Bücher der Reihe Journal for Religion, Film and Media

Today the dramas of world politics and a global economy continue to be represented and reconstructed on television and the Internet: as the Ukrainian athletes arrive in the stadium during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, Putin sleeps. China flexes its will to have absolute control over even a virus, and on the border between Ukraine and Russia, the latter amasses its military might. During all of these events on the political and economic world stage, the flame of Olympia remains lit, symbolising peace and traditionally dedicated to the Greek goddess Hestia, who protects family harmony. Religion and the media play a crucial role in this performance: the ancient religious ritual should guarantee that the tradition of international understanding and peace continues - at least during the Olympic Games - while these events are represented and reconstructed by the media. The current issue presents four contributions that discuss media ethics and religion from different perspectives.

Das außergewöhnliche und dennoch menschliche Leben Jesu inspirierte zu ganz unterschiedlichen Repräsentationen: visuelle und schriftliche Darstellungen stehen in hoch komplexen Beziehungen und sind in verschiedenen Epochen und Kulturen anzutreffen. Diese Ausgabe des JRFM fokussiert die unterschiedlichen Repräsentationen von Jesus in der frühen Neuzeit und darüber hinaus und bezieht auch weniger populäre Medien mit ein. Zusätzlich zur Analyse von schriftlichen Traditionen, wie wir sie aus Drucken, Manuskripten oder Marginalien kennen, werden auch gegensätzliche Narrative und kritische Darstellungen sowie visuelle Materialien einbezogen, um eine komplexere multimediale Sicht auf die verschiedenen Jesusdarstellungen und -theorien zu präsentieren. Die Betonung der Medialität bzw. Materialität der Darstellung soll dazu anregen, historischen Themen auf neue Art und Weise zu begegnen und dadurch zu innovativen Interpretationsansätzen zu gelangen.Die Zusammenstellung der Artikel dieser Ausgabe spiegelt diesen Zugang und zeigt unterschiedliche methodologische Fragestellungen und methodische Annäherungen auf. Die Artikel beschäftigen sich mit Repräsentationen, die von der frühen Neuzeit bis zur zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts reichen. Diese Zusammenstellung offeriert einen multiperspektivischen Zugang zum Thema Jesus-Repräsentationen. Nicht selten kontrastieren diese Sichtweisen historiographische Schriften, weil sie aus anderen religiösen Traditionen oder explizit areligiösen Kontexten auf die unterschiedlichen schriftlichen und materiellen Jesus-Darstellungen schauen.The exceptional and yet very human life of Jesus has been represented in a vast breadth of forms, from the visual to the textual, forming intertextual relationships that are highly complex in encompassing chronologically and geographically varied cultures. The aim of this specific issue is to provide insight into the representation of Jesus in the early modern age and beyond, deliberately extending the focus to overlooked media. In addition to the analysis of textual traditions embedded in prints, manuscripts and marginalia, as well as authorized and authorial perspectives, counter-narratives and challenging views, focusing on other forms and fields of representation such as visual material or archival sources are presented, in order to establish a more intricate picture of both multiple representations of and contrasting theories about the figure of Jesus. The emphasis on the medium - be it a manuscript, an illustration or a film - intends to encourage new modes of representing historical themes, which allow innovative interpretations and evaluation of the impact of scholarship on religion, shedding light on scholarship's failures as well as on its ability to resonate with a wider public.The collection of articles presented here contains various methodological lines of inquiry. At the same time, it brings together, albeit very selectively, the early modern and modern periods even up to the second half of the 20th century. This selection of case studies offers a composite view of varied, and often contrasting, practices of historiographical writing, which belong to different religious, anti-religious and neutral traditions that span across the centuries.

Paradise Lost is not only the title of John Milton's famous epic poem (1667) but also a philosophical-theological notion linked to and emerging from the Fall from Eden in Genesis. It expresses - or imagines - the human experience of a definite rupture in history, with its inextinguishable urge to return to the time before the rupture and its yearning for an idealized version of this past. Throughout history, this longing has been expressed in artwork, architecture, and literary works, and it is perhaps best observed in the Romantic era, with its preference for the past, the future, and the contemporary exotic.Today, the notion of "Paradise Lost" has far from disappeared, finding postmodern manifestations in contemporary art and literature as well as in the revival of (secular) nationalism and (religious) fundamentalism. The 20th and 21st centuries have also seen the emergence of new arenas for narratives and iconographies of "Paradise Lost": popular culture and digital games. Within the field of game studies and the history of digital games, their technological developments, their game play, and their graphics and user interface design, the notion of "Paradise Lost" can be traced in three ways.(1) In the past decade, the game industry has been witnessing a surge in retro-gaming as a kind of narratological, ludological, visual, and technological longing for the early age of gaming. For example, some modern games have (re-)introduced the concept of perma-death (Wasteland 2 [Deep Silver, AT 2014], Hades [Supergiant Games, US 2020], Xcom [various, 1994 - present], the Diablo series [Diablo, Diablo II and Diablo III, Blizzard Entertainment, US 1997 - present]), and retro-graphics has become a deliberate design approach in contemporary games (Cuphead [Studio MDHR, CA 2017], Celeste [Matt Makes Games, CA 2017], Undertale [Toby Fox, US 2015]).(2) The industry - and the consumer - has also witnessed the emergence of various remakes of old-school classics (1942 [Capcom, JP 1984], Baldur's Gate [various, 1996-2016], Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus [GT Interactive, US 1997] and Oddworld: Soulstorm [Oddworld Inhabitants, US 2021]). In other words, the present longing for the past, or for the early (or golden) age of gaming, manifests itself in and through the game.(3) Some games explicitly employ and reflect on the idea of a rupture in human history, that is, the loss of an earlier (potentially utopian) state that is yearned for but beyond reach (for example, Horizon Zero Dawn [Guerilla Games, NL 2017]). This lost period could be medieval times, paradise, pre-9/11, pre-COVID in light of prolonged lockdowns, and so forth.

Media industry is a vibrant element of East Asian popular culture that has become increasingly important on a global level in the last decades. Japanese, and recently South Korean and Chinese films or TV series have a growing and worldwide audience not least because of easier access through streaming services. The many film productions provide a multifaceted arena of highly diverse content that spans nearly all aspects of the cultural developments in the countries. Religion has always played a major role in these contexts in various ways and in accordance with the highly diversified religious landscape of East Asia. Consequently, this issue brings together contributions on Japanese, Chinese and Korean films, including one additional glimpse to South Asia, thereby presenting portrayals of independent filmmakers, highly renowned classics, but also specimina of manga and anime, the cyberpunk genre, or on most recent highly successful streaming series. The admittedly tiny sample we can provide is intended to pique curiosity and encourage readers to delve deeper into the multifaceted and intriguing relationship between religion and media in Asia. If the presented contributions, which have been carefully selected, lead to academic discourse and inspire further research, then this issue will have served its purpose.