In 1979, John Cleese and Michael Palin had a debate about Monty Python's film The Life of Brian with two defenders of the Christian faith -- one an English bishop. The question is whether the film's parody of institutionalized religion and religious hypocrisy amounts to ridiculing the personage of Jesus and Christianity in general.
Unsurprisingly, the very intelligent Cleese gets the better of his religious opponents, who come across as defensively arrogant and pathetically sentimental. Far more powerful a display of religious wisdom would have been a welcoming of the film's critique as Christian in spirit, taking "Christian" in its most authentically catholic sense. As Cleese points out, the crime for which Jesus was crucified was his impassioned protest against ... wait for it ... the hypocrisies of institutionalized religion! Christianity in this sense would require ongoing and unsparing self-critique, and we have every reason to expect that Jesus would have despised much about the history of the Christian institutions established in his name: his fetishization as messiah not only took precedence over the principles of action he advocated, but became an excuse for their regular violation.
One of Life of Brian's points is that you cannot really institutionalize Jesus' fundamentally anti-institutional critique without doing tremendous damage to it. When Cleese claims that what the film advocates is thinking for oneself, he leaves out its most subversive implication: that the same sentiment is essential to Jesus' teachings, once they have been resurrected from the very deep ashes of their institutionalized decay.
-- Wes Alwan
One of the great jokes on individualism:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXcGF2qv2CY
Yes, we are all different!
(I’m not.)
the old seminary line is that Jesus preached the kingdom and we got the Church, the question of how to keep away from the tyranny of the means in organizations is probably the ethical question of our times (think of the messes in govt., banking, heath-care, higher-ed, etc).
ps, even non-believing biblical scholars like Bart Erhman understand the historical Jesus to have been a messianic/apocalyptic Jew and not some K.Armstrong style “Axial” age teacher of moral principals.
Instinctively, I take your side (and Palin’s and Cleese’s side) on this, which makes me question my own motives.
Perhaps your framing of the question may be unfair to all the people who did and do take offense to the The Life of Brian. Sure, Muggeridge and Stockwood come across as grumpy, close-minded old men. But is that the charge to be levelled at everyone who was offended by the film?
Would Muggeridge and Stockwood agree that this was a parody of institutionalized religion? Or a parody of religious hypocrisy? That doesn’t seem to be what set them off. I suspect they would pose a different question to be answered. Isn’t a mocking parody of the crucifixion of a fictional guy called “Brian” obviously meant to be mocking the story of Jesus Christ? Certainly this kind of mockery has happened throughout the ages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexamenos_graffito
Let’s grant there are close-minded reactionaries (e.g., Muggeridge and Stockwood) who were never going to give the film a fair shake. (They appear to have never noticed that Jesus appears in the middle of the film as a separate supporting character, which undermines their assertion that LoB was “about” Christ.) But let’s also grant that there are fans of LoB who love the film precisely because it is “blasphemous” — precisely because it does mock the story of Christ — and they think Christianity (and/or all religion) is silly and deserves nothing more than ridicule.
My frustration with this encounter was that none of the five never first squarely addressed the two premises underlying the “debate.” First, is blasphemy is ever a viable accusation, and if so, where is the line to be drawn? Second, what tenets are “central” to Christianity?
Neither Cleese nor Palin were willing to come out and say “I reject the very concept of blasphemy, even if I don’t reject the very concept of Christianity.” I think would have been the more principled defense. Their more half-hearted defense, “Our film isn’t blasphemous, because it never depicted the crucifixion of Jesus as such,” is too lawyerly an argument to persuade anyone not already on their side. If one concedes there is can be an offense called “blasphemy”, then a reasonable debate can be had on what constitutes blasphemy. Must one be a buffoon to think that mocking Christ’s crucifixion would have constituted blasphemy, had that actually been depicted?
Which of course, leads into the next question they never addressed: Can anyone agree on what constitutes the “central” message of Christianity?
