Page 222 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

Chapter 9

Prophecy on Stage: Fame and

Celebrities in the Context of

the Raelian Movement

Carly Machado

Santa Suzana, Barcelona, August 2005. After a series of train delays, I
finally reached the Indalo Hotel where 600 Raelians had convened for the
“European Raelian Seminar.” I was in a rush, one day late for the confer-
ence and worried about arriving on time to take part in the event. When I
finally arrived, the first image I saw was Raël himself on stage. Raël is the
prophet and leader of the Raelian Movement. It was not the first time I had
seen Raël’s image, indeed I had often seen the latter projected on stage, but
I had never seen Raël in person. 1
Showing the prophet on stage (whether himself or his image), being on
stage, inviting people to come on stage, and enlarging “the stage” to the
audience are acts imbued with meaning in the Raelian Movement, whose
religious experiences are typically dramatized as mass media performances.
After attending various Raelian meetings, I was able to perceive the impor-
tance of the stage and its meaning to this movement. Simultaneously
invested with mediatic and religious significance, both related to the pro-
duction and circulation of fame, Raël is omnipresent on Raelian stages, not
usually in person, but via mass media forms such as photographs, video
clips, and so on. The central concern of this chapter is to analyze how mass
mediated performances and the idea of fame making permeate Raelian
religious experience, shaping attitudes and ways of being, relating and
evolving, while also creating values and forms of legitimization.