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VIEWING GUIDE: Godspell (1973 D. Greene)

The Celluloid Christ: Godspell Church of the Saviour Lenten Study - 2011 (leader: Lejf E. Knutson)

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“The characters in Godspell can be looked at in two ways, and both are inspired. On one hand, these people could literally be Jesus, John, and the disciples, in a story updated to modern day New York. With this approach, their colorful outfits, face-painting, and childish antics truly puts into perspective how bizarre and radical Jesus’ actions must have been in first century Israel, and yet these people are filled with so much joy and happiness that, much like in The Apostle, we find their lifestyle contagious. On the other hand, I choose to view this film not as a literal update of Christ’s life, but as a group of radicals living in New York embracing the teachings of Christ as a lifestyle. As a result, they are simply playing the life of Christ out to get a better understanding of his ideas. Either way, the message is the same: Be yourself, be radical, push the envelope, and love one another. Godspell is a film breathing with life and joy.”1

“In anything remotely resembling something that could begin to be called a religious sense, Godspell is a zero; it’s Age-of Aquarius Love fed through a quasi-gospel funnel, with a few light-hearted supernatural touches. ”2

“Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out – Find God” – David Greene’s Godspell (1973)

I concluded my discussion of The Gospel According to St. Matthew with a deliberately (or hopefully) provocative statement: “What would a Jesus film look like if it tried to present Jesus preaching his revolutionary, world-upsetting ethos of the kingdom in the here and now, in the heart of the modern city?” – and then suggested that Godspell would be an answer to that question. Part of the reason I thought this might engender some head scratching is because, unlike St. Matthew, Godspell doesn’t seem particularly provocative given the fact that it has permeated American culture in a significant way. It’s hard to find a church-gower who hasn’t been forced to sing “Day By Day” at least once since the Seventies and the stage musical Godspell has been routinely performed by professionals

1 Daniel Griffin, Film As Art: Daniel Griffin’s Guide To Cinema, located at http://uashome.alaska.edu/ ~dfgriffin/website/godspell.htm.

2 Stanley Kaufmann, The New Republic (May 12, 1973), reprinted in W. Barnes Tatum, Jesus at the Movies: A Guide to the First Hundred Years, p. 130.

9 and amateur groups, including in churches and high schools, over the last forty years.3

Also, at first glance it’s hard to think of Godspell and St. Matthew as similar films in outlook given the fact that they look and feel entirely different from each other. Still, I think there are significant points of contact between them beyond the primary source material from St. Matthew’s Gospel. First, both films are definite products of the counter-cultural movements in the Sixties and Seventies, although St. Matthew has a European, art house sensibility while Godspell emerges from an American, “hippie” context.4 Given this historical pedigree, Godspell is often linked to other counter-cultural rock musicals like Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Tommy (1975) and Hair (1979).5

Moreover, like Pasolini in St. Matthew, the original writer of the stage show and film script for Godspell – John-Michael Tebelak – was trying to find way to tell the Jesus story that would be new, relevant and accessible. At the time of Godspell’s genesis, Tebelak was a graduate student working on his thesis in classical mythology at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg.6 Apparently, Tebelak had an epiphany while his mind was wandering during church:

I went to the Easter Vigil service at the Anglican Cathedral in Pittsburgh. It was snowing, and I was aware of the proper setting for a tremendous religious experience. But the people in the church seemed bored, and the clergymen seemed to be hurrying to get it over with. I left with the feeling that, rather than rolling the rock away from the tomb, they were piling it on. I went home, took out my manuscript and worked it to completion in

3 Which brings me to my favorite (actually only) Godspell joke. There’s a cheap little film comedy called Wet Hot American Summer (2001) set in a summer camp predominately attended and run by Jewish campers and counselors. During the camp talent show, one group performs “Day By Day” in full hippie garb, and the audience sways and rocks out to the song’s imperatives to “See Thee More Clearly; Love Thee More Dearly; Follow Thee More Nearly, Day By Day.” However, the room’s mood abruptly changes at the end of the song when the performers reverently bow and a neon cross is lit up above them; then, the Jewish campers turn on the performers and “boo” them off the stage.

