19. A Religious Analysis of the Environment on a Feminist Perspective.

Abstract

The movie Mother! tells an intriguing story of an apparently common couple: a writer and his wife, whose main attribute is the fact that she is constantly reforming the house in which they live. However, the importance of the movie is in its metaphors rather than in its apparent denotation. In order to understand the general idea of these metaphors, we shall change the first sentence. The movie Mother! tells the story of a couple: God and Mother Earth.

The movie emphasizes the Mother Earth’s perspective, which provides three main interconnected discussions: religion, the environment, and feminism. Why have humans associated the image of God with a father rather than a mother? Is the disregard for environmental issues by the powerful related to the patriarchal system? How has the movie represented these ideas? The research, therefore, will focus on answering those questions by making a connection of the male and female images with the mentioned issues. That is, he represents the creation; she represents the tool for creation, dehumanized and used. How do these opposed ideas relate to the three main topics of the research? Initially, there will be a detailed analysis of the movie. After that, there will be an analysis of each of the three aspects to be studied. Finally, the aspects will be connected through the metaphors used in the movie and analyzed in the context of today’s society. This will lead the research to a final question: will our visions of religion change over time?