready for

Confront role to play, reliance on themselves and others, switching bodies? flopped

Slide 36 Recommended Reading

Different ways feminine characters communicate ideal femininity

• Capabilities and expectations

• Different from men

Slide 37 Gomora (Guardians of the Galaxy 2014)

Less threatening when switching sides, more feminine, less capable

Slide 38 Natasha Romanov/Black Widow Avengers

Spy using sex appeal, many languages, intellectual, 

Picks up slack when fury gone from snap, leadership

Is less bad less interesting? Vanilla good guys

Slide 39 Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch

Vision dies, no romantic partner, emotional wellbeing not greater good, 

bad to good to bad, switch between hero and villain, masculine and feminine

Femininity presented or negated

Slide 40 Hope van Dyne/The Wasp

Shorter hair, dynamic duo/partnership between sexes

Feminine on own or supporting

Slide 41 Femininity as Liability?

Stand alone without femininity as bad?

Gamora less potent when good, softer

Danvers Overcome hurdles, embrace emotions, feels, was discouraged

If sympathize, less useful

Less sexualised costume, armour not skimpy

No body exposed but vulnerability exposed, happy medium?

Grow into hero?

Slide 42 What About Wonder Woman (2017)

Powerful hero, before captain marvel, back to past device, immortal like danvers

Godlike, so god that less than human, less sympathetic, can’t relate

More mythic than human, mythic elements, amazons

Slide 43 Considering DC Superheroine in the Justice Leagues

How myth shows up in real life, out of time/place, still potent?

Still dodge bullets even if different tech

Slide 44 Ancient Archetypes and Old Gods

Trained when young montage, archetypes, like gods, not part of our world

Not real models or thought experiments, what if, fantasy not just scifi

Slide 45 Inserting Superheroes into Modern Warfare

Continuous force, not modern but wwi, timeless human rights

Different armour

Slide 46 Next Week Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

What’s god vs human, thor’s role, gender of heros and villains, family dynamics

Brother like lokiSlide 2 review Batman’sVillains in the Spotlight

Wanted to be heroes, apply ethics to life

Villains are cautionary tales, against norms, maybe like anti heroes, blurry

Slide 3 review The Joker As Main Villain of The Dark Knight

Heath ledger joker-nietzschean, no good or evil, in between, trolley problem, still ethical?, provoke, turn ethics on its head

Slide 4 review arthur fleck villain or antihero?

Joaquin phoenix- failed performer, world is bad, lash out, teaching moments, different gotham, from below not above

Slide 5 put on a happy face?

Pretend till you are, joker isn’t happy

Slide 6 forcing the facade

Tries too hard, overshoots, insecure, poor, needs safe space, obnoxious, people afraid,

too much or not enough, don’t meet the marks, cracks, weird laugh

Slide 7 REVIEW “Comedy and Ethics are Subjective”

Pretends to obey ethics, deviate Systems decides, joker hates world cus it decides

Slide 8 REVIEW Which of These Would be Arthur Fleck’s Ethical Position?

relativism=up to you subjective like joker

Absolutism-black or white

skepticism=none, grey

Slide 9 REVIEW Evoking Emotion

Soundtrack: dark knight hanz zimmer or superman or nanananana batman!

Humans are actors in life, project actions

Narrative possibilities black panther afro-futurism

Slide 10 REVIEW On “Religion” and Emotion

No definition of religion

Aspects of religion: art, narratives, emotional (deep, what’s human?) ritual, philosophical, ethical, social, material

Slide 11 REVIEW “Characteristic Emotional Experiences” and the Psychology of Religion”

Willian james:religion is overwhelmed by smt, can’t understand, emotional

Slide 12 this week

Metaphysics, switch paths, psychedelics, multiverse

Slide 13 doctor strange (2016)

Part of mcu, big and strong personalities, fictitious

Slide 14 As a “Master of Black Magic” in Strange Tales #110 (July 1963)

Counter cultures in 60s, black magic, civil rights

Slide 15 “The Origin of Doctor Strange” in Strange Tales #115 (December 1963)

Origin after introduction 

60s america magic vs. religion

Slide 16 Doctor Strange #1 (June 1968) first solo series featuring a story by Roy Thomas

Wizard or sorcerer

Slide 17 Marvel’s Cinematic Universe

In 2016, other heroes, stand out

Slide 18 Martial Arts and Mysterious Powers?

Casting, not bulky, intellectual

Slide 19 Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

In 2016, sequel later

Slide 20 Dr. Stephen Strange Neurosurgeon

Multitasking, smart like iron man, ego

Slide 21 The Doctor Becomes the Patient

Speeds while raining, crash, wanted best patient, downfall was ego, trauma from crushed hands like ego

Who am i if not what i do, surgeon no hands

Slide 22 Learning of a Miraculous Recovery

Spiral for answers, miraculous/unexplainable, grabs onto healing possibility

Slide 23 Seek out Kamar-Taj

Just wanted his back, high cost not money and strange is poor, go back satisfied

Slide 24 Strange’s Bandaged Hands Turning the Dharma Wheels

Hands and wrist, recovering while looking for cure, turns dharma wheels, answers in other cultures, going through motions, asking fro kamar taj, turning wheels without saying mantra

Slide 25 “The place you’re looking for is called Kamar-Taj”

Bruce wayne in jail, strange in kathmandu, fish out of water, white people in other cultures, monastery/monastic, orientalism, privileged info, esoteric

Slide 26 The Ancient One

Fight after theft, powerful

Slide 27 Separating Body from Spirit

Resistance, sink or swim, mister not doctor, cling to status, forced to be humble, rude awakening

Forced out of physical body into astral

Strange resisted magic then ancient one rejected strange

Slide 28 Should They Teach Strange? (Is he capable of learning?)

Maybe turn into threat

Slide 29 Lead another gifted student to power only to lose him to darkness?

Ethically responsible?

Slide 30 Kaecilius, The Zealot

Went down dark side

Slide 31 Stolen Pages from the Book of Cagliostro

Knowledge is power, decipher it and exploit for power

Slide 32 Kaecilius Performs the Ritual Gains Access to Power

Corrupted-eyes darken

Slide 33 Wong, Librarian of Kamar-Taj

Practices forbidden, not knowledge

Humor to connect, beyonce

Not doctor, mister, cus not master yet, eventually just strange-humility

Slide 34 Learning Spells and Mantras

Stereotypes (wifi password)

Slide 35 language of sorcerers

Magic, reality, powers, limits of human understanding and abilities

Try to expand keyhole, limited himself with previous assumptions

Ancient one eases strange in

Slide 36 Metaphysics (What’s Real? What Exists?)

Substance ontologies- what exists doesn’t change

Process ontologies-what exists changes

Materialism-only physical matter changes

Idealism- only spirit, everything else is less real or illusion

Dualism-matter and spirit

Slide 37 you helped him to walk again

Spirit heals body

Slide 38 looking through a keyhole

Blockage to widening keyhole

Slide 39 differing ontologies

No spirits and stuff, just matter, ancient one says there’s more out there

Slide 40 Separating Body from Spirit

Astral form

Slide 41 “What’s in that tea? Psilocybin? LSD?”

Maybe abused, show what he doesn’t know, 2 things, dualism

Slide 42 open your eye

Can’t imagine or see other stuff in world

Slide 43 Beyond Time and Time Loops

Pushes time envelope, not just place but time too, reversible, different planes

Slide 44 looping time

Makes dormammu suffer

Slide 45 “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain...”

Confronting limits

Slide 46 Ritual Theory and Rites of Passage

Changes: separation, liminality, incorporation

Slide 47 Ritual Theory and Rites of Passage contd

Liminal: between before and after, strange making own path between doctor and soceror

Slide 48 Victor Turner’s “Liminal Stage”

1. Separation-doctor strange, car crash

2. Liminal-try to cope, kamartaj

3. Incorporated-sorcerer, fight kaecilius

Slide 49 change and metamorphosis

Life cycle of butterfly, in shell and come out

Slide 50 Passages and Crossings: Journey Metaphors

Journeys and what happens on the way

Slide 51 William James’ Four Marks of Mystical Experiences

Too much, can't describe, kinda like religious stuff

1. Ineffability-no language to describe

2. Noetic quality-knowledge only from experience, no other place

3. Transiency-temporary, brief, not forever, 

4. Passivity-can’t decide when, drugs/deliriumjust happens, 

Slide 52 Considering the edited volume Marveling Religion (2022)

Religion in marvel

Slide 53 assigned reading

Trauma, don’t choose, make sense, who am i now?, fight or flight, overwhelmed

Slide 54 Baldwin’s Books on Trauma

Pastoral, help others in trauma, shape identities

Slide 55 Baldwin on Trauma

Trauma and religion

Slide 56 Critiquing Presentations “East” and “West” and “Magic”

Eurocentric bias: divide eat and west, boundaries, outside of europe/center

Romanticise east in 60s by stan lee, all asia in one, mysterious

Sold as magic and kungfuSlide 2 villains in the spotlight

Villains to understand what hero stands for

Larger than life, cartoonish villains, snappy names THE something, one-liner, distorted, over accentualized, character flaw, 

Villains caused to act out, batman responds

Villain MO? What can batman do

Slide 3 “The Batman” Created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger

Later Inspired by original

Slide 4 breaking news!

1st time superhero (batman) on walk of fame, characters before but superhero first time

Important enough, physical, material culture

REVIEW Batman’s Origin Story and Role According to Christopher Nolan

narratives

Slide 6 REVIEW Duality of Batman/Bruce Wayne

Different roles to appease

Bruce wayne can’t act as batman

Slide 7 building a legend

Function of symbol as fear

Fear as tool, larger than life

Slide 8 Batman’s Villains Dr. Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow

Use criminals as guinea pigs, mask

Slide 9 Batman as “The Dark Knight”

Does batman exploit fear like scarecrow 

Slide 10 The “White Knight” District Attorney Harvey Dent

Batman exacerbating?, dent is good

Slide 11 Harvey Dent Turns into “Two-Face”

Downfall of good, duality, happenstance?

Slide 12 The Main Villain: The Joker

Heath ledger Good portrayal, just died, won posthumously

Usually played good now villain

Menacing and facade

Slide 13 REVIEW The Joker Presents an Ethical Dilemma

Maybe batman needs to be pushed, right choice? Utilitarianism? (best for most) or manipulated by emotions, batman just human

Slide 14 REVIEW The Trolley Problem

Utilitarianism, kill 1 save 5

Maybe lay down on tracks or donate organs, conform to ethics

Bruce won’t kill and join shadow people, but lets al ghul die, “don’t have to save you”

Letting him live causes chaos, must choose

Slide 15 REVIEW Which of These Would be Bruce Wayne’s Ethical Position?

Ethical relativism-multiple views

Ethical absolutism-good or bad

Ethical skepticism-no answer

Slide 16 The Joker as Nietzschean Critique of Morality?

Slide 17 Assigned Reading: “No Laughing Matter: The Joker as Nietzschean Critique of Morality”

Make fun of joke, laugh at assumed comfortability, not black and white

Ledger joker like satan/devil, question morals

Angel and demon binary, more options

Move past old: god says…, restricting human potential

Why like joker? What do we get

Joker reveals batman flaws, can’t save everyone

Slide 18 This Week’s Villain: Arthur Fleck/Joker

Struggles socially and internally

Slide 19 Different Portrayals of “The Joker”

White face, red lips, clown makeup, exaggerated, circus/vintage

• Hide features, emphasize comedic attributes like smile

• Something off, bold and menacing eye contact

Slide 20 The Voices Behind the Joker

Off Putting laugh, disrupt, bubble up, isolate

Slide 21 Menacing Madness of Jack Nicholson’s Grin

Disfigured by acid, permanent

Slide 22 Threats of Chaos and Anarchy

Ledger no laugh

Slide 23 Jared Leto as The Joker in Suicide Squad (2016)

Menacing, not as great

Slide 24 James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad (2021)

No leto joker, bad guys do good

Slide 25 Harley Quinn

Focus in suicide squads, sidekick, in love with joker

Slide 26 “Harleen Frances Quinzel”

Margot robbie, lady gaga, start as animated

Slide 27 first appearance of harley quinn (1999)

Animated first then tv, branch off from joker?

Slide 28 the joker in love

Desires filled?

Slide 29 The Sad Clown Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck

Winds down to tragic

Slide 30 performing comedy

Trained, tries to make people laugh spontaneously, goal to laugh/perform

Spiral when bomb, internal instability when you laugh before they do, scares

Slide 31 forcing the facade

Intense desire for human interactions, forced smile

Slide 32 bombing on stage?

Projects himself to be on show

Slide 33 performing for the crowd

in on joke or being laughed at

Slide 34 Superhero Soundtracks JOKER “Send in the Clowns” Theme

2 step joke, set up and punchline-funny or shock

Narrative is arc

Send in the clowns, train scene and beat up by 3 finance bros

Why violent as reaction to bullying

Slide 35 Arthur Fleck a Villain or an Antihero?

Acts unethically, not self defense but rage/anger, runs down bully

Slide 36 Arthur Explains Himself

Wants his moment on the show

Slide 37 Arthur’s Statements on Murray Franklin’s Show “Life as Comedy”

Admits to killing, maybe responsible for riots

Not a joke, nothing left to lose, life is comedy

Slide 38 “Comedy and Ethics are Subjective”

Murray says not funny, arthur thinks it’s funny, subjective, system decides

Relates to ethics

Slide 39 But why did Arthur do this?

