A Spirited Anthropology for Avatars, Heroes, and Assorted Undead: Representing the Body in Popular Media

(Hardback)

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Description

This book focuses on debates surrounding the body, soul, and spirit, and addresses other aspects of theological anthropology in service to that angle.

What unseen forces govern fictional settings across films, television, and print Are the bodies they portray useless, evil, spirited, or maybe soulless This book interrogates the body in examples like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Castlevania, Get Out, Pans Labyrinth, and Watchmen. While theological anthropology examines the body and soul, human agency, evil, and the image of God in reality, a new method of analysis, spirited anthropology, explores how these concepts operate in fictional worlds. From Captain Americas virtue and Clayfaces fluid body to Mike Myers evil shape and transcendence in virtual reality and digital avatars, world-building across media elevates, diminishes, redefines, and mutates the body. The book contends that these spirited anthropologies present worlds occasionally injected with politics and social concerns from this reality, regardless of how ghosts, aliens, or virtual simulations try to strange the matter on display in each story.

Author Bio

Tim Posada is chair of journalism and new media at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, California.