Page - 136 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 05/02

that needs to be overcome by the rational West, or must be put in its proper place if it is part of “the West”. Acceptable “religion” is found in “the West”, portrayed as a familiar part of life. It is contained within the private sphere, tak- ing a supportive role in rites of passage (particularly marriages and funerals) but not interfering with the relatively secular public sphere of politics and the economy. If it does play a public role, it is portrayed negatively, as in the case of evangelical Christianity. This pattern connects Bond films to the hegemonic discourse about the proper place of “religion” in Western modernity. Reading Bond through the lens of “religion” adds to existing Bond studies – “religion” has not previously been examined extensively in Bond studies – and, more importantly, it shows the significant contribution made by “religion” to the discourse of “the West and the Rest” that is prominent in Bond films gen- erally. Reading Bond through “religion” does not replace other readings, but it offers support for some aspects highlighted earlier. For example, Michael Den- ning argues that British spy thrillers, including Bond, provide a “compensatory myth of the crisis of imperialism”,59 and my analysis supports that interpretation in recognizing that portrayals of “religion” in Bond films associate exotic “reli- gion” with “the Rest”, distinct from the rational, imperial and modern West. Taking “religion” into account does not fundamentally alter existing interpre- tations of Bond, but it does give due prominence to an important dimension of the construction of the Bond world. It is not only Bond studies that matter. The task was also to explore whether reading Bond through “religion” might contribute to the study of religion and popular culture more generally. When my students present their research ideas about religion and popular culture, often with the aim of examining “religious” figures, narratives and representations in a particular film or television series, I usually ask the “So what?” question: What do we know when we know it? Is it a more general example of something? For me, one of the reasons for reading Bond through “religion” is to suggest that popular films in which “religion” is not a dominant theme may offer insight into how we think about the aims of religion and popular culture studies in general and may challenge some typi- cal focuses of the field. The analysis shows how portrayals of “religion” can contribute to the more general functioning of popular products; they maintain, reproduce, circulate and rearticulate powerful, often hegemonic cultural dis- courses. Bond films do many things, one of which is to contribute to the pow- erful discourse of “the West and the Rest”, and “religion” is an integral part of that discourse. In other words, popular representations of “religion” play an important role in the maintenance of the idea of “the West” and what it is to be modern. 59 Denning 2015, 148. 136 | Teemu Taira www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/2, 119–139