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Robert Cettl www.widerscreenings.com
The Jesus Irony
Christian/Rationalist
Ontology in Two Screen Depictions of Jesus Christ
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There have been films about
Jesus Christ since the silent era’s original versions of both Ben-Hur and King of Kings.
Casting in these films has often been problematic – Burt Lancaster (an
avowed atheist) rejected the lead role in the remake of Ben-Hur (eventually
played by Charlton Heston) on the grounds that he did not want to
participate in Christian propaganda. Yet The Greatest Story Ever Told,
Jesus of
Nazareth, The
Gospel According to St. Matthew, Jesus Christ Superstar,
Godspell
and Monty Python’s Life
of Brian through to The
Last Temptation of Christ and The Passion of the Christ
have enthralled audiences, giving hope to the faithful and entertaining
the non-believer with ontological allegories of human nature,
“sinfulness”, divinity, good and evil. All of these films,
with
the possible exceptions of the Python crew, endorsed the divinity of
Jesus Christ without question, fully accepting of Christian belief –
the argument over The
Last Temptation of Christ
was not about his divinity but the extent to which he retained some
vestige of humanity, masculine sexual desire and free will in conflict
with what the film eludes to as God’s pre-ordained plan for the
salvation of humankind.
To the rationalist, the dilemma is
simple – did Jesus Christ have any say in the matter of his
destiny? Could He have said “no” to God’s plan and chosen a
life
for himself fulfilling at a human rather than divine level?
Did
Jesus truly manifest his own destiny or merely acquiesce to one imposed
upon him from without? Consequently, many rationalist film
studies of the individual’s capacity to manifest their own destiny
involve allegories of Jesus Christ in which He rejects his role as
saviour to pursue a life of his own determination, in effect denying
God’s plan for a life of his own (including, most problematically to
the devout Christian, the embrace of sexual “sin”). The Last Man on Earth,
Cool Hand
Luke and Easy
Rider
for instance all feature Christ-like characters rejecting God’s plan
but in essence doomed to it – human individuality in conflict with
divine pre-ordainment. Indeed, Jesus figures in rationalist
cinematic discourses far from representing the peak of human perfection
– the fusion of the human and the divine according to Christian lore –
represent the denial of human individuality simply because Jesus had no
say in the matter of his pre-ordained cruci-fiction; just as the Virgin
Mary – if God’s plan was absolutely and without question destined to be
followed through – had no say whatsoever in the matter of Jesus’
conception (arguably thus is the conception of Jesus rape by
deity?). For God’s plan to be supreme, these perfect being
have
no free will, a fact Christianity has obfuscated in nonsensical
doctrines like “the immaculate conception”.
Indeed, the vexed
question of Jesus’ supposed divinity (at mythic level, not as truth)
and his innate humanity (and corresponding masculine sexuality) have
preoccupied filmmakers of no belief, wavering belief and committed
belief alike. Significantly to the Rationalist, as the
Christian
Jesus is a man of no sin, he is paradoxically not a man at all and
therefore of little relevance to humanity except as a token
sacrifice. In the Rationalist view, Jesus only has relevance
for
his human nature, specifically his human inclination to “sin”,
something denied outright by Christian orthodoxy. The first
rallying point thus for the Christian community to protest the
burgeoning Rationalist/transgressive representation of Jesus on film
(permissible – unlike representations of the Prophet Mohammad on film,
strictly forbidden in Islam) came in the late 1920s when Spaniard
surrealists Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel made L’Age D’Or
in which Jesus is seen drunkenly emerging from a brothel (presumably
after having had intercourse with Mary Magdalene). Catholics protested
the film and the fascist Spanish authority banned it. The ban
enhanced the surrealists’ reputation and the incipient art movement
became one of the C20th’s most significant contributions to art /
literary / film history, eclipsed only by the growth of Existentialist
philosophy in the 1950s (influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous
pronouncement “God is dead”) and the development of post-modernism
towards the end of the century. The sexualized Jesus was a
humanized Jesus and blasphemy was the assertion of human nature against
God’s Laws, seen as hypocritical in their disavowal of the
psycho-sexual complexities of human nature (specifically Jesus’ human
masculinity).
