Faithscapes, Femalescapes and Townscapes

Athalya Brenner-Idan provides a cutting-edge study of biblical influences on three films and one television series, namely: Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), Pleasantville (Gary Ross, 1998), Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003), and the television series Joan of Arcadia (Barbara Hall, TV series for NBC, 2003-2005).

Brenner-Idan examines and reads these four `visual texts’ together and against each other in order to show what is common between them and to show how biblical tropes and themes are used in the telling of these stories. Brenner-Idan identifies several unifying themes, which form the basis of her discussion: dystopia/utopia; issues of location, place, and space; the dominance of female characters; the presence of a key male-female partnership; the importance of knowledge, the process of its acquisition, maintenance, influence and use or abuse. Brenner-Idan reads these elements alongside, and into, the relevant biblical texts examining encounters with the divine in the Bible, social conventions in the Bible and biblical ideologies of knowledge and power.