Puerile Patriarchs of an Infantilized God. Mythological Meme Mutations in Contemporary Cinema

This paper discusses the mythological shift generated by the process of cultural infantilization, using two recent feature films, based on two of the most important Biblical characters, Noah and Moses. These movies, labeled as forms of “Hollywood heresy”, Zionist distortions or even anti-Christian deceptions are analyzed in the context of the transformation in the representations of God (and the prophets) in contemporary culture, which is seen by the author as part of a mutation in the “genome of the God meme”. Starting with the hypothesis of a “third Golden Age of the Biblical Epic” the authors advances the concept of meme mutation, considering that a most recent “mind virus” is rapidly multiply in our popular culture, through a process that can be called the versatile revision of narratives, one perpetuated by deception and distortion, in a viral propagation that accelerates certain meme replications. The hypothesis is that we are facing a defective cultural mutation one in which, by transfer of qualities, the visual and ideological representations are carrying parasitic manifestations, malignant traits which are in turn perpetuated in our contemporary mongrelized mythological replication. This study is based on the interpretation of two different forms of cinematic interpretations of myths in recent movie making: exegetic and eisegetic. These two approaches to mythological re-writing in cinema are also identifiable with oversimplification and overcomplication of narratives.