What was significant about the early Church
pressure to censor “radical” images of Jesus Christ on film was the
determination of “blasphemy”. The advance of secular humanism
has
ensured that for most civilized countries “blasphemy” is no
justification for censorship, although technically it remains on the
law books in such Christian-led countries as Ireland and Australia
(where such outspoken Christian leaders as Fred Nile petition in the
name of “Christian Democracy” for mandatory internet censorship as
authoritarian as that of the Chinese Communist Party while opposing the
nation’s adoption of a Bill of Rights guaranteeing free speech in the
manner of the US Constitution). “Blasphemy” to the Christian
is
an offence once punishable by death – an affront to God. But,
by
definition, blasphemous expression in rationalist film is one of
self-actualization – inherently transgressive, it shows the individual
asserting their humanity, their free will, their moral relativism and
their ability to manifest their own destiny in defiance of a God-given
plan which in its absolutism denies human complexity and human free
will. Today, although resisted with equal vehemence by moral
charlatans who would re-impose the death penalty for blasphemy and
heresy if they had the power (all sanctioned by God of course),
“blasphemy” has emerged as the metaphor of choice in
rationalist-atheist-humanist discourses concerning the
inter-relationship between divinity and humanity in the screen
representation of Jesus Christ.
That of course brings us to Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ.
Scorsese, a lapsed Catholic whose early film Mean Streets
was drenched in Catholic fear, worked from a script by Paul Schrader
(himself raised in a strict Calvinist household which did not allow him
to watch film as it was of the devil’s party) adapting the novel by
Nikos Kazantsakis. Where every previous American Film
depiction
of Jesus had been reverential, Scorsese and Schrader took a vastly
different approach. The supposed divinity of Jesus Christ was
not
the film’s central issue – what preoccupied the filmmakers was the
conception of Jesus’ humanity. For the Rationalist, in
complete
opposition to the Christian, if Jesus was to be relevant as a teacher
of any significance in human history it is his humanity rather than his
divinity which is central. Thus, the character of Jesus in
Scorsese’s film (played by Willem Dafoe) is seen conflicted, torn
between his intimation of the Divine (in the form of auditory and
visual hallucinations – the literal talking snake of the Bible – more
akin to psychotic dysfunction than spiritual destiny) and his
all-too-human sexual urges. What the Christians considered
blasphemous was the film’s acknowledgement of Jesus’ humanity: Jesus
here, in the film’s most controversial scene, rejects his role as the
Messiah to step down off the cross and live out what is his human
rather than divine ambition. Jesus, as a man in charge of his
own
destiny, chooses to reject God’s Law to have a wife (Mary Magdalene)
and raise a family.
This humanist re-vision of Jesus as a man is
complete when, barely glimpsed but strongly implied, he has sex with
Mary Magdalene as a normal man making love with his wife. The
Christians considered this the height of blasphemy and it is intriguing
to examine the moral implications behind this. Firstly, the
humanist Jesus in rejecting the Divinity of the Cross asserts what is
an essential humanist principle – the exercise of free will.
Jesus here chooses to manifest a destiny in defiance of God: it is a
truly human self-assertion. Although this Jesus reconciles
his
humanity with God’s plan after all, the humanist core of the message is
central – for Jesus to have meaning he must have human urges and the
free will to choose how to manifest his destiny. For Scorsese
and
Schrader, the weakness in reverential depictions of a Jesus figure in
traditional Hollywood narratives is precisely this lack of free will –
Jesus as the Son of God has no choice in the matter of his
destiny. Jesus is the one spiritual teacher who, if one
accepts
his divinity, has no individual free will, nor any ability to manifest
a destiny for himself as an individual human being: he is completely
subservient to “God’s will” to the point of the loss of his human
individuality. Jesus is a powerless scapegoat in the
Christian
amalgam: far from a saviour, he is a pathetic victim whose death has
been pre-ordained. Without any free will nor human urges, the
Christian vision of Jesus far from perfecting humankind of its sinful
weakness presents a victim of circumstance powerless to challenge what
fate has in store for him and assert his humanity. Such a
Jesus,
to Scorsese and Schrader, has no relevance whatsoever to the
complexities of human nature: devoid of his own free will, Jesus Christ
is irrelevant as an example to humanity, a myth.
