Birgit Meyer in her article Media, Aesthetics and the Study of Contemporary Religion consider the whole area of embodiment and religious expression and mentions the possibility of embodiment as 'divine power' (2012:161). Do monsters also embody a divine power of some sort?
Throughout her article Birgit Meyer discusses the experiences grounded in “bodily sensations” and how “audiences” react to the visual presentation of religious processes in television (Meyer 2012). In this sense monsters can embody a type of power in the reactions they invoke in audiences watching shows such as Supernatural (Padalecki 2005). Whether this is divine or not is another question as the show’s demons and monsters all come from various religious traditions but are presented as fiction. Something to consider is the amount of fans that discuss the show as if it is real life and not fiction at all (something discussed in the show itself). Line Nybro Petersen also discusses how the show presents these monsters as part of everyday life and by presenting them as “banal” gives them a heightened power as audiences can imagine them as part of their own everyday existence (Petersen 2010).
Works Cited:
Meyer, Birgit. “Religious Sensations.” In Religion, Media and Culture: A Reader, by G., Mitchell, J. and Strhan, A. Lynch, 159-170. London and New York: Routledge, 2012.
Padalecki, Jared. 2005. Supernatural, television program. Vancouver: Kripke Enterprises and Warner Bros. Television.
Petersen, Line Nybro. “Renegotiating Religious Imaginations Through Transformations of "Banal Religion" in Supernatural.” Transformative Works and Cultures, No. 4, 2010: http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2010.0142.
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