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- DOI: 10.1111/jacc.12441
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Left Behind or Left Below? Parodies of Christian End Times Fiction in American Popular Culture
Journal of American Culture. 2015;38(4):386-400.
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Full-text held externally
- DOI: 10.1111/jacc.12441
Abstract
Christian dispensational “end times” fiction has found particular pop culture currency through the success of the Left Behind series of post-rapture novels in the 1990s and early 2000s. This has led to a number of parodic re-readings of the novels in contemporary entertainment media. This article examines several recent parodies of Christian “end times” fiction in American popular culture, including episodes of The Simpsons and American Dad, 2013 movie This is the End, graphic novels such as The Chronicles of Wormwood and Sword of My Mouth and Tom Perotta’s 2011 novel The Leftovers. These works critique “end times” fiction, but do not abandon its central apocalyptic form. Their parody works as a theological critique of the tradition in three ways: through reimagining the role of clergy and media in a post-apocalyptic world, debating the hermeneutical position of dispensationalists, and commenting upon the role of popular culture in influencing contemporary apocalyptic thought. While the parodies are designed to entertain, each is also “apocalyptic” in a theological sense, in that they claim to offer clear revelations of the true nature of the world.