Go Down to L.A. Land

Abstract

This essay will examine the thesis that film has become the medium of changes in the American civil religion by comparing how the traditional comparison of America to biblical Israel has played itself out in two Hollywood films: Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, and Dreamworks’ The Prince of Egypt. These films have preserved many of the historically important themes of American civil religion, including the close relation of freedom to justice and of individualism to social commitment, but also have “hollywoodized” these themes, contributing to a civil religion that is both more individualistic and more fideistic than in the past.