Film, feminism, and the sacred: The tension of gender and mythology in popular film

This study explores a void in feminist and religious film theory---gender construction in the context of the sacred. An attempt is made to extend the discourse beyond psychological and social criticism to religious theory from the perspective of feminism. The study focuses on the following films: The Secret of Roan Inish, Sorceress Orlando, the Alien tetralogy, and the Terminator films, all of which explore gender issues at the psycho-social level and all of which contain religious or sacred content.;This group of films is examined from the perspective of feminist religious theory in order to articulate the relationship between the construction of the sacred and the construction of gender. Gender construction in these films becomes a metaphor for value construction at the level of religious symbolism. All of the films discussed here reflect a simultaneous religious and cultural tension between a re-emerging Goddess mythos and the value of women within and/or alongside the existing myth of the hero's journey and the existing patriarchal system.