Video Games and Contemporary Esotericism: A study of eco-spirituality and the Grand Polemical Narrative in Final Fantasy VII

摘要

The concern of this essay is how religious change can be understood through theway that conceptions of religiosity and spirituality are represented in popular culture. Thesuccess of works of popular culture are due to the ability of these works to resonate with alarge number of people, which suggests that popular culture reflects the hopes, desires, fearsand anxieties of these people. The object of study for the essay was the video game FinalFantasy VII, released in the late 1990's. An analysis of the religious content of the game wasmade, which in turn was put in relation to the “Superstory”; an analytical frameworkproposed by Jeffery Kripal that deals with popular culture from the early- to mid twentiethcentury. The result of the comparison was that in Final Fantasy VII, sacrality is orientedtowards a cosmotheistic world view of a spiritualized nature, and not towards thetranscendent monotheistic world view of the Superstory. Likewise, where in the Superstorytechnology and scientific progress was sacralized, Final Fantasy portrayed these in a more sinister, negative light. This likely reflects the diminishing faith in science that characterizesthe late-modern society, as well as the growing concern for environmental issues, concernsthat are expressed through fantastic stories in popular culture.