Start movement to be symbol, 

no, guys were bad, makes people crazy, 

Slide 40 Which of These Would be Arthur Fleck’s Ethical Position?

ethical relativism, bit of skepticism-subjective humour

Ledger joker not crazy

Slide 41 “You sound like you’re making excuses for killing those young men! Not everybody, and I’ll tell you this, not everyone is awful.” – Murray

Not everyone’s bad, good people out there don’t deserve

Slide 42 “You’re awful, Murray...You just wanted to make fun of me. You’re just like the rest of them.”

Murray is bad, laugh at him

Slide 43 “How about another joke, Murray? What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash!?” – Arthur

Kill murray, tipping point

Slide 44 Arthur Fleck a Villain or an Antihero?

Defend himself, was ridiculed/self defense, sympathize/root for?

Slide 45 Superhero Soundtracks BATMAN

Joker comedy, 

• Hijinx then good place

Tragedy

• Worse than before

batman different soundtracks, 

• Movie (michael keaton/tim burton, theatrical) vs tv (fun, nananananana batman)

Slide 46 Superhero Soundtracks: Creating Tone and Mood

Iconic moments on screen

Slide 47 on “religion” and emotion

Different aspects

• Myths and narratives, 

• ethics (how to behave), 

• social institutions (communities like churches/synagogues), 

• material (objects like bible?), 

• experiential and emotional (soundtracks, overwhelmed, caught up, suspension of disbelief)

  • Feel for joker, but maybe not ethical

Slide 48 “Characteristic Emotional Experiences” and the Psychology of Religion”

Extrapolated, underlying stuff that’s religious

• Acts and emotions give rise 

Slide 49 What kinds of emotions are evoked by these origin stories?

(despair, loneliness, excited to project in superhero)Slide 2 review what is the nature of power? What is justice?

Abstract concepts like justice

Ethical consideration how they appear, comic or big screen

Slide 3 man of steel 2013

Superman origin

100 years old, what did it say in 2013 and now in 2024

Slide 4 action comics #38

Origin and golden age of comics

Batman, wonderwoman, superman

Changed origin story

Superman from other world, abilities from scifi

More origin added later

Slide 5 review last week’s assigned reading

How Birth father presented later and before

Slide 6 henry cavill portrays the character clark kent, the man of steel 2013

Different ways of seeing the world, clark kent his identity and actions

Ethical and identity considerations

Kansas or alien from krypton

Slide 7 review different types of film analysis

Semiotic symbols

Narrative plot, connections of what audience has

cultural/historical, context of when made or edited, immigration, refugees, global warming, climate change

mise-en-scene

Slide 8 semiotic analysis example “s”

Not s, krypton symbol for hope, ideal of house, virtues

Slide 9 narrative analysis example the reporter character “lois lane”

Ally vs friend

Ethics of family, kents in smallville

Reporter and sources

Slide 10 Cultural/Historical Analysis Examples

Adopted, outing, should lois out him

Slide 11 Mise-en-scène Analysis Example Clark Seeks Guidance in Church

What’s happening, how it’s staged

Clark in gathering place of worship, church

Stained glass of jesus

Priest costume, not named but can assume

Give himself to authorities? jesus vulnerable, mirrors

Childhood flashback, fight back? Or protect family, be aggressive, what happens? Ethical concerns

Larger than life characters

We’re not superheroes but we emphasise with larger scenarios

Superhero model for action, best example, or unknown, fear of his power, human nature

Slide 12 review Superman as Savior Figure? Or Villain?

Look for saviours why?

Fantasy of good people

Project desires of future, fall into complacency and apathy

We don’t take action, rely on others

Slide 13 REVIEW “Doctor Manhattan” Alan Moore’s Watchmen (1986-87)

Whole world fears him, lose something

Slide 14 “Doctor Manhattan” from Alan Moore’s Watchmen (1986-87)

Cold, distant perspectives, separate himself from politics

Slide 15 Considering Nationalism and Captain America

Who’s our people

Captain america only save americans? American interests

Slide 16 Today’s Topic: Batman’s Origin Story and Role According to Christopher Nolan

Not great models

Consequence of standing up with a lot of attention

Commissioner gordon says a lot of attention, someone likes theatricals

Superheroes make supervillains

Slide 17 “The Batman” Created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger Detective Comics #27 (May 1939)

Bill finger later, action

Bob cane-detective

Slide 18 batman television series

More personalities, robin sidekick

Slide 19 batman the motion picture

Adam west, characters come to life

flashy

Slide 20 Batman Animated Series Batman

action

Slide 21 batman in video games

Yourself in action, become batman

Control arkham asylum

Products created to liberate us to take on challenges, immerse ourselves

Some with blood, some without

Pow, no real contact, allude, staged on screen

Slide 22 Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992)

Over the top, larger than life, gloominess, fantastic world

Successful

What it takes to turn movies into feature films, 

How much production studio want for budget

Costume, makeup, capture imagination, worldbuilding

Slide 23 batman of the 1990s

Less successful movies

Villains capture attention, lose seriousness

Balancing act between cartoonish and very serious and constricted

Slide 24 christopher nolan’s trilogy

Larger than life and realistic problems

Slide 25 batman’s origin story

One iteration

Slide 26 duality of batman/bruce wayne

Inherited, nepo baby, center of gotham, legacy

Fill in the blank between the two

Why bruce wants to workout

Slide 27 bruce wayne's nightmare?

Flashback, traumatic childhood experience, dream

Young and adult at same time

Wake up in prison, maximum security, rage, violence

Bruce chose to be in prison, why choose to live like or be among criminals

Slide 28 Bruce traveled to understand the criminal mind. (But did not become a criminal)

Slide 29 How does Bruce Wayne become “Batman”?

Ducard comes in, mysterious

Like trying drugs

Violence for own code of ethics, bruce dismisses option

Slide 30 Ducard, Agent of Ra’s al Ghul

Al ghoul, aloof, whole society of fighters

Slide 31 Ducard Offers a Path

More than man, something else, a legend that can’t be killed

Don’t understand, unknown causes fear, trepidation

Bruce opposite problem, everyone knows him

Celebs don’t want to be known

Use power of fear to deceive or intimidate

Fear, grief, anger, duality

emphasize?

Slide 32 pick a flower in the mountains

World just, make sense

Violence, corruptions, tragedies

Slide 33 ducard’s lesson

Fear, use, exploit, cultivate

Answers to injustice

Use fear against those who prey on fearful, 

master own fears, mind over matter

Slide 34 special training from ducard

Tools to be larger than life

Scary, theatricality as tool, make opponent or audience think something

Slide 35 the death of bruce's parents

Death of parents change him

Remember batcave in opera, go out, puts parents in harm’s way, die

“Don’t be afraid” from father, focus on afraid

Slide 36 Alfred the Butler, Looking After What’s Left Behind

What bruce wants to do, legacy, memories, ideals

Alfred left behind

Slide 37 bruce’s daddy issues

What does don’t be afraid mean, what to do

Follow in father’s footsteps

Ducard manipulate in training, what will he do, direct emotions

Death of father is father’s fault

Look for fault

Responsibility of murderer, father should’ve done something

Maybe bruce’s fault, afraid of opera

What ifs? Who’s at fault

swayed

Slide 38 Ducard’s Fear Test (Bruce Breathes in Smokey Vapor)

Guided meditation, fear exploration

Be fear, bask in fear, become idea, fear what don’t see, feer is power, seize

Slide 39 Ducard’s Fear Test (Bruce Breathes in Smokey Vapor) contd

Embrace fear=one with darkness, master sense, face fear

Slide 40 bruce and the bats

Bats afraid of you-father

Slide 41 ducard’s final test: kill the criminal

Bruce doesn’t kill

Just, innocent vs criminal

Criminal captive, “not an executioner”

Slide 42 back to gotham to combat poverty

Can be destroyed as human, incorruptible and everlasting as symbol

What symbol? bat

Slide 43 the chosen symbol

fear=bat

Symbol for idea

Slide 44 building a legend

Bats scare bruce, alter ego protect family

Slide 45 bat symbol

Obscure, no one knows, secret fear

Slide 46 creating the legend

Batcave from childhood

Types of strengths

Slide 47 bruce “borrows” experimental prototypes

Strength from wealth and connections

Batmobile, suit

Nefarious, weapons, bruce uses extra

Wealth imbalance, ethics not addressed

Slide 48 dr. jonathan crane’s fear experiments

Manipulate and exploit

Slide 49 dr. crane transfers criminals out of jail and into his care at the asylum

Use position to exploit, ulterior motives

Slide 50 “the scarecrow” introduced as villain

Obscured face, imagine worst fear

Slide 51 duality of batman/bruce wayne

Try to be asshole to get out of harm’s way

Could ask nicely but uses skillful means

Batman tech and psychology in shadows

Slide 52 quotes

Alfred-get lost in the monster

Batman not helping people he hurt

Vigilante? Become criminal

Slide 53 al ghoul and bruce meet again

Ducard is al ghul

Bruce bring al ghoul to gotham if didn’t save him

Action and inaction

Father don’t act, killed

Slide 54 Ra’s al Ghul and League of Shadows’ Plan

League of shadows behind everything bad

Restore balance, poor and rich, snuff out

Slide 55 “Why do we fall?” “...So we can learn to pick ourselves up”

Dad brings bruce out himself

Being there, emotional care

Why bad things happen to good people

Tragedy, evil

Fall to make stronger, empathy for others, our limits, reflect after

Slide 56 “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me”

Action makes the man

Slide 57 Tutorial Exercise Today Semiotic Analysis of The Dark Knight

Other Roles in society for justice

Batman with alfred and robin, fox

Slide 58 The “White Knight” District Attorney Harvey Dent

Vs. dark knight, duality

Good and bad, by the book vs at night

Slide 59 Harvey Dent Become “Two-Face”

Slide 60 the agent of chaos

Is he really acting ethically at the limit?

Al ghoul and batman trolley problem

Slide 61 the agent of chaos the joker

Slide 62 Thought Experiment in Ethics: The Trolley Problem

Batman save ships of people or people he cares about

How to live, what to do

Force batman to show ethical canvas

Slide 63 Which of These Would be Bruce Wayne’s Ethical Position?

• Ethical relativism

What’s right according to social context, cultural relativism, determined by culture

Multiple factors, time and place

Batman beat up: was person holding a gun, bad person, bad things

• Ethical absolutism

Ideals, absolutes, yes or no

What god knows in religious texts

Batman beat up: never violence, batman bad, be nice, no action

• Ethical skepticism

How to determine what’s right, you can’t

Only human

Batman beat up: idk

Slide 2 review why study superheroes?

Pop culture, narratives about exemplary people, virtuous, worthy of emulation

Marvel mythology

What were creators thinking?

On purpose or accidental

Slide 3 review reflecting on human actions

Who not to be, cautionary

How to categorize villains

Who they want to be in relation to others, duty, responsibilities

Slide 4 REVIEW What is the nature of power? What is justice?

Abstract concept, right and wrong

How it works

Slide 5 REVIEW Why Marvel and DC Examples?

Branded to sell, out for consumption, marketing

How we encounter in real world, collect?

Authentic faith, real religion? How value is understood

Slide 6 Last Week’s Assigned Reading

Where do we find/expect to find religion

Slide 7 Four Relationships Between Religion and Pop Culture

Multiple ways to engage

Religion in pop culture, jewish or christian in superman

popular culture in religion, Music in church

pop culture as religion, geeks, dedicated fans, star wars, “i’m a jedi”

religion and pop culture in dialogue, how to pray, violence in video games

Slide 8 “What do religion and film have in common?”

S. brent plate essays

• Religion creates worlds

• Films make worlds, suspension of disbelief

• Part of the action

Slide 9 “Worldmaking” in both Religion and Film

Imagine type of world

Slide 10 Religion in film

Epic narrative, recreate biblical story, explicit

Slide 11 film as religion

Star wars, debate what’s canon

Slide 12 This week’s assigned reading

Man of steel not out yet

Role on earth

Slide 13 man of steel (2013)

Same themes as old movie, new cultural context

Slide 14 henry cavill portrays the character clark kent, the “man of steel” (2013)

no word “superman” for awhile, don’t know name

Powers from earth radiation, adapt from overloaded senses

Slide 15 action comics #38

Origin story, discovers powers

Leaping not flying

Taglines, man of steel, bulletproof

Explanatory narrative, because he had to adapt to different gravity, scifi

Slide 16 krypton the doomed planet

Horrific ideas of what alien means

Alien movies, monstrous not normal

Superman fits in, looks human

Why react strange when different?

Out of extraordinary circumstances get extraordinary beings

Slide 17 Jor-el (the scientist)

Think beyond krypton

Survival

Community die for better chance of others

How to prepare

futurist

Slide 18 general zod

Control, coup

Slide 19 “he’ll be a god to them.”

What to do with son, we don’t think it’s extraordinary

First birth in generations, eugenics, incubated

Natural birth, private

Not normal

Extraordinary action for different path, deviation from norm

Future not ourselves

Want to keep child, no room to escape

Lara-they’ll kill him

WILL BE GOD

Slide 20 “...An act of god…”?

Frequent God talk

Providence: Religion to explain

Act to preserve, need to keep secret, negative consequences, expectations, demand, fear

Must be a reason, how to parent child, parents saw the ship, don’t know krypton

Seek birthplace for himself

Slide 21 different type of film analysis

Slide 22 semiotic analysis

Interpretation of signs and symbols, metaphor, analogy of character and object

In time, place, and story

Slide 23 semiotic analysis of the “S”

s=superman but just what people call clark

jor-el , s=family insignia, means hope, different symbol different culture

Look beyond, bigger concept

Slide 34 jor-el you can embody the best of both worlds

Ethical duty, force for good, what’s good

Same as clark and on codex

Let clark engage with father and ship systems, 

key, opens up knowledge from father and kryptonian tech of ship

Slide 24 narrative analysis

What happens, plot, not images

Characters navigate through scenarios, choose

genre

Slide 25 amy adams portrays lois lane

Role of reporter

• Observe action and communicate

• Who is clark

• What’s buried in ice

• Who should know, 

• ethical, protect sources, reveal clark and shift

• Duty to, what to say, proof

Slide 26 “welcome to the planet clark.”

