Tara Ison - Reeling Through Life - How I Learned to Live, Love and Die at the Movies

And it is also a story that, in hindsight, feels ironically and paradoxically de-Jewed. The notable absence of that one word, Jew , intrigues me. Why the avoidance of that label? Is it merely an attempt to stay true to the Old Testament’s rare use of the word, or a writerly effort to be consistent amid all the tortured faux-Biblical dialogue? Is it an example of the anti-Semitic fashion of 1950s Hollywood? We have our hero, Moses, the venerable Jewish patriarch/prophet, but best we not make him, or anyone else in this story of Jewish liberation, too Jewish , too explicitly a Jew . Perhaps this was more palatable to a largely (98.3 percent) non-Jewish audience? Perhaps this fits better with the “history of the Jews” as the necessary and mere Old Testament prologue to the arrival of the true hero in the real story of our shared humanity: the New Testament Jesus Christ?

But of course, at nine, I am as ignorant of Christian theology as I am of Judaism. And I ask no questions of my parents, for they are even less interested in theological debate or semantics than I am.

Fortunately, 1973 also brings an instructional companion piece to The Ten Commandments : The arrival/transformation to the screen, like Fiddler on the Roof , of another wildly successful Broadway musical, this one about the final days of Jesus Christ. And also, like the film version of Fiddler , directed by Norman Jewison. (Still not a Jew.)

J esus Christ Superstar was not my first “rock opera”—my parents had taken me to the Los Angeles premiere of Hair at the Aquarius Theatre when I was six years old, so I was already a connoisseur of the form. 20But it is my introduction to a living, breathing (and singing) cinematic Jesus, one more vibrantly alive (and hot) than the museum icons shown in textbook color plates. Jesus Christ Superstar is my crash course in Christ.

EXT. JUDEAN DESERT — DAY. A beat-up VW bus arrives, a huge cross strapped on top like vacationers’ snow skis, a hippie-styled troupe of “actors” exit and, to a visceral electric guitar (I am already bouncing in my seat, feeling the fevered pulse of this desert rock), proceed to costume themselves in cheerful “Hey, let’s put on a play!” style. An exquisite-faced guy (blue eyes, cheekbones, scraggly blond goatee) garbs himself in a gleaming white robe that puts Sephora’s to shame and instantly becomes the object of everyone’s rapt and loving attention.

Standing apart and scowling is a black guy in a red dashiki; this is Judas, I will soon learn (and be very confused by, given that at age nine, I didn’t know any African American Jews, and for another ten or fifteen years I will believe that Judas was in fact black, just as I will believe for quite a long time that Jesus, a Mediterranean Jew, was a blue-eyed blond, reinforced by the tradition of other Aryan cinematic Jesuses like Max von Sydow, Robert Powell, and Willem Dafoe). Judas is distressed by how all the Jesus-love has gotten out of hand, everyone running around crazy with too much heaven on their minds , that Jesus is going to get all of them (that is, the Jews) in big trouble:

JUDAS

Listen Jesus, do you care for your race?

Don’t you see we must keep in our place?

We are occupied!

Have you forgotten how put-down we are?

I am frightened by the crowd

For we are getting much too loud

And they’ll crush us if we go too far. .

Other guys in massive onion-shaped black hats sing in frighteningly ominous baritones about the problems this Jesus guy is causing, he’s on a rabble-rousing mission , he is dangerous and must be stopped, this miracle wonderman, hero of fools :

CAIAPHAS

(Head Black-Hatted Guy)

I see bad things arising!

The crowd crowned him king,

which the Romans would ban

I see blood and destruction

Our elimination because of one man!

Oh, these guys are also Jews, I realize, some kind of High Council; I thought they were the bad-guy Romans. Meanwhile, Jesus’s followers are distressed by the lack of information Jesus is giving them about the Buzz , what they’re all supposed to be doing, what is their endgame, here? Maybe they should march on Jerusalem or something? Mary Magdalene, the local heart-of-gold prostitute, insanely in love, is worried that Jesus isn’t getting enough sleep. But Jesus is pissy that his (male) followers aren’t just following him blindly. Why are they pestering him with silly questions? He is upset they just aren’t into him enough, not loving him enough, that none of them— not one! of them — really cares if he comes or goes:

JESUS

You’ll be lost, you’ll be sorry,

When I’m gone!

he whine-sings, sounding like a petulant bad boyfriend, or a five-year-old throwing a tantrum. His followers (groupies?) try desperately to persuade him of their devotion; Christ, you know I love you! Christ, what more do you need to convince you? There must be over fifty thousand, screaming love and more for you! And everyone one of fifty thousand would do whatever you ask him to! , that last bit sounding disturbingly cultish to me. (It is 1973, after all, and I live in Los Angeles, and Charles Manson and his do-whatever-he-asked-them-to followers are still fresh in the news, still fresh in my nine-year-old mind.)

But it’s still not enough blind devotion; Jesus pout-sings some more about how no one, not the fifty thousand, not the Romans or the Jews (the Jews are more explicitly the Jews here, now that we’re in the New Testament) understand power or glory or anything. They just don’t get it. Nobody understands him, poor guy.

I certainly don’t — we don’t see him do anything to earn all that love. One of the High Council Jews bemoans how A trick or two with lepers, and the whole town’s on its feet! , but we don’t even get to see that. (I would have liked to see that leper-trick of his; I have no idea what a leper is.) Nevertheless: He is hot, this Jesus. Ted Neeley’s performance was both panned and praised, but you can’t argue with the guy’s charisma or the throbbing intensity of his rock opera vibrato. It makes sense, in a way, for him to be Big Man of Judea. As Caiaphas sings: One thing I’ll say for him, Jesus is cool!

But still, what to do about this Jesus-mania? Only one option:

CAIAPHAS

We must crush him completely!

For the sake of the nation

This Jesus must die!

Meanwhile, Jesus actually does throw a tantrum, in the temple: Tables overturned, stuff smashed, a little like the pogrom in Fiddler . (But wasn’t Jesus against violence? I understand he’s upset they’re selling stuff in the temple, but this just feels like a wanton destruction of property.) He storms off and is accosted by ragged sick people, blind people, people missing limbs (I imagine there are lepers in the crowd, but it’s hard to tell), who swarm him creepily, begging for healing and help, until, overwhelmed, he finally loses his shit, scream-singing, Don’t push me, don’t crowd me, there’s too many of you! Leave me alone! Perhaps this is meant to humanize him, show his undivine vulnerability, but what did he expect? It doesn’t seem very, well, Christian to yell at them that way, or to heal some lepers and not others. And how does Jesus and/or God select whom to heal, and whom to ignore; is mercy, grace, blessing, whatever you call it, so arbitrary, so inconsistent?