Now, before you get too panicked, let me assure you no one is going to ask you to lift up your heart here. No one is going to read you an extended section of the Bible, then pause dramatically and ask you to say "Jehovah" at the applicable times. This ain't that.
But when I sat down yesterday and watched Michael Jackson's incredible vanity project MOONWALKER, I wasn't really prepared for the levels of Christ imagery I was going to get. And it made me think.
For those that are unaware, MOONWALKER is a music video compilation of Mr. Jackson's BAD album, half-assedly compiled into a narrative about stopping a nefarious drug dealer, Mr. Big (Joe Pesci), whose goal is to get the children of Earth addicted to his drugs. It was never released theatrically in North America, although it did garner a European release, and has since become a cult object for those lucky enough to find it on video. And I found it in a quaint British village grocery store, next to a bag of Cajun Squirrel crisps and a squirt bottle of mayo. It was meant to be.
It's laughably pieced together, especially the first half of the film, which is just a collection of music videos awkwardly sandwiched together with incredibly lazy linking scenes. It's mostly just a collection of Michael running away from the paparazzi, or his mindless screaming fans, into worlds of fantasy where he can sing and dance for a few minutes of bliss, before someone invades the fantasy and ruins everything. This section of the film could inspire a whole article about Jackson's troubling escapes to fantasy, and the depictions of his critics and admirers, but that feels a little too easy, and the second half of MOONWALKER is where the really interesting stuff happens.
That's the half where the whole Mr. Big plot comes in, and Jackson's child friend is kidnapped. Michael decides to go all RETURN OF THE JEDI on Mr. Big and strolls into his base to demand the release of Captain Solo, or whatever the hell the kid is called. Kerri? Kelly? It's not important. Before you can say Great Pit of Carkoon, this ingenious plan has failed terribly, and Jackson is surrounded by men with guns. But Michael doesn't have R2-D2 standing at the ready with a lightsaber; he is R2. Jackson literally transforms into a giant robot of righteous vengeance, and spends no time in wasting these goons with shoulder- and pelvic-mounted laser guns and rocket-propelled grenades (it's as uncomfortable to watch as it sounds). And when Pesci comes out with a giant laser gun of his own, Michael transforms (yet again) into some sort of jet fighter and blows up Pesci and his death ray in a terrific fireball.
What's particularly interesting to me in this fascinating disaster of a half-movie is the violence that Michael uses to resolve the situation. Aside from a giant, sloppy blowjob to Jackson's talent and ego, the film is quite clearly portraying him as a Jesus-like figure, and has messianic overtones from the get-go. These only become clearer over the course of the film, as there's a resurrection, an ascension, and a return to preach (to a cover of the Beatles' "Come Together", no less) spread throughout the final 10 minutes of the film. But whereas the Biblical Jesus patiently withstood the temptations of Satan for 40 days and turned the other cheek to his enemies, this Jesus wastes fools with lasers and (at one point) a tommy gun, to visuals as pornographic as any Schwarzenegger or Stallone '80's orgy of violence. How did this happen?
I think we need look no further than Paul Verhoeven's ROBOCOP for the answer to that one.
ROBOCOP came out in 1987, the year before MOONWALKER, and while it's clear that Jackson and whatever hack creative team he put together have cribbed bits of pop culture from everything from the Transformers, to WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?, to the fucking California Raisins, it's pretty clear what the main inspiration was. ROBOCOP has a strong, if satirical, law-and-order and anti-drug stance, and it looks like Jackson ate it up, along with the awesomeness of being an indestructible cyborg.
But what was ROBOCOP really about? Paul Verhoeven has called it a film about "the American Jesus" and, for the purposes of this article, let's call it "the Modern Jesus". I don't want to get bogged down in a discussion of American values, and I don't think that's (necessarily) what Verhoeven has in mind when he calls it that. He looks at America as the policeman of the world, as the people in charge of order, as fulfilling the role of the Modern Saviour.
When we look at it from this perspective, the Modern Jesus is an incredibly violent figure, and that has more to do with how we look at resolving problems today than any particular nation-state's ideology. No one believes in turning the other cheek. We've seen how that plays out. Neville Chamberlain, anyone? I think the vast majority of us believe that some degree of physical violence is needed to keep the bullies of the world in check, and that most of us want to marvel at our own magnificence and make out with Megan Fox as we sit victorious on the shoulders of our giant robot warriors. We don't want to be Shia LeBeouf - I repeat, we don't want to be Shia LeBeouf - but we do want to win (this is not an indictment of the American film system's need for clear-cut definitive victories).
This is completely antithetical to Jesus' ministry, and it almost feels like this is the issue at the heart of modern Catholicism's constant youth crisis. At some level, it feels like the biblical Jesus loses. Sure, he had to die to open the Kingdom of Heaven. Sure. That might be the case, but I don't think anyone was hanging a "Mission: Accomplished" banner over the crosses at Golgotha (this is not an indictment of the American military and political systems' need for clear-cut definitive victories).
The point is, as Steve Buscemi gleefully told us in ESCAPE FROM L.A., "this town loves a winner" (in this metaphor, I think 'this town' is supposed to be either 'us', or 'history', or possibly 'America' - it was really just an excuse to post a link to the ESCAPE FROM L.A. trailer) - Snake Plissken isn't inheriting the Earth through meekness, he's doing it by playing Bangkok Rules whilst wearing a badass leather trenchcoat.
What we're really getting at here is that our fascination with "the anti-hero" has reached a point where the anti-hero no longer exists. The two have become intractably linked. Our old heroes, Jesus, Superman, et al., are not only in the same category as the Dirty Harrys and Punishers of the new era, but they're actually the same. We haven't rejected the old heroes, since they're the basis for what we know; rather, we've rejected their stories and morphed them into something more modern, more palatable; in a word, more violent, and with clear-cut victories.
We don't really believe in Gandhi. We don't really believe in Martin Luther King Jr., either. We believe we have to use force to fight, to get what we want, to win. The Jasmine Revolution, probably our most modern example of some sort of ahimsa-like philosophy, is actually evidence of that - no one gave the Egyptians much of a chance until they held Tahrir Square, when they responded to violence with violence. That's when it became clear they would succeed. We no longer believe in the long-term, patient, non-violent victories our old heroes represent: in the words of the Egyptian protestors, we want victory now. Preferably with some sort of robot warrior, just so that it's as new as possible.
While looking for that video of Verhoeven talking about ROBOCOP, I discovered he has written a book called "Jesus of Nazareth", which is "a new vision of Jesus as a child born from the rape of Mary by a Roman soldier, as a spiritualist who performed exorcisms by screaming and spitting in the mouths of the possessed to drive out demons, and as a militant revolutionary who urged his followers to arm themselves."
Shit. That pile of books is going to get higher. I hope Jesus has a robot sidekick.
Enjoy your vacation.
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