追溯当代X的精神旅程——文化视阈下的《圣洁百合》研究

　　John Updike(1932-2009)is one of the most famous,productive and most awarded writers in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century.Since the 1950s,dozens of novels,poems,commentaries,and short story collections have been published,and altogether he wrote 23 novels.His various works have won numerous awards at home and abroad,including the Pulitzer Prize,the American Book Award,and the National Book Critics Award,which cover all important awards for literary creation in the United States.In the Beauty of the Lilies,published in 1996,is his seventeenth novel.By telling the spiritual changes of four generations of Wilmot family,the novel reflects on the decline of American religious faith and the rise of the popular culture in the 20th century.This thesis aims to explore how the religious faith changes over time and how people’s lives and mentality are influenced by the popular culture.

　　Religious beliefs are the subject of many of Updike’s works,such as A Month of Sundays,Roger’s Version,and S,which explore the complex relationship between matter and spirit of the secular society.Influenced by the“dialectical theology”of 20th century theologian Karl Barth,Updike gains a perspective on the world,which helps him to give a comprehensive and complex representation of the people and scenes around him.Updike,who has repeatedly described himself as a Christian,often talks about the religious aspects of his work.But on the other hand,he doesn’t think that his work belongs to Christian art.When he is asked the relationship between his creation and Christian art in an interview,he once said,“I’ve never really offered it as Christian art,my art is Christian only in that my faith urges me to tell the truth,however painful and inconvenient,and holds out the hope that the truth—reality—is good.Good or no,only the truth is useful”(qtd.in Plath,104).This conversation represents Updike’s view of creation.Although he tries many writing techniques among his literary career,generally speaking,Updike is still a realistic writer.And his view of reality is deeply related to religious belief,so it can be said that his view of reality is based on his religious belief.Thus,the study of religious beliefs in Updike’s work is an essential part.

　　On the other hand,Updike pays attention to native culture,and he is named as the vermeer of American authors.The subject of Updike’s works concerns about“the whole middle,hidden,troubled America”.As James A.Schiff said,Religious beliefs are the subject of many of Updike’s works,such as A Month of Sundays(1975),Roger’s Version(1986),and S(1988),which explore the complex relationship between matter and spirit of the secular society.As Updike expressed during an interview in 1976:“I’ve never really offered it as Christian art,my art is Christian only in that my faith urges me to tell the truth,however painful and inconvenient,and holds out the hope that the truth—reality—is good.Good or no,only the truth is useful”(qtd.in Plath,104).Therefore,the discussion of religious beliefs is indispensable when studying Updike’s work.Unlike Melville and Hemingway,who traveled the globe for adventures that would later surface in their writing,Updike,the vermeer of American authors,found the stimuli needed to produce great art to home—in simple domestic and communal scenes.As James A.Schiff said,

　　What Updike does best,though,is America.Stretching himself across the continental surface,absorbing as much as he can of America’s people,attitudes,land,and history,Updike is our contemporary Whitman….As Updike writes,his subject has been the whole mass of middling,hidden,troubled America(Schiff,10).

　　Updike’s novel In the Beauty of the Lilies is a further attempt to portray America.He delves into the historical past and brings the hero’s story to the present,thus capturing the evolution of American culture throughout the twentieth century.All his books,he imagined,would contribute to this“continental magnum opus,”but it’s like that In the Beauty of the Lilies was conceived of as playing an important part in the contribution.In the Beauty of the Lilies is one of the important novels for Updike.As a great writer,Updike has set his sights on the various periods and corners of American society for decades in his novels,revealing the transformation of people’s spiritual life with his keen insight.Although the popular Rabbit Tetralogy has described the social aspects of the United States for nearly 50 years,he feels that it is still unfinished,so he launched In the Beauty of the Lilies five years after Rabbit at Rest.Based on the four generations of the Wilmot family,the novel follows the changes in American religion and the development of the film industry over the past century.As Schiff indicates that,

　　In addition,Updike has been interested in how people pass through,and how American culture alters with,time—witness his return every few years to Rabbit Angstrom and the Maples.By journeying to the historical past,Updike demonstrates the evolution that has taken place in American cultural history.(Schiff,128)

　　The novel’s title is taken from Julia Ward Howe’s“Battle Hymn of the Republic”,which appears in the opening page of the novel:“In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:As he died to make men holy,let us die to make men free,While God is marching on”(Updike,1996:cover).These stirring verses depict the development of the United States,and they are also what Updike wants to express about the America.As he writes:

　　In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea—this odd and uplifting line from among the many odd lines of“The Battle Hymn of the Republic”seemed to me,as I set out,to summarize what I had to say about America,to offer itself as the title of a continental magnum opus of which all my books,no matter how many,would be mere installments,mere stars at hymning of this great roughly rectangular country severed from Christ by the breath of the sea(qtd.in Plath,1998:142).

　　The images of“the sea”and“Christ”are very vivid expressions of the religious ideas that Updike himself has elaborated in his works.Firstly,it shows that religion is indispensable for Americans;and in the name of faith,the individual demonstrates the motivation for self-action and self-seeking away from religion.Secondly,the connection among American society,history,culture and religion is inseparable.The religion has provided a moral foundation for this country and society.Otherwise,in the course of time and social progress,the decline of this relationship and the erosion of the moral foundation become more and more obvious.Putting these two points together,Updike’s self-confessed“praise”to America is a mixture of love and hate,praise and flogging,conviction and confusion.Thus,In the Beauty of the Lilies has once again become a place for Updike to express that complex emotion,and religion has naturally become the introduction and theme of this novel.

　　The plot of the novel revolves around two clues:one is the evolution of religion from the rise to the decline in one hundred years,and the other is the formation of the film industry representing the popular culture from initial formation to rapid development,and the two influence each other.At the same time,their changes have subverted the traditional American ideas.In the novel,religion is entangled with the film continually,and it has an inestimable influence on American spiritual pursuit and material enjoyment.The four chapters of the novel are based on the four generations of the Wilmots,with one chapter describing a generation.The first generation Clarence,a priest,lives in 1910s.Influenced by the atheism and rational thoughts,Clarence’s firm faith is shaken.He resigns from the priesthood and becomes a salesman.Having lost faith,he goes into the cinema to seek temporary comfort.The family that leaves God suffers from hunger and disease.The second generation Teddy has lost faith in religion,and he can’t find spiritual support from Hollywood movies.So he chooses to seek comfort in real life,to marry and live in peace.Teddy’s daughter,Essie,grows up in a period of star adoration,and the star’s halo makes her very envy.She steps into the film industry and become a movie star finally.She will do anything to succeed in her career.Essie’s son,Clark,is a typical Hollywood teenager:a drug addict,a fast driver,and an unrestrained sex life.When he runs into trouble and fails,he decides to escape from Hollywood,to seek solace in religion,to seek self-respect,and to find a place where he could make a difference,but falls into a cult.

　　John Updike has won many foreign literary awards throughout his life,and the work In the Beauty of the Lilies wins the Harvard Art First Prize and Ambassador Book Award.At the same time,it also attracts the attention of Updike researchers.In the book John Updike Revisited,James A.Schiff concludes that,

　　Lilies does not utilize a central protagonist or couple.Instead Updike presents four generations of a family,of which not a single generation or individual emerges as central.But Updike devotes equal time and attention to each of the four generations and maintains an overall interest in the family itself,as if the family is the main character.For these reasons—its restrained and traditional form,its overly cautious characters and mood,its moderated sadness,and its lack of a central character—Lilies is a problematic work that does not easily fit the description of a great American novel.(Schiff,143)

　　George Steiner,a famous scholar,thinks that this work makes Updike firmly occupy the same position in American literary history as Hwthorne and Nabokov;New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani also gives the work In the Beauty of the Lilies a high praise and calls it“not only Mr.Updike’s most ambitious novel to date,but arguably his finest”(Michiko,67).Meanwhile,James Schiff further believes that this novel is the best representative of American literary creation in recent years.Such evaluation may be a little exaggerated,but the charm of the work and its shocking power to readers are undeniable.

　　In the related monographs of Updike abroad,there is no special research on the work In the Beauty of the Lilies.But it is mentioned in some research monographs about Updike.For example,in James Schiff’s book John Updike Revisited,he thinks that In the Beauty of the Lilies shows the spiritual void caused by the absence of God,which induces the modern people’s mental disorder.Clark in the novel attempts to get rid of the reality by following the cult,but finally falls into the abyss.James Yerks also mentions In the Beauty of the Lilies in his book John Updike and Religion,he believes that Clarence’s resignation is due to the loss of spiritual foundation.Steinberg Sybil’s monograph John Updike:A Sense of Religious Mission analyzes the religious consciousness in the novel In the Beauty of the Lilies.He points out that Updike is influenced by the theological thought of Karl Barth,and analyzes the concrete embodiment of this influence in Updike’s works.In addition,some scholars concerns about the narrative characteristics of the novel In the Beauty of the Lilies.In Updike:America’s Man of Letter,from the God’s-eye perspective,William Prichard indicates that“Updike gives us in this novel a pretty skeptical take,as far as his characters go,on the success of such a historical activity”(Prichard,253).

　　In terms of research papers,most of the researches on In the Beauty of the Lilies are mainly book reviews,and few journal papers are involved.For example,In World Literature Today,Marvin La Hood notes that the novel ends with a“bizarre,hollywood-style”ending,suggesting that America has lost its most basic sense of human decency and self-respect.According to Walter Goodman,In the Beauty of the Lilies is mainly about movies.Like God,Hollywood is the eternal theme of the family legend from 1910 to 1990.The critic A.O.Scott comments that In the Beauty of the Lilies is the combination of historical facts,“In the Beauty of the Lilies provides a new and valuable dimension to the historical romance of the American middle class”(Scott,28).

