Living with the fear of the end.

Apocalypse, like we discussed in the last lecture, is one of the defining features of Christianity. As the lecture mentioned, Abrahamic religions believe in the spectrum of beginning and the end. We have discussed few lectures ago that people are afraid of the unknowable, and because of that, we tend to be attracted to movies or television shows that put our fear for the unknown in visual form, and we talked about how monsters are the representations of this. Apocalypse, aka the end of the world, is a scary thought. Looking at the issue on a Christian perspective, Apocalypse is very similar to the idea of “death”, it will be here one day, we don’t know when and we don’t know what happens after. Horror movies capture this fear we have for death, and similarly, many movies seem to capture this fear of the end to get audiences' attention.

Because of the this fear we have of the end, many films and television shows tend to carry an apocalyptic theme, some portray this explicitly and others do it "rather" implicitly. Well-known explicit apocalyptic films include “The Day After Tomorrow”, “The Book of Eli”, “2012”…etc. Interestingly, I think the rather implicit apocalyptic films tend to have this crossover with horror/monsters theme, because of this, though the idea of apocalypticism remains but it seems less obvious. Example would be “Omen”, famous horror movie about a demonic kid taking over the world; “Pleasant Point”, was not a highly popular television show, but similarly to “Omen” it focuses on the idea that the evil is gradually taking over humanity; and most recently “American Horror Story, judging by its name and the first few episode, most would assume its strictly horror based television show, until the end of the first season, it slowly reveals its implicit religious-apocalyptic theme (when main character gets pregnant with a demonic child, and a psychic predicts the kid would have a massive influence on the human race).

               

"American Horror Story" Episode 11-"Birth" trailer:

                                                    Ghosts getting eager for the birth of the demonic child.

Both the lectures on monsters and the last lecture on apocalypse demonstrate very clear examples of the complex interaction between religion and popular culture. We have spent a lot of time in this course discussing this interaction, from the knowledge I have gathered throughout these 12 weeks, I’m debating the possibility if fear of the unknown actually came before religion. Religion could be generated from our fear of death/the unknown, faith and belief can comfort our fear by allowing us to the opportunity to imagine what the unknown looks like. As technology advanced, this idea of comforting our fear is taken up by the media, and the notion to target this fear in Christianity is often portrayed in movies and television shows, and eventually became a huge popular culture. Though of course there is a possibility that because our fear for the unknown is so huge that it could be a form of popular culture before everything else. I think it is this fear of the end that we are living with, contributed to the popularity of apocalyptic films.

As mentioned, apocalypse to Christians, is very similar to the idea of death, it is scary to the human race because it is unknowable. The media industry could have picked up this phobia and reinforce it by producing movies/television shows that capture this fear, and allow audience the opportunity to visualize the unknown. And by putting the unknown in a visual form, it indirectly comforts our fear, therefore, we enjoy it.  In a bigger picture, this demonstrates the complexity of the relationship between Christianity and popular culture, and how they reinforce and interact with each other, and therefore, I think apocalypse is an excellent topic to conclude this blog, as well as this course.


Cowan, Douglas. “Stalking Life: Fear of Death and of Dying Badly.” In Sacred Terror: Religion and Horror on the Silver Screen, 123-66. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 200.
Ostwalt, Conrad. “Movies and the Apocalypse.” In Secular Steeples: Popular Culture And The Religious Imagination, 157-88. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 200.
Walsh, Richard. “The Horror, The Horror: What Kind of (Horror) Movie is the Apocalypse?” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 22 (2010), 27 pp