4 “The 1960s saw the ascendancy of rock music and that movement, or movements, of young people variously identified as student activists or social dropouts, campus radicals or flower children, yippies or hippies. Racial segregation and then the war in Vietnam gave these representatives of a so-called counter- culture foils against which they rebelled or from which they withdrew. Berkeley, Haight-Ashbury, and Woodstock became geographical markers along the way.” Tatum, Jesus at the Movies, p. 119.

5 Again, see Tatum, Jesus at the Movies, p. 119 and Katherine J. Fennessey at http:// nationaltours.broadwayworld.com/videodbinfo.cfm?id=49 (“Comparing Godspell to its near- contemporaries Jesus Christ Superstar and Hair is unavoidable.”)

6 By the way, the work “godspell” is an old English word for “gospel.” Yes, this hippy rock play/film was the product of an overeducated Episcopalian mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John-Michael_Tebelak

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a non-stop frenzy.7

Furthermore, in my opinion, I think there is a major point of contact between St. Matthew and Godspell in that both of them are primarily focused on Jesus’ proclamation of the gospel message and the ethos of the coming kingdom.8

Still, while sharing some points of contact, the films part company in a radical way in terms of aesthetics sensibilities – and not just because St. Matthew is set in an art house black and white, barren Italian countryside while Godspell is a colorized carnival playing out in New York City. To spell out the differences – and as a change of pace – I think it helps to focus first on the narrative method used in Godspell and then turn to the “type” of Jesus presented in the film.

The “Jesus” Narrative Problem – Do A Little Song And Dance

As I mentioned in the context of St. Matthew, when that film gets to Jesus’ proclamation of the gospel message the narrative grinds to a halt – Jesus yells in the general direction of the camera for several minutes as the weather changes behind him. However, the presentation of the same gospel material in Godspell is entirely different and, as a result, we don’t get the same sense of narrative suspension. Instead, each of Jesus’ parables or sayings is presented in the context of a musical number and/or slapstick sketch, with “Jesus” and the “disciples” taking turns portraying the various good servants, bad servants and authority figures in each particular parable.

At the same time, Godspell is not a traditional American film musical. If you think of traditional film musicals, they are still standardized Hollywood films with narratives driven by central characters motivated by their personal goals and desires. Rather than

7 Quoted in Tatum, Jesus at the Movies, p. 120. It probably didn’t help that Tebelak showed up to church in a t-shirt and jeans and, as a result, was frisked by a police officer for drugs after the service. http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John-Michael_Tebelak.

Tebelak didn’t finish his original thesis. Instead, Tebelak wrote Godspell in collaboration with several members of the CMU theater department and, in doing so, pulled most of the song lyrics from the Episcopal hymnal. From there, Godspell opened in New York by the Café La Mama Experimental Theater Group in 1971. Then, it moved to Cherry Lane Theater after the songs were reworked by the composer Stephen Schwartz where it played for over six years. Afterwards, Godspell ran on Broadway for over five hundred performances from 1976 through 1977.

By the way, Stephen Schwartz went on to write other Broadway musicals like Pippin and the current hit Wicked. Also, Godspell’s musical cousin Jesus Christ Superstar was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, both of whom wrote Evita. Afterwards, Tim Rice went on to write song lyrics for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Lion King, while Webber wrote musicals like Cats and Phantom of the Opera. So, the moral of the story seems to be that if you want to have a successful career in music theater – write a Jesus musical in your youth.

8 In fact, while St. Matthew deemphasizes the miracles in comparison to a traditional Jesus film like The King of Kings, there are no miracles in Godspell – not even a resurrection. We’ll return to that point.

9 use music as a way to halt or suspend the narrative, the songs generally occur at key points in the story to explain the emotions and motivations of the main characters – as if the characters’ emotions are so powerful at that moment that they spill out in song form.9 Think of West Side Story (1961) – my favorite film musical, by the way. Tony talks with Riff behind the soda shop, complaining about how he wants to be more than just a soda clerk in a street gang and, after Riff leaves, Tony breaks into the song “Something's Coming.” Once Tony meets Maria at the dance and her brother Bernardo drags her off for dancing with a “Pollack,” Tony is so overcome he breaks into the show- stopper “Maria” – and so on.

