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To cite this article: Paul Otto Brunstad (2001) Jesus in Hollywood The Cinematic Jesus in a
Christological and Contemporary Perspective, Studia Theologica - Nordic Journal of Theology,
55:2, 145-156, DOI: 10.1080/003933801753330633
Download by: [University of Sydney Library] Date: 15 August 2016, At: 19:25
Studia Theologica 55 (2001), pp. 145± 156
Until the 1960s, the cinematic portraits of Jesus were strongly in¯ uenced
by the Alexandrian ª highº Christology tradition. Emphasis was on the
divine aspect of Jesus’ work and person. Human features were under-
played and hardly visible. Christ appeared as a pale, blond, blue-eyed
person in a long white robe. Compared to the Jewish background and
social context Jesus was clearly portrayed as a western person. None of
the major ® lms in this genre portrayed Jesus as a Jew with darker Semitic
features, despite the rest of the cast having typically Jewish features. 9
The cinematic Jesus of this Alexandrian period is further presented as an
elevated, remote and passive person. Human reactions such as fear,
insecurity, anguish and anger are hardly represented. Flanking this
Jesus in Hollywood 147
He’s God. He’s not deluded. I think Kazantzakis thought that, I think
the movie says that, and I know I believe that. The beauty of
Kazantzakis’ concept is that Jesus has to put up with everything we
go through, all the doubts and fears and angers. He makes me feel like
he’s sinning ± but he’s not sinning, he’s just human. As well as divine.
And he has to deal with all this double, triple guilt on the cross. That’s
the way I directed it, and that’s what I wanted, because my own
religious feelings are the same.23
Jesus in Hollywood 151
Whether Scorsese has accomplished his goal showing Jesus as both God
and man, is still to be discussed. Allegation of blasphemy from different
groups within the Church accompanied the release and gave Scorsese no
credit for this ® lm. The radicalism of the incarnation is profound, and it
seems that Scorsese’s ® lm has subsequently brought more of this
radicalism into the genre. Compared with The Greatest Story Ever Told
and other ® lms in the Alexandrian tradition, a ® lm like this is an
important and crucial reminder. Even though Scorcese’s ® lms do have
other major weaknesses, a ª lowº Christology does capture some
important Biblical elements that a ª highº Christology seems to have
forgotten. In this way it might be said that the Church itself need to
revise some components of its own Christology.24 Even though
Scorsese’s ® lm is very provocative, it has on certain points contributed
to revitalize the genre. The emphasis on the humanity of Jesus is, as
Friedman argued, necessary. ª If Christ is solely God, temptation is
meaningless, resistance is easy, struggle is absent, and the movie loses its
raison d’eÃtre.º 25 Friedman here gives an important theological argu-
ment. But the human nature of Christ is still just is one part of the whole.
Whether Scorsese has succeeded in his effort to unite the two natures of
Christ, both the human and divine, is not so clear. By leaving out the
resurrection at the end of the ® lm, he certainly enfeebles the divine on
behalf of the human.
two types of ® lms could throw an interesting light on the function and
fate of the Jesus-® lm in contemporary culture. Both ® lm genres are
closely tied to a metaphysical outlook on life. In a historical perspective
both the horror movie and the Jesus-® lm have experienced a somewhat
similar development. For both, the metaphysical and theological aspects
were suppressed by more psychological and human descriptions during
the 1960s. Even though the ® lms from the 1960s and onward deal with
the same texts, stories and symbols, there has still been an important
change, not only in the representation on the screen, but also among the
audience as well as in the cultural context. In a secular world, the role of
® lm and literature is no longer simply to explore aspects of various
transcendent and supernatural realities, but to hold up a mirror to our
own human desire and anxieties.27 This ª mirror-functionº is an
important assignment both for ® lm and literature.
In order to make a more credible Jesus ª worthwhile to follow and
possible to identify withº , Scorsese tries to use Jesus as such a mirror
re¯ ecting the human condition. By doing this, the ® lm genre that earlier
explored the more supernatural and religious aspect of life, now risks
becoming domesticated and tamed. The unsaid and unseen, the
mysterious and invisible in culture, the aspect that goes beyond the
human condition, suffers under this new concept. In this way the ® lm,
both Jesus-® lms and horror ® lms contribute to a trivialization of the
human world. They give a kind of disenchantment. The ® ght between
God and the devil, between the good and evil is just seen as a process
within each of us with no reference to a transcendent dimension. In this
way the development of these two genres also convey theological
implications. Where a kind of turgidity marked the earlier phase of the
® lm history, a trivialization characterizes the new ones.
