Death Dying

Entertaining Judgment

The Afterlife in Popular Imagination

by Greg Garrett Review by David Lorimer, April 2015

Published: 2014
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Format: Hardback
Pages: 245
ISBN: 9780199335909

Publisher’s description

Nowadays references to the afterlife-angels strumming harps, demons brandishing pitchforks, God enthroned on heavenly clouds-are more often encountered in New Yorker cartoons than in serious Christian theological reflection. Speculation about death and its sequel seems to embarrass many theologians; however, as Greg Garrett shows in Entertaining Judgment, popular culture in the U.S. has found rich ground for creative expression in the search for answers to the question: What lies in store for us after we die? The lyrics of Madonna, Los Lonely Boys, and Sean Combs; the plotlines of TV's Lost, South Park, and The Walking Dead; the implied theology in films such as The Dark Knight, Ghost, and Field of Dreams; the heavenly half-light of Thomas Kinkade's popular paintings; the ghosts, shades, and after-life way-stations in Harry Potter; and the characters, situations, and locations in the Hunger Games saga all speak to our hopes and fears about what comes next. In a rich survey of literature and popular media, Garrett compares cultural accounts of death and the afterlife with those found in scripture. Denizens of the imagined afterlife, whether in heaven, hell, on earth, or in purgatory, speak to what awaits us, at once shaping and reflecting our deeply held-if often somewhat nebulous-beliefs. They show us what rewards and punishments we might expect, offer us divine assistance, and even diabolically attack us. Ultimately, we are drawn to these stories of heaven, hell, and purgatory--and to stories about death and the undead--not only because they entertain us, but because they help us to create meaning and to learn about ourselves, our world, and, perhaps, the next world. Garrett's deft analysis sheds new light on what popular culture can tell us about the startlingly sharp divide between what modern people profess to believe and what they truly hope and expect to find after death--and how they use those stories to help them understand this life.

This is a study about afterlife in the popular imagination. It shows how many of our ideas are shaped by art - including film - and literature, whether contemporary or from previous eras. Given his background as a professor involved in teaching fiction, screenwriting and popular culture as well as theology, the author is able to bring together a remarkable range of illustrative material. Some of this will be more recognisable to readers such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Paradise Lost. After an initial introduction, the book proceeds to the in-between realm of legends, ghosts and vampires before looking at the denizens of the afterlife - angels and demons and the devil, all as understood by art and literature, with the occasional contribution from theology. Subsequent chapters examine images for heaven, hell and purgatory - this chapter includes the trials of Job and Schindler's list. The author remarks that purgatory is perhaps our primal plot in that through suffering and trial we reach the fates we are supposed to achieve. These stories feed into our quest into ultimate questions and assure us that the universe has ultimate meaning and order, even if this is not immediately apparent. Narratives of near-death experiences are mentioned, but there with no reference to the literature from post-mortem sources nor to Swedenborg, who wrote and extensive treatise, based on his own experience, on Heaven and Hell. Nevertheless, this is a highly engaging journey.

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