　　In China,In the Beauty of the Lilies was translated by Yuan Fengzhu and first published in 1999.At present,compared with other works of Updike,there is not much domestic research on this novel.According to CNKI’s statistics,there are nineteen articles published on the theme of In the Beauty of the Lilies,including four dissertations.Through analysis and induction,the current research on In the Beauty of the Lilies in China is mainly in the following aspects:

　　First of all,it mainly discusses the development and evolution of American religion in the 20th century from the perspective of social and historical criticism.Yuan Fengzhu’s article“Religion+Hollywood=?—Interpretation of In the Beauty of the Lilies”is the earliest paper to analyze this work.She thinks that Updike successfully analyzes the American social reality in the 20th century through In the Beauty of the Lilies(Yuan Fengzhu,92).In“The Rise of Popular Culture:an Interpretation of In the Beauty of the Lilies”,Li Yun discusses the influence of popular culture represented by film on American spirit and life in the 20th century,and holds a critical attitude towards the rise of film(Li Yun,158).And then,in another article,by investigating the lives and religious beliefs of the Wilmots,Li Yun annalyzes the religious changes in America since the 20th century(Li Yun,59).Gu Xueru in“The History of the Downfall of American Christianity”reveals the spiritual dilemma of each generation in the novel,and believes that the novel shows the decline of American Christianity from the skepticism of the first generation to the destruction of the fourth generation(Gu Xueru,95).What’s more,Xue Wei in“An Analysis of the Religionary Theme in In the Beauty of the Lilies”interprets the religious theme of the novel(Xue Wei,36).

　　Secondly,it concerns psychoanalytic criticism.In the article“The Desert of Belief—Study of the American Spiritual world in In the Beauty of the Lilies”,Zhao Hua believes that the characters in the novel have gone through a process from abandoning religious belief to embracing ethical norms,then abandoning ethics to embracing aesthetics,and gradually going to decline.(Zhao Hua,118).

　　The third is from the perspective of myth-archetype criticism.Fu Jielin’s article“Interpretation of Religious Spirit in John Updike’s In the Beauty of the Lilies”interprets the religious spirit of the novel,and holds that the novel expresses the doubts and anger about the reality,the confidence in the future and the pursuit for love through the myth-archetype in religion.(Fu Jielin,114).

　　According to the literature review,although the topic of religion and film is covered both at home and abroad,most of them are journal articles or book reviews,and there are few dissertations or monographs.Moreover,there is little analysis from the cultural perspective,the discussion on the relationship between religion and film is relatively broad,and its deeper problems still need to be explored.The novel involves a large number of movies and movie stars.Film is an important feature of human material civilization and spiritual civilization in the 20th century.On the one hand,movies to some extent guide the trend of popular culture;on the other hand,film is also one of the components of culture,conveying people’s thoughts and feelings and mainstream cultural values in an intuitive and shocking way.Therefore,the films of each period reflect the social status,people’s ideological status and cultural atmosphere at that time.The cultural research linking the novel text with the films and the implied meaning behind the films can enrich the connotation of the novel and deeply analyze the change of American religious belief under the influence of popular culture,and open up a new perspective for the study of John Updike.

　　According to newly released General Social Survey data analyzed by Ryan P.Burge of Eastern Illinois University,until 2018,Americans claiming“no religion”,sometimes referred to as“nones”,now represent about 23.1 percent of the population,up from 5 percent in 1972.People claiming evangelicalism,by contrast,now represent 22.5 percent of Americans,a slight rise from 17 percent in 1972.That makes the two groups statistically tied with Catholics(23 percent)as the largest religious or nonreligious groupings in the country.The biggest story is that“no religion”is coming from the mainline.The chart shows that nonreligious groups have been on the march for a long time now.It’s been a constant,steady increase for 20 years now.The causes of this social phenomenon are worth exploring.With the progress of human society and rapid development of science and technology at the beginning of the 20th century,instead of Christianity,the popular culture gradually began to play an important role in human’s minds.The authority of God is challenged.There are many different definitions about popular culture.Raymond Williams calls culture“one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language”(qtd.in Storey,2004:1).He suggests three broad definitions,and the second and third meanings of the word“culture”are usually used to speak of popular culture.One refers to“culture as a particular way of life”(qtd.in Storey,2004:2),the other suggests“culture as signifying practices”(qtd.in Storey,2004:2).However,Matthew Arnold is not optimistic to popular culture as Raymond Williams.He suggests that culture,as a spiritual life,achieves the perfection of personality and even society through seeking knowledge.On the one hand,this idealized declaration gives us a very beautiful cultural vision;on the other hand,what he calls culture is essentially an elite culture owned by a few people.Its function can be interpreted as“social order,social authority,won through cultural subordination and deference”(qtd.in Storey,2004:21).

　　In addition,the Italian Marxist Arzonio Gramsci sees“popular culture as a site of struggle between the‘resistance’of subordinate groups in society and the forces of‘incorporation’operating in the interests of dominant groups in society.The texts and practices of popular culture move within what Gramsci calls a‘compromise equilibrium”(qtd.in Storey,2004:11).

　　From this we can see,the definition of the popular culture is flexible and complicated,so John Storey concludes that“popular culture is in effect an empty conceptual category,one which can be filled in a wide variety of often conflicting ways,depending on the context of use”(Storey,11).In order to work out a better interpretation of the novel from the cultural perspective,the theory of popular culture is to be applied.In the study of contemporary culture,the study of popular culture occupies a very important position.Luo Gang and Liu Xiangyu said that“We can’t simply attribute cultural studies to popular culture research,but popular culture is clearly the focus of cultural studies.Talking about cultural studies without involving popular culture is like playing Hamlet without the prince”(Luo Gang,Liu Xiangyu,31).Thus we can see the significance of popular culture.

　　In the Beauty of the Lilies is not only a history of the rise and fall of the four generations of the Wilmot family,but also a true record of the rise of the popular culture represented by movies in the United States in the 20th century.As Shi Hongtao indicates,

　　In one sense,films could be characterized as America’s storytellers and have a special relationship with American culture.On one side,films shape and are shaped by national attitudes values,and ways of living,on the other side,Hollywood films reflect certain commonly held attitudes and beliefs about what it means to be American.(Shi Hongtao,74)

　　At the beginning of the 20th century,almost no one could have expected that the film that was in its infancy would become the most appealing and popular form of art in the first half of the 20th century.The intense life filled with competition increases people’s demand for entertainment.The promotion of mass media such as movies has broadened the horizons of the general public and exerted a subtle influence on Americans’lifestyle and values.Through the novel,Updike reveals the panorama of American popular culture in the 20th century and expresses his concern about it.

　　This thesis is made up of five chapters.The first chapter is a brief introduction,including the introduction to Updike and his works,the literature review at home and abroad and the significance and layout of the thesis.Chapter two,“Confrontation:the Wavering of Faith”,analyzes the first generation Clarence’s painful struggle over faith under the influence of popular culture,and his sense of escapism to mass media.The third chapter,“Impact:the Waning of Faith,expounds Teddy’s wandering between movie and faith,and his surrendering to reality.Chapter four,“Blurring and Merging:the Absence of Faith”,represents Essie’s success through the movie with the flourishment of the popular culture and her privatization of faith.The fourth generation Clark,who relies on movies as spiritual food since childhood,the absence of faith leads him into the cult,looking for spiritual sustenance.Based on the above analysis,the thesis comes to the conclusion in the fifth chapter by analyzing the changes of American religious beliefs in the 20th century and exploring the spiritual crisis of contemporary people.Perhaps the contradiction of America between the lightly industrialized economy and void spiritual condition is a reflection of the decline of conventional religion and the secularization of religion in general.

　　In the early 20th century,the United States opened up the modern industrial era,which was a period of both rapid development of industry and economy.Coupled with the influence of atheism and rational thoughts,the religious faith suffered from unprecedented challenge and religion gradually lost its absolute control.Influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution,liberal theology,Freud’s theory and Marxism,most of American people in this period began to doubt God that they once firmly believed in.Christianity gradually became a secular instrument to serve the capitalism.In the novel,Clarence Wilmot,the first generation of Wilmot family,lives in the early 20th century,from 1910 to 1915.Updike creates this character to witness the transformation of the twentieth-century American culture.John Updike’s examination and reflection on religious status quo in the United States lies in his questioning of the functions of the church and clergy in the United States,as well as the revelation of the“religious illusion”that the film is an“emergency religion”.Therefore,the novel In the Beauty of the Lilies fully shows the crisis faced by the traditional Christian faith in the new historical context.

　　The first generation Clarence Wilmot lives in the early industrial society.During this period,science has finally established the monopoly right to explain the external nature,denying the traditional macro explanation.The cognitive explanation of religion to the world is questioned more and more strongly,the cognitive meaning of religion is deconstructed,and the consequence of the increasingly poor cognitive meaning is the formalization of morality.Coupled with the influence of new trends,Clarence’s former firm religious belief has been shaken.He is immersed in the painful struggle for abandoning his faith,and“No God”echoes countless times in his mind.

　　As for the loss of people’s religious belief in the dilemma of American culture,John Updike believes that the loss of the function of modern church is an important cause of this dilemma.In Updike’s novels,the loss of the church’s functions is represented by the“dereliction of duty”of many clerical images.The expression of“dereliction of duty”on the image of the priest in Updike’s novels is divided into two cases.One refers to the image of the priest who is ridiculed and directly denied because of his hypocrisy,such as the priest Pedric in Couples.In Updike’s view,these priests are typical“false priests”,and the author makes a merciless mockery of their falsity with a humorous description.In the novel In the Beauty of the Lilies,there are utilitarian and selfish church members.

