Page 208 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

Modes of Binding, Moments of Bonding 193

The Living Word format, then, not only constructs a specific public
image of Otabil, but also of his audience as the visible embodiment of
the “transformation” and “success” he talks about. Moreover, the body
language of the people on TV is vital for Otabil’s public image. When
he speaks, the crowd of thousands is orderly and full of attention and
devotion, laughing when it is appropriate to laugh and nodding when it
is appropriate to nod. The church audience is shown to admire Otabil
and the TV audience is expected to do the same. The Living Word TV
format thus not only circulates Otabil’s teachings, but also visualizes
the bodily regimes necessary to appropriately receive them and with
them the Holy Spirit. Living Word shows that one cannot just listen to
the Word of God anyhow; the whole body is involved in a particular
way of listening. Bodies that do not listen appropriately and hence do
not receive the Spirit, but hear “mere” words, are not shown.
By identifying with the televised bodies of the church audience, the
TV audience is expected to similarly subject to “the powerful man of
God” and to the Word and experience the power of the Holy Spirit that
he transfers onto them. As the physical bodies of the pastor and his fol-
lowers function as a medium in religious practice, so do the edited and
televised images of their bodies function as a medium for the Holy Spirit
to “touch” the expectant viewer through the television screen and her
“mimetic” relationship with it. Here it is important to stress that audio-
visual media address not only the eye and the ear, but involve the whole
body and appeal to all senses (Sobschack 2004; Verrips 2002). Watching
a religious TV broadcast with an intentional body, “in mimetic sympa-
thy” (Sobschack 2004, 76) with the attentive audience onscreen, may
trigger the viewer’s embodied sensory memory of live church events and
thereby evoke an experience of spirit presence. Note that it was only after
the woman in the opening vignette put down her broom and sat down to
listen to the whole message that she was touched by the Holy Spirit and
started speaking in tongues. The boundary between onscreen and off-
screen, between object and subject thus blurs. The Holy Spirit ceases to
be an onscreen representation, represented by the interaction between
pastor and congregation, but becomes present and able to touch the

viewer.
Otabil’s media ministry thus creates an audience and evokes religious
experiences far beyond church membership. Receiving Living Word, and
thus being part of the Living Word audience, does not necessarily end with
the broadcast. People buy or order tapes or CDs, listen to them repeatedly,
and give them away or exchange them. Many people respond to Otabil’s
5
call to write to him. Some decide to join the ICGC or to convert to (char-
ismatic) Christianity after hearing Otabil. As Living Word listeners and