Passion Play or Gwar Show? You Decide.
Jeff Taylor | April 5, 2007, 9:50am
From the exotic land of Tennessee comes word that local church Passion plays have become gory affairs.
A few quotes for the flavor:
"At Halloween, we sell blood by the ounce. At Easter, we sell blood by the gallon," says Gary Broadrick, owner of Performance Studios. The churches that do Passion plays depicting Christ's Crucifixion and Resurrection come in search of biblical attire and stage makeup, including plenty of stage blood. The blood, church officials say, is necessary to truly bring home the message of Jesus' sacrifice.
"To see that blood makes it very real," said Sheri Simpson, drama ministry coordinator at Two Rivers Baptist Church, known for its large-scale Easter production. "It wasn't just a small slap on the hand. He was really tortured." ...
"It's almost like drug use," said Paul Prill, a professor of communications at Lipscomb University. "After a while, it doesn't affect us as much anymore." ...
"I knew it had to be real," said Bob Shupe, church choir director and the person who authored the long-running play 16 years ago. "So much is false today. People are suspect of everything - in particular, the church."
Why, yes. The whole Resurrection thing is so much more convincing with more fake blood.
Stevo Darkly | April 6, 2007, 1:06am | #
Caveat: I haven't seen Mel Gibson's
The Passion, so there may be stuff in there that would knock my comments into a cocked hat.
But in comprehending the gore and brutality in these depictions, you have to understand that they are intended to depict (what the portrayers believe was)
an actual event. This isn't a fictional horror movie for pure entertainment, it's supposed to be more like an instructive documentary, or at least a historical drama.
It's my undestanding that getting a Roman flogging and then getting crucified was, in fact, a pretty horrific and nasty and painful experience. There was a book out, some years or decades ago, that described all the details; I forget the title.
You wouldn't watch a movie about the Holocaust and complain, "Wow, they really made that Holocaust seem brutal, didn't they? Like, they really pumped up the violence quotient and dwelled on the horrific aspects, didn't they?"
How did you feel about the violence in
Saving Private Ryan? Too warlike?
When you're up late at night channel-surfing and you run across one of those infomercials for raising money to aid starving kids in Africa, and they show you images of dying little African toddlers with painfully swollen bellies and limbs as thin as your finger and crawling with flies, it may turn your stomach, but do you think, "Oh wow, yuck, it was really in bad taste for them to show me that; shame on them!"?
(Yeah, the starving African videos are actual images while the Passion depictions are only recreations at best, but they didn't have camcorders back then.)
And the intent of the Passion recreations and the starving African infomercials is the same: to guilt you up (Jesus suffered because of your sins! African kids are starving because you won't help!) and motivate you to change your behavior (Be a better Christian! Get off the sofa and write a check!).
