Page - 76 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/02

76 | Lavinia Pflugfelder www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/2, 65–85 a yearning for some kind of archaism, be it fantasy-guide imaginations of the Middle Ages, neopaganism, Vikings or the solitude of the “old forests”.55 In a similar vein, religion can be understood as anti-modern, as an irrational relic of the pre-Enlightenment. The Book of Revelation and the Apocalypse are generally part of the fixed repertoire of the representation.56 Finally, the assembly of religious imagery is more concerned with possible spiritual or philosophical assertions than with political allegory. The music video for the single “Cult of a Dying Sun”, from Uada’s album of the same name, combines, much like Venom Prison’s video, a perfor- mance and a fictional plot amidst nature. The individual pieces of visual staffage are tree trunks and ravines, the woods, candles and fire, and a deer skull mask. The latter is worn by a devilish figure, acting as the priest figure at the end and also as the singer, but in the montage the figure is separated from the performance shots. Ritual and nature are the two paradigms which determine the general structure of the video analysis. Ritualism The religious charge of the staffage lies in the trope of the lonely hooded figure travelling through the landscape with a bundle. In one case it is an old man in a cowl; in the other a young woman with a head scarf (figs. 1 and 2). The deindividualization serves to mythologize. A reading of the figure in light of a religious narrative is reinforced by their interactions with figures of seeming authority. In both cases I refer to the authority figures as “priests”, as we have no more suitable term. From the symbolic gestures to the staff and mask, they are marked such that they can be recognized as the (literary) archetype of the evil priest (figs. 3 and 4). In both cases the initial exposition surrounds the main fig- ure with religious imagery. In Cult of a Dying Sun, candles and a centred fire associate the female figure with ritual, which can be compared to the dialogue of the main figure with the priest figure at the beginning of Asura’s Realm. Both place the figures in a clear religious context, which turns out to be a sacrificial pilgrimage. The rising tension consists mainly 55 Ghonghadze 2017, 369–377. 56 Höpflinger 2010, 217.