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Barbara's Body: Final Girls, Saints, and Sex

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If Catholics love two things, it’s dying in Christ and not having sex. For these reasons, one of the most sacred types of saints is the virgin martyr. The virgin martyrs are young (often very young) women who died as retribution for resisting male advances. -Kate Sidley “Here is the patience of the saints...” -Revelation 14:12 1.      Hagiography hagiography (n.)—biography of saints or famous persons Heyshlee Burbara  is a call in Lebanese: “Run Barbara.” On Eid il-Burbara (Dec. 4), Lebanese Christians don masks and go door-to-door, repeating the call for Saint Barbara to run, the mask symbolizing her disguise as she flees from the Romans. Barbara runs from death, her sentence the crime of being a woman who defied a man.  The final girl.  ___ My middler (2nd) year of Seminary, I took a class on religion and sacrifice in film. The professor had a fascination with the concept of sacrifice. We read a lot of Girard, talked about the circle of violence done...
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The Yellow Balloon

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  "Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there, I did not die." -Clare Harner Imagine that for as long as you can remember, you’ve been asked to stand in a field and hold a balloon. You do not understand why this field or this balloon or the particular importance of why you need to do this. But everyone tells you that you do. It’s the only way you can get approval.  And so you do it to please. Everyone seems happy about this but you. You notice the sun has emerged from the clouds to bake your face. It’s making you uncomfortable. You want to go inside and drink a Pepsi, not caring what happens to the balloon. But you’ve been told that the sun is God and it will be furious with you if you let go of the balloon. You don’t want to make God angry. So you hold on tight.   I’m 5. Perhaps 6 or 7 but let’s just go with 5. One of my earliest memories is of my friend Sue. Sue had long, strawberry blonde hair that fascinated me. Indelible in my memory is a day in class when I ob...
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