Page - 124 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

relatively close to the prototype, as in the case of myths and rituals that include references to supernatural forces, it is likely to be included; when the material is far enough from the prototype, such as nationalism, it is more likely to be left out. The benefit of this approach is that it guides the selection but leaves it up to scholarly judgement to decide where exactly the line of relevance lies for the purposes of the analysis. As a result, the material that gets selected for detailed analysis is very close to what usually gets called “religion” in academic contexts, although it may be a bit wider – Saler lists 15 typical features – than the everyday (predominantly Western) understanding of what counts as “reli- gion”.21 For instance, the themes highlighted in this article utilizing Saler’s ideas are often about ritual practices, worship, buildings, “religious” language or tra- ditions referring to supernatural agents and powers, but this approach allows the inclusion of mythical narratives or characters that can also be recognized as being close to the prototype of “religion”. With this starting point that guides the viewing of the films, we can exam- ine how “religion” is part of the production of meaning, thereby tapping into wider (particularly, but not exclusively, British) discourses of what it means to be modern. Bond films and their representations are seen as articulated within the wider modern discourse of religion and within what Stuart Hall calls the discourse of “the West and the Rest”. It may well be that the ways in which films circulate stereotypes and, in some cases, play with them are at least partly intentional. However, particularly when “religion” and “religious” imagery are not central to plots or part of the most important characters in Bond films, it is likely that the wider cultural discourses are a source of meaning making in a not-so-well-reflected form. Although “religion” is rarely central to Bond films, there are so many references to “religion” that this article cannot provide a de- tailed analysis of all of them. Rather, I have selected themes that highlight most clearly how “religion” relates to what it means to be modern in the imagery of Bond films. 21 Saler 2008, 222. In some of my studies I have used an approach that analyses the discourse on “religion” rather than seeks to define it. This approach focuses on how various parties negotiate what counts as “religion” and how societies in general and various institutions and groups in particular organize themselves through such debates (e. g., Taira 2013a; 2013b; 2016). In this approach, “religion” is not defined because the aim is to study how others define and use it. Sometimes this has been seen to support views that suggest dropping the category of religion altogether from our analytical vocabulary, but I am not suggesting that scholars should never use “religion” for heuristic purposes in their research if they find it useful. On the contrary, I have used “religion” analytically for heuristic purposes previously (see Knott/Poole/ Taira 2013), but I would argue that there is a need for greater reflexivity in using the category of religion. 124 | Teemu Taira www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 119–139