Controversial Film _ Christologies Jo Pearson and Paul Overend consider what has made cinematographic portrayals of Jesus in film controversial.
You'd have done much better if you'd had it planned Why'd you choose such a backward time in such a strange land?
If you'd come today you could have reached a whole nation Israel in 4BC had no mass communication.
Judas' challenge to Jesus, in Tim Rice’s lyrics for Jesus Christ Superstar, makes an obvious connection between religion and film. The Christian story has always been told by images, from long before words were widely read. It is unsurprising then that the new visual medium of cinema was used to present Jesus, following a long tradition from icons and statues to frescos and stained glass windows. However, cinematographic representations of Jesus have had a history of controversy, from the earliest images in film to the latest portrayal of The Passion, by Mel Gibson. What is it that has made presentations of Jesus in film controversial?
The very earliest images of Jesus on film were subject to the newly formed British Board of Film Censors, which banned direct portrayals of Jesus in 1912, even though these were rather pious versions of the Christian story.
However since the 1960s, after such general bans had been removed, films began to represent Jesus in challenging ways. This change began as part of a cultural revolution that attempted to shed the legacy of Christian piety and religious conformity, and continued the 1950s youth culture, iconoclasm, and freedom for everything.
Reflecting the pop culture of the ‘60s, Jesus was de-theologised and presented as an all-singing, alldancing, anti-establishment hero, in films such as Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). The long hair of the early iconic representations of Jesus reflected the long hair of the hippies.
The flowing robes were more reminiscent of kaftan-wearing drug mystics and the sun-bleached hair and the blue eyes suggested the beaches of California. The tour bus drew on the hippy-trail, and music was the only language capable of bringing home the message of peace, freedom and love.
The representation of Jesus put forward in the story and song lyrics of Jesus Christ Superstar offered a challenge to traditional ideas and images. In the song 'Gethsemane’, for instance, Jesus confesses to being uncertain, tired and scared:
I have changed, I'm not as sure As when we started Then I was inspired Now I'm sad and tired Listen surely I've exceeded expectations Tried for three years seems like thirty...
Why then am I scared to finish what I started?
Jesus is rather like a petulant teenager complaining to his Father, as when he adds. ...What you started - I didn’t start it.
Jesus wants to know why he must die, whether it will make any difference or will it be in vain.
He even asked what his own reward will be if he goes through with it. A very human Jesus is portrayed, with an ever-widening gap between himself and God.
Quite graphically he submits to this Father, saying, Bleed me beat me kill me take me now — before I change my mind This is far from the reverent submission of trust by the Son to his Divine Father that the Church is used to honouring on Maundy Thursday.
He become an approachable saviour, someone who could come down even to the level of the drug addicts The '60s emphasis on the importance of the self allowed for a personal and intimate relationship with a very human Jesus. He become an approachable saviour, someone who could come down even to the level of the drug addicts, who 'go straight’ by ‘getting high on Jesus’.
Given the popular understanding of the '60s as a decade of decadence, the older generation was perhaps happy to see young people engaging with the Christian story, even if this engagement necessitated a certain amount of accommodation to their language and culture.
Challenging to traditional theology and interpretation of Jesus this may be, but at least Jesus Christ Superstar did not mock Christianity.
By contrast, Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) certainly dic appear to be poking fun at Christianity. The Life of Brian has continued to be one of the most controversial films ever to represent the gospel stories of Christ, along with Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) almost a decade later. It stood in stark contrast to John Kirsh & Peter Sykes’s pious film Jesus (1979), with which it was sometimes screened. In the Life of Brian, however, Brian is not Jesus, is not a representation of Jesus or a ‘cheerful Jesus': as his mother says, ‘he's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy'! This is made explicit in the film right at the start when the three kings, realising they have gone to the wrong stable and therefore the wrong baby, return to snatch back their gifts and take them to the right stable, which is shown bathed in heavenly light.
Additionally, when Jesus himself is shown - for instance, during the Sermon on the Mount which Brian and his mother attend - he is shown from a distance, in his own space surrounded by his own people, quite separate from Brian.
In this scene, the crowd, not surprisingly, is finding it difficult to hear, and one asks his neighbour what Jesus has just said.
He replies, ‘Blessed are the cheesemakers’ (rather than Matthew’s “peace-makers’). When perplexed at such a saying, the man explains to his neighbour that Jesus probably has the makers of all dairy products in mind.
Perhaps this intentionally satirises biblical scholarship with its concern for detailed interpretation. But perhaps the most offensive scenes are those of the crucifixion, which parody the most poignant moments of Christianity: instead of 'My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Brian is forsaken by his fellow zealots; and instead of 'It is finished’, we are presented with the words 'Life's a piece of shit/When you look at it’ in the gloriously irreverent song, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.
Hardly surprising, then, that the film was regarded as blasphemous by some, banned in cinemas across the USA, Europe and the UK, and earned the condemnation of the Festival of Light. It was a good job, perhaps, that Eric Idle's earlier suggested title of Jesus Christ - Lust for Glory (a play on the 1970 film Patton: Lust for Glory which presented the American general as an aggressive megalomaniac) was not used.
But if Monty Python's Life of Brian is seen as the satire it is meant to be, it makes some interesting observations. It is a reminder that Jesus was one among a number of magicians and allegedly messianic leaders, and was meant to ridicule the need for and belief in saviour figures in general, rather than Jesus in particular. It caused an outcry because people naturally saw Brian as Jesus, simply because his life is shown as a parallel. Not all were aware that there were lots of (false) messiahs or that Jesus was not the only man to be crucified within the boundaries of the Roman Empire. So while Brian is not Jesus, he still offers a challenging question of the need to acclaim and follow a man as a messiah, to believe in him as offering salvation and an answer to the ‘meaning of life’ (the title of a later film by the Monty Python team).
