Beautiful penitent whore: the desecrated celebrity of Mary Magdalene

Abstract

She is the author of Contemporary Cinema and the Philosophy of Iris Murdoch (Edinburgh University Press, 2019) and Film and Female Consciousness: Irigaray, Cinema and Thinking Women (Palgrave 2011), and the co-editor of Lasting Screen Stars: Images that Fade and Personas that Endure (Palgrave 2015). She co-edits the book series Visionaries (EUP) and is on the editorial boards of the journals Film-Philosophy, Open Screens and Celebrity Studies.

Queering the pulpit: catholic clergy and media celebrity in the Republic of Ireland

“…Both film and liturgy invite their constituent subjects to identify with one another, as audiences tend to build a relationship of identification with the main character of a film, Christian believers might identify with the priest. (61) Research on religious figures in celebrity studies has focused on evangelical Christian celebrities (Natale 2013), priests who have cultivated a radio presence (Warren 1996), saints as celebrities (Howells 2011) and individual figures such as Mother Teresa (Alpion 2020) and Mary Magdalene (Bolton 2020). The omission of religious figures in the context of celebrity studies is noteworthy, particularly in the Irish context, where the media landscape has been a potent site for constructing and cultivating clergy celebrity.…”