This being Good Friday<\/u>, I’m pondering the various artistic depictions that have been made of Jesus\u2019 last supper and crucifixion, especially the cinematic ones. Perhaps the most melodramatic depictions are those old Italian and Spanish movies, with all the contorted faces and dark shadows and droning music, meant to be shown to sobbing old ladies wearing lots of black. Yea, nobody does the Passion<\/b> like those southern Europeans.<\/p>\n
But I’m an existentialist American, and I’d like something a bit more cynical. So I’m imagining my own cinematic depiction of Jesus at Gethsemane, based around the lyrics to a song called “Bother”<\/b> by Stone Sour. From what I’m told, Bother was used to good advantage in the movie Spiderman<\/b> to depict a moody young superhero having his moment of doubt; not being a cool young guy, I didn’t see Spiderman.<\/p>\n
(Hmm, now, that’s an interesting thought: cartoon superheros as modern day Jesus Christs. Or Jesus Christ as a cartoon superhero.<\/b>)<\/p>\n
In my movie, we would not<\/b> see a Jesus who already had his flight booked to Paradise. Nope, the Jesus who would voice the lines to “Bother” would be pretty burned out and disgusted about things. He wouldn’t be particularly pleased with God the Father either. Jesus traded a skilled career and a suburban home for the poverty of an itinerant preacher, so as to enlighten humankind and save the lot of Israel. And now here they were, about to repay him by handing him over to the Romans. And God couldn’t even spare an angel or two to stem the tide. The refrain to the song would obviously come when a disciple took a sword to the slave of the high priest: “you don’t need to bother, I don’t need to be”.<\/p>\n
Next, some Good Friday reflections on Newark, New Jersey<\/b>. I work there and I commute by train sometimes. The rail line goes through an abandoned station in one of Newark’s many low-income neighborhoods, and I’ve been noticing some of the sights there lately. On the old eastbound platform is a dead dog. On the westbound platform is a smashed up computer monitor, which some kids probably threw from the embankment above the tracks. Somehow, this makes me think of the refrain to a song by Sponge: “in a world of human wreckage”.<\/p>\n
Then just a bit further up the line, the train passes the Garden Spires<\/b> high-rise apartment complex. Over the past two weeks at Garden Spires, a one-month old baby was drowned in a bucket of water and bleach, and a two year old boy fell to his death from a 17th floor window.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, an advocacy group released a report on child well being in Newark. According to this report, 4% of all New Jersey children under the age of 15 live in Newark. However, 13% of the children from that age group who die each year came from Newark. In other words, a child in Newark is three times<\/b> more likely to die before reaching the age of 15 than the average child in the state of New Jersey. Makes you think about Faheem Williams and the thousands of other kids who go to grisly endings in Newark. Talk about a world of human wreckage.<\/p>\n
Perhaps every Friday<\/b> in Newark is Good Friday.<\/p>\n
Anyway, here’s a link to the Stone Sour lyrics: BOTHER<\/a> This being Good Friday, I’m pondering the various artistic depictions that have been made of Jesus\u2019 last supper and crucifixion, especially the cinematic ones. Perhaps the most melodramatic depictions are those old Italian and Spanish movies, with all the contorted faces and dark shadows and droning music, meant to be shown to sobbing old ladies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
As to Sponge, try this: PLOWED<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"