Alien Sex
The Body and Desire in Cinema and Theology
Challenges in Contemporary Theology
1. Edition November 2003
336 Pages, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
Gerard Loughlin is one of the leading theologians working at the interface between religion and contemporary culture. In this exceptional work, he uses cinema and the films it shows to think about the church and the visions of desire it displays.
* Discusses various films, including the Alien quartet, Christopher Nolan's Memento, Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth and Derek Jarman's The Garden.
* Draws on a wide range of authors, both ancient and modern, religious and secular, from Plato to Levinas, from Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar to André Bazin and Leo Bersani.
* Uses cinema to think about the church as an ecclesiacinema, and films to think about sexual desire as erotic dispossession, as a way into the life of God.
* Written from a radically orthodox Christian perspective, at once both Catholic and critical.
In The Lobby.
Introduction.
Part I: Cavities.
Part II: Copulations.
Part III: Consolations.
Bibliography.
Index
"Alien Sex is part of Blackwell's Challenges
in Contemporary Theology series, a series that has produced some of
the most creative theological thinking in recent years.
Loughlin's book is no exception... Loughlin's
innovative method of dealing with his material is in line with the
theological approach taken but also connects with the cinematic
perspective. His subject matter, however, covers a wider range of
interests than film and theology and delves into the realms of art
history and literature. ... Loughlin's Alien Sex
is an extremely interesting and important work." Journal
of the American Academy of Religion
"Alien Sex presents Gerard Loughlin's incarnational
theology in a compelling mantle of film theory... The book's three
parts... display continual jump cuts between film texts, theology,
and philosophy with dizzying effect, but Loughlin keeps readers
from potential frustration through fascinating readings of a wide
array of films... he works wonders with eclectic and appropriate
juxtapositions of theological and scriptural texts." Journal of
Religion
"Alien Sex refuses, without coyness, to be quite the book
promised by its subtitle. It is the more dazzling for the
refusal... Alien Sex is rather an exercise in writing about
incarnation under the present regime of mass images. It inter-cuts
traditional Christian discourses with selections from recent films
in hopes of recognizing holy bodies... Loughlin's book is not
theology and film; it is theology after film - theology simply and
splendidly... The final effect - despite and because of its
brilliance - raises questions." Studies in Christian
Ethics
"It is frankly difficult to see how a book with a title
like this could fail to be interesting and Loughlin does not
disappoint... [It is] difficult to imagine anyone other than
Loughlin bringing together Christian tradition and pop culture in
such a provocative and endlessly inventive way...
Loughlin's work is an important revisionary reading of the
role of sexuality in both theological tradition and secular
modernity... I would nominate this brilliant synthesis of
theology, film and cultural theory as my book of the year within
the field [of religion]." The Year's Work in
Critical and Cultural Theory (2005)
"Loughlin envisages a complete remodelling of traditional
Christian ideas on the place and importance of sexual activity in
life... Loughlin's subject will increasingly preoccupy
intellectually, socially and morally adventurous Christians, and
there will be changes in the Church's attitudes to sex in the
decades to come." Times Literary Supplement
