Reflections on the Uncritical Appropriation of Cinematic Christ-Figures: Holy Other or Wholly Inadequate?

The aim of this paper is to offer a critical response to Anton Karl Kozlovic’s article, published in the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture in 2004, on “The Structural Characteristics of the Cinematic Christ-figure.” Even though one may be able to discern a parallel between a film character and the person of Christ, I argue that Kozlovic’s tendency to impose Christian motifs on to films rests on the false assumption that all of the facets of Christ’s life and work can be fitted into a particular typology, such that a film either does, or does not, have the necessary definitional properties. I propose adopting a new approach to the theology-film field which entails not the pursuit of redundant thematic parallels but asking whether or not a two-fold dialogical relationship between theology and film and between Christ and Christ-figure can emerge.