TY - JOUR

T1 - Pandora’s Box: Religion, Ecology And Popular Culture

AU - Mikhelson, O.K.

PY - 2016

Y1 - 2016

N2 - The paper is devoted to the link between ecology of religion and popular culture. Recently these fields have become topical for both contemporary cultural discourse and religious studies while environmentalism itself has often been considered as a form of implicit religion. J.Cameron’s film “Avatar” being an exemplarily work of popular culture raising environmental issues is in the main focus of the paper. Na’vi’s culture and religion invented in the movie are interpreted in tight connection to Pandora’s nature. Methodological approach underling the importance of investigating archaic religions in their coexistence with nature was developed by Å. Hultkrantz whose theory became the ecology of religion basis but in this paper it is applied to the study of a popular culture product. In “Avatar” one can see a range of religious believes starting with a Hindu term used for the title and finishing with “animism” and “pantheism”. These religious ideas gave rise to sharp criticism from some Catholics and Protestants

AB - The paper is devoted to the link between ecology of religion and popular culture. Recently these fields have become topical for both contemporary cultural discourse and religious studies while environmentalism itself has often been considered as a form of implicit religion. J.Cameron’s film “Avatar” being an exemplarily work of popular culture raising environmental issues is in the main focus of the paper. Na’vi’s culture and religion invented in the movie are interpreted in tight connection to Pandora’s nature. Methodological approach underling the importance of investigating archaic religions in their coexistence with nature was developed by Å. Hultkrantz whose theory became the ecology of religion basis but in this paper it is applied to the study of a popular culture product. In “Avatar” one can see a range of religious believes starting with a Hindu term used for the title and finishing with “animism” and “pantheism”. These religious ideas gave rise to sharp criticism from some Catholics and Protestants

KW - ecology of religion

KW - popular culture

KW - environmentalism

KW - “Avatar”

M3 - статья

VL - 4

SP - 91

EP - 97

JO - Вестник Санкт-Петербургского университета. Философия и конфликтология

JF - Вестник Санкт-Петербургского университета. Философия и конфликтология

SN - 2542-2278

ER -