The End of Desire: Theologies of Eros in The Song of Songs and Breaking the Waves

In this paper we intend to use Georges Bataille\u27s reflections on Eros, death, and God as the basis for a comparison between the biblical book, The Song of Songs (The Song of Solomon) and the controversial film by Lars Von Trier, Breaking the Waves. Following Bataille, we believe that both the biblical book and the film portray desire as a longing for the unification of separate realms, the joining of separate bodies. That which is desired is known to be always at risk, contingent and susceptible to dissolution, never far from the domain of violence, termination, and death. The comparison of The Song of Songs and Breaking the Waves, however, introduces something missing in Bataille\u27s analysis of Eros, death, and God. The book and film both provide a more complex understanding of the implications of desire for the divine. That is, they raise the question of what follows if God were not by definition immune to risk. What if God were not above the fray of passion, contingency, violence and death? What if the divine were not understood to be perfection, but also bound to the vicissitudes of life, with all of the anguish and ecstasy that implies

Seeing Beyond the End of the World in Strange Days and Until the End of the World

Herein we offer a critique of contemporary filmic visions of apocalypse. The problem with many Hollywood-style apocalyptic films is that they expect the end of the world to be a spectacular end of the whole world. Against this, by reviewing two contemporary films (Strange Days and Until the End of the World) we suggest that apocalypse may take on a greater significance if we understand that there are many worlds, and that rather than expecting the end of the world, we should be more vigilant in our examinations of the endings of a world. With this in mind, apocalyptic predictions given by Jesus in the gospels are reread and we note how these prophecies have already been fulfilled