Is the (or a) central message the Passion of the Christ? (See, e.g., Mel Gibson.) Or was it all of Christ’s rabbinical / messianic teachings while alive? (See, e.g., Leo Tolstoy.) Clearly there are partisans in both camps, and no doubt other camps I’ve excluded.
If the Passion is central to the Gospels (as it seems to have been for Muggeridge in particular), then it’s easy to see how the Pythons were having a laugh at Christianity itself. If the latter, then it’s much easier to be a Christian (or at least adopt a Christian outlook) without being offended by the film.
For my part, I’ve always been baffled by the Passion being the central to the New Testament. I tend to be in the Patton Oswalt camp:
http://comedians.jokes.com/patton-oswalt/videos/patton-oswalt—einstein-s-food-poisoning/
But that makes me no less guilty of “cherry picking” than those who feel the story of the Passion is primary. I think if they had resolved either of these two issues, the signal-to-noise ratio may have improved.
Anyway, this:
http://youtu.be/asUyK6JWt9U
I think they would deny that blasphemy is a legitimate accusation, but that they are more concerned with and sincere in their defense of the film as not attacking Christianity or Christ per se. If they had attempted simply to ridicule these things, the film would have failed comically — it would have come across as mean spirited and the sort of “tenth rate” thing the bishop imagines it to be.
Why? Because it would have completely undermined its leverage against the real targets that everyone agrees on — human hypocrisy and other foibles. This leverage requires that there be some professed ideals that others fail to live up to (or cynically exploit ). We can’t simply deny such ideals in general, because satire actually requires some sort of normative framework. And when it comes to specifics, there’s nothing to ridicule in what Jesus teaches, which are very general sorts of moral truths that only complete cynics would oppose. So you’re left with charging others with a) hypocrisy and similar faults or b) trying to provide these teachings with the wrong sort of religious or metaphysical grounds (including falsely claiming that there is a God or that Jesus is his son). In (b) the implied framework for our satire is either (1) entirely atheistic or (2) merely a rejection of the divinity of Christ.
There’s lots of evidence from the film that Life of Brian is primarily working angle (a); we get nothing of (b.1) but do get some (b.2) — more on that later.
First a few general considerations: theoretical criticisms are strongest when they critique a theory by its own lights. Otherwise, our disagreements end up about certain basic and un-provable assumptions. Your first choice for a critique is to give your opponent all their basic assumptions and show that these lead to some inconsistency. I think the strongest comedy works this way as well: the normative framework has to be obvious and agreed on by everyone. We’d have to imagine that Monty Python was appealing to the normative framework of hardcore atheists — not a large group — rather than people whose religious views run the gamut from religious to agnostic to atheist but all agree on one thing: they have a beef with organized religion and the abuse of religious authority. That’s a much bigger group of people, and organized religion is a much riper target than belief in God or Christ per se. There’s nothing really funny in saying, “It’s stupid to believe in God. Look at these idiots.” I’m trying to think of any comedy routine I’ve ever seen that does that — I can’t; perhaps Ricky Gervais?
On the other hand, The Life of Brian certainly does seem to call into question the idea that Jesus was actually a messiah: a) Brian is just an ordinary guy and through a series of misadventures he is also treated as a messiah (and there is mention of “messiahs by the dozen”; b) All of this happens because of Brian’s involvement in an anti-Roman political group. Clearly we are meant to think that it’s possible that Jesus too was primarily a political actor who was wrongly turned into a religious icon by an idiotic mob.
But I real think this questioning of Jesus’ divinity plays a supporting role in the critique of organized religion — where in this case the “organized” part inevitably involves the political and historical process that led to the notion that Jesus is divine. If Christian institutions had never done any wrong, how much force would this critique have? It would remain an abstract sort of attack on his divinity. The point is that institutionalized religion is from the beginning run through with human self-delusion and stupidity that lead to later evils in its name (religious violence, the oppression of women, etc). Consequently, an unquestioning relationship to such institutions can actually be morally damaging. This remains the case even if it is the case both that Jesus is the son of God and his teachings are wholly legitimate. We can grant these assumptions entirely (or remain agnostic about them) and still give a comic send-up or a serious critique of institutionalized religion along these lines. In other words, the film is primarily focused on religious epistemic foundations, regardless of what actually turns out to be the case; and religion’s epistemic problems are highly relevant to its institutional flaws (where whether there actually is a God or Jesus is divine are not).
