The Making of the Pentecostal Melodrama: Religion, Media and Gender in Kinshasa (Anthropology of Media Book 6)

How religion, gender, and urban sociality are expressed in and mediated via television drama in Kinshasa is the focus of this ethnographic study. Influenced by Nigerian films and intimately related to the emergence of a charismatic Christian scene, these teleserials integrate melodrama, conversion narratives, Christian songs, sermons, testimonies, and deliverance rituals to produce commentaries on what it means to be an inhabitant of Kinshasa. Contents Illustrations Acknowledgments On Language CHAPTER 1 The First Episode CHAPTER 2 Cursing the City: The Ethnographic Field and the Pentecostal Imagination CHAPTER 3 New Fathers and New Names: Social Dynamics in an Evangelizing Acting Group CHAPTER 4 Variations on Divine Afflatus: Artistic Inspiration, Special Effects, and Sermons CHAPTER 5 Mimesis in Motion: Embodied Experiences of Performers and Spectators CHAPTER 6 The Right Road: Moral Movements, Confessions, and the Christian Subject CHAPTER 7 Opening Up the Country: Christian Popular Culture, Generation Trouble, and Time CHAPTER 8 Marriage Comes from God: Negotiating Matrimony and Urban Sexuality (Part I) CHAPTER 9 The Danger of Sex: Negotiating Matrimony and Urban Sexuality (Part II) CHAPTER 10 Closure, Subplots, and Cliffhanger Bibliography Index This study describes how religion, gender, and urban sociality are expressed in and mediated via television drama in Kinshasa. Influenced by Nigerian films and intimately related to the emergence of a charismatic Christian scene, these teleserials integrate melodrama, conversion narratives, Christian songs, sermons, testimonies and deliverance rituals to produce commentaries on what it means to be an inhabitant of Kinshasa