THE WORD MADE CINEMATIC: THE REPRESENTATION OF JESUS IN CINEMA by Gregory Kahlil Kareem Allen B.A. Film Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 1997 M.A. English Literature, University of Pittsburgh, 2002 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2008 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Gregory Kahlil Kareem Allen It was defended on April 24, 2008 and approved by Adam Lowenstein, Associate Professor, Department of English Troy Boone, Associate Professor, Department of English Vernell A. Lillie, Professor Emeritus, Department of Africana Studies Dissertation Chair/Advisor: Marcia Landy, Distinguished Service Professor, Department of English ii Copyright © by Gregory Kahlil Kareem Allen 2008 iii The Word Made Cinematic: The Representation of Jesus in Cinema Gregory Kahlil Kareem Allen, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2008 Marking the invention of cinema as a point of entry and consequent filmic narratives about Jesus as aesthetic documents, this study will demonstrate how movie-going, due to its similarity to the devotional exercise of “worship” and the motion picture’s continual co-option for perceived religious purposes as readily indicated by the recent reception of The Passion of the Christ, complicates what otherwise might be the obvious distinction between the sacred and the profane. Examining the way in which the spectator is prompted by certain traditions of cinematic language and interpretation, this dissertation demonstrates how the representation of the Jesus in cinema must by definition always insinuate the sacrosanct, even if the symbol or image is presented in a context perceived to be secular. In this way, the Jesus film works as a hybrid text that through its study makes possible new ways of understanding both space and power. As a medium commonly engaged in public, cinema that represents Jesus is difficult to distinguish as exclusively sacred or profane, as these texts inevitably borrow from the tradition of both spaces. This study also investigates how the claims of directors of Jesus films inform the perceptions of both audiences and critics, and how the use of certain key terms situate a language of exchange between artist- iv commodity and consumer that only suggests more thoroughly what Bazin described as the inescapable historical combination of circumstances that institutionally and ideologically frame the auteur. Through careful film analysis, this study argues that throughout the twentieth-century the cinematic choices that filmmakers have made seem to be limited not by artistic sensibilities, but by the politics of the image itself, especially in terms of casting. Spanning from Sidney Olcott’s From the Manger to the Cross (1912) to more recent works like The Passion of the Christ (2004), this study challenges certain so-called auteur filmmakers like Martin Scorsese’s own claims regarding the difference of The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) from other films about Jesus, while carefully examining many other films in an attempt to determine how democratically Jesus can be represented in mainstream cinema. v TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION: THE POWER OF THE ICON AND THE SPACE BETWEEN THE GAZE……..………………………………………….......1 II. CH. 1: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MINISTRY – THE GOLDEN CALF AND THE GRAVEN IMAGE…………………………………......25 III. CH. 2: PRIEST OF CINEMA, OR POET OF GORE? - SCORSESE’S THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST…………………………………….....90 IV. CH. 3: WHAT’S LEFT GIVEN THE “RIGHT” REPRESENTATION OF JESUS? – THE POLITICS OF THE IMAGE AND THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST……………………………………………………………....161 V. CONCLUSION: CINEMATIC PARAOUSIA - THE NEGRO AS TIME TRAVELLER AND THE FEAR OF A BLACK SOVEREIGN………...235 VI. WORKS CITED…………………………………………………………....302 VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………….....309 VIII. ONLINE SOURCES……………………………………………………....315 IX. FILMOGRAPHY………………………………………………………….316 vi INTRODUCTION: THE POWER OF THE ICON AND THE SPACE BETWEEN THE GAZE This study examines the similarities between both the priest and the filmmaker as institutionally situated agents whose agencies both are determined and dependent on a group of listener’s willingness to either believe or suspend disbelieve regarding not only the object of representation, but also the agent’s ability and authority to make claims about the object in the first place. In the case of Jesus and the cinema, the object happens to be an image, or more specifically, the proclaimed reality, or re-presentation of the Word in the flesh, as suggested by the image. In this dissertation, a further parallel is drawn between the devotional exercise of “worship” itself and the movie-going experience; and, while this relationship is not necessarily a new film studies argument, the sudden surge in publications about Jesus and the movies, which stem mostly from both the popularity and controversy surrounding The Passion of the Christ (2004), has only demonstrated more fully how authorship and a sense of blame for narrative-based