mass culture

The Gnostic Trope in Contemporary Media Culture

The article applies the Gnostic trope as the most suitable tool for analyzing religious components of contemporary mass culture. Christopher Partridge’s theory of occulture serves as a methodological framework. The Gnostic trope includes the following elements: the idea that our world is a prison created for the torment of man; that it is controlled by the evil Creator of this world — the demiurge; that some exceptional persons, the Gnostics, are able to unravel the deceptive nature of reality and offer gnosis — a kind of extra‑rational experience.

The Reinterpretation of Death in Cyberpunk Culture: Some Religious Tropes

The article explores religious components in understanding death in Cyberpunk genre of the mass culture. Authors working in this genre tried to change and rethink the inherited sci-fi themes, which were deeply connected to a certain cultural code. In particular, previous works of mainstream art largely followed the Christian traditional view of death as a chance to attain resurrection and eternal life.

Religious Practices, Everyday Religiosity and Western Mass Culture in the Closed City of Dniepropetrovsk in Post-Stalin Era (1960–1984)

Part of a larger research project about Soviet cultural consumption and identity formation, this article explores the connection between religious practices and western mass culture in the industrial city of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, in the late socialist period. The Committee of State Security closed Dnepropetrovsk to foreigners in 1959 when one of the Soviet Union’s biggest missile factories opened there.