Validation, Comfort, and Syncretic Belief in the Afterlife: U.S. Viewers' Perceptions ofLong Island Medium
Dados Bibliográficos
| AUTOR(ES) | |
|---|---|
| AFILIAÇÃO(ÕES) | Georgia State University |
| ANO | 2019 |
| TIPO | Artigo |
| PERIÓDICO | Anthropology of Consciousness |
| ISSN | 1053-4202 |
| E-ISSN | 1556-3537 |
| EDITORA | Sage Publications (United States) |
| DOI | 10.1111/anoc.12108 |
| ADICIONADO EM | 2025-08-18 |
| MD5 |
a790e6b8c3440e2e4a691577aa90a3ed
|
Resumo
On the reality TV programLong Island Mediumand in public performances, professional spirit medium Theresa Caputo interprets messages she says she receives from the spirits of the deceased. Based on interviews with people who have seen her on television or in a live stage performance, I sought to learn more about how viewers experience, interpret, and are affected by these readings and by her presentation of life after death. For viewers who believed in this television medium's abilities, I was interested in how her interpretation of the spirit world corresponded with theirs. While some viewers were quite skeptical, for others the program provided a level of comfort about lost relatives and/or offered a means of validating or further understanding their own personal experiences with nonempirical phenomena. In this article, I explore howLong Island Mediummay offer a cultural framework for interpreting perceptions of spirit entities that is not available in mainstream U.S. culture or religion.