Screening The Sacred

Joel W. Martin is associate professor of American studies and religious studies at Franklin and Marshall College. He is the author of Sacred Revolt: The Muskogees' Struggle for a New World. Conrad E. Ostwalt Jr. is associate professor of religious studies at Appalachian State University. He is the author of After Eden: The Secularization of American Space in the Fiction of Willa Cather and Theodore Dreiser.

• Introduction: Seeing the Sacred on the Screen -- Theological Criticism -- Shall These Bones Live? The Problem of Bodies in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Joel Coen's Blood Simple -- Angels in the Primum Mobile: Dimensions of the Sacred in William Kennedy's Ironweed, Novel and Film -- The Christian Allegorical Structure of Platoon -- Hollywood and Armageddon: Apocalyptic Themes in Recent Cinematic Presentation -- Mythological Criticism -- Star Wars: A Myth for Our Time -- With Eyes Uplifted: Space Aliens as Sky Gods -- Evolution of "The New Frontier" in Alien and Aliens: Patriarchal Co-optation of the Feminine Archetype -- Ideological Criticism -- Redeeming America: Rocky as Ritual Racial Drama -- From Revelation to Dream: Allegory in David Lynch's Blue Velvet -- Women Spoken For: Images of Displaced Desire -- Conclusion: Religion, Film, and Cultural Analysis