Love story

• After saving

• Lois is threat, expose him, ally?

• Let in world in kansas, what does she do?

• Trust, work together

• Romantic connection, desire, kiss

Different goals

• Lois find out

• Clark fit in, glasses

Welcome to planet

• Daily planet

• Planet earth, 

• Lois knows his identity

• Skill to navigate what she knows

• Double speak

• Lois welcomes because he has a place

Ethics of clark

• Turn in?

Side 27 cultural/historical analysis

Bigger themes, major events

• Climate change, krypton and earth’s resources

• Terraforming, exploit climate

Films speak to audience lived experience even in fictional smallville

2011-13 events

Not just general themes, real world

Slide 28 kryptonians are colonizers

Kryptonians use earth and turn to krypton

• Gravity, atmosphere

• History of exploitation alluded

• Abandoned outposts, death

• Zod tried to salvage, scraps

Conquering, exploiting resources, leaving destruction behind

Slide 29 kal-el a refugee on foreign soil

Zod calls kal-el refugee, he’s the codex

Flourish on his death, only need body for info

Don’t need person, just dna

Man of two worlds

• One world sent to another

• Home destroyed, mercy of new world

Slide 30 mise-en-scene analysis

Ethical dilemma, clark is exposed

Single shot analysis of clark’s dilemma

• Who’s in the scene

• Lighting for tone

• Music for tone, message

• costume

Slide 31 clark seeks out guidance in a church

Think through dilemma

2 scenes

• Flashback, bullied in childhood

  • Could’ve struck back

  • Can’t hurt him, not the point

  • Type of man he wants to be, strength to seriously hurt

  • Inaction is action

• Church, 

  • jesus on stained glass kneeling

  • Behind clark

  • Going to death

  • Surrender for others

Tone, religious, seeking help

Lighting

Shot, not just bust, also art

Bleak bullying scene

Vulnerable boy

Bleak weather, not bright or happy

Highlight themes

What if clark punched? 

Slide 32 wait, what is “religion”?

What to do?

Slide 33 jor-el’s advice

Hopeful message

Slide 34 jor-el: you can embody the best of both worlds

Protector of humanity

Slide 35 semiotic analysis of the “s”

Symbol of hope

Slide 36 captain america: the first avenger (2011)

National, patriotic

You’re not one of us- i’m from kansas

Slide 37 captain america’s origin story

Enlists in experiment to be super soldier

Slide 38 red, white, and blue (stars and stripes)

Bulked, cloaked in america

Petit to supersoldier

Rahrah america?

Slide 39 captain canuck

70s, not popular

Slide 40 captain canuck cosplayer

Rip-off captain america

How we envision patriotism

Slide 41 superman as saviour figure? Or villain?

Uneasiness, too much power, trust?

Batman v superman, maybe not our hero

Slide 42 the character “homelander” from the boys

Like superman, anxiety

Slide 43 “doctor manhattan” from alan moore’s watchmen (1986-87)

“Superman is real and he’s american”

Slide 44 “doctor manhattan” from alan moore’s watchmen (1986-87) cont’d

Builds himself from nuclear experiment, puts himself back together

Choose to become what he is

Flew to mars

Rely too much on him, people around him get cancer

More ethical to go to mars?

Slide 45 “doctor manhattan”

Multiply, do whatever he wants

Slide 46 “doctor manhattan” contd

Doomsday

How to critique

OTHER, what we owe, others we fear, xenophobiaLecture 1 Introductions and Origin Stories

Deck 1 Reflecting on Human Actions “Heroes and Villains” Religion, Role Models, and Cautionary Tales from Marvel and DC

Slide 2 Why study religion? Why study superheroes?

Hagiography: legend about person so exemplary you need to talk about it

Stained glass - how mediaeval christians encounter saints in visual form “be like this person”

heretic=villain - popular narratives

How humans should behave

Didactic texts - designed to teach

Don’t want liars

Tales in different forms: Written material and oral

• Want truthful people like george washington and cherry tree-folk tale

• Buddha achieving enlightenment

Slide 3 reflection on human actions

Joker about to go on stage and make people laugh

Fake lip makeup-artificiality, a mask/persona to perform

Slide 4 considering conflicting goals

Not one goal

Multiple narratives and examples

Conflicting of ideal way of being- how one should live

Batman v superman- different ideas, no consensus

Legal hierarchy-who can arrest someone, who can determine a sentence?

• Batman is a vigilante-beat up someone to death?

Slide 5 ethical dilemmas and saviour figures

What role does superman fill in american cultural context?

What does it mean to have superpowers?

With great power comes great responsibility

Larger than life-needs to be checked and balanced eg homelander

Slide 6 What is the nature of power? What is justice?

How to operate with vulnerable people: captain america civil war

Comical context but important discours

Slide 7 why marvel and dc examples?

Coke and value: coke or pepsi hegemonic (ruling or dominant in a political or social context.)

Can’t get away, ubiquitous

Is deadpool a virtuous character? Intertextuality? -Call out one narrative to another

Reference to little mermaid eg.

• callout to type of character she is, 

• representation in live action

Slide 8 religion in film

virtuous, religious, political figures, trickster

How religion is depicted eg biblical narratives, sacred texts

Slide 9 moses

How he’s portrayed by an actor

Slide 10 film as religion

Star wars, jedi code, sith

Slide 11 different types of film analysis

Focus on

• Semiotic analysis - signs, symbols, objects, colour, vibrancy

• Narrative analysis-what’s referenced, images, stance, no slouching, human body as symbol

Slide 16 What do religion and film have in common?

What’s just, what’s moral

Slide 17 and 18 “worldmaking” in both religion and film

Fight to be free

Suspended disbelief

Whats if people had superpowers, this was the state of the world etc

Rapidly establish world and set the scene

Slide 19 wait what is “religion”?

Ideal world, How to avoid dystopia

No standard definition- fallacy, different cultures, places in time

Interdisciplinary

Deck 2 Considering Marvel’s Black Panther

Slide 2 marvel studio’s black panther (2018)

Who becomes black panther?- a role

Slide 3 african diaspora and afrofuturism in film

Why interesting in 2016 

why does comic character spark imagination

Real black panthers-civil rights

Diaspora-dispersed, try to come back into a community

Imagine and feeling reunited

Afrofuturism-

• themes of no apartheid, 

• living better off from tech advancements, 

• Sci-fi

• No problems of today

Slide 4

Wakanda-

• unconquered, 

• kept from the world, 

• no one knows how advanced, 

• low profile

• Spies but don’t reveal hand

Slide 5 T’Challa returns to his homeland after the death of his father, King T’Chaka

Crisis of succession

Tchala

Slide 6 If T’Challa’s claim is recognized, he will become King of Wakanda and receive the power of the Black Panther

T'challa step into father’s shoes

Capable individual

Seen as legitimate?

Rituals

Slide 7 but others will rise to challenge him for that role

Contrasting views 

Killmonger wants to open up

Two views of utopia

Killmonger grew up outside

T'challa wants to maintain father’s status quo, stay closed

Killmonger says wakandans are not to be messed with

Slide 8 stories of promised kings: considering ethiopia for the rastafari

Descendents of slaves-unbroken tradition?

Ethiopia

Slide 9 the rastafari movement

Marcus Garvey tells african people to take pride even if brought to jamaica and not connected

Look for unconquered king-prophecy

Slide 11 Haile Selassie I Emperor of Ethiopia (1930-1974)

Haile selassie (formerly Ras Tafari Makonnen) crowned emperor of ethiopia

Prophesied king from unconquered nation (ethiopia)

Slide 12 the rastafari movement in jamaica

Greater than human

Slide 13 rastafari worldview

New idea, ethiopia is promised land

Powerful god, like jesus for christians

Slide 14 T’Challa’s story inspires much like the story of Haile Selassie

T'challa like haile selassie

Black superhero own movie-not side character

THE black panther movie-magnum

Slide 15 African Diaspora and Afrofuturism

Fictitious, unconquered land

Slide 16 Reactions to the Release of Black Panther in 2018

Snoopdog buys out theaters to inspire young black children

Rolemodel-

• not enough for perfect figure, 

• needs to be human, 

• aspiration, 

• connection

Slide 17 In America, Members of Black Churches Organized Screenings of Black Panther

Church goes to watch movie

How important?

Slide 18 Godlike Superheroes?

Gods?, too big to be mere mortals? Deities? Mythic?

Difference between god and human, where does superhero/demi-god fall, mutant

Retelling old mythologies?

Slide 19 yoruba religious traditions

Real world inspo

Orishas-lower gods, more able to engage with humans, intimately 

Humans take attributes and become gods through connection

Black panther taking on previous black panther powers

Slide 20

Inspo from orishas

Real human models posing as and depicting gods

Subconscious images, inspiring

Small and big screens: art gallery and movie

Political and social

How people choose to go to movies?

Barbie phenomenon-dressing in pink, going with friendsSlide 2 ​​Why Study Religion? Why Study Superheroes?

Like villain, ethics what they’re like, script, apply to won life, role models

Religious figures in other format

Morally grey/dark knight, white knight better? What to learn

Slide 3 Reflecting on Human Actions

Don’t need to wear cape

Self preservation, responsibilities, humans in micro and macro scale role

Sacrifice, scapegoat-symbolic like arthur fleck, different representations

Slide 4 What is “religion”?

No definition, what they mean or leave out

Slide 5 Definitions of Religion

Ninian smart comparative 7 dimensions, different types

William james psychological approach-internal, emotions, mind

David chidester’s functional definition-coke, pop culture

Cliffor geertz’s anthropological approach-round egg thing, maria statue

Different disciplines

Slide 6 7 Dimensions of Religion

pratical/ritual, -costumes, light candle

experiential/emotional, -feel, soundtrack

narrative/mythic, -story, arc, human origin stories, identity, 

doctrine/philosophical, -real stuff, soul, body

ethics/legal, responsibility

social/institution, government, superman and kansas

Material, merch

Slide 7 Different Source Materials

How characters act, comic or film, fanmade stuff, what types of media mean

Slide 8 “What do religion and film have in common?”

World on screen,

Slide 9 “Worldmaking” in both Religion and Film

god makes world, secular or religious

Slide 10 Different Types of Film Analysis

Interpret, semiotic, narrative, cultural/historical, mise en scene

Slide 11 Semiotic Analysis

S in man of steel, krypton, family, hope, fear

Slide 12 Narrative Analysis (Comedy or Tragedy?)

Type of narrative, overall theme/arc to be hero or villain, origin, broken

Ethical relativist, skepticist, absolutism

Slide 13 Narrative Analysis (Rites of Passage)

Different statuses, transformation,

 spiderman bitten by spider, great power great responsibilities

Becoming new person, rite of passage, different social status

Slide 14 Trauma and Rites of Passage

Change yourself, lose capabilities, what’s left, different role

Slide 15 Critiquing Perceptions of “Magic” and “Religion”

Belong to different cultures, sources of power and knowledge

Buddhism, pilgrimage

Slide 16 Cultural Historical Analysis (Colonialism and Genocide)

Impose and exploit resources

Untouched, no exploitation, resist

Slave trade, diaspora

Slide 17 Cultural Historical Analysis (Critiques of Gender Bias)

Good vs bad girl, hero vs villain

Feminine limit, be good, less good

Slide 18 Ethical Considerations (Living Authentically?)

More than one way to be hero

Slide 19 Becoming a Hero

Leap of faith, live for one self

Slide 20 Reflecting on Material Culture And Commodity Fetishism

Material culture, engage with, brand, cool, choose, matter what’s on it

Object to fetish, more than it is

Maybe make own stuff, maybe sell

Slide 21 Reflection on Individual and Community

Legacy, companies as brands

Stan lee-hero helps people, right thing, must do

Slide 22 Practice Essay Questions

1. Stan lee, person help cus should, must, right thing, ethical position?

Relativist, should

Slide 23 Practice Essay Questions contd

2. Black panther, religion, definition, dimensions, how understood

Slide 24 Practice Short Answer Question

3. 2 types of commodity fetishismRyan Smock’s “Who Are You? René Girard, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Black Panther” In Marveling Religion: Critical Discourses, Religion and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

   
   

   Not a lot of minority superheroes until civil war-black panther

   How to overcome satanic blame, victimization, scapegoating?

   Sense of self with no desire, conflict, violence?

