Consuming Visions: Mass Culture and the Lourdes Shrine

by Suzanne K. Kaufman

Plastic Madonnas, packaged holy tours, and biblical theme parks can arouse discomfort, laughter, and even revulsion in religious believers and nonbelievers alike. Scholars, too, often see the intermingling of religion and commerce as a corruption of true spirituality. Suzanne K. Kaufman challenges these assumptions in her examination of the Lourdes pilgrimage in late nineteenth-century France. Consuming Visions offers new ways to interpret material forms of worship, female piety, and modern commercial culture. Kaufman argues that the melding of traditional pilgrimage activities with a newly developing mass culture produced fresh expressions of popular faith. For the devout women of humble origins who flocked to the shrine, this intensely exciting commercialized worship offered unprecedented opportunities to connect with the sacred and express their faith in God. New devotional activities at Lourdes transformed the act of the train became a moving chapel, and popular entertainments such as wax museums offered vivid recreations of visionary events. Using the press and the strategies of a new advertising industry to bring a mass audience to Lourdes, Church authorities remade centuries-old practices of miraculous healing into a modern public spectacle. These innovations made Lourdes one of the most visited holy sites in Catholic Europe. Yet mass pilgrimage also created problems. The development of Lourdes, while making religious practice more democratically accessible, touched off fierce conflicts over the rituals and entertainments provided by the shrine. These conflicts between believers and secularists played out in press scandals across the European continent. By taking the shrine seriously as a site of mass culture, Kaufman not only breaks down the opposition between sacred and profane but also deepens our understanding of commercialized religion as a fundamental feature of modernity itself.

Genres: History

264 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2004

Reviews

[Ella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many collectors of vintage Catholic tat, I’m well aware of the omnipresence of Lourdes kitsch (and indeed even have a vintage mantilla showing Bernadette encountering the Virgin as a mantelpiece covering in my living room. I bought it when my ex dumped me, in perhaps the most Catholicism dork lesbian coping mechanism move of all time). This book puts that omnipresent kitsch in the centre of its argument, about Lourdes as simultaneous site of holiness and nineteenth century consumerist paradise, portraying it as a kind of holy resort town bringing both holiness and modernity to nineteenth century consumers. It’s a fascinating argument (and, because I’m me, I was particularly drawn to the mentions of Lourdes vs La Salette controversy).

[Roland Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heavily influenced by Cultural Studies theorists, Kaufman is interested in how new technologies, media, and marketing shaped pilgrim’s experiences of the shrine. “Commercialization,” she writes, “was central to the development of the Lourdes pilgrimage site, to its success as an expression of popular religious faith, and to the century of tumultuous debate over worship at the shrine.” Kaufman focuses on the trains that took people to Lourdes, the postcards and trinkets they bought there, and the photos that they took home of their time at the shrine.

See my full review here: http://wordsbecamebooks.com/2014/11/1...