Playing with Paradigms: The Christ-figure Genre in Contemporary Film

Numerous mainstream films feature a plot line loosely based on the Gospel narrative and a protagonist who has some Christ-like features. This paper will argue that the Christ-figure motif is not a minor element in contemporary cinema; rather, Christ-figure films constitute a genre in their own right. After providing a brief overview of the Christ-figure film, as illustrated by The Shawshank Redemption (1994), this paper will engage in an analysis of two movies—the Quebecois film C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005) and the American film Stranger than Fiction (2006)—that explicitly and humorously demonstrate the interplay of convention and innovation, familiarity and novelty that is the salient characteristic of the genre film.