   Black panther unique cus hero is above social and political adversity, just himself

   Humanitarian and teacher, not just warrior, answers “who are you”

   Girard on the root of all conflict

   Consequence of rivalry between t’chaka and brother prince n’jobu 

   stolen vibranium, want to use for own ends, see each other as enemy, kills brother

   Could’ve avoided killing and knocked out gun

   
   

   Rene girard-deceit, desire, and the novel: triangular/mimetic desire

   • Copy desires from others

   • Boy 1 looks at giraffe to choose what he wants, boy 2 immediately wants giraffe

   • Boy 2 gets giraffe but boy 1 refuses even if he wouldn’t have cared cus didn’t want

   
   

   Boy 2 is subject, giraffe is object, direct line

   Other toys but wants giraffe cus boy 1 is holding it, boy 1=mediator or model of desire

   Maybe boy 1 knows which toy is best, reason he’s holding it

   • tutelary belief-effect on subject more important than true value

   • If boy 2 thinks boy 1 has giraffe for a reason, it’s desirable

   • Desire is imitated or mimetic

   • Boy 1 sees desire and wants to copy

   • Boy 2 get giraffe-shift in relationship, rival in way of getting the object

   • Triangular relationship between

   
   

   T’chaka mediator, n’jobu subject, vibranium desired object

   
   

   Girard analysis of max scheler: difference between hatred, jealousy, and envy

   Hate: someone models desire but prevents us from fulfilling it

   Jealousy feeling when rival has desired object and we want

   • Tchaka hoards vibranium to keep safe, n’jobu can’t use to free oppressed

   • By stealing, n'jobu threatens tchakas ability to keep secret safe

   • Each deprive the other of object that makes them rivals

   • Each wants to defeat or remove each other

   
   

   Two triangles, each sees other as rival, conflict, stronger till violence

   
   

   Envy: efforts to get object failed and we feel impotent

   N'jobu failed, lost vibranium, fights then killed

   Modeling action versus modeling ideal

   Analysis confined to internal mediation: limited is mediated by someone in social sphere, drawn to conflict

   
   

   Positive mimesis in external mediation-role model outside social circle makes desire away form objects and to ideals, 

   like jesus, heaven to save everyone from sin, no imitate actions like others but resemble

   Eg detached generosity, be nice and give without favoritism or prejudice

   
   

   Internal mediation-materialistic or acquisitive, jesus-compassion and care

   Heal, preach, and support anyone

   By being nice, no mimetic rivalry and violence

   
   

   But satan acts as model for desires, easier to imitate

   Abandon ourselves, defy morality and prohibitions

   Presence not being, invitation to think that not want what others had is not to have a good time

   False sense of liberation cus then we just want to copy and be hateful when in way

   
   

   Tchaka exclusively tchallas role model, meet spirit, wanna be good king like him

   Action not ideal, wanna hoard vibranium like him, consumed by his identity

   No warrior need king but he’s “satanic”

   
   

   Satan is accuser, people who desire something fought over, scandal

   Everyone wants same thing but prevents anyone else from getting it

   War of all against all/mimetic crisis

   Community express collective violence but can’t attack itself so has scapegoat

   Blame all on them, satan is violent contagion who makes scapegoats guilt

   Make them driven out by community

   
   

   Tchaka rivalry revealed, show false model, njadaka was scapegoat

   Lift shadow of father but njadaka comes back and pits wakanda against each other

   Satanic cycle of violence, blame, and victimization

   killmonger’s mimetic origin

   Complex villain, consider part of global community while tchalla is only wakanda

   Erik as product and commentary on african american history, slave trade

   
   

   Vickie mays-human identity must be examined, relationship in social and historical development of society

   No human immune from ideologicalizing influences of social context

   Fit in, live up to others’ standards and expectations

   Good, honourable, just- collective abstract desires

   Black culture teachers that theyre inferior, mediation

   
   

   Transmission in mimetic process, borrow everything not just desire, fuel conflict

   Racial ideals-wanna be better than others, selfish-mimetic violence

   
   

   But can’t go against society like a rival with internal mediation, can’t change mind

   Change thoughts, external mediation but only works with scapegoat

   Reaffirm own ideas, both vilified

   
   

   Negative stuff makes black people have double consciousness

   Look at yourself through another’s eyes that don’t like you, slaves, coping

   Internalized racism-less violence, dual identity, real and pseudo-self-feel bad

   
   

   Like njadaka, born in us, racially bound to racism but prince of wakanda

   Live in poverty while watch relatives thrive

   3 names, eric, kilmonger, njadaka, 2 for pseudo-self, 1 real, inner conflict

   Wants violent retribution cus from satanic stuff

   Call to responsibility

   Authentic desire, your own, but allmediated

   Don quixote surrenders fundamental prerogative, agency=individual

   But obsessed with others-vaniteux, vain, rely on others to determine their desires

   
   

   Luca di blasi-give up a promethean egotism for autonomy, 

   inseparable from mimetic desire, more I, more me-victorious-mimetic conflict

   Accept mimetic desire, overcome illusory autonomy and have it real instead

   Woken up by jesus, as new model, or anyone outside mimetic triangle

   
   

   When aware of models of desire, autonomously choose which to follow

   
   

   T'challa wants to be good king like dad but needs own place in world as himself

   Humanitarian nakia is outside, help others, be own person

   Split from dad 

   Agent ross is 2nd outside person, protected nakia, would sacrifice himself to protect wakanda

   
   

   David fleming: Catholic-conscience is call to goodness, follow god

   Law has 3 parts

   • Call to do good, no evil

   • Want moral truth

   • Actic in a way

   Deepest conscience is call to responsibility, with other

   
   

   Conatus essendi, latin for being tired

   Scruple- part of human nature, tired to differentiate between good and bad

   Other makes scruple move, can’t ignore, pebble in show, call to responsibility

   
   

   Conatus chose between yourself and other=good, pre-intentioned to be good

   Conscience counters selfishness of internal mediation
   Responsibility has own meaning, just there, commanding, intentional

   
   

   Easy to dismiss nakia for helping others cut they are distant and vague

   But ross is urgent and immediate, t'challa mimetic process makes confrontation

   T'challa vs nakia and ross, good or bad, so save life instead of keep wakanda secret, duty

   
   

   Choose own subject of desire-brotherhood

   
   

   Tchalla motivated by conscience to right the wrongs of ancestors

   No mimetic violence, try to save killmonger, help others, is himself, not father, no cycle of violenceJeffrey Scholes, “The Coca-Cola Brand and Religion.” In Understanding Religion and Popular Culture, edited by Terry Ray Clark and Dan W. Clanton, Jr., 149-166. 

   Introduction

   Brand logos ubiquitous, corporate brands, commercials, labels, billboards, product placement

   Annoying or helpful

   
   

   Corporate brands are unique cultural expressions, identity of product or service

   In pop culture on purpose, carefully constructed to make meaning for consumer loyalty, brand makes it popular not product

   
   

   James twitchell: religious deep, cluster around like sacred, loyal, live through and around, part of man

   Act like religion, religious power

   Pop culture product, religion, brands and religion

   Theory and method

   Brand, sign to distinguish, successful when there’s story/narrative

   • Customers, critics, sellers, or company itself

   • Into personal narratives from story without notice

   • Plots, characters, metaphors, make conventions in everyday life

   
   

   Brands do something that can’t be done or didn’t need to be done, 

   meaning of product not product itself

   Embody ideas people admire, express who they want to be, “identity brands”

   “Iconic brands”, appeal to much of society, contribute to identity of community or nation, apple, nike, budweiser, mcdonalds, coke

   • Make identity, mythical aura

     • Historical, founding

     • character-driven, who’s running it or buying

     • Functional, what it can do

   • From legendary stories, real or not

   
   

   ‘Mac person’-story, add to it, bridge people, identify with

   Not necessarily part of pop culture, need to be liked by many, quantitative, iconic brands, john storey

   
   

   Coke is popular, powerful, and rich

   Logo conveys happiness, american patriotism, Community that drinks coke

   Participate in coke, participate in those ideas

   Popular and in culture, mass audience-into pop culture, john storey

   General and deep needs for the most people-mass audience, john storey

   Corporations only want mass audience, others just want to appeal, not whole goal

   Pop culture is from people-john storey but now everything is commercial, not spontaneous, “top-down”

   Consumers can make or break brands with purchasing power

   Pop culture: struggle between resistance of subordinate against incorporation of dominant, producers vs consumers

   
   

   Top-down: look and feel, psychological tactics, brand saturation, control brand

   Use focus groups but corporations final say

   Consumers can manipulate brand image, struggle-pop culture

   
   

   Chidester functional definition of religion: being human in human place

   • What religion does not what it is

   • Limits of being human, cope with suffering and death

   • Transcendent (above), sacred (different), ultimate (final, unavoidable)

   • Perspective of human  in human place, community, desire, exchange

   
   

   Pop culture between humanity and religion, mediator

   Pop culture changes, do religious work-authenticity

   Ask if something is religion, pop culture help to arrive at truth, even fake

   Even fake religion has community, maybe real religion

   David Chidester and the religious work of Coca-Cola

   Coke as religious work cus global fetish

   Fetish: something that has power beyond original properties,

   Marx: fetishism of commodity-material products for consumers

   Logos, who they are or should be-human in human place

   Commodity is religious object-extraordinary, attention, desire, reverence

   
   

   Coke had sacred aura, secret formula, national and personal narrative

   Wwii, santa, peace

   Coke in culture, movie, literature, art, lyrics, relationship to sacred with object

   Icon of west, modernity, desire, communal bonds-fetish, goal of religion

   Fetish unstable-made or material

   
   

   Clifford geertz religion definition

   1. System of symbols

   2. Powerful moods and motivation

   3. Order of existence

   4. Like fact

   5. Moods and motivations seem realistic

   
   

   Inauthentic coke can make religion, anything can be religion

   Commentary

   Mine pop culture for religion, describe religion to contrast

   Cocacalonizaiton: desire for something you don’t need, ads, not religious

   But ignore pervasive and brand saturation and penetration

   Don’t need to overcome to find real religion, religion in pop culture

   Religion mediated by culture, pop culture not too shallow or artificial

   Religion needs to be meaningful otherwise just a whim

   Coke is unstable fetish, not long-lasting motivation, not transcendent truth

   Can worship material fetish like statues

   Coca cola not sacred, just corporation make into fetish

   Brand more important than needs of consumers

   Drink can’t be social, uses brand

   Double instability: made object and not long lasting fetish, just bottom line

   Not sacred cus is fetishized product created by humans motivated by human stuff (money=religion)

   
   

   Human in human place is broad, can include coke 

   Needs to be transcendent and immanent

   Fetish can do religious work

   More inauthentic it seems, more we ignore, “real thing” not real thing, want actual real thing

   Ronald L. Grimes’ article on “Ritual” in Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief vol. 7, iss.1 (2011), https://doi.org/10.2752/175183411X12968355482097 

   Ritual is actions, treasured and iconic or not

   egg= darner, lady=doll=statue in church, both wood, ritual

   Decorated statue, egg abandoned in attic, not “she”, before cinderella

   Virgin mary: hispanic and latino, cultural identity, our mother, conquistadores, “my children”

   1st person, intimate, “writes” own books, “speaks” directly, roman catholics

   In processions for family reunion and remembering dead, over city and ethno familial

   Overall to all residents, privately only devotees who regard her as mother, family property

   Makes city cooperative based on good will, be included is complement and obligation

   Rituals to go to dead, interethnic violence into sibling rivalry, fathers look over

   
   

   Egg is plain, passed around during class, no meaning, maybe have nicknames

   No meaning to passing around but students ask about it, 

   can’t throw it out cus everyone handled it

   Know it’s trash but got attached, 

   practices, like objects, have history, cycle up or down 

   
   

   Be careful to make claims about it, what it can do

   People died for statue but bad for indigenous, power difference

   no animist, I play animateur saying, “Stuff has mind of its own” and “Things are people too.”

   Regardless of how declarative ritual authorities sound or how imperative they act, all ritual is performed in the subjunctiveJohn C. McDowell’s “Marveling at Captain Danvers, Or, What Is So Super about Our Heroes?” In Marveling Religion: Critical Discourses, Religion and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Edited by Jennifer Baldwin and Daniel White Hodge, 197-215. 

   Mlk jr: inequity and violence in injustice, sincerity and conscientiousness not enough

   • Turn to vices, ignorance and stupidity is dangerous

   • Jesus executors blind, be insightful and honest in self-examination/enlightenment

   • Moral responsibility to be intelligent

   
   

   Theodor adorno: culture industry

   • With max horkheimer: hollywood makes moral blindness that distract from life

   • Henry giroux: mass deception bakes workings of own ideology indiscernible

     • Entertain not educate but storytelling is political

     • Make social stuff that limits range of meaning that can be taken

   
   

   1. Film is range of cultural understanding, barometer for social change and issues

   2. Movies manufacture plausibility, subjects, and moral and political judgment

   “Superheroes in Kairotic Time Post 9/11”

   Christian steinmetz: comics promote nationalism, conservative,

   • no utopia so fighting continues

   • No change in status quo

   • Power fantasy for teen boys

   
   

   Matthew costello: political commentary un comics in 21st century

   • 2 years after 9/11, comics question US culpability, 

   • US no longer virtuous for progressiveness

   • Superheroes became problematic, can’t save US

   
   

   Mcu, post 9/11 cinema, cultural trauma through cathartic compensation

   Susan sontag: reflect world-wide anxiety, try to soothe

   9/11 isn’t just a date, but knowledge and power exchanged

   Kevin wetmore: pre and post 9/11 to categorize viewing the world and what to do

   • Cultural shift

   • War on terror’ less politically sophisticated and nuanced

   • rupture=need to comprehend, explain, and restore

   
   

   Terrence mcsweeney: 

   • mcu replays and perpetuate mythological values part of american identity

   “Captain Marvel and a Politics of Hospitality”

   Focus on feminist potential cus female lead

   Mcu women support cast

   Nods to male gaze in captain marvel, more subtle than all female team up

   Lucia stasia: anxiety about changing gender roles, no anxiety for post-feminism

   • Convince that it’s oist-patriarchy

   • White, middle-class, no politics, 

   
   
   

   post-9/11

   • 1. Global Terror threat

     • Range is global, world-changing/threatening

     • Threat to life itself, apocalyptic catastrophism

     • Frank kermode: apocalypse show how we make sense of world

   
   

   Elisabeth ford and deborah mitchell: disaster in all film genres,

   Wheeler winston dixon “romance of armageddon”, fear a romance

   
   

   Earth in danger in captain marvel

   2. Post 9/11: agencies take responsibility and heal

   Ernest becker: hero saves society from evil of death

   Robin rosenberg: want larger-than-life heroes, be inspired and rescued by them

   Can’t imagine peace, plan well, be fair, heroes not from society but freak of tech

