Tolerating Babel

The Bible, Film, and the Family in U.S. Biopolitics

Authors

  • Erin Runions Pomona College Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/rsth.v29i2.143

Keywords:

Babylon, Babel, Genesis 11, Intolerance, Griffith, Iñárritu, biopolitics, family, film, U.S. empire, tolerance

Abstract

D.W. Griffith’s 1916 film Intolerance: Love’s Struggle through the Ages, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 2006 film Babel both treat the biblical figure of Babylon/Babel positively and negatively. These films are analyzed for their ambivalence toward Babylon, as it dramatizes and facilitates the tensions between unity and diversity, control and mobility, rights and interest, individual discipline and regularization of the population at work in biopolitical U.S. empire. These films wish to rebuild Babel: they propose cinema as a universal language able to bridge communicative divides and remedy the violence and social control of intolerant empire. In imagining a more tolerant world, they ostensibly value diversity. Yet they want to return to the normative sexual relations of the white heteronormative family. Thus, both films mirror an ambivalence, also found in Genesis 11, toward social/political unity and diversity, producing a liberal tolerance discourse wherein the regulation and regularization of populations via biopolitics can be detested and yet pursued.

References

Anderson, Bernhard W. 1978. “Unity and Diversity in God’s Creation: A Study of the Babel Story.” Currents in Theology and Mission 5(2): 69–81.

Barrera, Ashley. 2007. “Review of Babel.” Journal of Feminist Family Therapy 19(4): 78–82.

Blenkinsopp, Joseph. 1992. The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible. New York: Doubleday.

Brown, Wendy. 2006. Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Brueggemann, Walter. 1982. Genesis. Interpretation. Atlanta, GA: John Knox.

Cassuto, U. 1964. A Commentary on the Book of Genesis: Part 2, From Noah to Abraham. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, the Hebrew University.

Chocano, Carina. 2006. “Babel” LA Times, October 27, http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/reviews/cl-et-babel27oct27,0,4536976.story.

Coote, Robert B. and David Robert Ord. 1989. The Bible’s First History. Philadelphia: Fortress.

Croatto, J. Serverino. 1998. “A Reading of the Story of the Tower of Babel from the Perspective of Non-Identity.” In Teaching the Bible: The Discourses and Politics of Biblical Pedagogy, edited by Fernando F. Segovia and Mary Ann Tolbert, 203–223. Maryknoll: Orbis.

Deleuze, Giles. 1992. “Postscript on the Societies of Control.” October 59 (winter): 3–7.

Dershowitz, Samuel. 1994. “The Tower of Babel Revisited.” Jewish Bible Quarterly 22(3): 266–267.

Drew, William. M. 1986. D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance: Its Genesis and Its Vision. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co.

Eisenstein, Sergei. 1977 [1944].“Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today.” Film Form: Essays in Film Theory. San Diego, CA: Harcourt.

Felperin, Leslie. 2007. “Babel.” Sight and Sound 17(2): 41–42.

Fernandez, Eleazar S. 2002. “From Babel to Pentecost: Finding a Home in the Belly of the Empire.” The Bible in Asian America, edited by Tat-siong Benny Liew. Semeia 90/91: 29–50.

______. 2009. “Diaspora, Babel, Pentecost, and the Strangers in our Midst: Birthing a Church of Radical Hospitality.” In Postcolonial Interventions: Essays in Honor of R.S. Sugirtharajah, edited by Tat-siong Benny Liew, 147–161. The Bible in the Modern World 23. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix.

Fewell, Danna Nolan. 2001. “Building Babel.” In Postmodern Interpretations of the Bible: A Reader, edited by A.K.M. Adam, 1–15. St. Louis, Mo: Chalice.

Fokkelman, J. P. 1975. Narrative Art in Genesis: Specimens of Stylistic and Structural Analysis. Amsterdam: Van Gorcum.

Foucault, Michel. 1991. “Governmentality.” In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, edited by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, 87–104. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

______. 2003. Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976. Ed. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. Trans. David Macey. New York: Picador.

______. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. Ed. Michel Senellart. Trans. Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Friedman, Richard Elliot. 2001. Commentary on the Torah. New York: Harper Collins.

Gish, Lillian. 1969. The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.

Griffith, D.W. 1916. The Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America. Los Angeles, CA: Larry Edmunds Bookshop.

Hall, Stuart. 1997 [1991]. “The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity.” In Culture, Globalization and the World System, edited by Anthony D. King, 19–40. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hamilton, Victor P. 1990. The book of Genesis Chapters 1–17. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Hansen, Miriam. 1985. “Universal Language and Democratic Culture: Myths of Origin in Early American Cinema.” In Mythos und Aufklärung in der amerikanischen Literature / Myth and Enlightenment in American Literature. Festschrift in Honor of Hans-Joachim Lang, edited by Dieter Meindl and Friedrich W. Horlacher, 321–351. Erlangen, Germany: University of Erlangen Nürnberg Press.

______. 1989. “Griffith’s Real Intolerance.” Film Comment 25(5): 28–29.

______. 1991. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hiebert, Theodore. 2007. “The Tower of Babel and the Origin of the World’s Cultures.” Journal of Biblical Literature 126(1): 29–58.

Houck-Loomis, Tiffany. 2009. “Homogeneity: Safe or Profane? The Journey Toward the True Self: A Study of Genesis 11: 1–9.” The Reformed Review 62(2): 90–101.

Hunter, Stephen. 2006. “‘Babel’s’ World: Just a Big Ball of Yarns.” Washington Post, November 3, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/02/AR2006110201681.html.

