Religious Portrayals

For this discussion I wanted to look at the depiction of religious individuals, mainly Jews, Muslims and Catholics within film and television. I think with all three religions, their portrayals are often closely associated with orthodox belief. When you see a religious individual in a film or on TV how can you tell that they are religious? Often in their more appropriate portrayals one religious person is indistinguishable from another. Unfortunately you cannot distinguish the indistinguishable within film and TV, so they seek out more visual aids of recognition. So we often see a Jewish person wearing a yarmulke in orthodox dressage and Muslim’s conducting prayer or wearing hijabs, kufi’s or other religious adornments. With Catholics it is a little different. In most cases we might see a symbolic cross around one’s neck or even holy gestures to symbolise Catholicism. Having such visual displays is all well and good, because it serves a purpose within film and television to show ones commitment and belonging to a respective group, however we might consider such generic representations as even misrepresentations. Because of their orthodox basis they marginalise all other forms of the said religions, as all Jews do not wear yarmulkes, all Muslims do not wear kufi’s and hijabs and all Catholics do not perform the hail Mary. Then again short of a character actually professing their belief on screen, there is almost no way to distinguish religious participation without these visual aids, so for the meantime as religious identity is needed on film and television, generic representations may have to suffice.