In this perspective, Scorsese’s contribution may be rather more
problematic. In the history of the Jesus-® lm, his attempt to create a
more human Jesus is important and necessary, but taking the wider
cultural context into consideration, his ® lm needs to be revised once
more. The result of a more ª humanizedº Jesus could be an individual-
istic Jesus, able to re¯ ect some of our own condition, but unable to
extend to a world beyond our own anxiety and confusion. Jesus could
easily end up imprisoned within the framework of secular humanism.
This shows some of the more basic problems for ® lms dealing with
religious subjects today. This problem is not only tied to the ® lm
medium itself: it has also to do with the cultural context of the ® lm. The
same challenge is also to be seen within religious literature. A more
therapeutic perspective has in many ways replaced a more theological
approach to basic questions in life. 28
Jesus in Hollywood 153
What is the role of the Jesus ® lm in our time? The assessment of the genre
has to take into account the development and change in the cultural
context. The Jesus ® lm is a part of consumer culture and the entertain-
ment industry. In this culture the audience never likes to be bound,
restricted or challenged by what they consume. The freedom of the
audience is decisive. Walter Benjamin describes people of modern time
as ¯ aÃneurs.29 One of the main characterisations of a ¯ aÃneurs was that
(s)he wants to observe, without being observed, to grasp without being
grasped. The ¯ aÃneur was in the crowd, but not of the crowd. It was
important to maintain this feeling of freedom. In this respect the ® lm
medium and the ¯ aÃneur are historically closely connected as fruit of the
culture and technology of the 20th Century. The undemanding ® lm
medium gives access to all sides of the human life, but at almost no cost.30
It is in this cultural climate of a ubiquitous ¯ aÃnerie that the Jesus ® lm has
its ª Sitz im Lebenº . This imposes limitations when we ask for the role
and function of the Jesus-® lm from a theological perspective. The ¯ aÃneur
of our time is a faithless spectator who goes wherever caprice or curiosity
might lead, loving novelties and distractions. The ® lmmakers within the
Hollywood ® lm industry have to adjust to this situation in order to cater
to the demands of the masses. The temptation to represent a Jesus that
satis® es the audience is easily done. The danger of Hollywood cinema, as
Jasper so clearly states, lies in its commercial habit of absorbing all
visions in to its own, ª offering the viewer a commodity which can be
consumed without fear of signi® cant change or disturbance.º 31 In this
respect Scorsese does transgress the demands of the audience by his
choking representation of Jesus in his anti-hero manner.
In addition to the faithless and demanding audience, cinema and the
Church represent two different rooms. To bring a sacred text from the
Bible to the screen does something with the content. The ® lm is an
interpretation of messages, stories and myths presented as a visual
imagination. While the cinema is purely based on the voyeuristic gaze,
the liturgical room is based on participation, commitment and commu-
nity as decisive goals. The community in the cinema dissolves as soon as
the ® lm is over and no one is called to account for the feelings and
thoughts created by the ® lm.
The cinematic Jesus could never replace the Jesus portrayed in the
Bible or preached in the Church. The concept of a sacred ® lm seems
impossible. One other problem we see by these re¯ ections on the Jesus-
154 Paul Otto Brunstad
Notes
1. David John Graham. The Uses of Film in Theology. In: Clive Marsh & Gaye Ortiz
Explorations in Theology and Film. Blackwell Publisher, 1997, pp. 35± 43, 39.
2. W. Barnes Tatum. Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years. Santa Rosa,
Calif.: Polebridge Press, 1997.
3. See Bruce Babington, & Peter William Evans. Biblical epics: sacred narrative in the
Hollywood cinema. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993, p. 4± 8 for a detailed
discussion on the classification of the Jesus Film / Christ Film within the term
Jesus in Hollywood 155
ª Hollywood Biblical Epicº . Three sub-types of films are included by this term: the Old
Testament Epic; the Christ Film; and the Roman/Christian Epic (of the beginning of
Post-Christ Christianity).
