the power of images

Interesting paper.

I agree with the points he's made -- and I hope some people in Hollywood read it. One of the chiefest strengths of the paper is on how the archetype is diminished once we have an image of it.

That is, I think, one of the chief failings of cinema in our age. It's not enough to let us imagine the horrible scene, we have to see it in gory detail, whether it be murder victims in movies like "Se7en," rape victims in "The General's Daughter" or what have you. The monster that we cannot see is much more terrifying than the one that we do; the crime scene that goes unshown can be far more unsettling than the one shown in full-color. Good directors understand this; more studios need to as well.

The balrog in Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" that Mallinson mentions is an excellent illustration of that. The echo of its approaching footsteps sets everybody on edge, but when it appears, it's like watching a video game.

Theologian Jacques Ellul wrote a fascinating book called "The Humiliation of the Word" -- I imagine its actual title is more like "L'Humiliation de le Parole," but I bought it in translation -- that examines the role of images in Scripture.

His essential thesis is that God proscribes images much for the same reason describes in the essay: It reduces the divine to the level of the profane, and strips it of its power. An old man with a long beard sitting on a chair in the clouds is nowhere near as awe-inspiring or unsettling as an encounter with the numinous; what's more, it decreases our dependence upon God to be with us in the now.

God's spoken word is what shaped the mountains and can shatter the foundations of the earth. Written down, while still True in the best sense of the word, it can become a snare to us because we get locked into the surface of it without understanding the full import of what it says. (Such as those Christians who refuse to have Christmas trees because they believe Jeremiah spoke against them.)

Take that degradation one step further -- print the verse under the picture of a Christmas tree -- and the meaning becomes even more fixed in the minds of those who see it, to the extent that it becomes increasingly difficult to read the verse or hear it and understand that Jeremiah was referring to idolatry, without at least thinking of Christmas trees.