Language:
English
Year of publication:
2021
Titel der Quelle:
The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and American Popular Culture
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2021) 219-239
Keywords:
Bible Influence
;
Popular culture
;
Heaven
Abstract:
The chapter analyzes American pop-cultural constructions of heaven as attempts to deal with the symbolic loss of the traditional (biblical, Jewish, and Christian) conceptions of heaven. Accordingly, American pop-cultural heavens take the following forms: (1) heaven as the place for protagonists to “relearn the world” and so reestablish identity and achieve self-fulfillment following loss; (2) heaven as apotheosis of dominant ideologies such as the American Dream or neoconservative militarism, and so paradoxically both retaining and transforming our symbolic bonds with the ethereal realm; (3) heaven as intrinsically relational, a place of reunion with family and pets; (4) heaven made immanent on earth via near-death experiences, mind uploading, and virtual reality; (5) satirical and blasphemous heavens, combining resentment and anger at heaven’s irrevocable loss with an impossible desire for its renewal.
DOI:
10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190461416.013.12
URL:
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