4. I thank Assistant Professor Arnfridur Gudmundsdottir at the University of Iceland for
her constructive criticism of an earlier draft of this article.
5. At this point, by using Kelly’s classification of this material, I am indebted to
Christopher R. Deacy and his article: Screen Christologies: An Evaluation of the Role
of Christ-Figures in Film. In: Journal of Contemporary Religion. Volume 14 Number 3,
1999, pp. 325± 337.
6. J. N. D. Kelly. Early Christian Doctrines. New York: Harper & Row, 1978, p. 139.
7. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 304.
8. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 141.
9. See William R Telford. The Depiction of Jesus in the Cinema. In: Clive Marsh & Gaye
Ortiz Explorations in Theology and Film. Blackwell Publisher, 1997, pp. 115± 140, p. 133.
10. Telford. The Depiction of Jesus in the Cinema, p. 129.
11. Bryan P. Stone. Faith and Film. Theological Themes at the Cinema. St. Louis: Chalice Press,
2000, p. 72.
12. David Jasper: On Systematizing the Unsystematic. In: Clive Marsh & Gaye Ortiz
Explorations in Theology and Film. Blackwell Publisher, 1997, pp. 235± 244, p. 237.
13. See Babington, & Evans. Biblical epics: sacred narrative in the Hollywood cinema, p. 1, and
Stone. Faith and Film. Theological Themes at the Cinema pp. 69± 72.
14. Clive Marsh & Gaye Ortiz Explorations in Theology and Film, is a typical book dealing
with this double perspective and finding Christ-figures in other film-genres. Other
books doing the same are: Inge Kirsner/Michael Wermke (Hg.). Religion im Kino:
ReligionspaÈdagogisches Arbeiten mit Filmen. GoÈttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000;
Joel W. Martin, Conrad E. Ostwalt Jr (ed.). Screening the sacred: religion, myth, and
ideology in popular American film. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995; Robert Jewett.
Saint Paul at the movies: the apostle’s dialogue with American culture. Louisville, Ky.:
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993; John R. May & Michael Bird Religion in Film,
Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1982.
15. An interesting article dealing with this topic is Rikke Schubart. Syndebock och
haÈmnare. Maskulinitet i actionfilm. In: FilmhaÈftet, No. 1± 2, 1997, p. 63± 72.
16. David Jasper. On Systematizing the Unsystematic: A Response. In: Clive Marsh &
Gaye Ortiz Explorations in Theology and Film, pp. 235± 244.
17. Mark Goodacre. Do You Think You’re What They Say You Are? Reflections on Jesus
Christ Superstar. Journal of Religion and Film Vol. 3, Number 2. p. 1.
18. Lawrence S. Friedman. The cinema of Martin Scorsese. Oxford: Roundhouse, 1997, p. 11.
19. Babington, & Evans. Biblical epics: sacred narrative in the Hollywood cinema, p. 151.
20. Friedman. The Cinema of Martin Scorsese, p. 153.
21. Friedman. The Cinema of Martin Scorsese, p. 152.
22. Friedman. The Cinema of Martin Scorsese, p. 156.
23. Friedman. The Cinema of Martin Scorsese, p. 154.
24. Stone. Faith and Film. Theological Themes at the Cinema, p. 74.
25. Friedman. The Cinema of Martin Scorsese, p. 162.
26. For an interesting and necessary discussion on this topic, see May and Bird. Religion in
Film, p. 2± 23.
27. Hollinger Veronica. Fantasies of Absence: The Postmodern Vampire. In: Joan Gordon
and Veronica Hollinger. Blood Read. The Vampire as Metaphor in Conteporary Culture.
Philadelphia: PENN University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997, p. 199.
28. David Wells discuses the ª therapeutic societyº in an interesting way in his book Losing
156 Paul Otto Brunstad
our Virtue. Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision. Leicester: Inter± Varsity Press,
1998.
29. See Susan Buck-Morss. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989, pp. 304± 307.
30. David Jasper. On Systematizing the Unsystematic: A Response. In: Clive Marsh &
Gaye Ortiz Explorations in Theology and Film, p. 242.
31. David Jasper. On Systematizing the Unsystematic, p. 244.