Religion, cinema and literature

Because cinema combines text, image and sound, it conveys information quickly and with strong effect; according to the textbook, besides informing it also educates and forms worldview and attitudes. Religious themes have been present in film and literature since long ago: examples from literature are Dante’s “Divine Comedy” (early 14th century), Mir Alisher Navoi’s Sufi allegorical poem “Lison ut-tayr” (around 1499), Jalaluddin Rumi’s “Masnavi” and John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” (1667); from cinema, films such as “Gandhi” (1982) or “Ben-Hur” (1959). The textbook stresses that some films and cartoons may contain violence, frightening scenes or ideas that do not match national values, and says parents’ attention is needed in choosing content for children; for this purpose Uzbekistan has a law on protecting children from information harmful to their healthy development (2017) and age-category labels. “Ideological immunity” here means the ability to assess critically what one sees and reads and not to give in to manipulation. When assessing a film or book on a religious theme, a scholar of religion analyses separately the accuracy of facts, the mass effect and the authors’ aims, but avoids discriminatory generalisations about any religion and its followers. It is also recalled as a historical fact that in the Soviet period literature and cinema were subordinated to state policy and atheistic propaganda was conducted.