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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2015 8:52:58 GMT
Yes Ranger, Hellsing is incredibly over-the-top with its violence, but the trade is that it isn't graphic in a sexual way.
Thanks for those recommendations. I'll have to have a look at those series.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 28, 2015 18:36:46 GMT
Eastern/Japanese popular treatments of Catholicism are probably different from Western in that they presumably involve picking up on something that seems alien and exotic (and I believe anime can be quite "creative" with western history as well) rather than reflecting strong feelings about it. That said some pop-culture use of Catholic imagery and symbols in the West reflects a sense that Catholicism is (a) exotic in historically Anglophone cultures in a way that most if not all forms of Protestantism are not (b) old and full of arcane meanings, whether malevolent or just strange (c) lay claim to strange sacramental powers that PRotestants don't; in C18 Britain there were fairly widespread folk-beliefs among Protestants that Catholic priests had strange supernatural powers. This ambivalence in Gothic literature goes back quite far - a lot of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Gothic is explicitly anti-Catholic, many of the later stock images of inbred occultist aristocrats secluding themselves in their shadowy ancient mansions and practising strange decadent rituals derive from older English Protestant portrayals of Catholicism, and in Bram Stoker's original DRACULA novel, while the "modern English" protagonists are very PRotestant the vampire expert Van Helsing is not only a devout Catholic and lay celibate (his wife is in a lunatic asylum and he can't remarry), but has a direct commission from the Vatican; the idea of Van HElsing working for the Vatican recurs in some later adaptations and in others (such as PEter Cushing's portrayal in the first Christopher Lee Dracula film) he has a sort of priestly air about him.
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Post by hibernicus on Jul 28, 2015 18:40:23 GMT
As regards TV I think the central issue is something that applies to popular culture generally; it's an immersive medium which is very difficult to avoid and by sheer ubiquity it shapes people's attitudes over time. The same was true to a lesser extent of popular newspapers and of cinema (the regular appearance of cinema satires denouncing TV for causing its audience to sink into fantasy and lose touch with reality is a real example of pot-kettle-black). I don't watch TV much; I'm a living fossil from the Gutenberg era, but I think we just have to adapt and be aware.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Jul 28, 2015 18:43:30 GMT
Most of you were probably too sensible to see the Van Helsing film starring Hugh Jackman, even with Kate Beckinsale to gawk at. But the Van Helsing character in that movie is employed by the Vatican. The Vatican is shown as being a rather Machiavellian institution but basically good. His sidekick is a friar.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 28, 2015 19:48:16 GMT
Well, it's arguable that he was employed by the Vatican as such. The Vatican seems to be part of a larger alliance of religious groups set up to destroy monsters - including Buddhist monks funnily enough. At one point a monk causes an explosion, and someone shouts "What in Allah's name is wrong with you?" or something to that effect.
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