Ibn Ezra. 1988. Commentary on the Pentateuch: Genesis (Bereshit). Trans. H. Norman Strickman and Arthur M. Silver. New York: Menorah Publishing Co.

Iñárritu, Alejandro González. 2006a. “Alejandro González Iñárritu.” Interview with Stephan Littger in The Director’s Cut: Picturing Hollywood in the 21st Century, edited by Stephan Littger, 191–193. New York: Continuum.

______. 2006b. Babel: A Film by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Ed. María Eladia Hagerman. Los Angeles, CA: Taschen.

______. 2007a. “Interview for on the Spot.” Interview with Eleftheria Parpis. Adweek 48(8), (February 19): 21.

______. 2007b. “In a Global Age Films Must Portray Point of View of Others.” Interview with Nathan Gardels. New Perspectives Quarterly (winter): 7–9.

Inowlocki, Sabrina. 2006. “Josephus’ Rewriting of the Babel Narrative (Gen 11: 1–9).” Journal for the Study of Judaism 37(2): 169–191.

doi:10.1163/157006306776564674

Jacobs, Lewis.1968 [1939]. The Rise of the American Film. Fourth edition. New York: Teachers College Press.

Jakobsen, Janet and Ann Pellegrini. 2003. Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance. New York: New York University Press.

Jastrow, Morris. 1915. The Civilization of Babylonian and Assyria: Its Remains, Language, History, Religion, Commerce, Law, Art and Literature. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott.

Kaplan, Amy. 2002. The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kaufman, Joanne. 2006. “‘Babel’ Mixes Plots, Pitt, Blanchett but Is a Mess in Any Language.” Wall Street Journal. October 27, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116190635292205389.html.

Kikawada, Isaac M. 1974. “The Shape of Genesis 11:1-9.” In Rhetorical Criticism: Essays in Honor of James Muilenburg, edited by Jared J. Jackson and Martin Kessler, 18–32. Pittsburgh: Pickwick.

Lennig, Arthur. 2005. “The Mother and the Law.” Film History 17: 403–430.

May, Lary. 1980. Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Merritt, Russell. 1979. “On First Looking into Griffith’s Babylon.” Wide Angle 1: 12–21.

O’Hehir, Andrew. 2006. “Babel.” Salon October 27, http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/2006/10/27/babel/index.html.

O’Keefe, Alice. 2007. “Agent Provocateur.” The New Statesman 136 (January 15): 36–38.

Pinker, Aron. 2000. “The Book of Zephaniah: Allusions to the Tower of Babel.” Jewish Bible Quarterly 28(1): 3–11.

Prince, Stephen. 1992. Visions of Empire: Political Imagery in Contemporary American Film. New York: Praeger.

Ridley, Jim. 2006. “Communication Breakdown.” Village Voice October 17, http://www.villagevoice.com/2006-10-17/film/communication-breakdown/

Rogin, Michael. 1989. “The Great Mother Domesticated: Sexual Difference and Sexual Indifference in D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance.” Critical Inquiry 15(3): 510–555. doi:10.1086/448500

______. 1990. “‘Make My Day!’: Spectacle as Amnesia in Imperial Politics.” Representations 29 (winter): 99–123.

Sarna, Nahum M. 1989. Genesis. JPS Torah Commentary 1. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society.

Sarris, Andrew. 1996 [1968]. The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929–1968. New York: Da Capo Press.

______. 2006. “Manipulative and Mean-Spirited, Babel Frustrates Despite Style.” New York Observer November 5, http://www.observer.com/node/36219.

Sasson, Jack M. 1980. “The ‘Tower of Babel’ as a Clue to the Redactional Structuring of the Primeval History [Gen. 1–11.9].” In The Bible World: Essays in Honor of Cyrus H. Gordon, edited by Gary Rendsburg et al., 211–219. New York: KTAV.

Sayce A.H. 1897. Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religions on the Ancient Babylonians. The Hibbert Lectures. London: Williams and Norgate.

Scott, A.O. 2006. “Emotion Needs No Translation.” New York Times, October 27, http://movies.nytimes.com/2006/10/27/movies/27babe.html?scp=3&sq=babel&st=cse.

Speiser, E.A. 1964. Genesis. Anchor Bible 1. New York: Doubleday.

Strong, John T. 2008. “Shattering the Image of God: A Response to Theodore Hiebert’s Interpretation of the Story of the Tower of Babel.” Journal of the Society of Biblical Literature 127(4): 625–634.

Tierney, Dolores. 2009. “Alejandro González Iñárritu: Director without Borders.” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 7(2): 101–117. doi:10.1386/ncin.7.2.101/1

Vanderhaeghe, Guy. 1996. The Englishman’s Boy. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.

Van Seters, John. 1992. Prologue to History: The Yahwist as Historian in Genesis. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox.

Van Wolde, Ellen. 1994. Words Become Worlds: Semantic Studies of Genesis 1–11. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

Von Rad, Gerhard. 1972. Genesis: A Commentary. Trans. John H. Marks. Philadelphia, PA: Westminster.

Walton, John H. 1995. “The Mesopotamian Background of the Tower of Babel Account and Its Implications.” Bulletin for Biblical Research 5:155–175.

Wenham, Gordon J. 1987. Genesis 1–15. Word Biblical Commentary 1. Waco, TX: Word Books

Published

2011-04-20

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Runions, E. (2011). Tolerating Babel: The Bible, Film, and the Family in U.S. Biopolitics. Religious Studies and Theology, 29(2), 143-169. https://doi.org/10.1558/rsth.v29i2.143