Page - 75 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

struggle for a better world, intending to positively renew social structures and human relationships. But the advocates of secular salvation strongly criticize Christians for their subjugation to the Almighty God, just expecting him to save them. Instead, these authors prefer to focus on the here-and-now: “Does ‘salva- tion’ denote something that falls into some inherently religious realm? Can it be understood apart from its traditionally theological and vertically transcendent cynosure? The answer, we argue, is: ‘absolutely’.”30 Moreover, they assess that forgetting about God would increase the imple- mentation of real solutions to humans’ troubles and injustices; some religious frameworks, they propose, provide an excuse for not taking action to make the world a better place. Caesar Montevecchio separates “biblical apocalyptic” and “secularized apocalyptic”,31 while Lyman Sargent points out with irony: “[g]iven our real world, who needs dystopias?”32. Sargent concludes that “[w]e need the dystopia to remind us that our dystopia could get worse, but we need the eutopia even more to remind us that better, while difficult, is possible”.33 Modern dystopias are, therefore, revulsive catalysts for societies where protest songs became rather outdated: “the New Left was born from the mood of anti- dystopian resistance”.34 If critical dystopia presupposes that people should not limit themselves to resignation but instead confront the capitalist system and its excesses, then it constitutes a call to civic activism. AUTHENTICITY In the confusion of values of our times, “authenticity” becomes a moral man- date for many rock followers. Authenticity rests “on two key concepts: orig- inality and trueness”, entailing a quasi-religious faith. Relying upon Walter Benjamin’s notion of “aura” in the contemporary work of art, Bernardo Attias theorizes authenticity as a “spiritual concept”, associated with “cult value”35 in terms of an overall “mystique of authenticity”.36 Not surprisingly we live a time with “thirst for the authentic”.37 Authenticity within rock is tied to a vague, nondenominational human spirituality, not unlike the transcendent qualities 30 Coleman/Arrowood 2015, 12. Around the notion of “secular salvation” several works by Dutch historian Jan N. Bremmer are worth consulting. 31 Montevecchio 2012, 6. 32 Sargent 2013, 10. 33 Sargent 2013, 12. “Eutopia” (from the Greek eu [good] and topos [place]) means the fair, desir- able, and good community, as a real aspiration (in comparison with “utopia” as an unattainable concept). 34 Feenberg 1995, 43. 35 Attias 2016, 133–134. 36 Attias 2016, 136. 37 McCoy 2013, 188. Apocalypse as Critical Dystopia in Modern Popular Music | 75www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 69–94