October 7-11, 2024
Gonzaga University
Is there still space for spiritual themes—faith, transcendence, human meaning, the sacred, the holy—in popular films and series? What trends are there in treatment of religious and spiritual themes over the last few decades? Is the hidden God present in ever more subtle ways in contemporary films? Are there particular filmmakers in whose work spiritual and religious themes remain significant?
The Gonzaga Faith & Reason Institute is sponsoring a series of public events on “Spiritual Film Themes in a Secular Age” to address these questions the week of Monday, October 7, to Friday, October 11, 2024 on the campus of Gonzaga University, in Spokane, WA. Students, faculty, staff, and community are invited to attend any of these events. All events are FREE admission.
Along with the public events of Faith, Film, and Philosophy 2024, there is a seminar devoted to the series topic that will take place from Thursday, October 10 to Saturday, October 12. The seminar offers 12-15 scholars of film the opportunity to present, discuss, and develop their work in an engaging, interactive context. More information about the Seminar can be found on the Faith, Film, and Philosophy 2024 Seminar page.
Series Event Schedule
Monday, October 7, 7 pm
“I See Dead People”: Spiritual Quests in the Films of M. Night Shyamalan
Brian B. Clayton, Philosophy Emeritus, Gonzaga University
WOLFF AUD JEPSON 114
M. Night Shyamalan’s early films (from Wide Awake to Lady in the Water) are notable for the presence of spiritual themes such as faith, grace, and hope. While the perception of Shyamalan’s films is that they are thrillers with a twist, his most popular and successful films often raise questions of supernatural agency in the form of fate or even providence. This talk will examine these films and explore these themes in an effort to cast light on Shyamalan’s “project” in the earlier part of his career. This project certainly suggests that spiritual themes have not been “dropped out completely, in keeping with the secularism of the age.” Over against this is the apparent counterevidence of Shyamalan’s films beginning with The Happening, where spiritual themes seem notably absent. The lecture will consider this counterevidence and consider its implications for the view that Shyamalan’s oeuvre shows that there is still room for spiritual themes in popular films.
Tuesday, October 8, 7 pm
FREE film screening and panel discussion
HEMM AUD 004
Scheduled film and panelists TBA
Wednesday, October 9, 7 pm
Student panel discussion: “Spiritual Film Themes in a Secular Age”
WOLFF AUD JEPSON 114
Student panel presenters TBA
Thursday, October 10, 7 pm
"A Secular Stage: Religion through the Lens of Hollywood"
Michael P. Foley, Honors College, Baylor University
WOLFF AUD JEPSON 114
The thorny relationship between Divine Revelation and the motion picture industry runs deeper than an anti-Christian bias in Hollywood or a current shortage of Christian screenwriters, as real as these problems are; the problem is as old as cinema itself. Drawing from Charles Taylor’s Secular Age, which argues that secularism is above all a predisposition that is closed to transcendence, Dr. Michael Foley will offer a brief history of the tension between Christianity and the modern entertainment industry, recent developments that have made that tension worse, and possible ways to move forward.
Friday, October 11, 7 pm
“The Displacement of the Sacred in Modern Film: Film Nihilism from Nietzsche and Heidegger to Barbie and Deadpool”
Duane Armitage, Philosophy, University of Scranton
WOLFF AUD JEPSON 114
Contemporary popular films manifest an eclipse of the sacred that reflects the secularism of wider culture. Insight into the marginalization of sacred themes in film can be found in Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s understanding of secularism, nihilism, and the death of God. The sacred, for Heidegger and Nietzsche, represents the metaphysical, that is, the transcendent world that grounds meaning, truth, and morality. The death of God primarily then represents the collapse of this supersensible world and its relocation elsewhere; for Nietzsche, the worry is its relocation in weakness and in the “victim,” for Heidegger, its relocation remains in the machinations of modern science and technology. Contemporary films such as Barbie and Deadpool illustrate aspects of Nietzsche’s and Heidegger’s diagnoses, such as the sacralization of the victim and the resort to imaginary worlds as alternatives to the metaphysical. Through Nietzsche and Heidegger, I argue that these elements represent distortions of metaphysics and morality that can only be grounded and made sense of in Christianity.
Featured Speakers
Brian B. Clayton
Brian B. Clayton is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Gonzaga University, where he taught for over 30 years. His teaching included Philosophy of Human Nature in the University Core and advanced courses in Faith & Reason, Film, and Walker Percy. His senior level course on C.S. Lewis was legendary as a deep dive into the complexities of Lewis’ fiction, philosophical theology, and reflections on culture and literature. As director of the Gonzaga Faith & Reason Institute, Clayton founded the Faith, Film, and Philosophy Series and organized it for over a decade. He is the coauthor of Two Wings: Integrating Faith and Reason (2018) and coeditor of The Philosophy of Clint Eastwood (2014), a collection of essays that grew out of papers that were part of the Faith, Film, Philosophy Seminar.
Michael P. Foley
Michael P. Foley is Professor of Patristics in the Honors College of Baylor University. His academic research and writing focuses on the thought of St. Augustine, early and medieval Christianity, liturgy, and comedy and tragedy. He has written and spoken on a number of topics in film, including Catholicism and film, mystery films, and the films of Andrew Niccol and Whit Stillman. In addition to his scholarly work, Foley is a popular writer and speaker on Catholic history and culture. Foley's appearance at Faith, Film, Philosophy 2024 represents a return for him, as he has presented at past FFPs in 2007, 2008, 2011, 2013, and 2017.
Duane Armitage
Duane Armitage, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Scranton, is a scholar of continental philosophy with specialization in Nietzsche and Heidegger, especially the theological dimensions of their thought. His books include Heidegger and the Death of God (Palgrave Macmillan 2017) and Philosophy's Violent Sacred: Heidegger and Nietzsche through Mimetic Theory (MSU Press 2021). Armitage has special interest in the social, cultural, and theological implications of the Death of God.
Contact
If you have any questions regarding the Faith, Film, and Philosophy 2024 Series, please contact David Calhoun, Director of the Gonzaga Faith & Reason Institute, at faithandreason@gonzaga.edu.