However, the songs and skits in Godspell don’t explain anybody’s emotions or motivations – or do anything to advance any plot. Each song is it own self-contained event with its own particular religious content, such as prayers for deliverance (“Save The People”), positive religious exhortations (“Light Of The World,” “Beautiful City”), religious condemnations or warnings (“Alas For You,” “Turn Back, O Man”) or expressions of religious sentiment (“Bless The Lord,” “Day By Day,” “By My Side”).

While “Day By Day” remains Godspell’s breakout hit (and requires little explanation), I think Godspell’s musical strategy is well illustrated by the song “All For The Best.” The song sounds like a cheap, comedy soft shoe duet between Jesus and Judas – and it is. At the same time, the lyrics are trying to communicate two diametrically opposed views based on whether or not a person has hope and faith in the coming kingdom of God. While both Jesus and Judas sing about the life’s difficulties and how it’s “all for the best” – Jesus sings about how all of the sufferings in this life will be redeemed in the coming kingdom. (“Don't forget that when you go to Heaven you'll be blessed…Yes, it's all for the best...”)10 In contrast, Judas uses the world’s unresolved suffering and disparity between the rich and the poor as an excuse to live selfishly with no thought of the coming kingdom. (“They can't take it with them, but what do they care?…You guessed! It's all for the best...”)11 As a result, “All For The Best” functions as a mini-sermon one’s attitude towards living the ethos of the coming kingdom (or not).

For myself, I think Godspell’s use of music goes back to its roots in experimental theater. During the twentieth century, there were several theatrical movements that tried to overcome what was seen as the dead end of traditional Western drama with its emphasis on character development and motivation. One of these was the “epic theater” of Bertold Brecht, a committed communist playwright working in Berlin between WWI and WWII

9 There’s a lot of critical material on the musical film but, in my laziness, I will just point you to Wikipedea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_film#References.

10 Basically, it’s a gloss on Jesus’ message in John 16:33: "These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world."

11 As a result, Judas’ lyrics are an expression of St. Paul’s sentiment if, in fact, there is no resurrection: “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’” (1 Corth. 15:32.)

9 who had to flee the country when the Nazis came to power.12 To oversimplify a bit, Brecht wanted a theater that could teach the people the political messages he wanted to convey as a communist while being entertaining enough to avoid driving the audience out of their seats. So, he came up with a series of theatrical strategies designed to both interrupt the theatrical narrative – since the audiences’ emotional connection with the characters was the enemy of analysis and reason – but still convey his message. As you probably have guessed, several of Brecht’s plays used jokes and popular, cabaret style songs with biting lyrics in order to get Brecht’s political message across without being unspeakably dull. As a result, Brecht’s “epic theater” (when done right) is entertaining, popularly accessible and politically engaged.13

So, in a style somewhat reminiscent of Brecht, Jesus and the disciples in Godspell sing, mug and do pratfalls in order to entertain the audience while they try to slip in Jesus’ teachings under its collective radar. Godspell is the Gospel as Vaudeville and variety show, with Jesus and his disciples as a sort of sanctified, homogenized mash-up of the Keystone Cops, Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers and Mae West.

Still, what is the deal with all of the clown makeup, floppy shoes and Jesus’ Mork from Ork suspenders?

Jesus As The Divine Fool My last comment wasn’t a rhetorical question. When I first saw the film all of the clown paraphernalia drove me nuts because I couldn’t quite sort it out. Being the type of guy

12 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht. It’s not the only time Brecht had to flee a country – after settling in the US and working in the film industry during WWII, he was drug in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. When he got there, he generally insulted the committee and then immigrated back to East Germany the following day – Brecht was a man who always kept a hand on his passport.