Scorsese and
Schrader in presenting a Jesus who is aware of both his humanity and
his divinity and capable of making a choice to either accept or reject
God’s will expose the fundamental humanist flaw in the Christian belief
in Jesus’ divinity – the “saviour” has no free will and is thus of no
relevance as a leader or teacher to a humanity in which individual free
will is an inviolable freedom and means of self-definition.
Indeed, it is only through following the example of the supposedly
divine Jesus Christ that Christians can both claim ideological freedom
and justify a censorship regime that is the complete antithesis of the
human freedom of expression. In that way, Christianity rather
than a moral solution is a paradox which as a religion is fundamentally
hypocritical in its condemnation of an exploratory celebration of
essential humanist free will as “blasphemous”. “Blasphemy” is
an
absolutist moral imposition on innate human self-expression, essential
in the manifestation of an individual destiny in which the self and not
God is supreme. If The
Last Temptation of Christ
is blasphemous the only conclusion is that the Christian view of a
divine Jesus Christ is irrelevant as a human being and hence a mythic
figure of little consequence in what such Church-banned books as
Charles Haanel’s The
Master Key System
and its introduction to what is now termed the “Law of Attraction”
determine as the inviolable opportunity of every human being to create
their own destiny. A Jesus without a choice as to whether to
accept or reject the cross has no significance to humanity – as God
supposedly sent his only begotten son, his mission was predetermined
and the Son had no say in the matter.
Indeed, the absolutist
rhetoric of Christian dogma in historically repressing and punishing
any individual self-expression and self-actualization except that
condoned by the Church in accordance with God’s Law therefore robs the
individual of any free choice in the matter. The Christian
religion in Rationalist cinema is the enemy of humanity in its
subordination of humanity to God’s Will and its equation of the
complexities of human nature with a “sinfulness” in need of Divine
forgiveness: an absurdity the Rationalist rejects as having any
philosophical truth. Christianity thus, as a religion, is
fundamentally opposed to the principle of individual self-determination
which runs through the Law of Attraction as described in such popular
bestsellers as The
Secret. Which now brings us to the acceptable
Christian representation of Jesus Christ: Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
This is a film which Christians want shown to their children (just as,
with typical Christian hypocrisy, they would ban the humanist vision of
Jesus having free will in The
Last Temptation of Christ
from being shown to adults): in Australia it was rated as suitable only
for people over 15 years of age and was greeted by a petition to lower
the classification so as to permit children as young as 12 to see it.
Gibson
is also, like Scorsese, a Catholic. However, far from a
lapsed
Catholic, Gibson belongs to a particular sect which holds that the last
valid Pope was Pious XII, the Pope who acquiesced with Hitler in the
Second World War to ensure that as long as the Church supported Der
Fuhrer Catholicism would be the official religion of Third Reich
Germany. The anti-humanist capitulation of Catholicism to
Nazism
is thus something Gibson – once booked for drunk driving and screaming
anti-Semitic profanities – endorses as the last expression of a valid
Catholicism. With the current Pope Benedict a former member
of
the Hitler Youth who ordered his Bishops to cover up a massive child
sex abuse scandal until the statute of limitations had run out and the
Vatican would not have to pay compensation (while hypocritically
condemning extreme wealth as a mortal sin mind you), one cannot help
but wonder just how perverted a denial of humanity Catholicism has
become. Thus, it is no surprise that The Passion of the Christ
restores the reverence towards Jesus as a holy figure beyond
humanity. As this Jesus has no humanity, no free will at all
in
his pre-ordained destiny, his suffering and sacrifice ring
hollow. Beyond sin, Jesus has no choice and the film instead
glorifies the horrendous suffering of an irrelevant, mindless scapegoat
who, according to the humanist-rationalist tradition in cinema, having
no free will in no way can represent humanity.