   
   

   Vigilante violence shape american imagination

   Superhero represent americans, fantasy of global superpower saving the world

   heroes=social catharsis, carol part of american military-industrial complex

   Jason dittmer:american ness of superheroes intensified cus superhero genre is global

   3. Self-depiction to be pure

   Paul petrovic: american national victimhood from 9/11, only certain conditions

   Captain marvel post 9/11, skrull is terrorist threat, 

   us/earth is innocent, accidentally in conflict

   Slavoj Žižek: Go back to basics, basic ideas, 

   • Nothing innocent with getting rid of historical guilt and irony preventing national identity

   • Politics of purity is simplifying

     • Citizens Are zealous cult to state

     • Nostalgia for values and virtues of state

     • Purifies national memory

   • Mcsweeney: perpetuate narrative of 9/11 instead of asking questions

     • Uncritical and unreflective narrative of american victimisation

     • Disconnect from geopolitics

     • Erasure of political and historical context

     • No social, no action for change and responsibility

   
   

   4. Blame, from vulnerability and victimhood to dominance and control

   • Othering

   • Douglas kellner: manichean mentality, other is evil, 

     • deny own violence and aggressions

   • Other is sub-person, can’t speak, us vs them

   • Presence, role, importance, and subjectivity erased

   • Athena athanasiou, abnormal life, derealize violence, can’t be human

   • Boundary, getting rid of other is hygiene and social therapy

   • Pharmakon, justifies immoral stuff as collateral damage

   
   

   Other is pure threat in captain marvel but it subverts

   Fury worked in cold war, alien threats, training to eliminate, no emotions

   
   

   Associate skrulls as villains first, voiced by villains, ominous, chameleon abilities

   Paranoia, no trust

   Žižek: political struggle is making image of enemy or else they're invisible

   • Looks like us, can’t be recognized

   • Features as target for hate and strugle

   
   

   5. Stuff from Logic 

   Resistance so need redemptive action, holy terror-terry eagleton

   Kellner: violence to solve problems and empower males, trope

   Binary imagination gives american fantasy where no ambiguities, just good vs evil

   “Myth of good war” more destructive than retaliatory biblical smiting

   Sontag: enemy worse than murder, no restraints, anything justified,

   • No moral problems, no moral qualifications

   Dittmer: america simple morals, limitless violence like dominant and assertive heroes

   Superhero narratives: discourse through which world is understandable

   
   

   Žižek: conflict doesn’t resolve itself, must break out

   Kree as victims, genocide, but did human experiments, genetic purity, military, imperialistic

   Kree vs skrull

   Skrull shapeshifting induce panic and violence

   Skrulls are peaceful midway through captain marvel, unarmed, reveal truth about kree

   
   

   Terrorist and war to mean state action against terrorism are idological constructs

   Žižek: terms for present conflict are false terms, mystify perception, can’t think

   Freedom to mask, lead to unfreedom

   Terry eagleton: war on terror, “evil” label hides explanation

   • Terrorist are irrational abstract agency

   • explanation that evokes social circumstance is justifying terror

   
   

   Žižek: retaliate on “terrorists” is sad duty, USA police, don’t like US cus no power

   Kree are genocidal not other way around, skrulls like virus, heal means killing them

   Humanize skrulls, with their family, humans as friends

   Enemies recognized through empathy and sympathy

   Conclusion

   Pop Culture in disciplinary technology of self

   Mcsweeney: Post 9/11 produce, prolong, shapes, give meaning to possible responses

   • Ironman is antithetical, rejects and perpetuates US identity, military industrial

   
   

   Captain marvel contests post 9/11

   • Not male hero

   • Challenges dominant political issues of power excluding “other”

   • Unlearn inherent dominative mode that alienates and excludes

   • Crisis of subjectivity, separate consciousness and what’s learned

   • Relearning restores who she was, challenges how she was with others

   • Refugees as result of kree

   
   

   Žižek: threat to common way of life is global capitalism not refugees, price for economy, production of ‘redundant people’

   
   

   Not totally anti-hegemonic

   1. Lot of violence to subvert, superhero genre

      1. Legitimize violence for politics

   2. Women’s role in violence, subjects of violence and sacrificial death

   3. Binary of other as villainous, 

      1. Henry giroux: violence so normal no longer part of history

         1. Fed by fear in US, surveillance, incarceration, security

         2. Undermines trust, breeds hatred of other, no compassion

      2. Doesn’t undo fear even if it has compassion, just change object of fear

   4. US as saviours, morally unambiguous certitude

      1. Superhero conventionality

      2. Only official story of good USA

   5. No hospitality for skrulls, only a ship, just want home

      1. Sympathy but keep them on margins, back into margins

      2. No integration, alliance, mutuality, only difference

      3. No home cus displaced indigenous people

   
   

   Terry eagleton: culture says some humans don’t deserve compassion

   • Needs cultural sophistication

   
   

   Captain marvel tries to disrupt but not really 

   • Still kearney’s challenge against us and them

   Mlk, moral intelligenceJ. Oropeza. “‘Behold! The Hero Has Become Like One of Us.’ The Perfectly Imperfect Spider-Man.” In The Gospel According to Superheroes: Religion and Popular Culture.

   
   

   Growing pains, bullying, unlucky

   Old character, many movies, comics, even female version

   Popular cus human, : poor, personal problems, people don't like him

   Like us, coming of age, human problems but superhuman

   Peter parker angst: living in a world that rejects the friendly neighborhood spider-man

   Raised by uncle and aunt after parents killed, new york=realism

   Powers bit by spider, spider sense

   Use for showmanship and money

   Uncle killed, then starts to fight crime

   Teen tribulation

   Question why things go wrong

   Can’t perform for money cus reputation bad after in the news, public menace

   Can’t join fantastic four cus they’re nonprofit

   Popublic don’t like him, has enemies

   Can’t cash spider-man cheques

   Bullied by flash thompson, friends in college, reconcile later

   Help pay rent and aunt’s medical bills, tries to be photographer

   Rooms with harry osborn

   Dock ock is aunt may’s tenant

   Aunt may hated spiderman, almost marries dock ock until exposed that he’ll steal her money

   
   

   Emphasize life is complicated and confusing, want community, belong, love

   Acceptance, significance, life's calling,

   Spiderman like looking into mirror, no money even if work hard, accused as criminal

   Who am i? Why do it if bad consequences

   Teen heartaches: tangled in a web of romances

   Betty brant, wants to reveal identity but hates him when brother died, dates ned leeds

   
   

   Gwen stacy but but hates spiderman for dad’s death, acts as redeemer cus loves him

   Then died, first time leading lady dead, big part, good guy not always wins

   Mary jane, knows he’s spiderman

   Masked identity angst and the green goblin saga

   Should share anxieties with loved ones

   Keeps identity as insurance so personal life not affected, loved ones would be in danger

   Almost exposed many times

   Tragedies avoided like harry osborne into greengoblin and dead if revealed identity

   Could’ve been like jesus, keep secret with close people till ready, avoid deaths

   Didn’t understant true love, mercy forgiveness, anger but no rejection

   Want him alive rather than not, like bible: love covers sins

   New challenges: the clone saga, an alien suit, and the “anti-christ”

   Later is black and white not red and blue, is venom, attaches to eddie brock

   Becomes villain, also carnage both from spiderman’s suit like 2 dopplegangers

   What spiderman is without morals

   Dark side after gwen’s death but no killing just hitting

   • If bad end up like green goblin

   
   

   jackal/professor miles warren makes clone of gewn and peter

   Clone gwen leaves peter, clone peter becomes ben reilly, became real spiderman

   
   

   Peter no longer teen, better life, then ben killed off

   Bring back old villain, green goblin back, peter was real spiderman all along

   Goblin as anti-christ, returned like in revelations, 

   • Crucified by glider then rose again, recond coming

   
   

   clones=nothing is certain, characters revive

   Releauched spiderman but never uncle ben cus other wise change character

   Spider-man’s guilt

   Was actor then ben died, track down murderer who he refused to help before

   Change purpose to fight evil, blames himself for death, motivated by guilt

   Great power comes great responsibility

   Orphan to find identity, journey himself

   Unamed burglar as mirror to emphasize peter’s own fault

   
   

   Responsable for aunt, almost kills her, nothing left but prayer

   When recovered, freed from guilt of her condition but still guilty over uncle

   Gives up spiderman for a bit cus unhappy then restarts cus people can’t be harmed

   
   

   Then lost gwen, blames himself, she’s victim of his double life, no grace

   Nothing overcomes guilt, wants revenge on himself like orphan, neurotic

   Powers like curse, bad life

   Spider-man’s redemption

   Fight villains cus it’s right, give up dreams to do good cus great responsibility

   Like bible werse, save life will lose, lose life will save

   Do unto others what you want done to you-bible verse

   
   

   Faces burgler who killed ben, spares him, 

   Aunt may was kidnapped, closer with peter, love greatest medicine-bible

   
   

   As spiderman, more justice and hate crime

   Responsible not cus guilt but chosen by god to help others

   Was misguided, good can’t erase bad, needs to believe in god, his sacrifice

   Then crucified and dead, like jesus sacrifice for humanity

   Spider-man as the model of human imperfection

   Adam and eve sined, lose connection with god

   Jesus as one of us to rescue and bring us back to god

   Both selfless to help humans

   Peter like apostle peter not jesus, both suffer from guilt, no grace

   Like whom christ wants to save

   
   

   Spiderman needs to suffer and sacrifice for us to relate

   Like jesus was carpenter

   Reflect in humanity not christ, see what’s human about jesus which is what we love

   Andrew Tobolowski’s “The Thor Movies and the ‘Available’ Myth: Mythic Reinvention in Marvel Movies.” In Theology and the Marvel Universe, edited by Gregory Stevenson. 

   Thought traditional narratives had no authors, just from ethnic consciousness

   Stories stayed same, people that old it changed

   Understand traditions, understand group, ur-narrative

   
   

   Primordialism-outdated ethnic identity, Stable tradition=stable ethnic identity 

   
   

   Traditions and identities change, rethink how traditions inherited, stories retold

   Still look for truth, tradition inheritance has rules

   
   

   Marvel has source material, 

   • norse myths for thor, afro-futurism black panther, american patriotism and history-captain america

   • Draws on other movies from before and after

   
   

   Individual creativity in telling stories, reformulate and retell

   
   

   Mcu-story is what’s acceptable

   TRADITION AND THE INDIVIDUAL

   Ragnarok-loki’s theft is wink, pretend to be odin

   Really, thor stole odin’s part as leader and role in norse myths, lose eye, hanging

   
   

   Marvel different source materials like memes, and myths, how did I end up here?

   3 sources: mcu, thor comics, norse myths

   • Memes is individual imagination, specific to time and place of premiere

     • Internet culture

     • Usually miss it, voice, no analysis, from writers

     • Pop culture aesthetic-another source material

     • What’s appropriate depends on author

   MARVEL, THE ANCIENT WORLD, AND THE “AVAILABLE MYTH”

   Myths: stories from past, not always true, cultural significance

   Marvel movies not myth, taika waititi feel different than comic or myth author

   Authors play by rules how they understand, anything possible

   Fluidity from new meanings not changes=taxonomy, ordering system/hierarchy

   • Or vocabulary, meaning from arrangement, emphasis, and style

     • Shrek uses fairy tales but interesting delivery

     • Vocabulary less limiting

   
   

   Mcu source material, hammer from stone like sword from stone from arthur

   Vocab reference from source material, analogy, interesting cus available

   
   

   Thor and arthur both medieval but different cus different vocab

   
   

   Troy movie, myth elements to other materials, made up stuff too, 

   • from roman aeneid, based on greek iliad

   • Both classic mediterranean, looks like can can mix

   
   

   What belongs together shapes retellings

   Constrained by what’s traditional but not always, group choice, who we are

   Available is up to individual, don’t care much then do whatever

   
   

   How fast stuff is tradition, don’t need source material knowledge

   • Comics become canon like myths 

   • Oral storytelling more changes

   
   

   Individuals only respond to authority, 

   what is thought to be traditional/canonical may be innovative, individual imagination

   MARVEL AND MYTH, MYTH AND MARVEL

   Stories told differently, changes not discussed as author expressions, just world shift

   Communication contexts-why created, for what, do stuff for time, place, audience etc

   
   

   Thor has myth and mcu narrative constraints from before and after, also not constrained

   • From previous movies but then goes on own path, 

     • space for individual imagination

   • Original myth elements modified

   • New installments, more available traditions, vibranium wa only shield, now more

   
   

   Sacred, more control, make tendencies not rulesJennifer Baldwin’s “‘Open Your Eye’ Psychedelics, Spirituality, and Trauma Resolution.” In Marveling Religion: Critical Discourses, Religion and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Edited by Jennifer Baldwin and Daniel White Hodge, 179-194. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2022.

   Looking through key hole

   Threat or Trauma before superpowers, fuels and guides for growth into power

   Response to crisis, threat, or trauma depends on resources post-crisis

   “Sufficient” support: traumatic response, recover resilience, traumatic growth, super

   No support: overwhelm, ptsd, “villain”

   Trauma response determines if villain or hero

   sdasc=safety-dependent altered states of consciousness

   To show you just how much you don’t know

   Arrogant and superficial neurosurgeon, reputation over patients, crash, bad hands, no surgery

   Kamar-taj for therapy but goes into new world, consciousness, time, space, spirit

   Gets powers and becomes Sorcerer supreme

   
   

   Not every bad thing becomes traumatic

   Fight or flight, trauma when overwhelms coping

   Dr. strange, losing hand function, lose wealth, expertise, connections, trauma and destabilise

   Can’t process sensory, narrative, and relational input, what’s left out triggers ptsd

   • Affect sense of time, embodiment, affect, or thought, 

   • Turns to different state of consciousness=survival response from hormonal response, “trauma-related altered states of consciousness” (trasc)

   • Less trauma less trasc

   
   

   Trasc

   • Intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, negative thinking, hearing voices, hyperarousal, feeling body parts not real, negative emotions

   • Strange: lost sense of time, posttraumatic body dysmorphia, rage

   What’s in that tea?