13 One standard example (and one of my favorites) is The Three Penny Opera (1928), with the music co-written by Kurt Weil. The song “Mack the Knife” is the break out song from that show, although one of the best examples of Brecht’s method from the play is the song “What Keeps Mankind Alive,” where Brecht directly attacks the church for preaching morality to the poor without any concern for their economic deprivation:

You gentlemen who think you have a mission To purge us of the seven deadly sins Should first sort out the basic food position Then start your preaching, that's where it begins

You lot who preach restraint and watch your waist as well Should learn, for once, the way the world is run However much you twist or whatever lies that you tell Food is the first thing, morals follow on http://www.tomwaitslibrary.com/lyrics/orphans-bastards/whatkeepsmankindalive.html. (These are the translated lyrics from Tom Waits’ cover version of the song – it’s really much better in the original German. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR-qwE0VKtg).

9 that I am, I researched it. Turns out, like many other weird Episcopalian experiments, it started by a guy reading a book.

In this case, the book Tebelak read was The Feast of Fools (1969) by the Harvard theologian Harvey Cox. Much of Cox’s general work is concerned with developing a theological understanding of the gospel message that can move outside of the institutional church and into the “everyday lives” of people.14 In Feast of Fools, Cox seizes on the historical practice of European peasant festivals where members of the lower classes elevated themselves for a day into mock positions of power, while those in actual authority had to stand by and watch. Suffice it to say the festival was not popular with the authorities and it was eventually sanctioned out of existence.15 In any event, Cox in The Feast of Fools sees festival and fantasy as ways for the Christian community to throw off the burden of their historical and institutional past and live in the presence of the Spirit. In doing so, the Christian community acts and lives out its hope in the coming kingdom where the traditional roles of ruler and ruled, oppressor and oppressed are finally overcome. In this specific context, Jesus acts as a divine clown who teaches us to play out a radical eschatology in the heart of the modern city that needs to be transformed into the life-affirming City of God:

Will we make it? Will we move into this world of revitalized celebration and creative imagination? Or will we destroy ourselves with nuclear bombs or man-made plagues? Or will we survive as a precarious planted where a small affluent elite perches fearfully on the top of three continents of hungry peons? Or will be all end up on a subhuman world of efficiently lobotomized robots? . . . Hope in the religious sense rests in part of nonempirical grounds. Christian hope suggests that man is destined for a City. It is not just any city, however. If we take the Gospel images as well as the symbols of the book of Revelation into consideration, it is not only a City where injustice is abolished and there is no more crying. It is a city in which a delightful wedding feast is in progress, where the laughter rigs out, the dance has just begun, and the best wine is still to be served.16

Put into this context, all of the clown makeup, play acting and prancing around in

14 Describing his key work The Secular City (1965), Cox stated “[t]he thesis …was that God is first the Lord of history and only then the Head of the Church. This means that God can be just as present in the secular as in the religious realms of life, and we unduly cramp the divine presence by confining it to some specially delineated spiritual or ecclesial sector.” (http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp? title=206).

15 The most well known representation of the “Feast of Fools” is the scene in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_Fools.

16 Cox, The Feast of Fools, p. 162. You know, for a book all about feasts and partying, The Feast of Fools is thoroughly academic book and about as much fun to read as most academic theological books – although it has the advantage of being shorter than most.

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Godspell suddenly makes sense. Before the disciples become the disciples, they are a representative cross-section of the modern city: a waitress, a student, a parking attendant, a garment worker, a cab driver, a want-to-be actress, a dancer – and as rigorously diverse in gender and ethnicity as a Benetton magazine advertisement. However, John the Baptist (looking kinda like John Lennon on the Sgt. Peppers album) blows his shofar and calls them all out of their daily lives to the park – the playground of the city. They shed the clothing and other items from their work lives and throw themselves into the fountain in a cross between a public baptism and a kids’ pool party. Finally, once the disciples have formed into their festive, comic God troupe – Jesus appears out of nowhere and makes his way to the fountain for his baptism. Once baptized, he emerges from the water (surprisingly dry) in full face paint and clown clothes, including his Superman t-shirt. As the duly anointed, divine clown representative of God, his first order of business is to lead everyone in the song/prayer of “God Save The People.”