Yet, the Jesus
Gibson presents as admirable, and a conception of Jesus that is
endorsed by Christians throughout the world, is a cipher.
Gibson
accepts without question the supremacy of God’s Law. The
fulfilment of prophecy in the Messianic gibberish surrounding Christ’s
cruci-fiction robs Gibson’s Jesus of any free will. Also
beyond
sin, this Jesus has no human weakness, no masculine sexual desire and
no comprehension of himself as an individual capable of making his own
choices. Gibson celebrates a Jesus who is merely a vehicle of
the
Lord. His human nature does not concern Gibson, only his
divinity. Yet, it is in the expression of divine will in
Christ’s
suffering that Gibson makes what is an anti-humanist
statement.
Where Scorsese and Schrader sought to emphasize Christ’s humanity,
Gibson chooses to emphasize his physical suffering. For some
20
minutes, Jesus is whipped and scourged by the Roman soldiers, shown in
explicit, nauseating details: ripped flesh, slow-motion flying
blood. Indeed, the “passion” of the Christ here is, to a
Rationalist believer in an individual’s ability to manifest their own
destiny, mindless suffering. Here, Gibson’s Jesus is a fraud
–
with no humanity, no choice, no free will, the suffering of Jesus is
that of a victim and its glorification by Gibson is nothing less than
the violent suppression and exploitation of the human body in order to
validate the lack of human free will in God’s universe.
Just as
Jesus symbolically represents a humanity forgiven for its sins, for
Gibson Jesus himself is a man of no sin taking the responsibility for
the sinner upon himself (but, as he himself is free of sin, this is not
by informed choice but by acquiescence to a higher power).
The
suffering of Jesus as depicted in The
Passion of the Christ
is a vindication of victim-hood and scape-goatery. It
validates
an image of a pure “man” completely devoid of masculine humanity and
therefore irrelevant as anything except a symbol for a bankrupt
Christian ideology favouring divinity over the manifestation of
individual human destiny. Gibson’s Jesus is a powerless
figure
swept up by God’s plan, significant only for his suffering, his
“passion”. As Jesus thus acquiesces, his “passion” is
inherently
masochistic: in taking up his suffering to save humanity, Jesus
absolves the individual of responsibility for their own actions in the
true tradition of the scapegoat. There is no humanity
whatsoever
in this conception of Jesus and furthermore, Jesus’ inherent masochism
in accepting such physical suffering (a “passion” seen perversely as
something holier and more worthy than a sinful Jesus wishing for a
wife, sex and family) is rendered so explicitly by Gibson as to become
a sado-masochistic spectacle. Gibson emphasizes the physical
ordeal of a powerless saviour of no relevance to humankind and in so
doing idealizes suffering and victim-hood as noble – a typically
self-defeating Christian ideology.
Christ’s passion is
antithetical to human individuality: Gibson intends to show how the
sinless son of God (a perfected human) suffered to forgive the rest of
humanity their sin. He intends to make the viewer appreciate what Jesus
went through to save humanity: the paradox being that this sinless man
is by definition hot human at all and thus of no relevance to
humanity. Gibson’s Jesus is a Jesus of Christian myth alone,
divorced from any of the complexities of human nature. Gibson
thus stresses as a Christian ideal the sublimation of individual human
will (which the Rationalists equate with the indulgence in “sin”) to
God. Humanity here has no independence, no individuality
beyond
what God wants – the individual is not free at all under this
oppressive Christian obfuscation of the complexities of human free will
and moral relativism. Gibson as a Catholic director is left
no
choice therefore but to vindicate the mindless suffering of an
essentially inhuman scapegoat (ironically representing the perfection
of humankind as a creation of God) in a sado-masochistic spectacle
which, in its reduction of the “divine-human” to the “suffering
innocent” perpetuates an aesthetic that can only be described as
violent pornography, and homoerotic to boot. The “passion” of
this Christ is the violent exploitation of an individual in celebration
of the denial of individual free will. Presented as
entertainment, Gibson’s recreation of Christ’s passion objectifies the
male body of Jesus (representative of a human perfection in which
individual free will is of no relevance) as a vehicle for pain and
suffering in exactly the same way that much hardcore pornography
objectifies the female body as an object for sexual
penetration.