Later, some critics also condemned Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Denis Potter's play, Son of Man (first shown on television in 1969) as Roman collaborator and has the job of assassinating him but is persuaded to follow him instead.
Mary Magdalene is a childhood friend of Jesus and now works as a prostitute. Jesus makes regular visits, but only for conversation.
The second part of the film offers a selection of Gospel stories, including his baptism and temptation, Sermon on the Mount, water into wine, woman taken in adultery (here shown as Mary Magdalene) and the raising of Lazarus. When Jesus enters Jerusalem he overturns the money-changers (twice), is betrayed by Judas (at Jesus’ prompting) and sentenced by Pilate (the Jewish involvement is played down). He then utters the ‘forgiveness’ saying (Luke), the ‘forsaken’ saying blasphemous. Potter's Jesus is a rebellious anti- (Matthew / Mark) and John’s ‘It is finished’, aligning all establishment figure who irreverently spars with Pilate, the gospel accounts. Between the second and third seemingly inviting crucifixion. No burst of sunlight saying is a controversial dream sequence in which Jesus takes away from the horror of the crucifixion, as his is offered a reprieve by an angelic young girl and given mutilated body cries out, 'My God, why God, why have the chance to make a happy family life with Mary you forsaken me?' For Potter, it is a real question. What Magdalene. Only on his deathbed in this dream does sort of God allows this to happen to his Son? Scorsese’s Jesus realise the angel that led him to this life was really Last Temptation explores the inner struggle of a confused an agent of Satan tempting him to renounce his fate, and and seemingly haunted Jesus, torn between his human so he struggles back to the cross, an old man. Back at the will and divine vocation. cross, he awakes from the vision to find that a moment in time has passed and that he has I created the truth out of what people needed _ overcome the ‘last - * temptation’. and what they believed. If | have to crucify you During the dream ° , th to save them, then Ill crucify you. If | have to a a from the cross hears the apostle preaching about his death and resurrection. Jesus resurrect you, then Ill do that too The first part of Scorsese’s film is a calls him a liar and Paul defends himself with the fictitious / imaginative account of Jesus’ early life as a words, ‘I created the truth out of what people needed carpenter, engaged in making crosses for the Romans. and what they believed. If I have to crucify you to save As in previous films, the roles of Judas and Mary them, then Ill crucify you. If I have to resurrect you, Magdalene are expanded. Judas is a friend of Jesus and then I’ll do that too’. The film makes explicit the a member of the zealot party. He regards Jesus as a separation of the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, through this imaginary device of the dream, challenging traditional perceptions of the Jesus story as history by offering an alternative myth.
While these images of Jesus have been criticised and even condemned as blasphemous, they have each been notorious because they have offered an informed challenge to perception.
Monty Python's Life of Brian and Scorsese's Last Temptation have challenged Christian ideas of what Christ was like, in terms of personality, appearance and theology. It is this scholarly critique of Christianity that deserves the name controversial. With this in mind, let us consider Mel Gibson’s latest film, The Passion of the Christ (2004). This has also been described as controversial, although its portrayal of Jesus is more pious than critical. It is in the tradition of other films, like Jesus in 1979, which was made in partnership with, and adopted by Christianity and used as an evangelical tool. The Passion may be a reminder that the suffering of Jesus was not beautiful and question pious Western images of Jesus, but the portrayal is not critical of traditional imagery; rather it revels in traditional imagery, offering meditations on the mopping up of the ‘precious blood’ by Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and by The Passion may be a reminder that the suffering of Jesus was not beautiful and question pious Western images of Jesus, but the portrayal is not critical of traditional imagery the lady Veronica, whose veil will carry the image of Christ; the veneration of the cross, led by his mother; the wounds of Christ, which are linked with flashbacks to the breaking of the bread and the blessing of the cup; the blood and water which flow from Jesus’ side; an homage to the tools of the passion (crown of thorns, nails, hammer and spear, which were so often portrayed in religious art on the altar or reredos after the Middle Ages); and a final statuesque pieta, near the film’s close.
The film is no more historical than the gospels, although its theology is not that of a single gospel, but the theology of the Catholic Church. It even retains that church’s idea that the Temple Priests and their supporters were responsible for the death of Jesus, as if blind to awareness of the historical repercussions of blaming ‘the Jews’. Its only challenge is an emotional appeal to feel horror for what Christ, after an initial struggle in the garden of Gethsemane, then so willingly underwent.
In short, although Mel Gibson’s The Passion has earned the title ‘controversial’, because of its brutal portrayal of the passion and its laying the blame clearly. on the religious authorities, it does not merit such a title in the history of cinematic portrayals of Christ. This film is not in the critical tradition of Jesus Christ Superstar, Monty Python's Life of Brian, or The Last Temptation of Christ, or of others, such as Derek Jarman’s The Garden (1990), that have continued in this critical and reflective tradition. In the history of film it will not go down as a scholarly and reflective challenge to perceptions of Jesus, but as a footnote of Catholic piety. However, rather than representing the story ‘much better’ by using ‘mass communication’, the film serves as a reminder of a strange psychology, if not perverse sadomasochism, by looking to a ‘backward time’ in the ‘strange land’ of pre-Vatican Catholic spirituality.
Jo Pearson is Lecturer in Religious Studies at Cardiff University. Paul Overend teaches on her first year module. This article is adapted from Pearson's ‘Jesus in History and Film’ in Gwilym Beckerlegge [ed.] From Sacred Text to Internet, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2001.