So, the clown costumes and perpetual horsing around come together in Godspell – Jesus leads the disciples like a group of particularly rowdy Sunday school students as they perform “Godly Play,” sing and act out the lessons of the kingdom and transform the junkyard into a mini version of the City of God – which turns out to be an overly colorful playground. So, whatever you personally think of Godspell, it does have a certain method and logic to it – until it moves into the Passion Week material.

During the film, and for no apparent reason, John the Baptist turns into Judas. Jesus shows the occasional reluctance towards the his suffering that’s coming up – but Jesus’ passion is an interruption to the Godly Play rather than an outgrowth from it. Unlike most other Jesus films, the crucifixion is not the end result of a growing conflict with the religious authorities. There are no religious authorities to worry about, or any authorities for that matter, because God’s clowns interact with no one but themselves. They may be preaching, singing and acting out the message of the Kingdom of God, but they are their own audience.

As night falls – the Jesus play like the feast of fools only lasts for a day – they return to the playground and Jesus begins to act out his crucifixion of sorts. However, even though Judas is sent out to get the authorities, he only shows up with a couple of police cars which park and do nothing else. Jesus then provokes Judas into tying him to the chain link fence where Jesus acts out his crucifixion like he’s being electrocuted.17 Then, everybody sings about how Jesus is dying – and he dies. After this pseudo-crucifixion for no apparent reason other than “it’s written” – there’s no resurrection. All we have at the end of the Jesus play date is a dead Jesus who the disciples carry back into the city where the all vanish as the modern city, which has been frozen in time up until now, suddenly snaps back into life.

So, what has been accomplished by all of this Godly Play? Are the lives of the disciples transformed? Do they take the message of the kingdom back into the heart of the City? Is the oppressive modern City any closer to becoming the City of God? Or, is the only

17 Not that anybody’s actually electrified the fence since the disciples are crawling all over it. . .

9 result that our disciples have had a great day off at a particularly raucous religious retreat, after which they all return to their day jobs?

Concluding Comments

Tatum’s comments about Godspell emphasize the film’s low Christology – Godspell’s Jesus is pretty much just a God intoxicated person with a penchant for sketch comedy who inspires others through his life and death.18 While I’m not necessarily trying to push the group into the huge, ongoing theological debate about the historical vs. existential nature of the resurrection,19 I think it’s fair to ask how successful Jesus as the divine fool is at the end of the day. Cox’s entire feast of fools/Godly play idea was supposed to make the gospel message relevant to us modern city dwellers, giving us the space and energy to imagine a better world so we could save ourselves from this one. Or, at least, the Godly play is supposed to give us a better religious experience than that enjoyed by the frozen Episcopalians in the Pittsburgh cathedral which drove Tebelak to write Godspell in the first place. But, while we may or may not enjoy the divine Vaudeville depending on our particular taste for soft rock music and face paint – the divine play doesn’t seem to equip anyone to live out the gospel message in any significant, transformative way, let alone bridge the gap between Jesus’ life and teaching in first- century Palestine and the modern city. The Godly play ends up being just a private, little party – neither directed towards nor drawing attention from anyone else in the modern world. So, how much of a Gospel (or “godspell”) can it be if it’s only a private performance for God’s chosen dropouts? As Victor Canby put it: “Godspell pretty much reduces the story of Jesus to conform to a kind of flower-child paranoia that was probably more popular three or four years ago than it is today: the only way to survive in this world is to drop out of it, which, if you think about it, effectively reverses Jesus' instructions to the disciples.”20 Not so much “We Can Build A Beautiful City” – just warm, fuzzy God feelings growing “Day By Day.”

18 See Tatum, Jesus at the Movies, p. 124

19 For just one overview and viewpoint in this perennial debate, you can always take a look at the work of the good Bishop of Durham, N. T. Wright. See, e.g., “Christian Origins and the Resurrection of Jesus: The Resurrection of Jesus as a Historical Problem” located at http://www.ntwrightpage.com/ Wright_Historical_Problem.htm#_edn9

20 New York Times Review of March 22, 1973, located at http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review? res=9502E0DF1538EF3ABC4A51DFB5668388669EDE.