The Despair and Hope of the Imago Dei: Lordship, Judgment, and Mercy in Aronofsky's Noah

Fri., Nov. 14, 2014 3:30 p.m.

Location: AH 348, Ad Hum Building, University of Regina

The Department of English is pleased to announce the next presentation in this semester's Orlene Murad Academic Discussions, which all are warmly invited to attend:

The Despair and Hope of the Imago Dei: Lordship, Judgment, and Mercy in Aronofsky's Noah
by Dr. Marcel DeCoste

During this lecture, Dr. Marcel DeCoste will speak on Darren Aronofsky's film version of the Noah story.

ABSTRACT:
As picture-book accounts emphasize, Noah's tale is one of rescue and hope, of a second creation born of the ark. Yet his story is also one of condemnation, a demonstration that the wages of sin are death. Though the subject of much controversy, Darren Aronofsky's cinematic rendering of this story is deeply sensitive to both aspects of the tale. This is a film that treats the Deluge as a matter of both despair and hope, precisely as it is exemplary of both judgment and mercy. But Aronofsky does more than undertake a meditation on the two faces of the biblical God. He does so by posing the question of how sinful man reflects that divine countenance. In presenting its tale in terms of the conflict between justice and mercy, Noah, DeCoste argues, proffers the theological doctrine of the Imago Dei as central to both man's sinfulness and the annihilating judgment it fosters, and to the saving mercy that makes the Flood a source of rebirth.

This talk will be followed by a reception.