　　At the beginning of Chapter One,Harlan Dearholt,chairman of the Church Building Requirement Committee,is a small silk-ribbon millowner.He strongly advocates the new addition,to accommodate church socials and an expanded Sunday school.Clarence refutes:“Is a church effective in direct proportion to its physical size?Seriously,a church is a community whose strength lies in purity and zeal,not in its buildings”(Updike,1996:37).In Clarence’s mind,the church is only a place in which to pray and spread religious ideas,its significance does not depend on the physical decorations,but lies in its symbolic meanings.But the church building requirement committee members don’t think so.They think that a decent church can attract more young believers,they will come to their church to pray,and encourage more people to believe in Christianity.

　　As a devout faithful priest,Clarence feels confused.Dearholt believes in God so much on the one hand,but turns a blind eye to the suffering of poor workers.Clarence feels that the world of the twentieth century is completely different.This is an era of competition and material,which makes him doubt whether God still exists.When Clarence laments this era will be“troubled times”(Updike,1996:26),Dearholt retorts:

　　What do you see troubled about them,Reverend?I would call these exceptionally good times,for the U.S.of A.and the city of Paterson both.The silk business is going full tilt and the locomotive works will come out of their slump as sure as I’m sitting here–it has to happen,what could possibly replace rail as the cheapest,fastest way to move bodies and freight across this enormous nation?(Updike,1996:26)

　　But Clarence’s suggestions are invalid,and the Church Building Requirement Committee has the decision-making power.From this we can see,the existence of church is not to spread the doctrines,and implement moral education,but to serve the capitalist need to a large extent.

　　At the beginning of the 20th century,modern industry is in the rising stage.Because of Patterson’s favorable conditions,the textile industry takes the lead in development in the small town.Most factory owners squeeze more profits by increasing working hours,which escalates labor conflicts.In the face of the poor’s sufferings,Clarence only laments,but he could do nothing,which makes him wonder about the meaning of being a priest.The priest is the speaker of God’s will,but he feels the Words are losing their power.Under the control of capitalists like Dearholt,Clarence says:

　　Compassion!Isn’t that a sickly thing,when as Kleist said the millowners have all the swords?Aren’t these so-called Christian virtues just as Ingersoll and the radicals claim,an excuse for doing nothing,a way to keep the poor quiet while the rich get richer?(Updike,1996:41)

　　Updike’s novel pays more attention to another type of priest“dereliction of duty”,whose main characteristic lies in his religious perplexity.The status of the priest’s own faith is crucial to influencing others.In the novel,Clarence’s own religious contradictions eventually lead to the collapse of the faith.This is mainly reflected in the priest’s aphasia state.

　　On the one hand,his belief is contrary to the prevailing secular utilitarian belief.He voluntarily exiles himself,“and the bitter fact is that my respect for the church is still enough that I don’t intend to pollute its pulpit with hypocrisy”(Updike,1996:63).From this,we can see that Clarence is devout in religious belief,and it is this faith that forces him to make the painful decision to exile himself from the church.In the novel,the detailed description of his lost voice reflects Clarence’s loss of faith.Clarence explains the“silent incident”in the sermon:

　　My very voice rebelled,today,against my attempting to put some sort of good face on a doctrine that I intellectually detest.Ingersoll,Hume,Darwin,Renan,Nietzsche—it all rings true…I’ve twisted my mind in loops to hold on to some sense in which these things are true enough to preach,but I’ve got to let go or go crazy…I can’t keep selling myself and others the opposite of what jumps out at me from every newspaper and physical fact I see.The universe is a hundred percent matter,with the energy that comes in waves out off matter,and poor old humankind is on its own and always has been.(Updike,1996:61)

　　So Clarence sees the universe as a machine of purposeless self-motion,and we are meaningless byproducts.With or without the propaganda of God,death will eventually send man back into nothingness.Finally,Clarence chooses reason in the paradoxical relationship between rational ethics and religious belief,thus losing his ability of sermon.His aphasia is exacerbated by three subsequent conversations with his wife Stella,Dearholt,and Presbyterian Chairman Thomas Dreaver.The common characteristic of all three is their incomprehension of Clarence’s loss of faith and his decision to exile himself,to quit the church and to resign the priesthood.Clarence falls into aphasia,“I don’t half know what my mind is any more”(Updike,1996:41).

　　The first is an argument between Clarence and his wife Stella.Clarence’s sincerity lies in the fact that when his wife is afraid of the dilemma of life and the actual harm caused by the loss of the clerical position,and allows Clarence to pretend to believe and persist,he resolutely chooses to refuse in the face of the pressure of his wife and life.“But I no longer can—if simply willing it or praying for it would do it,don’t you think I would have?”(Updike,1996:63)His wife Stella retorts on his piety,telling him to stop talking about faith,“faith is something we build;it’s a habit”(Updike,1996:65).The second is the argument with Dearholt about faith and resignation.When Clarence reclaims faith,Dearholt retorts,“consider your own personal welfare.Think selfishly for a moment.What lies outside the church for you?Nothing compared to what is within”(Updike,1996:69).Dearholt’s belief is purely utilitarian from the perspective of practical interests.The third is the conversation with Presbyterian Chairman Thomas Dreaver.When Clarence asks“what about personal immortality”(Updike,1996:76),Thomas Dreaver answers,“this life is the one to be lived now,that much is crystal-clear.What did Thoreau supposedly say—‘One world at a time’?”(Updike,1996:76)When Clarence’s devotion to God meets the false Christian belief for various utilitarian purposes,he can only be aphasia,and the narration of Clarence’s aphasia in the novel also reflects and criticizes the status of belief in God in the modern American context.

　　Another reason of people’s loss of faith lies in the transformation and domestication of religion by modern rationality,that is,the attempt to tame irrational religious beliefs through human rationality.However,this transformation leads to the deconstruction of Christian belief in the rational category,making it lose the legitimacy of existence.The questioning of the legitimacy of existence of God and the resulting absence of God causes a series of spiritual crisis.

　　Influenced by the atheist Ingersoll’s book Some Mistakes of Moses,he agrees that“the God of Pentateuch was an absurd bully,barbarically thundering through a cosmos entirely misconceived”(Updike,1996:5).The power of atheistic thoughts at that time could not be underestimated.“This sentence,like hundreds of others mocking and scouring the Christian faith”(Updike,1996:14),which makes Clarence suspect the faith that he once believed in.Therefore,he believes that there should not be such a God,and he denies the existence of God,which is equivalent to denying the legitimacy of the existence of Christianity centered on belief in God.Under this influence,Clarence’s“invisible vestiges of the faith and the vocation he had struggled for decades to maintain against the grain of Godless times and his own persistent rationalist suspicions”(Updike,1996:6)is lost eventually.

　　The novel especially emphasizes the priest’s erudition and the rigor of his research,presenting him as a theologian.However,when the objective and rational scientific spirit collides with the paradoxical religious spirit in the Bible,Clarence is greatly“offended”,and his scientific questions can not be answered in the Bible,leading to his loss of faith.The tragedy of Clarence is that he does not look at religion and faith in terms of his own existential concern.Christian knowledge and faith are two different things.So Clarence decides to give up the ministry.But denying the existence of God brings about a number of spiritual and practical consequences.The spiritual consequence reflects in:

　　All its metaphysical content had leaked away,but for cruelty and death,which without the hypothesis of a God became unmetaphysical;they became simply facts,and yet the depths of vacancy revealed were appalling.In the purifying sweep of atheism human beings lost all special value…the once-green ferny lives crushed into coal’s fossiliferous strata were no more anonymous and obliterated than Clarence’s life would be soon be,in a wink of earth’s tremendous time.Without Biblical blessing the physical universe became sheerly horrible and disgusting.All fleshly acts became vile,rather than merely some.(Updike,1996:7)

　　The establishment of the meaning of human life has lost its foundation,and everything has disappeared into endless nothingness.This drives Clarence into despair.“There is no God”is repeated in the first chapter of the novel,“with a wink of thought,the universe had been bathed in the pitch-smooth black of utter hopelessness”(Updike,1996:10).

　　Besides,Clarence faces a severe reality test after giving up his faith and ministry,but he still chooses to leave.The God to Clarence is crumbling and he is guided by the scientific and rational world,“this is the twentieth century!I can’t keep selling myself and others the opposite of what jumps out at me from every newspaper and physical fact I see”(Updike,1996:16).But as his wife Stella says,“But the world goes on,out through them”(Updike,1996:63).Although the new trends are prevailing at that time,the great environment is still relatively strong in religious atmosphere.Most people still believe in God sincerely,they go to church and pray,and accept spiritual baptism.The religious atmosphere at that time is quite strong,“the world can accommodate many sincere opinions but has no lasting use for turncoats”(Updike,1996:89).Losing God,and not accepted by the world,Clarence’s mind wanders like a ghost,which can not find a place to return.He struggles over faith and reality painfully.

　　In the novel In the Beauty of the Lilies,Clarence’s rational faith is as beautiful and fragile as his dead face,“just died without a sound so they found his body like a beautiful perishable statue in the morning,all of a stiff pale piece”(Updike,1996:125).This description becomes a metaphor for Clarence’s state of rational belief.In the novel,the fact that Clarence later engages in the sale of The Popular Encyclopedia has a strong metaphorical meaning in the text.“For the twentieth century,these books are what the Bible was for times long ago”(Updike,1996:125),compared with the authority of God,the encyclopedia represents reason and it is the cause of Clarence’s loss of faith.However,encyclopedias do not provide people with a kind of life imagination and a reference to the meaning of life.