Gibson’s staged “passion” is structured on the principles of
pornographic objectification and thus it is ironic that Christians want
children to see it.
In film thus, the Jesus irony is that the
depictions of Jesus considered blasphemous by the Church have
endeavoured to explore the role of humanity’s relevance to divinity in
Jesus as a teacher subject to human frailty whilst the depictions of
Jesus considered acceptable by the Christian Church endorse a humanity
devoid of free will, individual destiny and the right to
self-actualization. Furthermore, if The Passion of the Christ
is truly considered a good Christian film, it validates the divine
sacrifice of Jesus in aesthetics which objectify the body of that
sacrificial Jesus in terms identical to violent pornography.
Between the blasphemy of The
Last Temptation of Christ
and the Christian orthodoxy of The Passion of the Christ, the
blasphemous endorses human complexity and praises the right to
individual self-determination (in the end Jesus chooses to die on the
cross after all) while the acceptable negates human complexity as
tantamount to sin and praises the sublimation of individual
self-determination to the supposedly beneficent will of an omniscient
force – an invisible man in the sky as George Carlin would aptly and
dismissively describe this Christian God. In this, The Passion of the Christ is,
to the Rationalist, pornographic Christian propaganda in denial of
essential humanity: pompous, self-important ideological junk culture.
###
* * * * *
To
Brawl or not to Brawl
(an extract
from Robert Cettl’s forthcoming book Australian Film Tales)
Mel Gibson did not go to the audition session for Mad Max
for the lead role, but was merely accompanying a friend.
Indeed,
Gibson did not think himself in suitable shape for any audition as the
night before he had been involved in a party brawl. Thus,
when he
attended the audition he looked bandaged, cut-up and bruised.
Nevertheless the casting director was intrigued enough to take his
picture. The picture was shown to the director George Miller
who
next day called to see Gibson, who was then awarded the title
role. The film and sequel were popular successes and by the
time
of the third film, Gibson was being groomed for American audiences as
Australia’s first genuine “star”. Thus it was that Gibson
found
himself cast in The
Bounty, a remake of the classic Mutiny on the Bounty.
The 1962 version of the film had starred Australian Chips Rafferty who
had passed much of the time on location in Tahiti by getting drunk,
returning to his hotel room and howling like a dog. When in
Tahiti some twenty years later, Gibson kept up Rafferty’s noble
tradition and after a night of drinking once again got involved in a
brawl. Yet again, his face was bruised. This time,
the
filmmakers were distraught and did everything they could to conceal the
injuries. ### |
Wider
Screenings columnist Robert
Cettl
has a B.A (Hons) in Film Study from the Flinders University of South
Australia, which included an international scholarship to the
University of Southern Illinois in the USA. He has
post-graduate
qualifications in Librarianship and Information Management from
UniSA. In addition to popular DVD reviewing, his writing for
McFarland (one of the leading American publishers of film non-fiction)
has been collected by such as Yale University Library and the British
Film Institute. His forthcoming work for this market (for
release
in 2010) is Terrorism
in American Cinema: a comprehensive analysis of terrorism
as a genre from fears of PLO inspired homeland attacks in Black Sunday to the
outright denouncement of the Bush War on Terror in W. His
previous work includes the above extracted Film Tales, now on
sale and coming soon as an ebook through Inkstone Digital and Amazon
Kindle in association with No
Limits.
For analysis and commentary on individual films mentioned in this
column (and hundreds of others) and for updates on the latest Hollywood
hits and choicest DVD releases, Wider
Screenings
is now on Twitter. Any @ reply will be duly answered – there
are
no automated DMs or tweets. If tweeting, please mention film
title in tweet: requests for films/DVDs to be reviewed are welcomed and
given priority. Free print copies of Film Tales can be
won in the tweet ‘n win Film Buff Quiz. First tweet request
being incorporated into Wider
Screenings is a retrospective of actor Warren Oates
beginning with the film Cockfighter,
a seldom seen look at cockfighting in the Southern States and a film
still banned in England.
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