A walking, talking Shroud of Turin

People who read the world famous weekly The Village Voice are sophisticated. Even so, Stephanie Zacharek (pictured), the paper’s film critic, would have caused a lot of head scratching with this image evoking sentence just a few years ago.

For his role in The Machinist, Christian Bale dropped to a sub-skeletal 122 pounds; he looked like a walking, talking Shroud of Turin.

Having only heard of the Shroud of Turin or perhaps only having seen pictures of the face is not enough. This is a full-body visual analogy. What has happened in the last few years to make so many more fully aware of the shroud?