Page 106 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

Economy 89

Nothing in this film, we might think, has anything to do with religion.
We see no churches, mosques, temples, or synagogues. We hear no priests,
imams, gurus, or rabbis. Therefore, this film is not religious, as religion is
conventionally defined, as it is commonly understood as something located
in specialized religious institutions, arbitrated by recognized religious
leaders, and adhered to by religious followers. Based on such a conventional
definition, the analysis of religion and media is straightforward. We look for
media representations of religion and religious uses of media. However, as
historian of religions Jonathan Z. Smith has observed, such a conventional,
common-sense definition of religion is circular: religious organizations,
with their religious leaders and followers, are religious because they are
engaged in religious activities (J.Z. Smith 2004: 375–89). So, we are left
with the problem of thinking more carefully about what we want to mean by
“religion,” for purposes of analysis, for our struggles in trying to understand
the material and symbolic economy of religion, media, and popular culture.
If we define religion, following Emile Durkheim, as beliefs, practices, and
social relations revolving around the sacred, that which is “set apart,” we
find that religion is set apart at the center of personal subjectivities and social
formations (Durkheim 1995: 44). In the context of the expanding economy,
we can explore this definition of religion as a political economy of the sacred
to understand the ways in which the sacred is produced, circulated, engaged,
and consumed in media. Not merely given, “the sacred” is produced through
the religious labor of interpretation and ritualization as both a poetics of
meaning and a politics of power relations.
In exploring the political economy of the sacred, we need to identify the
means, modes, and forces involved in the production of sacred values. In
Destination Earth, these features of production were explicitly represented—
industry run by Ogg-power was contrasted with industry running on oil;
communist collectivism was opposed to capitalist competition; and a Martian
(or Marxist) totalitarian dictatorship was overthrown by the liberating spirit
of American freedom. Since the late 1940s, producer John Sutherland
had been animating these themes for early Cold-War America. Make Mine
Freedom (1948), for example, depicted a group of Americans rejecting the
utopian promises of a snake-oil salesman, Dr. Ism, because their capitalist
system gave them the freedom for “working together to produce an ever-
greater abundance of material and spiritual values for all.” In the conclusion
to this film, Sutherland directly referred to the production of spiritual
values, but the spirit of capitalism was also present as a transcendent force of
production in other films by Sutherland productions, such as Going Places
(1948), Meet King Joe (1949), and What Makes Us Tick (1952). Clearly,
capitalist competition was invoked in Destination Earth as a spiritual mode
of production.