　　Clarence resigns his ministry regardless of his relatives and friends’persuasion.The anti-christian thoughts and various social changes in the society lead to the crisis of the priest’s faith.Unfortunately,he is accused of betraying his faith and becomes an unpopular renegade.He suffers from emptiness and poverty and finally dies in depression,“now he was free–free to sink”(Updike,1996:89).

　　With the advent of the industrial age,the public’s need for recreation is increasing.The mass media such as movies,radio,and newspapers has emerged as the times require,and gradually penetrate into people’s daily lives.According to Schiff,

　　Updike reveals in twentieth-century American culture–the shift accounting for the decline of religious faith and the related rise of the cinema.Since the puritans,who treated this continent as a promised land and framed their personal stories typologically,religion has functioned as an integral part of American culture(Schiff,144).

　　In the novel In the Beauty of the Lilies,Updike presents the interaction between the decline of religious faith and the relative rise of the film.The film comes into people’s life in 1910s,and the first generation Clarence,who abandons his faith,does not obtain the relief he expected.The inner emptiness caused by the collapse of the faith makes him escape to the mass media,such as movies and popular newspapers.

　　Paterson Evening Times actually belongs to the popular newspapers.Most of the content covers trivialities of local citizens,or entertainment news such as sports.Most of the articles are to attract people’s attention and interests,and the content is closer to life,but there is not much educational function.The Evening Times conveys fresh news around the world that makes this small town no longer occluded.

　　Clarence is keen to read the Evening Times,which is part of his daily life.Even when he is sick in bed,he often lets his younger son Teddy read it to him.Through the press,he can understand the new things happening around the world every day,so that he temporarily forgets his current dilemma and eases the depressed feeling.On the other hand,he finds that there are many sufferings around the world,and there are many people who are in miseries like him.To some extent,he can get psychological comfort.Some content of the paper is filled with a series of social chaos and evil such as shootings,drugs,marriages,coups,murders and ethnic conflicts.It makes Clarence feel“the world rolled onward,in other words,on its usual riotous course of bombast and deviltry,with or without God”(Updike,1996:23).

　　John Updike pays close attention to the influence of cultural changes on people’s religious beliefs,among which the most important is the influence of film culture to faith.For Updike,“the cinema is a secular church.The rectangular screen,like the rectangular shape of the United States,giving people a false illusion that they forget painfulness as well as God”(Bellis,2000:173).The influence of movies on people’s spiritual world is so deep,“truer than reality,truer than truth”.So Updike says“most of the old movie theaters are now churches where we pray”(Updike,1999:642-643).In the middle and late novels of Updike,the film has become an important theme.

　　In the novel,for Clarence,a down-on-his-luck priest who has lost his Christian faith,the movie is an escape from reality,a temporary relief for the fragile soul trapped in a dilemma by the loss of his ministry.“For the one hour in which he could forget,in a trance as infallible as opium’s,his fall,his failure,his disgrace,his immediate responsibilities,his ultimate nullity.”(Updike,1996:108)This escape also means that Clarence is aware of the illusory nature of movies,and clearly understands the fundamental difference between the real world and the movie world.

　　The novel constantly describes the distance and difference between the film world and the real world at the same time.As is noted in the story,

　　The pictures transported the audience everywhere but to workday place like Paterson:the Wild West,Manhattan slums,lumber camps in the far Canadian north,Chinese opium dens,English castles,deserts of the Holy Land,and the Roman amphitheatres of the first Christian centuries.There were kidnappings foiled by faithful dogs,and chases in which one was miraculously present first with the chased and then with the pursuers.For the female apparitions there were delicious and languid descents into sexual temptation that ended in abject wantonness and a welcomed death,and for the indestructible male spectres the camaraderie of battle,the thrill of vows redeemed and triumphant rescuing achieved,with the new art’s dazzling nimbleness,in the very nick of time.(Updike,1996:106)

　　“Movies,the technology of satisfying emotions,are all the demands of imagination,fantasy,magic and beauty that cannot be met in real life.”(qtd.in Moran,2012:114)To some extent,the movie is a response to people’s spiritual expectations,and the wishes that could not happen in real life are realized in the movie.This is both a parody of the divine almighty and a mockery of the hidden God.Movies,like God,bring people into a magical new world that is different from the real world.But the mental illusion created by the film is only a temporary satisfaction,“watching the‘movies’took no strength,but recovering from them did—climbing again out of their scintillating bath into the bleak facts of life,his life,gutted by God’s withdrawal”(Updike,1996:107).So every time at the end of the movie,Clarence would stand there like he is waking up from a dream.

　　At the beginning of the 20th century,the film industry began to rise.And people name the dance hall or moving-picture theatre as“dreamland”.From this we can see,the film to people is fantastic and illusory.Being a book-seller makes his social status slope down the bottom,and he feels ashamed.So he refuses the job actually out of his dignity,but he has no choice for living.The theatre gives him a way to escape this predicament temporarily:

　　During this summer Clarence took his own defeat indoors,deserting the sunny harsh streets of door-to-door rejection for the shadowy interiors of those moving-picture houses that,like museums of tawdry curiosities,opened their doors during the day.The worshippers within these catacombs sat scattered and silent.In 1913 there were increasingly many such houses,along Main and Market Streets(Updike,1996:103).

　　The film may not have completely changed his life,but at least it begins to change his view to life.A new reality begins to form in front of his eyes,and the cinema even become his“church”(Updike,1996:105).The film industry,which began to develop in the early 20th century,has become a symbol of diverting from traditional life.The temptation of film to Clarence far exceeds the power of belief,which constitutes a sharp satire.Leaving God,just like a man loses his home,his heart doesn’t have a place to stay.As is noted in the novel,

　　Ever since his revelation three years ago of God’s non-existence,he had carried around with him a crusty,stunned feeling—a cling sense of lostness,as if within a series of ill-furnished,run-down classrooms he found himself in the wrong one,with an urgent appointment elsewhere…(Updike,1996:104)

　　So Clarence’s spiritual world is empty,desolate and floating.As an emerging product,the movie attracts Clarence’s attention,and fills his spiritual emptiness.“Within the movie theatre,amid the other scarcely seen slumped bodies,he felt released from accusation.”(Updike,1996:104)

　　At the beginning of the 20th century,the film industry is just developing and silent films dominate the film market.Crowds of people flock to nickel cinemas,where nickel coins accumulate constantly.Film companies depend on these revenues to expand innovation,and become more and more ambitious and adventurous.With the gradual development of the film industry,film shooting and processing techniques have been developed.For people,the film is a dazzling magic.At that time,movies are not as elegant as operas or stage plays,so most people who go to the cinema are those like Clarence;they are at the bottom of society.“Clarence’s companions in the afternoon theatre were by and large of the humbler classes”(Updike,1996:107),they either sneak out or go to the temporary shelter because of the humiliation of unemployment.Paying a few cents,in this dark small house they temporarily unload the burden of life,and forget the hardships.And they can get some spiritual support from movies.Otherwise,through the movie,people can have a better understanding of the lifestyle and behavior custom from all walks of life.

　　The early American movie themes are mostly about sympathy for the weak and social morality,“the films lifted the skirts of the supposedly safe,chaste,and eventless world to reveal an anatomy of passion and cruel inequity”(Updike,1996:107).The content of the film is usually to expose the sanctimonious hypocrite,tell the tragic fate of the seduced women,or poor young people who suffer the contempt of the rich,but eventually get their lover due to the reversal of economic status.People travel the world with the movie,experiencing danger,feeling pleasure and pain,thus being relieved from the burden of reality.

　　In In the Beauty of the Lilies,John Updike describes how the technological development in movies makes great impact on people’s minds.And some movies have moral education to people,just like the church does,such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin,Ivanhoe,A Tale of Two Cities.Uncle Tom’s Cabin vividly depicts the lives of black slaves in the 19th century.The main character of the film,Uncle Tom,reflects the common demands and aspirations of slaves.By presenting the ethnic contradictions between the Normans and the Saxons,the religious contradictions between Christians and Jews,the film Ivanhoe advocates the reconciliation of social contradictions,and the members of society can live in peace.The film A Tale of Two Cities advocates humanitarian themes,non-violence,rationality and tolerance.

　　In the cinema,Clarence and other audiences from the bottom of the society are immersed in the plot of artistic skills,and temporarily forget their troubles.But he has to wake up from his dream and continues to face the reality of life,suffering from spiritual emptiness.As is mentioned in the novel,

　　When the film was over,and the pale lights of the world came back on,he stood and looked kindly upon the dazed and sated faces of the others in the audience,who had been motionlessly pursuing the same adventures as he,and who now awoke from the same dream.(Updike,1996:107)

　　The movie can not replace the traditional religion completely;it is just like a dream,giving people room to imagine but it is unrealistic.The reality is concrete,cruel and hard.No matter how wonderful and excellent the movie appears,people must return to the real life,and face reality.

　　In the nineteenth century,Europe,especially Britain,was undergoing a transition from an agricultural society to an industrial society.Mathew Arnold’s poem Sanzas from the Grande Chartreuse is a portrayal of the spiritual outlook of that era.As the poem writes,“wandering between two worlds,one dead,the other powerless to be born”.These two lines are supposed to reflect the true state of religious belief in western societies and the confusion and transformation of the British society in the late 19th century.The poem uses metaphor to explain the predicament of modern life and profoundly reveals the social crisis brought by the decline of modern western religious belief.Wandering between two worlds means a gap between the past and the present.It shows a western society in which the past and the present have broken down.People at the turn of the century are at a loss in the face of great social change,and the influence of traditional religions on people is declining.In Arnold’s view,no faith is unshakable,no doctrine is unquestionable,and no tradition is unchallenged.In this age of declining religion and philosophy,it is only poetry that can shed light on the meaning of life and provide us with the greatest spiritual comfort.

