Driving Question

How do the Adaptations of Christian pedagogy in Hollywood films Impact our worldviews?

Reflection #1

          Through my exploration of my topic, I’ve found that Symposium is going to be harder than I thought. Over the course of researching, me and my group have changed our topic about 4-5 times. We haven’t gotten farther than our generalizations, due to the constant change in our topic. We started with the idea of apocalypse, changed it many times, and ended back with apocalypse. We chose it because it was a very odd topic to cover. We hope to find articles that will help us with our driving question, which will be tough. Because of the complexity of the topic there are many ways one could view apocalypse from, such as politics, religion, or even through the media. Before setting up our driving question, we need to come up with how we are going to tackle apocalypse. We strayed away from apocalypse at first because we thought there weren’t going to be a lot of sources, but part of choosing this topic is doing lots of research. I think that the collaboration is going well. I made sure that the topics we were choosing was something that we all wanted to discuss, and my partners gave me their opinions which I thought was great. To be honest, I think I could be doing a better job at being a teammate to my partners and for myself. There were times where we needed to cancel our meetings because I had something I needed to attend to, or where we didn’t know what to do because we didn’t plan early enough. So I’m going to say that there could be more improvement coming from my part. Other than that, I’m excited to be working with two of my best friends that I’ve got to get to know so well and I’m glad that I’m working with them. There couldn’t be anyone better.

Reflection #2

          Our driving question/topic did not change because it is something different and something that hasn’t been in a project yet. Also, we have found several articles about religion in film which has gave us hope that we could do a really good project. For our student-led research, we are going to do interview(s). We will interview Erin Runions, professor of Religious studies at Pomona College, and Robert K. Johnston, professor of Theology and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary’s school of Theology. Both have done research about religion in film, so their responses can add onto our research about our topic. The SLR has been very easy, along with finding the articles and annotating them. Putting our research into our universal theme’s generalizations has been harder. I think that the hardest thing was to work on this at home, because I cannot collaborate as effectively through Google Hangouts than I can through face to face. We need to look up at least 3 more credible articles to help us better understand our topic(not that we don’t already, but we want to know our topic inside and out). I also believe that we should annotate together so that we can help each other understand what an article is saying. Our collaboration is better than what it has been during the time of reflection #1. However, there is room for improvement. I’ve been trying to contribute the best of me to my group. I believe that there could be more collaboration between my two teammates and Ms. Park. When Ms. Park spoke to me about understanding my generalizations(Adaptations can be positive or negative, etc.) I understood what I needed to do and it helped me a lot. If Jerry and Michael could get Ms. Park’s help during their class period, we would work faster and more efficiently.

Reflection #3

 Over the course of creating our tri-fold board, I learned that I can work well with others. We were able to finish our board before the due date(4:00 pm, after school) and were able to start planning for our supplemental. We first stared with the idea of creating a mural. In the mural we were going to have a pair of hands holding the bible, and film was spilling out of the bible. However, we decided to roll with a sculpture so we could all contribute equally. We took our idea for a mural and are creating it into a physical project. We are going to cap out the time we can stay after-school so that we could work on our supplemental. 

SLR - Interview with Erin Runions:

• 1. Why do films have such an impact on our culture and our world views?

      “One of the things that films do is that they encourage you to identify with the characters. Certain shots are structured so that you get positioned in a viewer with a specific kind of view.”, “The coherence one gets, when they view a lot more, one feels more in control.”

• 2. Do you believe that films impact how people view biblical themes such as the end of the world, morality, life v. death, and the idea of a savior?

        “...I think it kind of obscures that actual power relations that happen in relationships that demand sacrifice.”

• 3. Through research we’ve found that religion (more specifically the Bible) plays a significant role in several horror films. Why does religion have such an impact in horror films?

       “To a lot of people, [religion] explains the unknown. That’s what horror feeds on. But also, there’s the book of Revelation, again we were talking about apocalypse, where there’s lots of descriptions of things that are scary in the unknown … I do think that [religion] is something that gives people a way to explore the unknown or their fears of the unknown.”

• 4. Some films |have religious concepts in them that are “exaggerated.” or “stylized.” Could this change what people believe about the concept?

      Stylized would be… a lot of times you’ll get the bad catholics, which is one of the ways you’ll get a real stereotyping, or a really narrow view of religion. Islam is usually thought of as a lot of bad characters if you’re Muslim right? So there is a very stereotyped notion of religion, but also a really limited idea of what’s good and what’s bad and how religion even operates.There is a very narrow realm of what is acceptable religion in film right? So like what religiosity does Hollywood really even allow, very little. Maybe some vague ideas of spirituality. Is religion even --maybe if it is a biblical film, then you get some ideas that religion is okay. Otherwise you have descriptions of religion, they are usually like a signal for something bad is going to happen...these other hidden themes that aren’t necessarily announced that they are biblical like the apocalypse or the savior. In film there may be just allusions. So you are supposed to just know as a viewer, what religion is okay and what religion is not good. So there’s a very refined idea of good and bad religion.   

• 5. How do you think the way people receive information about the Bible or Christianity has changed due to Hollywood films? In other words, are people learning about Christianity or Biblical themes more through films than through traditional ways like the Bible or through church?

        “… I would say that there’s a lot of people don't have a high religious or biblical literacy, so I think that they do get a lot of it from films.”, and after discussing the way death is portrayed in films and about its impacts, Runions stated, “Again, a lot of times it stereotypes who’s killed in movies, like who are the gangsters, who are the bad guys...they’re not white. Sometimes they are, but not always. Then what does that do? It dehumanizes a whole races and ethnicities. I think we really see that. We’re reaping the results of that, because right now with the attacks on immigrants, attacks on Muslims. That comes partly from a whole society that doesn’t think very complexly about death or about violence or about who deserves to be heard.

Link to ISD