Noah narratives, gender issues, and the Hollywood hermeneutic

The exciting field of religion-and-film provides new insights into Holy Writ whenever filmmakers project sacred texts onto the silver screen. One Judeo-Christian film favorite is the diluvial disaster story of Noah and the ark (Gen. 6–9), whether rendered as an epic bio-pic, scriptural fantasy, or sacred subtext. Even “bad” films offer good pedagogic possibilities for via negativa–style biblical exegesis to stimulate one’s religious understanding. Of particular interest is the gender representations of Noah’s family. Consequently, utilizing basic descriptive analysis and a selective review of the critical literature, this chapter investigates eight notable exemplars of Noachian cinema: (1) Noah’s Ark (1928), (2) The Green Pastures (1936), (3) When Worlds Collide (1951), (4) The Bible: In the Beginning . . . (1966), (5) Noah’s Ark (1999), (6) Northfork (2003), (7) Evan ALMIGHTY (2007), and (8) Noah (2014). Each film is closely read, explicated, and copiously illustrated. The chapter concludes that traditional patriarchal gender portrayals do not vary much and that non-scriptural creative extrapolations frequently focus upon rebelliousness, madness, or heterosexual titillation.