Validation, Comfort, and Syncretic Belief in the Afterlife: U.S. Viewers' Perceptions of Long Island Medium
On the reality TV program Long Island Medium and in public performances, professional spirit medium Theresa Caputo interprets messages she says she receives from the spirits of the deceased. Based on interviews with people who have seen her on television or in a live stage performance, I sought to l...
| 1. VerfasserIn: | |
|---|---|
| Medienart: | Elektronisch Aufsatz |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
| Verfügbarkeit prüfen: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Lade...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Veröffentlicht: |
American Anthropological Association
[2019]
|
| In: |
Anthropology of consciousness
Jahr: 2019, Band: 30, Heft: 1, Seiten: 90-112 |
| normierte Schlagwort(-folgen): | B
Caputo, Theresa 1967-
/ Long Island medium
/ USA
/ Reality-TV
/ Medium
/ Rezeption
/ Zuschauer
/ Jenseitsglaube
/ Synkretismus
|
| RelBib Classification: | AE Religionspsychologie AZ Neue Religionen KBQ Nordamerika |
| weitere Schlagwörter: | B
nonempirical experience
B United States B Media B Religion B spirit mediumship |
| Online Zugang: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Zusammenfassung: | On the reality TV program Long Island Medium and in public performances, professional spirit medium Theresa Caputo interprets messages she says she receives from the spirits of the deceased. Based on interviews with people who have seen her on television or in a live stage performance, I sought to learn more about how viewers experience, interpret, and are affected by these readings and by her presentation of life after death. For viewers who believed in this television medium's abilities, I was interested in how her interpretation of the spirit world corresponded with theirs. While some viewers were quite skeptical, for others the program provided a level of comfort about lost relatives and/or offered a means of validating or further understanding their own personal experiences with nonempirical phenomena. In this article, I explore how Long Island Medium may offer a cultural framework for interpreting perceptions of spirit entities that is in mainstream U.S. culture or religion. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1556-3537 |
| Enthält: | Enthalten in: Anthropology of consciousness
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/anoc.12108 |