   Who’s strange without his hands?

   Identity, purpose and how to cope with trauma is part of spirituality and theodicy

   “normal “ treatments don’t work, unravels strange’s western, and medical view, overwhelming

   Move and change, decenter being or crisis of faith

   Kamar-taj for bleeding edge solution and ancient one 

   
   

   Reference to Life pre-trauma less important, 

   remember and process trauma 

   Make new way of being with past, threat, and survival

   Mordo “forget everything you think you know”, unknown spaces

   Strange tries to be a surgeon an starts quizzing, ancient one reorients from western keyhole, spiritual stuff, strange rejects, ancient one puts him in astral form, strange confused

   
   

   Other states of consciousness= new perspective, not always healing but can help trasc when used well, 

   psychedelics for spiritual stuff and healing, more western research after banned in 70s

   • Trust between therapist/guide and patient/client

   • Client more awareness and connection to god or divine

   • Ketamine, weed, lsd kinda legal, be careful

   New psychological and spiritual space like apocalypse (uncovering) and revelation (learn new stuff)

   Wedding the keyhole

   Sdasc: transform norms and structures

   • Structure overwhelms trauma survivors

   • Trauma causes dissociation

   • sdasc=clarity, courage, compassion

   
   

   Ritual theory, track transformation

   1. Separation-ordinary to ritual state

   2. Liminality-in between before and after

   3. Incorporation-new status or way

   Different after

   Psychedelics, prayer, meditation, diets, can cause ritual theory

   Strange going to kamar-taj

   Psychedelics in ceremonies, rites of incorporation-strange: plea to learn

   
   

   Trasc: liminal is like dissociation, not different, sdasc: liminal with a “trip”

   Social, personal, and neurophysiological changes, 

   “time out” from norms, disrupt default patterns

   Normal: “doing” leaves no room to process, post-trauma: “doing” in time loop

   Like dormammu and strange

   
   

   Perspective, find new response, new understanding of concerns, release burdens, interpret

   Not alternate, but widening keyhole, see more=neuroplasticity

   
   

   Neurons that fire together, wire together, generate new connections, think and feel differently

   Keyhole narrow in trasc, replay trauma response, good biologically cus keep us away

   • Rigid learning, erode trust, driven external or internally

   Feel safe, seek new stuff (sdasc), feel threat, don’t change (trasc)

   Reorienting the spirit into the mystical arts

   Different interpretation of divine based on spiritual tradition and culture

   Use drugs at rituals, spiritual growht, more awareness

   
   

   Religious experience

   • Can’t describe mystical experience “ineffability”

   • “Noetic quality” learned something

   • “Transiency”, short time

   • “Passivity”, can be induced

   
   

   Mystical doesn’t mean religious/spiritual like trauma doesn’t mean ruined

   • Seeds that can be cultivated or ignored

   • Not experience but how we respond

   
   

   Can go back from trauma or have darkness and have new path, origin story, dr strange

   
   

   Ancient one

   1. “Open your eyes” disrupt 

   2. “To show you just how much you don’t know” trip

   
   

   4 elements of religious experience, 

   • ineffability, this can’t be happening, confused, whirlwind

   • noetic, ancient one teaches that there’s more

   • transient, only a few minutes

   • Passivity, can go back, ancient one make him experience again, “teach me”

   Open the door

   Perception opened by mystical/psychedelic experience

   Experience isn’t life’s meaning and purpose, just 1st step

   
   

   Integration

   1. Return from altered space to connection, safety

   2. Identity experiences and lessons, learn

   3. Implement wisdom, live

   “Study and practice…years of it”

   
   

   Can move on after trauma

   Altered consciousness as trauma response, mystical awakening, or drugs

   Must be safe, no threatsJamey Heit’s “No Laughing Matter: The Joker as a Nietzschean Critique of Morality.” Vader, Voldemort and Other Villains: Essays on Evil in Popular Media. Edited by James Heit, 175-188. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2011. 

   
   

   Mobs have clear good or bad, easy villain, violate morals

   Binary of good triumphs evil

   Maroni in batman but joker robs bank, new breed of criminal, not same evil

   Steals from mob

   Joker offers to get rid of batman, 

   
   

   he’s not crazy, but not interested in material or moral values

   Subvert expectations

   Evil not easy, don’t know how to categorize, look away

   Not interested in money, bruce doesn’t know why he isn’t greedy

   Just watch the world burn, doesn’t care

   Crime is joke, evil is game, don’t care for outcome/consequences

   1. Make sense of someone who can’t be categorized, binary

   2. Why does joker’s evil appeal

   Joker like devil

   Nietzsche: joker diverts from moral binary

   Deviation is evil and appealing

   
   

   Manipulate like devil, satan tempt adam and eve

   • Adam and eve can be good like god, won’t punish, snake subverts god

   • Nuanced discussion in binary

   • Misdirection paradise lost, rebellion

   Conflict when satan expelled from heaven

   • Blames god, rift

   • Satan will be justified, not god

   
   

   Batman is facade

   Institution is bad, no phone call, batman into cell

   Good is product of utility, not trusted

   
   

   What's evil?

   Alternative, batman may need to kill, batman considers

   Joker like snake is powerless, but subverts notion of good, that frames whole conflict

   Doesn’t claim evil is better than good but whole paradigm is flawed

   Those who adhere fracture self-identity

   Labelled good or evil to dismiss

   
   

   Nietzche: morality believes in realities that don’t exist, misinterpretation, ignorance, nonsense

   Binary distorts reality to justify

   Joker subvert paradigm to undo, expose institutional distinctions

   Doesn’t deny reality=ahead of the curve, chilling because true

   
   

   Christianity

   Human, all too human, feel bad being not doing, misunderstand choice obscures consequence

   Become who you want to be

   Not free so feels remorse, problem

   Consequence according to framework

   No one responsible, judge is to be unjust

   If you judge, others judge you

   Unlike jesus, reject him

   Will of god and humility is cowardice to be decisive

   
   

   Joker bombs 2 ships, wants to dissolve binary but people failed, clung to good, timid cowardice

   Freedom is act without prohibition, joker doesn’t surrender

   
   

   Thus spoke zarathustra, only god knows good and evil

   Dream where distinctions make certainty

   Nietzsche uncertainty, god doesn’t affect others, decide for themselves

   Freedom when don’t accept others’ standards

   
   

   Joker makes circumstances to get rid of good

   Do this, do that and be happy, immoral unreason

   Harvey and rachel bomb, no right answer

   Happiness and morals limit freedom and fractures clarity

   Don’t take reason’s ability to address stuff for granted

   Saving dent gives consequences

   Original sin in interpretative response to decision not disobedience

   
   

   Dent wants pain, good didn’t save rachel, disassociate from good

   Reject binary, two-face

   Joker- no one panics when stuff goes according to plan even if same thing

   Chaos is fair, two face flips coin, shift in good and evil

   Chance is fair, independent from morals like joker

   Zarathustra: risk and danger, dice-playing for death

   Chance is morally neutral, ground freedom

   Joker doesn’t care if two face shoots him, just that he abandons framework

   Release from false certainty, immortal sin of reason

   
   

   Joker is evil because doesn’t care about hospital, subvert paradigm

   What kind of derange person does that

   How to respond to someone who rejects binary

   Unhinge from binary=unsettling, actions and consequences no moral worth

   
   

   Nazi no morals like joker

   Only watch if normal

   Evil acts normal, ability not willingness

   Banality of evil, support or observe

   Evil in culture can be unchecked, not individual

   Joker evil but seduce good

   Evil not monster, maybe clown

   Clown hurt trial and suffering, not noticed or reported

   Clowns resist standards, divert, distract, amuse, obscure dark reality

   Joker exposes batman shortsightedness

   Villains exploit space from good

   Joker exposes us for relying on people telling us good and bad

   Evil doesn’t follow good, good fails

   Evil thrives when ignoredSuperman most ubiquitous symbol of american pop culture

   Created by 2 jewish teens in 1938

   Always had religious or scriptural references, jewish or christian

   
   

   Religiously multivalent: different interpreters find different symbols and themes about same thing

   Meaning comes from interaction between interpreter and text

   • Clues in text and reader experience

   • No one fully responsible

   Superman origin retold

   June 1938

   • Distant planet destroyed by age

   • Scientist puts infant son in hastily made space ship and launches to earth

   • Passing motorist finds it and puts in orphanage

   • Child gets powers and decides to use it for good

   Little religious symbolism, nothing specific

   Alien with great power decides to use for good and not dominate

   Any connection is not very useful

   Daily strip

   • Jor-l and lora, krypton scientists birth kal-l

   • Earthquake threatens to topple home, family is fine

   • But planet will explode

   • Jor-l wants to make big ark to move everyone to safe place but government refuses

   • He still secretly builds a small ship to test flight 

   • but planet gets destroyed and superman is put on it to go to earth

   • Parents are self-sacrificing

   • Passing motorist picks him up and puts in orphanage

   Ark-noah’s ark in torah, rescue entire populace

   Ark for moses

   • all male hebrew children killed in egypt

   • Moses put in basket “tevah” down the river

   • Safe future for sun like noah in alien culture

   Superman #1

   • The kents advise him to use powers for good but hide alien identity

   • Krypton just experimental ship, no family background

   • Kents replace passing motorist

   • After dropping him in orphanage, kents come back to adopt

   • Kents give love and guidance

   • Dad says hide identity

   • Mom says do good

   • Kents explain why superman does good

   • Kents death makes superman more determined to do good

   Kent’s advice adds ethics

   • Can draw parallels between moral actions and religious ethics, 

   • superman can be “claimed” as religious symbol

   • Influence pop culture, convert

   • Mother named mary, christ parallel

   • Christ as alien come from heaven but looks human

   • Too many details missing for a good link

   Superman: the movie

   Various interpretations

   What details signifies one religion more than another

   How do people understand superman religiously

   
   

   Jewish

   • Godlike nature of name

     • el=god

     • kal=with lightness, swiftness, vessel, voice

     • jor-el , white colour, divine

   • Immigration for sake of survival, dual identity

     • New world, remember heritage

     • Superman passes as normal, refugee

     • Clark kent-jewish male stereotype, timid socially inept, weak, clumsy, not sexual, nebbish

     • Superman jewish, mixes “old world” sensibility and anti masculinity with superman physical prowess=new home in america

   • Old testament and jewish heroes, moses

     • Singled out by god like superman’s dad

     • 12 year tutelage with robot dad in fortress of solitude

     • Dad says to use powers for good

     • “Commission narratives”

       • Confronted by divine when discovering green crystal and watching creation of the fortress

       • Introductory word- jor-el introduction

       • Commissions- by dad to do good

       • No objection so no need reassurance and sign, can still be represented by uniform and powers

     • light=divine presence

     • Killing First born=kryptonian

     • Both sent away for protection

     • Raised in foreign cultures

     • Help people

     • Hide true identity

   • Jews make illustrated books, haggadah

   
   

   Christian

   • Heavenly father

     • Sun becomes father, father the sun

     • Jesus lives in you, paraclete

   • Moses parallels with christ too

     • 12 year tutelage with robot dad in fortress of solitude

     • Dad says to use powers for good

     • Jesus also fled because male infants would be killled

     • jesus=new moses

     • Mostly moses over samson and hercules (physically strong peopl)

   • Only son for divine mission with secret identity

     • Earth people lack the light - jor-el

     • light=jesus, light of the world

     • Clark will change humans and shine his light and make other good

   • Christ figure himself

     • Dad says “my only son”

     • fulfillment for hope of messiah, saviour figure

   • Commission is incarnation, servitude, could be torah too

   • Echoes bible

   • Chsitomorphic, transfigures story of jesus

   • Whole movie shows possibility of incarnation of divine love

   • God makes servants suffer and triumph for humans

   
   

   Examination of superman

   4 Issues

   • Difficult subject, very interdisciplinary

   • Different understandings of same text, relationship between text and reader

   • Pursue knowledge of history, older origin stories, appreciate changes, holistic view

   • Open to analysis and critique, no one is rightReligion appears in pop culture like music and tv shows

     • Yoga and hinduism

     • occult phenomena like angels, demons, witches, vampires, zombies (haitian vodou)

     • Superhero good vs. evil

     • Crucifix pose on posters

     Shortened workshops to accommodate short attention span from tv

     Super bowl festivities=religion

     Learning about religion thru pop culture helps us 

     • learn role of religion in everyday lives and its perception

     • How religions change by culture

     
     

     Defining popular culture

     High/elite culture 

     • gourmet meal

     • Transmitted in written form eg literary magazine, music score, cookbook

     • Limited audience by intention

     • Aimed at people with perceived superior backgrounds or sophisticated taste

     
     

     Folk culture

     • casserole

     • Passed orally eg family recipes, legends, customs

     • Limited audience from oral communication

     
     

     Popular culture-

     • mcdonalds hamburger

     • Widespread and popular from mass media eg tv, radio, movies, books, magazines, social media

     • Larger audience

     
     

     Culture: neutral term, range of human products and thoughts that surround us and provide context

     Some say culture should only be for sophisticated and quality stuff eg symphony not polka band

     Analysts say it doesn’t make judgments on value, quality or taste

     
     

     How indispensable are the mass media to the concept of popular culture? 