While the film raises the possibility that the Passion of Christ is just the death of a non-divine human being, I don’t see this as “ridiculing” or making fun of the Passion itself, or of Christ. No one’s having a laugh that someone who was at the very least an important teacher and political actor was tortured to death. In Brian’s case, it’s the people surrounding him who are ridiculed; Brian may seem like a buffoon but he — and by analogy Jesus — actually calls on the idiots around him to think for themselves. We’re asked to imagine the possibility that Christ was a great teacher who has been wrongly divinized, and that this divinization may actually conflict with his teachings: but isn’t that sort of doubt central to the more reflective part of the Christian tradition? It’s hardly anti-Christian to bring up the question. Regardless of whether Jesus turns out to be divine, what people will end up doing in his name — beginning with what they did to him! — is manifestly atrocious. So I think it’s clear we can make fun of the Passion of Brian without making fun of the Passion of Christ; and the force of the film’s satire doesn’t vary whether we’re an atheist, agnostic, Christian who believes in Jesus’ divinity, or a very liberal Christian who rejects or is agnostic about Jesus’ divinity but accepts his teachings. It would be a very poor film if it required us to have some strong settled religious or anti-religious opinion of any sort. What it asks us to question is the manifestly flawed (and historically and politically conditioned) human relationship to the divine, regardless of our view on whether there is such a thing.
Hi Wes,
Again, I agree with most of this, but then does that mean anyone who took offense at The Life of Brian is simply incapable of understanding what “the message” of the film might have been? And if so, is that because they are too stupid to comprehend the film? Or are they just too emotionally invested in the New Testament narrative to have the right perspective?
Even if we grant that the Pythons were not attacking Christianity or Christ per se, that doesn’t mean they weren’t incidentally attacking Christianity’s central message along the way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitutionary_atonement
Also, I’m not sure if subjective intent is always a defense. Even if Monty Python may have made, say 5 or 6 good points about Christianity in this movie, aren’t Christians allowed to get upset about the 1 bad point they also made? Even if the Pythons didn’t mean to give offense? After all, the no. 1 sincere defense provided by those who give offense is, “Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it!”
Maybe to choose some perhaps awkward illustrations:
It wasn’t the point of Breakfast at Tiffany’s to rididcule Japanese people as such — it just happened to incidentally do so along the way, with no real animus but just a desire for cheap laughs.
It wasn’t Mel Gibson’s purpose with The Passion of the Christ to perpetrate the deicide slur against the Jewish people. But many people couldn’t help but take it that way.
Lars von Trier insists that one needn’t be misogynist to appreciate his films, but, y’know, it couldn’t hurt.
But you might disagree these examples are analogous.
Anyway, I found this thread on the subject at a Catholic web forum – a good survey of views, some 30 years later:
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?p=6967600
Jesus gave away all of his material possessions and got strung up and murdered on a cross. As much as I agree we should all live like him, every single Christian still alive today would apparently disagree. This idea that Christianity should be about living like Christ did, and does not deserve to be attacked for that reason, is wrong. Christianity deserves to be attacked and ridiculed through and through. The fact that so many people still lead lives which revolve around a dead culture from the ancient past is bone-chilling. Anything and everything should be done to prevent that from continuing to take place. Many Christians have their minds changed by other people absolutely refusing to tolerate their intolerant religion just as often as they are convinced by the facade of whitewashed middle class american politeness, it’s only a matter of taste not ethics.
The Christians here fested about being ridiculed.
They cannot be, should not be, if they actually believe in the tale, disturbed by what others think.
They hate being laughed at. They cower under the glaze.