　　The spiritual crisis Arnold describes also occurs in the 1930s’America.Under the impact of popular culture,religion gradually loses its original authority.In this period,popular culture has a great influence on people’s ideology and subverts people’s traditional cognition and moral concept.In novel,in the face of great social changes,the second generation Teddy’s spirit is in a state of wandering,without support and comfort.

　　Teddy,the second generation,witnesses the cruelty and ruthlessness of God to his father Clarence.He regards believing in God as a betrayal of his father,so he swears not to believe in God any more.At the same time,the popular culture has been preliminarily developed,film and radio have become the public’s main means of entertainment,among which the popular and participatory film culture has a great impact on the aesthetic mode and values of the public.

　　After Clarence loses his faith,the entire family also goes downhill and collapses.Faced with the sick father,the ramshackle house,and the poor financial situation,Teddy,who is already very sensitive,becomes even more depressed.He has no interest in anything around him.He doesn’t like school and hates to work;he doesn’t go to church and keeps himself away from crowds,wandering on the streets aimlessly.For Teddy,he is out of place in the world.Is something wrong with the world or with him?

　　In order to show his loyalty to his father,he chooses not to go to church.But after he moves to Basingstoke in Delaware with his family,the relatively closed small town does not have many entertainment places,and the church is the only social place for young people in the area.This makes himself isolated,the local people in Basingstoke“would know nothing except what the local parsons and county politicians told them”(Updike,1996:157).

　　On the one hand,one of the reasons Teddy resents God is his misconceptions about God and the ways in which he believed.Teddy feels unfair that his father is devastated by the loss of faith.Teddy thinks God should save his devoted father.The second chapter of the novel begins with the profound spiritual impact of his father’s loss of faith,so that“he could never stop remembering was his father coming home to the house on Twenty-seventh Street after a day of treading the sidewalks for nothing,not having sold a single subscription to the encyclopedia”(Updike,1996:109).This influence leads directly to Teddy’s rejection of God’s faith.“He thought of praying that he not die,but this seemed disloyal to his father,somehow.”(Updike,1996:116)Teddy resents God,and when his religiously confused grandson Clark asks him why he gives up on God,he answers“I must have had a grudge.It seems to me God could have given Dad a sign.To help him out.Just a little sign would have done it,and cost God nothing much”(Updike,1996:410).It can be seen from this that Teddy makes a moral and ethical interpretation of God’s mercy,and mistakenly takes it as the premise of faith.

　　On the other hand,in the 20th century America,the secularization of the religious function of Christianity gradually increases.And the role of Protestantism in spiritual guidance and moral code is gradually weakened,and the secularization of religious belief is increasingly serious.

　　In his article entitled“The Concept of Secularization in Empirical Research”,Scheiner argues that secularization has six meanings.First,it indicates the decline of religion,that is,religious thoughts,religious acts,and religious organizations have lost their social significance.Second,it indicates that the value orientation of religious groups has changed,that is,the content and form of religion have become suitable for the market economy of modern society.Third,it represents the separation of religion and society.Religion has lost its public and social functions and has become a purely private matter.Fourthly,it indicates the change of belief and behavior,that is,in the process of secularization,various doctrines have played the role of religious agents in the past assumed by religious groups.Fifth,it indicates that the world has gradually got rid of its sacred features,that is,the supernatural elements of society and the mystery have decreased.Sixth,it represents the change of the“sacred”society to the“secular”society.

　　Secularization is non-sacred,and it means a long process of social change.This process involves two aspects:first,the change of society,that is,the various fields of human society are gradually getting rid of the shackles of religion,and various social systems are increasingly rationalized;the second is the change of religion itself,that is,religion constantly adjusts itself to adapt to secular changes in society.

　　After Clarence’s death,the Wilmot family is in trouble.The family moves to Basingstoke to survive.Teddy is sensitive,sentimental and not good at communicating with others,which becomes worse after the relocation.Teddy’s mother encourages him to return to Christianity,as she says,

　　“Teddy,you should begin to go to church again.That’s where all the respectable people are,and ones who might have jobs to give.Thanks to our friends in Avon Presbyterian I have more sewing and mending to do than I can rightly keep up with.It’s almost getting to be a curse;I have to keep getting stronger prescriptions on my glasses.And there are some pretty young ladies in our choir,too.”(Updike,1996:151)

　　It can be seen that the church has become a place for people to communicate and meet,and church activities have gradually become a specific way of community life,which also reflects the secularization of religion to some extent.In this period,although religion’s ability to guide people’s spirit and moral code has gradually declined,it has become a new place for the American people to participate in gathering activities,and it shows the secularization of religious belief.

　　The outbreak of the war in Europe has materially helped the amazing development of the American film industry.The First World War accelerates the process of the westward movement of the film factory,turning Hollywood into a bustling city.The 1920s is also a time of great clowns and western heroes,which represent two typical American film styles.

　　With the increasing prosperity of American society in the mid-1920s,the competition for entertainment time reduced the number of cinema audiences.Commercial radio,which began in 1921,reached every home in the United States in the late 1920s,bringing free entertainment to the living room.But film is still the main force of the mass media.

　　As the dominant cultural form of modern society,media culture not only creates the way and landscape of contemporary daily life,but also shapes a new type of people.Marshall McLuhan,a Canadian scholar,puts forward that“the medium is the message”,which means that every time a new media form appears,the medium itself means the emergence of a new message.As McLuhan puts it,“media are not tools,and the influence of technology does not occur at the level of opinions and ideas,but rather it is determined and irresistible to change the ratio and mode of perception.”(qtd.in He Daokuan,2001:49)In a word,new media creates new culture,which acts on people’s perception and reconstructs people’s way of feeling and thinking.

　　Teddy lives in the 1920s and 1930s,and the film has been initially developed in this period.As the number of cinemas continues to increase,it can be seen that the film industry is constantly expanding,and begins to lead a new trend.“It did seem the world was turning sexier”(Updike,1996:161).

　　Daniel Bell points out that“the film has many functions—it is a window to pry into the world,and a group of demonstration for daydreams,fantasy,intentions,escapism.It also helps people to understand the outside world and escape from the real society”(Bell,1989:114).One of the functions of film is to transform culture,which influences people’s living habits,especially teenagers’.Influenced by the behavior of the characters in the film,people imitate the movie stars,learn the behaviors in the film,and live according to the life style in the film.The film glamorizes the things that young people worship(girls like short hair and short skirts)and advises middle-aged men and women to enjoy the moment.As is noted in the story,

　　The country’s tough,“fast”currents were picked up by the young set around Basingstoke—the girls in their tubular little dress and rolled stockings,the guys in their white wide-bottomed ducks.Teddy marvelled that even the children of people working at the bottle-cap factory were able to buy the clothes that imitated the rich youth of Long Island and Chicago and Grosse Pointe.(Updike,1996:161)

　　It can be seen that,the film is favored by young people.People not only watch movies,but also are keen on the worship of movie idols,imitating their dress,movement and appearance.So the mass media,such as films and advertisements,revolutionizes people’s social habits and lead to changes in their lifestyles and values.

　　On the other hand,popular culture has a great impact on traditional moral concepts.For young people,the fine traditions of the past are a fetter to them.They want to have fun in time and to pursue love and freedom.As Teddy’s mother says,“they just don’t make girls as conscientious as they used to;all they want is to get off work and dance and drink and ride in roadsters.Whatever happened to old-fashioned right”—raaaht—“from wrong”(Updike,1996:159)?The decline of traditional moral force also reflects the weakening of religious influence.

　　But Teddy is not too passionate about movies like his father.The movie is not Teddy’s refuge,because he sees clearly the illusory nature of the movie and understands the fundamental difference between the real world and the movie world,as he realizes in the movie:

　　The speckled and jerky but effulgent flickering that had lifted Clarence Wilmot up from the dark pit into which his life had fallen seemed to his son a bit menacing,an alarming and garish profusion.The motion pictures,all made now in California or Europe,three thousand miles away in one direction or another,embraced the chaos that sensible men and women in their ordinary lives plotted to avoid.(Updike,1996:146)

　　He thinks the movie is a bit scary and extravagant and tacky.The movie world is dramatic and far from the real world.And at this time,the theme of film is no longer about sympathizing with the weak and advocating social morality,but about drinking,gambling,family breakdown,poverty,violence,fighting,murder,explosion,death…Take the films The Temptress and Flesh and the Devil mentioned in the novel as examples.

　　The Temptress is a romance released in 1926.Elena played by Greta Garbo is glamorous and fascinating,and countless men fall under her skirt.She makes the banker commit suicide,her husband is killed by mistake,her friends turn against each other and lead to tragedy.The only man she loved,Robledo,thinks that she is a sorcerer.He loves her and hates her,and refuses her closeness again and again.When Robledo finally admits her love for Elena and wants to be with her,she leaves Argentina alone in order not to destroy him any more.The glory of her life is bleak when she meets her lover again six years later,and she is already stupid and stumbles on the streets of Paris.

　　At that time,the film The Temptress has a great impact on the people of Basingstoke.The bold description of sex in the film has caused shock on traditional morality.While liberating people’s sexual consciousness,it also causes a certain degree of moral corruption.

