Synecdoche, Aesthetics, and the Sublime Online: Or, What's a Religious Internet Meme?
Hoping to court young people increasingly distancing themselves from institutional religious affiliation, religious organizations like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are creating and circulating aesthetic short-form videos (memes) rife with existential cinematic tropes aimed at invo...
| Authors: | ; |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group
[2020]
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| In: |
Journal of media and religion
Year: 2020, Volume: 19, Issue: 1, Pages: 12-23 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Religion
/ Mormon Church
/ New media
/ Synekdoche
/ The Sublime
/ Experience
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| RelBib Classification: | AD Sociology of religion; religious policy AZ New religious movements KDH Christian sects |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Summary: | Hoping to court young people increasingly distancing themselves from institutional religious affiliation, religious organizations like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are creating and circulating aesthetic short-form videos (memes) rife with existential cinematic tropes aimed at invoking a sublime, affective viewing experience. Unlike the destabilizing cinema that inspired them, however, these religious memes do not have the luxury of equivocation. Institutional religious messages online must aim to instill divine experiences in spectators even while transcending the constraints of mobile media that circulates them. Responding to this exigency, institutional religious messages overcome these restrictions by using synecdoche to create a necessarily incomplete iteration of the sublime. "Earthly Father, Heavenly Father," an example of a short video religious meme by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, lets the familiar cinematic tropes innovated by filmmakers such as Terrence Malick do the work of the sublime in order to represent the much larger, transcendent experience of personal communion with God. |
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| ISSN: | 1534-8415 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of media and religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/15348423.2020.1728188 |