     • Ray Browne, a key figure in the founding of the Popular Culture Association and the American Culture Association. 

       • “Way of life of a people”

       • “Existed since primitive times”

       • Before printing press and mass media

       • Eg laughing at play

       • Discuss pop culture through all of human history

       • Merges with folk culture but in contrast with high culture

     • Russel Nye, also a central figure in the development of popular cultural analysis as an academic field. 

       • Needs mass audience from urbanisation and democratization

       • Mass distribution eg printing press and mass media

       • “Cultural condition that didn’t appear in western civilization before late 18th century”

     • Mass mediation?

     • Both agree pop culture is what’s accepted by a large group of people

     • Important in its transmission eg tv, movies, music, coms, social media, video games, magazines, popular fiction

     How widespread?

     Top 40 but also specific categories of music=subcultures/sub-universes

     Why some pop culture flourishes?

     No clear difference between between levels of culture eg old folk music is high culture

     Notion of “pop culture” brings attention to common commercial and entertaining parts of cultural context as worthy of attention and reflection

     
     

     Analyzing popular culture

     Why pay attention? It both reflects and shapes us

     Reflect

     • General public makes stuff popular

     • Producers manipulate tv and we decide what we like

     • Why is stuff popular? Figure out why and learn about ourselves

     • Jack Nachbar and Kevin Lause, in their introduction to popular culture analysis at the beginning of Popular Culture: An Introductory Text, “pop culture formula”

       • Popularity of something is proportional to how much it reflects our belief and values

       • We don’t examine things themselves but the meaning in the culture as a whole

       • Quest for meaning for popularity

       • Mirror and reflects but it’s distorted and only reflects back a portion

         • Influenced by intentions of creative forces

       • Funhouse mirror

     
     

     Shapes

     • Reflection reinforces our values and deepens our connection to them

     • Only show certain images and alters perception of reality 

       • eg no african americans in 50s

       • White people forget them

       • Internalize message that they’re marginal

     • Michael Real Mass-Mediated Culture

       • Mass mediated culture serves interest of elite

       • Programs mass consciousness

       • “Give people what they want”-maximise profits, restricts choice, fragments consciousness, hides alienation

     • Kenneth Myers, an evangelical Christian and a journalist

       • Pop culture: “erosion of character, spoils innocent pleasure, cheapens life itself”

     • All include hope that if we analyze pop culture and raise them to a level of consciousness, it affects us less

     • Activists try to blunt pop culture and change its production to something more appropriate

     
     

     Conflict between pop culture creators and critics: both reflects and shapes

     • Encourage materialism, prompt violence, demean women vs. merely reflections of society

     • Video games Make violent society vs. society already violent

     • Both may be true but one claim can be more significant

     
     

     Some discussions only limit to intention of creators and nature of object itself 

     need to focus on audience reception : how and why public receives and responds

     • Eg. bts of star trek but needs how and why star trek is popular

     
     

     Learn more by examining patterns rather than examples

     • Single example focus on creative uniqueness

     • Patterns have broader themes and popular response

     Recognizing religion

     founding of the Popular Culture Association in 1971 

     the American Culture Association in 1979,

     Pop culture text in 1992, no religion

     American Academy of Religion in 1995, topic of religion exploded

     
     

     Levels of religion

     • Institutional religion eg. christianity, islam, judaism, etc and smaller groups

     • Broad societal assumptions about holiness and what’s valued eg wealth=success, value of family, individualism

     • unique/personal beliefs and practices

     • “religion”=institutionalized group

     • “spirituality”=general movements and private expressions

     • “Spiritual but not religious”

     • Scholars use “religion” to include everything

     
     

     Definition of religion

     • Christian theologian Paul Tillich :“ultimate concern,” 

     • undergraduate text: “any person’s reliance upon a pivotal value,” 

     • Organizing principle in life, what’s important and everything else is subordinate

     • Includes religion and other passions/priorities eg nationalism, materialism, sports

     • Popularity is what public values, could be “religion” 

     • Also human expressions closer to traditional religions

     • Julia Mitchell Corbett’s Religion in America “ system of belief, lifestyle, ritual activities, and institutions that individuals give/find meaning to their lives by living by what they think is holy, sacred, or of the highest value.”, more restrictive definition

     • Religion is spectrum, present in superheroes, struggles of life, celebrity, tv

     
     

     Four relationships between religion and popular culture

     1. Religion in popular culture 

     Catholic nuns, monks, preachers

     Redeemer played by comic heroes, apocalypses, witches, angels, vampires, zombies

     Movies focus on religion eg ten commandments, chosen, little buddha

     Explicit representation eg nuns, monks, muslim prayer rugs, exorcisms

     Patterns?

     Implicit appearances eg christ allegories like 

     • ET, come down from earth, loved and misunderstood, died and resurrected

     • Superman returns

     • Man of steel, zach snyder wanted to add christ-like parallels, superman metaphor

     • Jewish themes in superman 

     • Neo in matrix either christian, buddhist, jewish or gnostic

     • Plot structures: ‘classical monomyth”

       • Hero goes to supernatural

       • Encounders forces

       • Victory

       • Comes back

       • Eg ulysses, aenas

     • “American monomyth”

       • Paradise threatened by evil

       • Institutions fail

       • Superhero victory from fate

       • Goes back and fades

       • Westerns, comics

       • Secularization of Judeo-Christian redemption

       • Heroes replace christ

       • Hope of divine bigger than science

     • Films have cross-cultural forms, the way hollywood reshapes, invents, rejects archetypes

     • Pop culture stories like themes of love, meaning, sin, death and resurrection, forgiveness

       • Ask questions of identity 

       • How the world poses question, parallel own faith

     •  Andrew M. Greeley, a Catholic priest, sociologist, and prolific author. Find god in movies because the art is fine and lively and vivid

     • Also in music videos, movies, comedies, stories, comics, books etc

     2. Popular culture in religion 

     Appropriation of pop culture by religion, impact and influence on what they believe and how they operate

     • Popular music styles in church

     • Adds

     • Pop culture slogans/icons

     Does pop culture change religion?

     Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

     • Change in thinking from print to tv

     • Marshall McLuhan’s “ medium is the message,”

     • print=serious rational discourse

     • tv=image-based culture, exploding pics, fragmented, sensation/feeling over rationality, entertainment first, anything on tv is entertainment

     • “The danger is not that religion has become the content of tv shows, but that tv shows may become the content of religion.”

     • Even more different with tech

     Religion as self help?

     Marketing religion?, good or bad?

     Pop Culture in religion least examined

     
     

     3. Popular culture as religion 

     3 types of religion

     substantive

     • Inner core/essence/ nature

     • Thing in itself

     • Relationship with gods

     • Favoured by philosophers/theologians

     Functional

     • Effects in life

     • Systems and how it helps people deal with stuff

     • Favoured by scholars in social sciences

     Formal

     • From comparative study and presence of religion

     • Stories, rituals, morals, communities

     • Favoured by historians of religion

     
     

     Pop culture is mostly functional and formal, a little substantive too

     Fandoms and conventions

     devotion to stories and people Eg graceland is elvis pilgrimage

     Religion? Meaning and purpose? Interpret the world? Belief systems?

     
     

     American pop culture as religion like worship services

     • Belief system, problems (evil), deliverance, future, resolutions

     • Westerns are rituals to americana like casablanca

       • Basic storyline

       • Evil from outside

     • Worships already held beliefs

     • American worship less explicit but still persuasive

     • Focus on beliefs 

     • Similar function

       • Cope with problems, find meaning

     • Religion for most devoted followers

     4. Religion and popular culture in dialogue

     Things that don’t fit in other categories 

     • eg. violence in media, 

     • religious leader debate is dialogue

     • Violence has no religion

     • Just in media and society 

     • Connects religion and pop culture

     • Catch-all,

     • Religion and pop culture not separate

     • Dialogue, used broadly

       • Talk to and about others

       • Conversion in shared interest

     
     

     Religious denunciations most publicised

     • Lgbt

     • Islamophobia

     Awareness to culture and diversity and less fortunate too

     
     

     Pop culture speak on religion negatively

     • Abuse in spotlight movie

     • Religious hypocrisy in east jesus nowhere

     Affirms religion too

     • Country albums with hymns

     • Heart warming movies and tv

     
     

     Only general issues 

     Religion approves of pop culture?

     Pop culture criticizes or affirms religion?

     • Ethical ares that religious values pertain

     • Gender, race, success, etc

     Mostly jewish and christian

     
     

     Conclusion

     More than 4 categories, not exclusive but interactive

     Use pop culture to promote religion

     Use religion in marketing and media

     Discussion of religious and cultural assumptions

     Fluidity in categories

     
     

     Get interested unapologeticallyPeter parker, was only spiderman

     Miles morales, other spiderman, same universe?

     Fun movie style

     Smart, entered a lottery, uncle bad, maybe satan?

     Hidden in plain sight

     Meets gwen

     Foreshadow spiderman, moving in the dark after getting to class late

     Tries to fail on purpose but can’t fail that bad

     Gwen likes him

     Spray painting when avoiding homework with uncle then stung by spider

     Gets powers

     Tries to hit on gwen but is “sticky”, everyone knows

     Overthinking, loud thoughts

     Two spiderman, doesn’t think possible

     Miles like spiderman like jesus?

     Wants to actually tell someone and not keep to himself

     Why happening to me

     Peter spiderman opened a portal, saved by peter

     Kingpin Opened 5 dimensions, exploded

     Needs to destroy portal

     Real spiderman killed and identity revealed, mary jane

     Uncle sent to kill miles but escape

     Counting on miles

     Use comics as guide, text in text

     Other spiderman came when miles was visiting other peter’s grave

     
     

     Peter b spider failed, sucked into mile’s universe

     
     

     Miles can’t swing

     Saves then Captures peter b to question

     Doesn’t wanna teach, better not to be spiderman

     Go through portal before bad stuff

     Needs mile’s help, agrees to teach

     Miles turns invisible

     Female dock ock wants them to study

     
     

     Gwen! Went to mile’s school after, knew he was there

     Kingpin lost his family, from other universe

     Make machine to bring back family

     
     

     Visit aunt may, make another usb after broken

     Meet more spidermen, dark, spiderman, pig

     Not ready, no powers

     Uncle disappeared, fight as villain, soft spot for him, finds out it’s uncle!

     
     

     Was followed by kingpin’s henchmen

     Uncle finds out it’s miles, shot by kingpin, uncle ben moment

     Dad is cop, wants spiderman

     
     

     Other spidermen leave him behind cus can’t prove himself

     Leap of faith to know when ready, faith-christianity stuff

     Worked!

     
     

     Kingpin party, Waiters dressed as spidermen, Peter b saw mj

     
     

     Miles help the spidermen at portal, 3rd act fight sequence

     All spidermen leave except miles who fights kingpin on his own and wins

     Reconciles with dad

     Anyone can wear the maskThor trapped, gods not all-powerful and holy, uncouth humour, still sound godly

     Mythical figures and events into pop culture

     Combine with earth, guy went to earth, got guns

     Memorable soundtrack evoke emotion for other religions

     Story in story

     Gods still “human”, dumped by jane

     Different higher powers coexist, dr strange’s magic and mythology

     Gods can be made a fool of, physical comedy

     Gods can die

     Hela flipped the script on loki, kneel

     Not all gods equal

     Subdivided jobs, god of___

     Mix religions, norse gods with halos, catholic frescos

     Reshape history, history told by victors, no peace treaties, won by battles

     Gods as entertainment, maybe in real life/distraction? Fighting each other

     Gods as sex symbols?

     Try to defy fate: stop ragnarok

     
     
     

     Flashback Crashes, bleeds blue

     Power and chip in neck

     Fights cus can’t sleep, needs to let go of past, makes vulnerable

     Has to control power, cus emotional

     Can’t see supreme intelligence

     Memory wiped

     Mission to retrieve spy

     Captured by skrulls, going through memory, looking for lawson for engine for home

     Fights them, blows out of ship, lands on earth

     Contacts team, told to stay

     Meets nick fury and phil coulson, don’t believe her

     Scrull finds her and attacks, fights grandma

     Coulson is skrull, fury kills, him, turns to skrull

     Steals bike and table

     Dissect skrull

     Makes friends with fury at empty bar

     Meets goose, infiltrate government hangar

     Look for records of lawson

     Lawson was kree, crashed testing light speed engine, danvers crashed

     Head shield guy is skrull

     Meets with rambeau who fills her in

     Talos in house

     Kree shot her down

     Blow up energy core gave her powers

     Everything i knew was a lie, wrong side of unjust war

     Find coordinates for lab, invisible

     Lawson was hiding skrulls, talos family

     Kree capture her, no power, with supreme intelligence

     Breaks out of trance, takes out chip

     Flurkin takes tesseract

     Ronin wants to take her down and tesseract but they leave

     Goose eats fury’s eye

     Carol will find home for skrulls, tesseract should stay on earth

     Gives fury pager

     Fury needs to find more heroes, start avengers initiativeCaecillius steal stuff, caught by ancient one, fight in other parallel realm?

     Dark vs light

     Light is hypocrite

     • Ancient one uses prohibited dark magic

     caecilius escapes

     Dr strange arrogant, likes christine palmer, other doctor,

     Operate on guy with bullet, wants to take out full bullet free-hand, show off

     Car crash on way to speaking while calling, glass damage hands

     Tries to fix hand, people and western medicine won’t help, expensive surgeries, poor now

     Finds someone healed with mind, then healed body, kamar-taj

     People try to rob strange, rescued by kamar taj people

     “Forget everything you think you know”

     Look through keyhole, try to widen, but reject other ways to widen, don’t believe

     No such thing as spirit, just matter

     Astral projection stuff, then kicked out 

     Reminds like caecilius, wants to use stephen against him, teaches him

     Dropped off on everest, learns it’s not his hands that’s problem

     Finds eye of agamotto, time stone

     Caecilius stole dormammu stuff, could make time loops and stuff

     Caecillius comes back to fight strange

     Strange gets cape

     Caecillius wants to live forever, use dark magic, tempts strange

     Stabbed, goes to christine, astral project after defibrillation

     Fights other guy in astral projection?