　　The film Flesh and the Devil tells the story of a seductive beauty who loses her reputation by teasing an honest man.It is one of Greta Garbo’s classic silent films,and John Gilbert,the leading actor,is also famous at that time.The two perform brilliantly in the film,perfectly interpreting a subtle relationship between men and women and becoming the most striking romance in Hollywood history.This film indicates that people can pursue sex boldly.Otherwise,people also like to imitate the actors’kissing movements in movies.These movie stars’behaviors become a kind of fashion,which induce such fans to imitate and follow them.

　　Although Teddy realizes film is filled with illusion,he can’t avoid the infiltration and influence of film culture on him.When he first meets Emily,he describes“her eyes had bigger whites than those of ordinary girls:they were like the eyes of the movie stars Gloria Swanson or Lillian Gish on posters outside the Roxie”(Updike,1996:163).Thus,the film subtly changes his way of thinking and inner emotional structure.Besides,the movie provides a way for Teddy to pursue Emily and an opportunity for their first date.

　　However,Teddy can’t find spiritual sustenance from either religion or Hollywood movies.He has to seek comfort from real life,marrying and having children,and living a stable life.

　　The content of the movies is much too dramatic and unrealistic to some extent in Teddy’s time,and it exaggerates the real world.A number of people are addicted to movies,because the film concedes the cruelty of reality and blurs the real world.In movies,people can get rid of the triviality of life,and don’t need to make hard choice.As is noted in the novel,

　　Terror would attack Teddy even in the middle of hailarious and romantic sequence,as he realized that these bright projections were trying to distract him from the leaden reality beneath his seat,underneath the theatre floor.Death and oblivion were down there,waiting for the movie to be over.Not so,these movies tried to say.Life was not serious;it was an illusion,a story,distracting and disturbing but at bottom painless and merciful.(Updike,1996:147-148)

　　In Clarence’s time,the film mainly involves ethical themes,punishing evil and promoting good,and so people can get comfort from the film.However,the themes of films during this period are mainly about poverty,war,murder and sex,which mostly expose the dark side of the world.“The motion pictures embraced the chaos that sensible men and women in their ordinary lives plotted to avoid”(Updike,1996:146).As a result,Teddy could not enjoy them,and he feels a sense of rejection.

　　“These stars led up there a life that was always renewed,movie to movie,without permanent harm,whereas Teddy knew that harm was permanent.The reel of your real life unwound only once”(Updike,1996:148).An actor can play different roles,have unlimited possibilities,and even can return to life;this state of infinite loops paralyzes people’s nerves and obscures the cruelty of life only once.

　　And the real world is not much better than the movies.After the death of the Clarence,the Wilmots move to a small town and stay at aunt Esther’s home because of their awkward situation.Aunt Esther rents out the extra house.And now it has become a place to hide dirt:all those who come to live are people with bad reputation.Sometimes they are prostitutes,sometimes they are drunken salesmen who have been away for a long time,and sometimes they are smugglers.In addition,the world outside Basingstoke is developing rapidly,the city’s entertainment venues are overwhelming,and the way of entertainment is crazy.The 1920s is an age of consumption,people follow the principle of material supremacy.They pursue money first,material enjoyment,regardless of the state of the spiritual world.Teddy’s elder brother and sister are deeply influenced by the prevailing atmosphere.They are floating on the ocean of American greed,money and jazz.They are the typical representatives of consumer society.Teddy spends a short time in New York,he witnesses their way of life:

　　The life he saw Jared and Lucille and Esther leading seemed fuelled on tobacco and bootleg hooch,and jangled to a desperate rhythm imported across the color line—jazz.Teddy went with them,the three of them and sometimes a too-slick associate of Jared’s who served as Esther’s date,to the speakeasies and nightclubs and Greenwich Village parties where they had what they called their fun,and smoked and drank along with them,until he attained that state.(Updike,1996:191)

　　In contrast,Teddy’s life has been relatively simple,although he is out of tune with the outside world.His life is still quite happy.Unlike Jared and Esther,Teddy does not like competition,and he is not good at adapting to the environment,and does not like to do risky things.“Life basically had to be endured.Nature fought for you until it turned against you.”(Updike,1996:162)As Jared’s life motto is“money gives,and pussy takes”,there are only money and women in his world,no morality,only living for survival.He speaks openly,debauched and unscrupulous,and Teddy describes him as“the code of a monstrous world that a man evidently grows into”(Updike,1996:117).His sister Esther is tough,capable and never gives up.In addition,Esther is very casual about marriage,and there’s no shame in dating a married man,and dating other men at the same time.It is totally hedonistic.Their conduct seems too worldly,too arrogant.These disfigure the beautiful natural phenomenon of life that he wants to understand.“He and his parents had this in common:they were all soft.The world pushed them around.”(Updike,1996:128)

　　Teddy’s attitude to life seems un-American and un-Christian,and his refusal is also American on the other hand.As Schiff indicates,

　　Updike suggests there is another side to Teddy’s resistance and Clarence’s withdrawal,however.Though competitiveness,ambition,and risk have pulled America to the top of the world,there is something spiritually vapid and culturally destructive about the compulsion to succeed.Business is,as the head of Teddy’s school states,“scrupulous method and faithful repetition”,which suggests business may be simply business.As Teddy argues,“Does everybody have to do something all the time?Isn’t it enough,sometimes,if you just don’t make things any worse?”to which his mother replies in delight,“I can hear Clarence saying that!”.Their unwillingness to struggle may seem un-American,but such a refusal reveals an individuality that,ironically,is also American.(Schiff,148)

　　Teddy’s retreat is not as extreme as his father’s.Fleeing with his family from humiliation associated with Paterson,Teddy finds the right job and wife in Basingtoke,Delaware.As a mailman,Teddy returns to the safety and familiarity of his first boyhood job,his paper route,in which his duties unite the town in an ordered network.In the Great Depression,the frustrating and oppressive era,Teddy chooses to marry.By marrying Emily Jeanette Sifford,a country girl of Moorish decent who suffers from a lame leg,Teddy finds contentment and domestic peace.“A job and a wife:He had become a man.”(Updike,1996:210)

　　Teddy’s rejection of God leads to his loss of passion for life,leaving him mentally disabled.“A numbness of incredulity surrounded the erasure—the daily willful absence and silence—and a sense of injustice,which was absurd,since there was no one who had promised justice.”(Updike,1996:136-137)His choice of love for his wife Emily is out of a kind of helplessness.He stands aloof from the world and does not run for the post of postmaster.Unlike his father,he can not find spiritual comfort in the film,because he see clearly the illusory nature of the film.

　　Without spiritual support,Teddy’s life is numb:“there was a tranced rhythm to the day that ate up the years.Teddy sometimes felt his entire life draining from him,without any raise or change of prospect”(Updike,1996:158).It can be seen that Teddy is mentally paralyzed and dead,as his brother Jared tells him,“now your Emily—you and she are my idea of a perfect match.You have been kind of a cripple ever since Pop collapsed”(Updike,1996:147).Unable to find solace in the movies or return to the church,Teddy finally embraces life.This may reveal the situation of contemporary American people who lack of spiritual support and the feeling of security in such a transitional phase.

　　the Absence of Faith

　　By the 1940s and 1950s,popular culture had entered a prosperous stage and become a powerful force.The most representative was the rapid development of the Hollywood film industry,and the films were produced in large numbers.“In 1948,an average of 90 million people watched a movie in the United States every week—an unprecedented number.”(qtd.in Smith,2015:115)In the novel,the third generation,Essie,grows up in a period in which the popular culture flourishes and religious faith gradually declines.Living in this social atmosphere,she succeeds through the film.Unlike her father,she believes in the existence of God,but this belief has turned into a self-interested religious belief.By the fourth generation of Clark,it is already in the second half of the twentieth century.At this time,the popular culture has occupied a dominant position,and the boundaries between popular culture and traditional religion have blurred.Clark,who relies on movies as a spiritual food since childhood,is like living in a dream,and he never knows what the real world looks like.The lack of faith leads him into cultism,looking for spiritual sustenance.

　　Raymond Williams defines culture as“a particular way of life”,he thinks that the purpose of cultural analysis is to reconstitute“the structure of feeling”.By structure of feeling,he means“the shared values of a particular group,class or society.The term is used to describe a discursive structure which is a cross between a collective cultural unconscious and an ideology”(qtd.in Storey,2004:45).

　　In the 20th century,the United States is facing the reality of cultural mediatization.Numerous new technological civilizations are being transformed into modes of cultural production,circulation and acceptance,which means that the public is confronted with a symbol culture transmitted by various media.Therefore,facing culture means facing the media,and being in the culture means being in the media,or more accurately,the symbol of mediatization.As a kind of mass media,film is not only an industrial technology,but also a comprehensive art form that can truly and quickly reflect the life of the times.On the relationship between culture and cinema,Shi Hongtao mentions that,

　　The relationship between films and culture involves a complicated dynamic;while films certainly influence the mass culture that consumes them,they are also an integral part of that culture,a product of it,and therefore a reflection of prevailing concerns,attitudes,and beliefs.(Shi Hongtao,2014:74)

　　On the one hand,movies to some extent guide the trend of popular culture;on the other hand,film is also one of the components of culture,conveying people’s thoughts and feelings and mainstream cultural values in an intuitive and shocking way.With the rapid development of science and technology,the social structure of western capitalist countries,especially the United States,has undergone tremendous changes.And the post-industrial society has gradually emerged,accompanied by the emergence of a hedonistic lifestyle.Hedonism focuses on play,entertainment,show-off and happiness.This hedonism is opposite to the religious asceticism,and to some extent the former highlights its own charm and wins its own believers by breaking through the taboos of religion.

