Rhetoric Race and Religion
A new semester is underway and I get to teach my new, favorite class, Religion and Sexuality. And the timing couldn’t be better! Twerking Miley, bouncing Beyonce, and tantalizing Thicke are providing excellent source material for our upcoming discussions. Many would argue our sex-obsessed culture is prominently on display in these musical examples of young libido unleashed and unabashed for children and senior citizens alike to see on old and new media. A sign of the times, the end times to be exact, they might say.
We take a different track in this course. Like my old favorite course, Death and Dying, Religion and Sexuality asks students to explore and analyze the topic at hand (sex, or death) first comparatively, across different cultures; then historically, specifically in Western and primarily Christian cultural settings; then, finally, here in North America so we end the course in the present.
Talk about blurring lines. After this kind of semester-long exercise, the sexuality associated with Miley, Beyonce, and Thicke today, as well as with other examples from the past like Valentino and Elvis, Marilyn and Madonna, can be seen as having more to do with religion than simply serving as a focal point for the outrage of believers. There surely is more to the rampant sexuality permeating every crack and crevice of popular culture than what, on the one side, the religious fanatics are saying about cultural degradation and the apocalypse to come; and on the other side, the idols’ fanatic and rabid fans who are numerous and seriously entertained by suggestive hip movements, protruding and active tongues, and outrageous and lasciviously choreographed spectacles.
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