     Ancient ones draws dark power to stay alive

     Strange becomes new guardian cus other one died

     Won’t kill cus doctor like batman

     Caecillius back, stabs ancient one, meant to die

     Strange fears failure

     Could go back to surgery but chooses not to

     Mordor turns quits and turns dark, blames ancient one for caecilius

     Sanctum already fallen in hongkong but reverses time

     Dormammu i’ve come to bargain etc time loop

     Draw on evil to defeat evil, not black or white like joker, chaos in between

     In charge of sanctum santorium

     mid credits, thor and loki come to look for odin, cause chaos strange helps

     Post credits, mordor is really evil, kills healed guy cus too many sorcerors

     
     
     
     
     Joker mask, crime

     People in clown masks go to rob bank

     joker planned heist but not in it, wants cut

     Clown backstabs each other when job is done

     Puts bomb in hands

     Banker with gun fights back, shot when he runs out

     Joker actually in heist, kills everyone else

     Money in bus blends in with other school busses

     Scarecrow back, sells bad drugs

     Fake Batman kills mob but gets sprayed

     Real batman comes in 

     Rachel and da in court, guy took over falcone tries to shoot da but not full

     Scientist gets chinese company

     Batman wants new suit

     Rachel and bruce dinner

     Die hero or live long enough to be villain

     Joker stole from chinese company/mob bank

     Joker infiltrate meeting

     Joker card, like bat signal but for joker, also he plays the card, leverage, advantage of card

     dent=da, want lau (chinese mobster)

     Joker plays games, gets mob

     Why so serious, why no joke

     fox/science guy, goes to hongkong to meet lau

     Batman goes into hongkong building, gets lau

     Arrest bad government people, judge has joker card

     Fake batman body from joker

     Batman, symbol not to be afraid of people

     Joker card that batman needs to turn himself in like superman

     Bruce throws fundraiser for dent

     commissioner and wife poisoned or blown off, joker goes to bruce party for dent

     Joker plays about his backstory

     Joker throw rachel off roof, bruce saves her

     Joker just wants to watch the world burn and have fun

     Batsuit, evolution of power and influence over city

     Joker gonna kill mayor

     Joker sole security uniform set bomb

     Good cop dead, Batman’s fault

     Rachel next, hides with bruce

     Batman gets bad government guy

     Dent playing games, gets caught up with games

     Joker gets arkham patients

     Rachel cheats on dent since bruce will give up batman

     Dent claims he’s batman

     Police diverted and run over

     Batmobile dead, self destructs, turn to motorcycle

     Joker wants to play with batman, tips his truck

     Good cop survived

     Not monster just ahead of the curve

     Batman talk to joker

     Joker wants bruce to kill him, dent missing,choose between rachel and dent

     Rachel wants to marry dent

     Batman comes for dent, rachel dies

     Joker planned to be caught and locked up

     Harvey becomes two face

     Joker burn money

     Joker gonna get hospital, they evacuate

     Coin, chance, two face, luck, game, fear, i make my own luck, fairness, equal chance

     Harvey survives, starts spinning/flipping coins

     Too much power for one person

     Science guy will resign cus bruce tapped everyones phone for surveillance

     Dent wants to know who picked up rachel

     Ferries gonna blow

     Boats blow up each other, civilians or prisoners

     Good cop family to leave to get kidnapped

     Joker tricks police into killing wrong hostages, hostage and bad guys switch clothes

     Batman caught, takes swat down the building

     People on boats volunteer to kill others

     No one’s like joker

     Joker and batman won’t kill each other

     Joker wants fun, batman self righteous, dance forever

     Joker made harvey mad

     Harvey gonna hurt good cop’s family, son

     Joker wants to prove even good guys can be crazy like dent

     Harvey shoot batman but bulletproof

     Joker won, dent’s work is undone

     batman=gotham

     Hunt batman cus he can take it and he’s not a hero, silent guardian, watchful protector, dark knightBad city

     Joker tries to smile

     Kids steal his sign, hit him with it, beat him up

     Laughs weird?

     “Death more sense than life”, in therapy?

     Was locked up in hospital

     Wants more meds, wants to feel better, laughing condition

     Lives with mom

     Wrote to the Waynes, who’s running for mayor will save city

     Late night show, goes on stage, in his head

     Guy gives him gun to protect, not supposed to have one, owes him

     Gotta payback sign, 

     Mom thinks wayne will help

     Follows someone he made smile 

     Makes joke wants her to come to his standup

     Guy who gives him gun gets him fired

     Guys on subway make fun of him, beat him up, he shoots them

     Starts dancing? Folie a deux, makes out with neighbour?

     Hide behind a mask, envious, won’t show face - wayne

     People don’t care, he thinks they do

     Good standup

     Girl thinks clown is good

     Wayne is his father not really mom is delulu

     Tries to entertain rich kid/bruce wayne, chokes alfred butler

     Comes back mom sick

     Police interrogated mom, gave her stroke, asks about gun, says it’s a prop, make fun of laughing condition

     Late night guy makes fun of his condition

     Wayne says people are clowns, smt wrong with them, protests and fight

     Joker sneaks into benefit, confronts wayne in bathroom

     Joker is a adopted, wayne punches him

     Joker’s gonna go on show

     Goes to arkham finds out mom was crazy, steals files, is adopted, abused, maybe brain damage

     Deluded about neighbour being in love with him

     Kills mom, life is comedy

     Plans to off himself on the show

     Dyes hair green before show and puts on makeup, transformation

     Clowns come to cheer him up from mom death

     Stopped meds, stabs guy who gave him gun, he wanted to get stories straight

     Runs from police on way to show, blends in with crowns on way to protest,

     clowns fight police reverse uno

     Murray call as joker when introduce, joker’s gonna be laughing stalk

     Weird sexual theme in whole movie

     Confesses to murders

     Everybody is awful these days, it’s enough to make you crazy

     Blows murray’s brains out

     Likes Causing chaos, gotham is burning, arrested, isn’t it beautiful

     Rescued by clowns, police car rammed

     Waynes out of movie, parents killed, mother’s pearl necklace

     Joker causes batman

     Clowns cheer him on

     In arkham asylum, leaves blood(y footsteps) behind himBat

     Playing with kid in garden finds smt

     Bruce falls down well, BAT, fear, trauma, nightmare

     Falling down into bats, nightmare

     Bruce in jail? Prisoners don’t like

     Practice? Fighting

     Very good, guards take bruce away to protect prisoners

     Bruce wayne is trying to disappear

     Ducard spies

     Ra’al ghul, league of shadows

     Vigilantes lost for struggle of own gratification

     Look for blue flower carry to mountain for purpose

     People tell him to go back

     Meets al ghuland ducard

     Seeks means to fight injustice

     Blue flower, symbol that he’s chosen?

     Manipulate fears of others, master your own, bats

     Death isn’t fair, ducard fights him after he climbed a lot

     Old arrow, childhood curiosity, adventure, arrow, fear pierce down, ancient acting, human nature stuff

     Pearl necklace, for mother

     Wayne tower, center of gotham, resources

     Bats, seriousness, in opera

     Gets out of opera, shoots parents, pearl necklace broken

     Dad says don’t be afraid

     Bats, reason for parents death, his weakness

     Pearl necklace, family, wealth, old life broken when snatched

     Gun, weapon, ends lives

     Wallet, wealth, resources, passport to high society

     Coat, police gives as comfort, shield, warmth

     Umbrella, shielding, grief as shield

     Wayne manor, safe house, bit of old life

     Alfred, comfort, reassurance, control, sanity, voice of reason

     Learns stuff

     Back for hearing, talks with rachel, old friend

     Man that killed parents might get early parole for ratting

     Someone shoots the guy walking out of court, bruce was gonna kill him before someone else did

     Revenge and justice isn’t the same

     Gun, tool for revenge

     Falcone mob guy inciting crime causing parents death

     Gun, revenge, throws it off bridge before confronting falcone

     Fear what you don’t understand bats

     Falcone insults him, gets thrown out 

     Trades jacket with homeless

     Starts living homeless, experience common people

     Thrill of success, never became of of them

     Blue flower, change to get batman powers? Black panther moment, breathe in fears and face them

     Become fear

     People simulate bats

     Commit to justice, kill prisoner

     League of justice kill gotham, not justice league lol

     Doesn’t kill, sets off explosives instead

     Mentor person died, bruce rescues as tower thing is falling

     Trapped on cliff, pulls him up

     Picked up by albert of a fucking private plane

     Father wanted to help poverty, murder made people help, big events spur people

     As a symbol i can be incorruptible, elemental, terrifying, bat

     Gone 7 years, someone wanted to take public liquidate shares

     Cillian murphy scarecrow HOT

     Sees bats, unfazed

     Explores batcave

     Scarecrow doing operation

     Bruce shows up at shareholders meeting, rachel finds out he’s back

     Wants to do science

     Gets armour from science department

     Orders stuff

     Police that helped him gives info to take down falcone

     Gets batmobile and fabric stuff from science department

     Bruce intercepts drug stuff first time as bat

     Bat, use it to incite fear in others now, boomerang thing

     I’m batman, he’s fear

     Falcone sent people to kill rachel, batman helps get leverage

     Falcone makes bat signal, justice, criminals in fear

     Police don’t like because they didn’t do their job

     Billionaire playboy genius philanthropist

     Wayne enterprises shipping weapon, someone turned it on, destroyed ship, weapon gone

     Sees rachel again after being weird

     Scarecrow makes falcone scared and insane

     Falcone guy shoots person investigating

     Inspires kids?

     Scarecrow burns a house?

     Scarecrow makes him scared, lights him on fire, fears back

     Blood poison? Out 2 days, wakes on birthdays

     Rachel find boss killed, bruce suits up and follows

     Scarecrows rachel

     Batman comes

     Scarecrow working for al ghul

     Batman takes good cop

     Crane dumping medicine into water supply to kill gotham per al ghul’s wishes

     Weaponizes bats against others

     Drives into batcave with rachel gives her antidote

     Gives antidote to rachel to give to others and replicate

     Get lost in monster, father didn’t prove to others

     Ras al ghul was good guy whole time dundundunnnnn

     Doesn’t like compassion

     Toxin from blue flowers, too good to be true trick

     Gonna destroy city, restore balance like thanos

     Burns mansion

     Prisoners out

     Bruce burning and trapped, albert rescues

     Poison Spray, control

     Rachel finds out it’s bruce

     Scarecrow mask, protection, feer device,like other masks from poison

     Darkness, cover, evil, bad etc

     Water pressure gonna blow, filed with poison

     Train keeps going maybe sacrifice

     Break pipes stop train

     Lets him run down train, die but not kill by himself

     Bruce buys company

     Batmans’ just a symbol rachel

     He himself is also mask, criminals fear his face

     Stethoscope, doctors thing, heal, rebuild house, rebuild lives/relationships

     Joker card, joker foreshadowingAlien, freak

     He’ll be like a god to them

     Mary kent=martha kent, both biblical

     Only chance, people’s only hope

     Holds info, like jesus, codex=bible/word of god,

     zod/villain/satan/egyptians, temptation to join bad side

     Boy child, first natural birth in centuries, miracle like jesus, free, heresy, religion theme

     Future with the child, like moses and israelites

     Zod banished like satan, won’t kill him but banish for eternity like god

     Will find the son like satan

     Assimilated like moses and jesus

     Using powers like jesus

     New name like moses?

     Call him names like moses

     Superman and moses has romance, not jesus

     Act of god for saving school bus

     Save enemies like jesus

     Gonna change everything when they find out real identity, 

     Afraid of what they don’t understand, bible stuff

     “did god do this to me”

     You’re the answer to are we alone in the universe, higher power ish

     sent for a reason

     Other father, other name, god

     Find reason like moses

     Fights back, unlike jesus and moses

     Non Believers in supernatural (superman’s powers, moses, jesus, god)

     Clark doesn’t know identity, other do

     Genesis chamber

     Predetermined role, slavery in egypt, something greater? Freedom?

     Dual identity

     Keep testing your limits, inspiring superhero shit

     Superman inspire kids like jesus inspire followers and moses inspire israelites

     Ideal to strive towards, race behind, join in time, accomplish wonders: freedom

     Cover tracks unlike moses and jesus

     Guardian angel

     Jonathan kent, biblical

     Wants no credit like, disappear unlike others

     “Not my dad” jesus?

     Dad’s sacrifice

     Told not to act, had to wait, world not ready

     Do you know how they’d react, lois lane paper, form following

     Found my people

     Farm in kansas, manger for jesus, israelites farm?

     Villain back, journey across ocean of stars, red sea egyptians

     Surrender himself, like jesus ish

     Hold anger

     Take leap of faith to trust zod will keep promise

     S means hope

     Can’t control

     Hand over to zod, betrayal like judas but less extreme

     Believers are important to superman, jesus stuff

     Enemy makes threats

     Enemy in other land

     Wants people to help but needs to run its course

     Destruction freed villains

     Instrument of damnation became salvation

     Krypton live again on earth, jews move to israel

     Can’t be part of it, what can be part of, 

     Father as guidance, god

     Protect loved ones

     Being persecuted

     Sense of morality

     Evolution always wins

     A good death is its own reward

     Father and zod, god and satan

     He saved us