Bracketing Religions: A Phenomenological Analysis of Theological Origin and Social Construction of Religions in the Context of PK Movie

Abstract

Cinema functions as a rich data store for researchers in understanding and interpreting unique characteristic components of a society such as language, culture, tradition, religion, etc. The subject of this study is to question the realities of a multicultural social life with reference to PK movie. There is a set of problems such as what the basic motivations of religious groups are, whether a person could be independent of cultural/environmental factors, and how the theological and sociological perceptions of religion differentiate, etc. The aim of this paper is to trace the steps of the construction of social and religious reality experienced by an alien’s own consciousness. This study combines sociology of religion with cinema through a phenomenological approach. Everyday realities perceived through an alien by suspending stocks of knowledge (externalization) enable us to apply the phenomenological approach to the study. As a result, this alien tends toward the society as a stranger and contributes to criticize it objectively.