Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com

Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com

Another episode of A Satanist Goes to the Movies. As I mentioned in the episode on Hitchcock's Rope, this is a project I've been wanting to do for a while, a look at the religious themes in the films of Martin Scorsese and in particular at a trilogy of films, The Last Temptation of Christ, Bringing Out the Dead, and Silence. This episode will focus on the first of these, The Last Temptation of Christ from 1988.

Transcript available at asatanistreadsthebible.com

In this episode I'll be delving into film criticism with an analysis of the 1948 film Rope, produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring John Dall, Farley Granger, and James Stewart. Rope has fascinated me since I first saw it earlier this year; it's now one of my favorite films and, in my opinion, and although it enjoys considerably less fame than staples like Psycho and Vertigo, Hitchcock's best. Its central theme, as I'll be arguing here, is the relation between the life-world of human symbolic reality and the Real itself, and as such makes an excellent example for exploring some of the themes of metaphysical idealism from my recent episodes. At the same time, I thought it would make an excellent warmup for a larger film criticism project I'd like to attempt, a look at the religious themes in the films of Martin Scorsese.

For this one we’ll be focusing on the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden as it appears in the second and third chapters of the Book of Genesis.

Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com

I thought it might be fun to revisit the topics and themes of my earliest episodes, starting with my first essay, "Six Days of Creation and the Sabbath." It's been almost five years now and both my knowledge and my writing skills have improved immensely, and my perspective and positions have shifted as well. The circumstances certainly warrant a second look at things.

In this essay, we’ll see some striking and deeply troubling parallels to Germany in the 1920s, parallels which should be of grave concern to anyone who doesn’t want to see genocidal fascists take control of the most powerful economy and military in the history of the world.

Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com.

Today I’ll be arguing that this progression is amplified by a dialectic within certain threads of modern Christianity, an internal contradiction that pushes those threads further and further in a fascist direction.

Transcript with citations available at asatanistreadsthebible.com