　　Hedonist culture has a great impact on traditional religion.It emphasizes material enjoyment while religion emphasizes spiritual pursuit.In western society,most religions are restrictive,emphasizing thrift and abstinence,highlighting spiritual pursuit rather than material enjoyment.For hedonist culture,it is intended to pursue material desire and pleasure,which is especially reflected in the influence of mass media on people.In Chapter Four,the novel concerns many movies,some of them reflect the hedonist culture.For example,the film The Little Fox centers on a greedy middle-aged woman named Regina Giddens,for whom nothing is more important than money and power.The film shows the image of a cruel and greedy woman,whose worship and pursuit of money have completely deprived her of emotion,and her husband means money to her.This is a rather striking work of critical realism,it aims to criticize people’s obsession with material desires and the loss of emotion and morality.As the film describes,“The little foxes have lived in all times,in all places”.

　　Inspired by the art of film,illusions flourish in reality.The appearance of movie stars is a manifestation of the illusory nature of movies.“During the 1910s and 1920s,studios also developed the concept of the movie star,realizing that a star’s fans would pay to see any of the star’s films.Stars are thus used to sell films,giving them a kind of brand-name appeal.”(Shi Hongtao,2014:32)Regarding stars as a special form of industrial commodities,they also serve as a commercial means of film marketing,and often become a key element of the ticketing mechanism through the promise of providing audiences with certain pleasures.

　　Besides,the movie star is also regarded as“object of desire”.“A star should first be seen as an object of desire.As long as one studies it,the way the audience finds identity,meaning and a certain degree of satisfaction in his or her image becomes an irreconcilable angle.”(qtd.in Nelms,2012:165)In the novel,since she was young,Essie had a dream of becoming a movie star.After experiencing the film,she imagines herself as the heroine in the film,paints her face in the mirror,imitates the sitting posture of movie stars in front of the mirror,and even regards herself as Betty Davis or Katherine Hepburn.“When she got older,she promised herself,she would paint her toenails so she could wear open-toed shoes with slinky slacks like Marlene Dietrich and Dolores Del Rio.”(Updike,1996:236)As for a seven-year-old girl,she knows how to dress up herself.She is infatuated with beautiful costumes.And all of her experience is from the movies,which she can imitate from the movie stars.

　　Essie collects all kinds of pictures of movie stars,and the action shots of movie stars become the source of her deliberate imitation and experience.She even mixes her admiration for her dead grandfather Clarence with her dream of stardom,“in his reality he held a promise of lifting her up toward the heavenly realm where movie starts flickered and glowed and from which radio shows,with movie stars as guests,emanated”(Updike,1996:271).Essie’s heaven is a fantasy land of film and television,which determines the ultimate goal of her faith is to become a film and television star.

　　The movie stars have two kinds of life:in the movies and in the real world.In fact,the life in the film gradually controls or devours the real life.Some studios even stipulate that they must imitate the characters they played in the play,as if they are real.This makes the stars feel that they have been reduced to brooding ghosts at parties and entertainments whose human essence had been sucked away by the cameras.In the novel,when Essie becomes Alma,the movie star,she is immersed in film roles and gradually loses herself.It is reflected in the filmmaking,the actor Coop tells her,“trust the machine.Else you’ll get an ulcer bad as mine.Hundreds of folks have a job that feeds into a motion picture.Your job is,know your lines and show up fit two hours ahead of camera call”(Updike,1996:319).Therefore,the film can not fully express the actors themselves,but only a puppet of the film production team.Essie tries to find transcendence and eternity in film,“with the cry‘Print’!she would know that once again her poor precious perishable self as of that exact moment had been…she would always be there,in some archive or return”(Updike,1996:336).

　　However,in the course of her career,Essie comes to understand that movies are not meant to recreate reality,but to mask it to some extent.She can not understand why the phenomenon of real life has been removed from the stage,but when she becomes Alma,she realizes that“this clarity makes a refuge for actors and audience both,lifting them up from fumbling reality into a reality keener and more efficient but not less true”(Updike,1996:335).

　　In addition,in the process of rapid development of the film industry,people gradually get used to understanding the world through movies instead of reality,and movies gradually become an important factor influencing people’s world outlook and values.Therefore,it is not necessary to regard them as an alternative religion.In the novel,Essie thinks her role in the film would make her immortal.But the irony is that the eternity she seeks turns out to be an illusion,“she had been mulched in—what had once seemed to her absolute immorality turned out to be a slow dissolution within a confused mass of perishing images like a colorful mountain of compressed and rotting garbage”(Updike,1996:465).This discovery leads to the crisis and eventual collapse of Alma’s faith.

　　Although Essie succeeds in movies eventually,her spiritual world is empty.The material wealth and status she has achieved can not replace interior mind.As Teddy says,“Essie,we’re all just dumb-founded at what you’ve accomplished.I don’t think any of us can actually comprehend it”(Updike,1996:344).For a long time under the lens of the movie,she even loses the ability to express her true feelings,“tears,since she had learned to cry on cue,rarely came to her eyes spontaneously”(Updike,1996:352).The emotions she presents are all for the public,and she gradually loses herself in the movie.And she can not find her position and identity in the real world.

　　The privatization of religious belief is a social phenomenon shown in In the Beauty of the Lilies.The so-called privatization of religious belief means that the social significance of religious belief is gradually weakened,and people pay more attention to the interests and gains of individuals in the process of religious belief,which is also a concrete manifestation of the secularization of religious belief.With the decline of traditional religions,individual beliefs are almost no longer controlled by religious organizations,and the American people’s autonomy is more prominent.They can choose their own world view according to their own beliefs.In the novel,the life of Essie is the real projection of the privatization of religion in American society.

　　Although Clarence and Teddy no longer believe in God,their wives remain religious,and Essie grows up in such a religious environment.Essie believes in God and believes that her success is the gift that God gives.However,in real life,Essie completely deviates from the traditional religious doctrines.She pays more attention to the realization of self-worth,and she can even do anything in order to achieve the goal.She would sacrifice anything for a successful film career.In order to become more beautiful and sexier,she does not hesitate to do plastic surgery;in order to make her name more attractive,she even changes her name;she goes to bed with some of the biggest names in show business to get a chance to act.It can be seen that Essie’s religious belief has become a personal religious belief.She only believes what she is willing to believe,so she will not restrict her behavior or thought according to religious doctrines.Compared with the previous two generations of the Wilmots,Essie makes a huge success.she becomes one of the biggest stars in the film industry,reviving the reputation of the Wilmot family.The biggest difference between Essie and Teddy is that Essie has her own faith.In her mind,God is so kind and approachable,as is described in the novel,“she had trouble understanding how people could doubt God’s existence.He was so clear there,next to her,interwoven with her,a palpable pressure,as vital as the sensations in the skin,as dependable as her reflection in the mirror”(Updike,1996:354).

　　Essie’s pursuit of material life and her attitude towards faith further reflect the moral evolution of American society.Essie is the most religious figure in the Wilmot family.She not only acknowledges the existence of God,but also believes that she is a person chosen by God,who will surely help her to succeed.When she encounters some troubles,she always asks God for help.And most of the time her prayers can get a response.“Essie was afraid she would be too stirred-up to sleep,and prayed,Dear God,let me sleep so I can be poised and not make a misstep or stammer onstage tomorrow and look radiant enough.”(Updike,1996:276)It is obvious that God does exist in her mind,but the God she worships has changed.God is no longer sacred,out of reach;God has become a channel for individuals to realize their aspirations.If they have difficulties,they will ask for help;if they have no difficulty,they will give up.

　　However,Essie’s religious belief is different from the traditional religious belief.She pursues the material life she wants under the spiritual support provided by religious belief.In the pursuit of material enjoyment,this belief has become the source of her strength.But it is worth noting that God has no restraint on Alma’s behavior.In Hollywood,her behavior completely deviates from the traditional Puritan ethics.Protestantism emphasizes work,sobriety,frugality,abstinence and serious attitude towards life,among which frugality and abstinence are especially important.In order to go further in the film industry,Essie runs counter to the fine traditions of the past.In order to be a movie star,she changes her name to Alma Demott afterwards,just because it sounds sweet and sexy,and is kind of mysterious-European.She chooses to sell her body,and any man can be her sexual partner as long as she can succeed.This fully demonstrates that the God Alma believes in is no longer the God of traditional Christianity,and the God she believes in is only her personal God.The religion has been secularized.

　　Alma uses the screen as a pulpit for preaching,continuing the missionary work of her grandfather Clarence,and acting as in a different world from reality.She seems to have found a way from the secular world to the transcendent world,which is to obtain spiritual salvation from the screen through the illusion of life created by the film.Alma hopes to show herself through the film,to feel God through the film,so as to obtain a kind of faith.But the film itself is a purely commercial product,as Alma’s agent Arnie reveals the deep secrets of film industry,“the audience showed up,week after week,Westerns,thrillers,A,B,they didn’t much care.You know what the banks used to figure?—that any film,no matter how lousy,would make back sixty percent of its cost”(Updike,1996:357).The commercial value that the film pursues conflicts with Alma’s holy star dream.

　　What’s more,she becomes more and more unscrupulous about sex.She sees sex as a tool for success,having sex with many actors and agents.“When Essie,for whom sex had never been a problem—an entertaining smooth chute into the dark-red bliss of things”(Updike,1996:313).She has never blamed herself or been ashamed about what she did,“shame was not part of her religion”(Updike,1996:313).

