Sci-Fi Nuns v. Real Nuns

I knew Doctor Who had to have a nun character! Where does the evil nun stereotype come from? It’s in horror movies as well.

Your description of nuns going to space reminded me of Maria Doria Russell’s book The Sparrow in which the Jesuits head off to space in search of other sentient beings. Again, male religious characters.

Ah, there is a great Star Trek The Next Generations book called “Guises of the Mind” that had two Franciscan nuns going to a planet to being an orphanange. No, really, it sounds much better than my poor summary. One of the nuns is telepathic, although she’s always hidden the fact. There is also a co-ed monastery (alien, not any Earth-based religions) on this planet, and their religion and rituals are quite interesting. I’m not a fan of STTNG, but i really like this book.

As far as nuns in the media, my favorite modern portrayal was Sister Maureen “Mo” Brody in Nothing Sacred. It was so realistic that is could have been a documentary.

On another note, someone once sent me a picture of a Chibi Nun(Japanese anime). She “Chibi-ed” a picture of my foundress because she thought our original habits were so cute.

The Hoopy Frood–who’s in town this week–brought up the MST3K lampooning of “Future War.” Have you seen it? I can’t think of it off the top of my head, and it’s one of the ones he doesn’t have.

Sorta like the cover you showed in your post. The one of our foundress reminded me of Sailor Moon–overly large head, skinny waist, loooong legs, saucer sized eyes, tiny point of a nose, small mouth (unless they are screaming, then it grows to half their face!) She was wearing our pre-Vatican II brown habit, black veil and wooden crucifix.

I Googled chibi nun image and got this: http://www.absoluteanime.com/fullmetal_alchemist/clara-nun.jpg

Uh, why do I know about this stuff? When you teach elementary school, you have to keep up on things.

Hi there Sister Julie, how’s everything going?
I’ve almost come up with this blog and I find it quite interesting, specailly this section about sci-fi creation vs. reality concept.
I haven’t had the time to read all the answer to the original post so I will write my opinion hoping I’m not copying something already written:

Seems that at times people tend to question the basis of everything that exists, form the stablished political ordes to the most sacred religious ideas.

Mainly I think this happens (and it is only and opinion based on observation) when the ruling system of ideas, values and such is almost collapsing or on the edge to suffer a critical change on its curse of action.

With this in mind then the shaking waves make people to look for certain explanations and ideas in things that beofre where untouched and one of the is religion.

The ancient greeks for example had in their mythology a huge collection of stories where human feelings and passions affected gods in various ways making at times that stories to be like a soap-opera (in spanish “telenovela”)

Now seems that again people tries to search humanity in those things that somehow seemed beyond common reach. In a wide view (once again I believe so, I don’t have a certain way to prove it) religion seemed to ask for a high degree of perfection and virtue and God, Jesus, the Saints, the Virgin, the Pope, priests, nuns and a long etc. became symbols of the expected perfection.

Then, as a natural result of this way of thinking came this question: And what if…?

This “whatifazing” is like a way to embed the human nature into the sacred things and it is not happening only in the Catholic church.

Well, back in the topic, the “What if…?” opens a huge rank of possibilities to wonder how a person, a being or an organization would act in some given circumstances.

In the world of books, cartoons, movies and tv this action of imagination is called “Fan Fiction” and is a free creative expresion of the followers.

Now I mention this for two things: first, the FanFic allows the viewers to get in touch with the subject in a special way. In this particular case is geting the religious concept into an unprecedented situation, like the plot of Da Vinci’s code or The Last Temptation of Christ.

The second is that depending on the number of fanfics and the acceptation of those stories is how popularity can be measured.

So, to finish with this speech let’s recapitulate:

This new conception of religious life seem to be a resource of people to make less sacred some sacred things to split them of the perfection they seem to have been bonded with.

Why to do so?

In order to imagine what would happen if they had the daily problems of the commoner (for people outside the structure of church it seems like a kind of secret club ruled by a series of strict rules and the popular view acts like it does with famous people: both don’t have the chance to make mistakes)

Now, all this new conceptions, this new and sometimes rare visions and how much scandal and speech tey create seems to confirmate one last thing: religion is still in the mind of people.

Hope this speech has some sense for you and anyone who can read it. It’s in anyway an attack or a radical view, it’s just an opinion and observation based on the things I see from the world. The same thing of split from sacred tones things also happens in tv, movies, cartoons, politics, schools, even on internet.

I think it is a massive movement that announces a big change. Which one? I don’t know, but now this is happening with finances. When the crisis began some of the most respected banks and enterprises broke when no one expected it (an example of sacred symbols of economy falling or being hardly questioned)

Well I leave now, have a nice day and good luck.

Opinion offered with all respect for:

A passerby named Andrés