material by critics even when the filmmaker is not the so- called “author” has worked to obscure a more careful discussion. When these obscurities are complicated by the apparent devotional and sublime nature of the film-going experience as perceived by some, the filmmaker can come to be regarded as a sort of mystical figure with unique representational abilities. But I attest that there still remains a certain economic component that cannot be ignored in this process. The manner in which the concerns of the marketplace dictate not only how Jesus narratives are constructed, but also how the manner in which production companies and filmmakers themselves have marketed the director as producers of these works in the first place is a vital component to consider in terms of the representation of Jesus in cinema. Perhaps no cultural phenomenon surrounding a Jesus film demonstrates the pitfall of the perceived auteur more readily than that pertaining to The Last Temptation of Christ. As a result, I will argue how when it comes to interpreting Martin Scorsese’s 1988 film, scholars have one of two choices: one, either to get honest and concede that somewhere along the line filmmakers either gave up their artistic freedoms regarding the representation of Jesus, or they never had these freedoms in the first place; or two, filmmakers, for some undetermined reason, have conspired to participate in a cooperative project that spans throughout history not only to politically stabilize Jesus’s image in historical inaccuracy and dislocation – but likewise have they schemed to challenge how we talk about Jesus through cinema, without actually challenging how we see him. Either option warns of a prospect that threatens to undermine not only the hermeneutical possibilities of the image as stabilized within the 2 space between the gaze, but the cinema itself in terms of how it can be accessed, and in turn, discussed publicly. Since the cinema is a medium chiefly invested in the image, the categorical failure of the motion picture to portray a more diverse, ethnic, or even historically accurate range in Jesus’s depiction is both alarming and disappointing. Instead, Jesus’s cinematic representation has indicated a coalition of sorts seemingly bent on determining precisely what Jesus can look like in cinema so that even a “controversial” film like Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ – while at first glance appearing unconcerned and not invested in a particular status quo in the name of art – still manages to expose the limited nature of cinematic thinking within a particular space. The entire third chapter focuses on The Passion of the Christ: the flaw of the anti-Semitism argument, the inconsistency of the film’s violence critique, and how this film in 2004 at the dawn of the Iraq War indicates a decisive interposing of secular and sacred space, that while first intimated by DeMille for the sake of commerce in the 20s with The King of Kings (1927), now becomes hijacked by the Fundamentalist Right for the sake of politics and situating how sovereignty can be discussed for an entire theologically-justified political lobby. Probing both the war-torn climate of the early twentieth century, and exploring 3 many of the United States conflicts of the past, I will argue as to the conspicuous absence of New Testament based films during times of war.1 But this interposing makes sense, since of all the problems one might imagine coinciding with the representation of Jesus in cinema, the most fundamental is the problem of space. I do not mean cinematic space. In that instance, then, I would be referring to the frame, the space between it, or some other very specific aspect of mise en scène. This too is a problem, and has been discussed ad nauseam by film scholars, but for me it is not the most fundamental. Instead, I am referring to the space between the gaze – that is, the space between what the characters in a given film see and are aware of and the space between what the audience sees. By this, some may think I am referring to the fourth wall, but I am not referring to the fourth wall, since in certain films like Austin Powers: Goldmember (2002) and Annie Hall (1977) it has been demonstrated that while untypical, fictional characters can be created to be made to appear both conscious and aware of the fourth wall. However, what I mean by the space between the gaze includes the fourth wall; it also includes that space whereby power is exchanged between speaker and listener as a result of a certain discourse about characters in a film or a film in its entirety without those characters even knowing it. Now at first this may seem to be a silly proposition as characters in films quite often are fictional and, by definition, are unaware of 1 Even the recent success of the Passion, due to its emphasis on the crucifixion and not Jesus’s actual pacifistic teachings, marks yet another example of the absence of New Testament-based films during wartime, only further suggesting the potentially subversive reading that one might apply to a mainstream, literal proliferation of such discourses as the Sermon on the Mount.