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Jesus Movies

Jesus Movies. fall 2008 King/ Malbon. Explicit Jesus-figure movies. Explicit Jesus figures tend to appear in art films: companies staging Passion plays ( Jesus of Montrèal , Mary ) Criminals needing redemption ( Bad Lieutenant , La Vie de Jèsus )

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Jesus Movies

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  1. Jesus Movies fall 2008 King/Malbon

  2. Explicit Jesus-figure movies Explicit Jesus figures tend to appear in art films: • companies staging Passion plays (Jesus of Montrèal, Mary) • Criminals needing redemption (Bad Lieutenant, La Vie de Jèsus) • Christians struggling to follow Christ’s example (Nazarín, Heaven’s Above!)

  3. implicit Jesus-figure movies Implicit Jesus figures tend to appear in variants on the monomyth, in which young heroes • are unaware of supernatural parentage until • they meet mentor figures who offer guidance, • train in the use of inborn powers, • at least flirt with romance, • submit to estranged patriarchs, • risk death to battle evil, and • bring salvation to the community.

  4. Implicit Jesus-figure movies Monomyths tend to be franchises, based as they are on sci-fi/fantasy with large, juvenile fandom. They focus on temptations from duty: • vanity (Excalibur, Star Wars, Superman) • romance (Star Wars, Superman, The Matrix) • fear (The Lion King, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Lord of the Rings) They thus use Jesus to rehearse character-driven (Hollywood-style plotted) fantasies of heroism.

  5. Explicit Jesus-figure movies • A few also focus on external constraints on divine duty, such as adult authority(Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Wars, Harry Potter). • Portrayal of Jesus as hampered by human authority (Romans, priests) is common among Jesus movies. • But the only Jesus movie to focus on temptation (by vanity, fear, or romantic desire) from divine duty was The Last Temptation of Christ.

  6. Explicit Jesus-figure movies Crusader outrage at that film suggests that many Christians abhor a portrayal of any embarrassing human qualities in Christ. The most successful Jesus films focus instead on responses of onlookers to the Passion (The Robe, Ben-Hur, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Passion of the Christ). This dramatic distance from Jesus may result from Protestant discomfort with vivid portrayals of God.

  7. Jesus as national totem • The most active crusaders against Jesus movies tend to align with a conservative vision, with a theology of substitutionary atonement that emphasizes violence as the proper response to sin, and with a patriotism that lauds war as a proper response to threat. • For such audiences, Jesus is more invincible than vulnerable, more divine than human. • Portrayals of Christ as struggling to meet goals against internal constraints give offense.

  8. Competing priorities

  9. Competitive storytelling • To the extent that the needs of religion and Hollywood differ, the use of powerful elements of religious storytelling for Hollywood purposes will strike many as untrue, offensive, and dangerous—stolen fire. • But, to the extent that Jesus-figure movies avoid realism and claims to authority (avoid “Jesus” altogether), then they may ponder the tension between human and divine, sacred and profane, without giving such offense.

  10. An Interfaith Jesus figure • Often authored by people outside of Christian culture, Jesus-figure movies refer as often to monomyth as to the gospels, and look to young fantasy fans as their audiences. • Creators of the Matrix cycle looked not to Christian and Jewish authorities but to philosophers for advice. • The result combined Hindu and Buddhist elements with Abrahamic themes.

  11. THE MATRIX • Plot structures highlight doubt (about savior status), but then threats (Reloaded), and finally mission and sacrifice (Revolutions), and are thus unlike those of other Jesus-figure movies. • God is a machine driven to conquer the people who created it when they turn against machines. • The savior mission turns out to be a con run by God to keep humans under control. • By rebelling against the savior mission, Neo creates a crisis that requires his sacrifice.

  12. THE MATRIX • Neo thus turns out to be the savior after all, who brings salvation by submitting first to a computer program (“the Oracle”), then to the mainframe machine (“the Source”) and finally to his destructive doppelgänger. • Christian themes appear in Anderson’s betrayal by Cypher and his sacrifice in battle with the anti-Christ figure Smith. • But much of the story is Hindu and Buddhist, with themes ofprālāyā, reincarnation,andkárma …

  13. THE MATRIX

  14. THE MATRIX • This Jesus-figure movie concludes its character-driven cycle in war-movie mode, with heroes’ resolutions to sacrifice their lives for the greater good. • But, locating agency in machines and ending the hero’s journey with submission to his enemy, it refuses the sense of warrior agency and ascension found in many Jesus movies.

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