　　Essie believes in God,but the goal is not to let God save her soul,but to help her achieve fame and wealth.The God Essie believes in is the“protestant God”,and she gives full play to the personal spirit of the protestant ethic,but completely ignores the moral norms of the traditional religion.Clarence and Teddy abandon their faith and live in poverty despite their good character,while Essie believes in God and succeeds in spite of her decadent life.In this sharp contrast,the author shows that the privatization of religion plays a role in the success of the American people,but the American people also pay a certain price.

　　In the novel In the Beauty of the Lilies,Updike chooses the representative of popular culture—movie.New things dominate people’s spiritual life,cinemas replace churches,stories in Hollywood movies replace people’s prayers for Christian heaven,and the characters in the film have become the objects of people’s yearning and worship.In the eyes of Alma and Clark,there is no real God.Alma uses God to promote her success,and the master of cult organization,Yaser,has become the true God in Clark’s mind.In Essie’s mind,God is just like these movie stars,she worships Him,and wants to get His protection.There is no boundary between religion and popular culture.

　　In the 1960s,a large-scale counterculture movement broke out in the United States by young people,who attacked the mainstream culture and social norms of the American society in various ways and attempted to practice their ideal of creating a new society and a new way of life.This cultural movement took place in the period of social transformation and the turbulent American society and had a profound impact on the development of American society and culture.It can be said that this is a cultural civil war between the traditional culture in the era of shortage and the new culture in the era of abundance.In the novel,the fourth generation Clark lives in this era,and the author writes many movies to reflect the social problems at that time,such as the films Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate.

　　The film Bonnie and Clyde was released in the United States in 1967.Although the film is based on real people and facts,it is set in the Great Depression of 1930s.The inner sense of resistance,depression and despair is the anti-war and anti-government sentiment of American society at that time(1960s).By describing the love experience of the college graduate Ben,the film The Graduate reflects the growth of young people and their rebellion against adult society.It accurately represents the young people of that era:they are rebellious,passionate,envious of the future,longing for justice,disgusting with hypocrisy,pursuing happiness,and squandering their youth for this purpose.

　　Like Ben in The Graduate,Updike portrays Clark as one of the many young men of the 1960s.Living in such a chaotic social environment,it is difficult for these young people to find a suitable position in society.They hope to be recognized by the society.However,in a society lacking in purpose and significance,the reality makes it difficult for them to find the value of survival.Parents,schools and the society can not provide them with the clear goals they need.Thus,this generation of young people shows a self-concept characterized by high ambition and low motivation.They are still idealists,but not necessarily willing to take risks to realize their ideals.Traditional values have been impacted,and the concepts of truth,good and evil,beauty and ugliness have been suddenly reversed.They pursue a completely different way of life and meaning.

　　Clark is lost in a state of faith,which leads to his death in the fire.One of the tragedies of his life is the empty state of life caused by a lack of faith,“all this arduously attained and Mex-trimmed multi-million-dollar home being turned into the shit of boring and chatter going nowhere,not even to bed,people too strung-out and scared of or tired of the idea of love”,and“they often improve their moods with a few too many chemicals”(Updike,1996:411).Clark has a desire to find faith,he has a conscious awareness of God and faith.He can’t find a way out of faith,he doesn’t know“who was this God everybody talked of but no one ever met”,and he also doesn’t know“what to believe”,but he has an instinctive reflection on the meaning of life.He knows that“he was going to die some day,and that is unthinkable–everything going out like a light bulb,and people and planets going on and on without him”(Updike,1996:408).But tragically his desires are not answered,as he turns to his grandfather Teddy for help,but Teddy could do nothing about it,because he has no faith to offer,he has only“the facts of daily existence.Weather,family news,local change”(Updike,1996:412).And the lack of external religious guidance is the main reason for Clark to finally go to the extreme religious organization.

　　In addition,the loss of religious belief leads to the loss of Clark’s self-awareness.If Alma is still struggling between Essie and Alma,then Clark/Esau/Slick completely loses himself,just like a movie character who changes constantly with different scenes.He is immersed in the film,unable to distinguish his own behavior,and he always think he is in the film.The first sentence of the chapter begins,“there isn’t an awful lot to say about me”(Updike,1996:362),and in the Temple,when Yaser first asks Clark about himself,he also gives the same answer.

　　Clark can not tell the difference between the real world and the movie world.If Clarence sees the movie world from the real world,Clark sees the real world from the movie world,and it is the dislocation of this direction that leads to his tragic ending.His mind is filled with“inner movies”,Clark’s life has been soaked and frozen in movies,and in the novel,when the Temple and the police come into violent conflict,the scene seems to Clark like a movie.“Very quickly,and like a film in no synchronization with the rattle of gunfire and indignant yells of men”(Updike,1996:446),Clark finds a feeling in the illusion of the movie at this point,“not only was Clark’s head suddenly as clear as an adjusted TV screen but his eyesight too”(Updike,1996:446).When Yaser calls the movie is the devil,Clark retorts,“please,don’t call it trash.We lived and breathed movies around the house”(Updike,1996:380).Clark’s memories are filled with movies,and only movies can restore them,“Clark had these irritating memory blanks,more and more of them lately;but then the break in the film was mended and the inner movie resumed”(Updike,1996:382).When Yaser talks about his experience in Vietnam,Clark exclaims,“oh,’Nam!You were there?That’s cool.Was it as wild as they had it in Apocalypse Now,all that rock music blaring and explosions all over the place?”(Updike,1996:384)Real-life disasters seem to Clark like a movie joke.The film not only shapes Clark’s spiritual world,but also makes his self-realization possible only in the film.The heroic act in the fire at the end of the novel is the interpretation of this logic.The film becomes the place of his ultimate pursuit and realization of the meaning of life,and also stages the tragedy caused by the loss of God’s faith.

　　Unlike his mother who has her own God to believe in,Clark has no God.And he can’t get comfort from these mass media.As Clark says,“The world as entertainer fell flat some days”(Updike,1996:432).Under the aggression of popular culture,traditional religion has lost its foothold;without mental support the masses are increasingly unable to prove their existence.Just like Clark,more and more young people are trapped in a mental dilemma.The chaos of thought and the turbulence of society make cults come into being.In 1980s,traditional religions have been unable to meet the needs of the American people,and the rise of religious reform activities has given birth to many new religions,which can also be seen as a manifestation of secularization of religion.Among the new religions,there are some extremist sects,whose doctrines are mostly anti-social and anti-human,and thus become what people call cults.The cult’s mystical,fanatical teachings are easy to attract spiritually vacant teenagers.

　　In the novel,the lack of faith leads Clark into cultism,looking for spiritual sustenance.“Clark could not remember when he had decided to believe in Jesse;the big man had just stepped into him like a drifter taking over an empty shack.In Jesse’s presence he felt possessed of a value he possessed nowhere else”(Updike,1996:412).He joins the Temple,the Adventist cult led by Jesse Smith,who proclaims himself the new American Messiah.Standing in opposition to what he calls King Gog(the U.S.government,or“government of godless”),Smith believes God is about to act through him and waits with his followers for the Day of Reckoning.

　　By joining the Temple,Clark finds a role he is good at,becoming PR man for a group that increasingly find itself running counter to law:“So he liked it that at the temple of true and actual faith he has the suave one,the slick outside operator,the one who gave the TV interview when Jesse refused to come out of his bedroom”(Updike,1996:415).He becomes a star,and finds significance of his existence.At the end of the novel,Clark’s death indicates modern people’s spiritual crisis,and the traditional religion has lost its conventionally prominent position.Updike expresses his concern about the future of religion through the sad endings.

　　In the novel In the Beauty of the Lilies,Updike,by telling a family tale,depicts the history of four generations of the Wilmots in the 20th century America.The four generations of the Wilmots,living through the different historical and cultural periods,are closely related to religion and movies.This thesis is intended to analyze how people’s faith changes under the influence of popular culture,and reflect on the interaction between the gradual decline of the traditional religion in people’s lives on the one hand and the rise of popular culture on the other.

　　Although the novel focuses specifically on one family,the Wilmots in the story,there are other people involved.Many more families and social groups go through the different historical stages and experience the cultural impact as the Wilmots do.To a large extent,many of the social and cultural events as experienced by the Wilmots are experienced many more other people like them.As is suggested by John Updike,the 20th century simultaneously witnesses two things,namely,the decline of the influence of conventional religion on general people and the rise of popular culture and its corresponding impact.As an existing phenomenon,the prosperity of film is real,and people going to the cinema is one of the reasons for the prosperity of film.The Wilmot family’s obsession with movies is not a special event,but a reflection of the American public’s love and obsession with movies.

　　The first generation Wilmot,a priest,affected by the new ideas and the mass media,steps down from the pulpit.From then on,his faith begins to sway,and no longer believes in God.In turn,he goes into the cinema to seek temporary relief.This symbolizes the decline of conventional religion and the budding of the film industry.Affected by his father’s loss of faith,Teddy is discouraged from God,but he is not freed from the film and eventually surrenders to reality.Teddy’s daughter,Essie,is ambitious and believes in God,and attributes her success in Hollywood to God.Essie’s success symbolizes the rise of film industry and the secularization of religion.The fourth generation Clark,who has no religious beliefs,relies on the film to dispose time,and then he is immersed in the cult temptation.

　　Based on this,this thesis features an in-depth analysis of the spiritual state of the main characters by referring to their association with both religious belief and popular culture as represented by movies,and thorough investigation into the interaction between religious faith and popular culture.It can be argued that the contradiction of America between the highly industrialized economy and void spiritual condition is a

　　reflection of the decline of conventional religion and the secularization of religion in general.All in all,the Wilmot family witnesses the changes between the popular culture and American faith in the modern century,revealing the people’s confused spiritual state.

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