Premiering on August 7 (11 PM ET/10 PM CT) on the Adult Swim Network, The Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder's Black Jesus has been reaping controversy since word about it hit the streets. Conservative Christian groups are calling for boycotts, signing petitions, screaming to the heavens in outrage and taking to the pulpit, promising fire and brimstone will hail down on McGruder's head and on the Turner-owned Cartoon Network.
McGruder is no stranger to fury or fuss, since The Boondocks comic strip and comedy cartoon series has always been an equal-opportunity satire of black folks living and surviving in a white America—lambasting all and sundry with sharp street smarts and insightful disses.
The current sturm und drang picks up steam daily on Christian websites, as if the idea of a black dude who may or may not be Jesus Christ, wandering the mean streets of Compton, California, with a coterie of homeless, often epithet-mouthed wine-drinking, pot-smoking followers is an unthinkable and unportrayable heresy.
Can't tell you how many times in my life I've thought that if Jesus ever did come back and showed up here in the U.S., he'd get stopped, frisked, locked up, tasered, deported or probably shot dead "accidentally" before he could deliver one of those "peace and love" messages. He wouldn't even have to be black. The long hair and sandals would do the trick, lickety split.
Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, some folks' savior, son of God, mythological iconic figure, whatever your take on his existence, or non-existence, historically has always been a subject that gets folks either riled up or filled with messianic fervor. Jesus Christ, the comedy series is no exception.
Follow me below the fold for more on Jesus in black and white.
Boondocks cast. Clockwise from top: Huey Freeman, Michael Caesar, Hiro Otomo, Riley Freeman, Cindy McPherson and Jazmine DuBois.
Some of you may not be familiar with Chicago-native cartoonist
Aaron McGruder or his
comic strip, which starred
a black family from Chicago—The Freemans.
The strip depicts Huey Freeman and his younger brother Riley, two young children who have been moved out of the South Side of Chicago by their grandfather to live with him in the predominantly white fictional suburb of Woodcrest (in Maryland, as seen from the area code stated in the March 16, 2000 strip). This relates to McGruder's childhood move from Chicago to a white, Maryland suburb. The title word "boondocks" alludes to the isolation from primarily African-American urban life that the characters feel, and permits McGruder some philosophical distance. Huey is a politically perceptive devotee of black radical ideas of the past few decades (as explained in the May 4, 1999, strip, Huey is in fact named after Black Panther Huey P. Newton and is harshly critical of many aspects of modern black culture. For example, he is at least as hard on Vivica Fox and Cuba Gooding, Jr. at times as he is on the Bush administration. Riley, on the other hand, is enamored of gangsta rap culture and the "thug"/bling-bling lifestyle. Their grandfather is a firm disciplinarian, World War II veteran, and former Civil rights activist who is offended by both their values and ideas.
The comic strip was later turned into an
animated sitcom. From its inception until its last episode, it provoked
controversy.
And yes—in its first season Jesus was in an episode. Huey has a dream, where he stands in front of a crowd of well-heeled white folks and announces, "Jesus was black...and Ronald Reagan was the devil ..." I wonder if the idea for Black Jesus was born then?
The idea that the historical Jesus figure is not a blue-eyed, blond white dude is hardly a new one in the black community. For that matter, Jesus is portrayed differently depending on the different cultures that embraced or were converted into Christianity, not withstanding FOX News host Megyn Kelly's loud cries of "Jesus was a white man!".
Blogger David Drumm had this to say:
Megyn Kelly, on her Fox News show, declared: “Jesus was a white man, too. It’s like we have, he’s a historical figure that’s a verifiable fact, as is Santa, I just want kids to know that.” While I grant that Jesus was a historical figure, Santa was only based on a historical figure, a monk named Nicholas. Nicholas was born around 260 A.D. in Patara, in present-day Turkey. Nicholas was probably Greek although little is known about his parents. While it make make Kelly uncomfortable, Nicolas certainly wouldn’t have looked as white as Santa appears in the Coca-Cola ads.
According to Reza Aslan, Jesus was a Galilean, a Palestinian Jew. He would have looked like the average Palestinian looks today. Aslan cites those features: “that would mean dark features, hairy, probably a longer nose, black hair.” Hardly the Jesus seen in so many European paintings. There is great psychological benefit to portraying Jesus as “one of your own.”
It isn't just Jesus that bends some folks outta shape. Odin forbid that a dreamy black man like Idris Elba should be in Asgard—"
White supremacists urge Thor boycott over casting of black actor as Norse god."
My own concepts about Jesus were ambivalent as a child. My dad was an atheist. He taught me Jesus was a mythological deity along with Osiris and Thor and Apollo, and my mom, a nominal Presbyterian, didn't talk about Jesus at all. When my Catholic cousins took me to mass I got my first up close and personal introduction to a bleeding, tortured man nailed to a cross in agony and I asked plaintively why they didn't "take that man down." I was told, "You killed him." I protested vehemently that "No, I didn't," but my older cousin said smugly,"You did too ... he died because you sinned." She then told me I was going to hell because I didn't have a patron saint or a saint's name.
Heavy stuff to lay on a youngster. She did, however, promise to get me a saint and later took me to a Catholic religious articles store to buy me one. I looked through the selection and only saw one I wanted. He was brown-skinned, and I selected him. My cousin told me to pick a lady saint, but I insisted on the brown man and threw a tantrum, so she bought him for me. It was Martin de Porres, and she informed me smugly that he wasn't even a saint—only "blessed," and that I had better pray real hard he got made a saint or I was going to hell. For years I used to say bedtime prayers under my breath ... "Dear God, make Blessed Martin a saint," which happened in 1962. I secretly took partial credit for it.
My other childhood exposure to Jesus was the reverse of the Catholic one. My parents were part of a leftist, artistic bohemian crowd and my dad, a jazz fan, introduced me to music and jazz and beat poetry. That's how I became familiar with Lord Buckley and his classic hipster poem, "The Naz."
Full text here.
Now look at all you cats and kitties out there whippin' and wailin' and jumpin' up and down and suckin' up all that juice and pattin' each other on the back and hippin' each other who the greatest cat in the world is: Mr. Malenkov, Mr. Talenkov, Mr. Eisenhower, Mr. Wozenweezer, Mr. Wisenwoser, Mr. Woodhill, Mr. Beachill an' Mr. Churchill and all them hills gonna' get you straight. If they can't get you straight, they know a cat that knows a cat who'll straighten you. But I'm gonna put a cat on you, was the coolest, grooviest, sweetest, wailinest, strongest, swinginest cat that ever stomped on this jumpin' green sphere and they called this here cat the Naz.
He was a carpenter kitty. Now the Nazz was the kind of a cat that come on so cool and so groovy and so with it that when he laid it down, whabam! It stayed there! Naturally all the rest of the cats said, "Man, look at that cat wail! He's wailin' up a storm up there. Hey, eh, ain't it down right? Hey, get off my back Jack! What's the matter with you? I'm tryin' to dig what the cat's puttin' down!" They're pushin' the Nazz to dig his miracle lick, and the Nazz say, "Cool, babies. Tell ya' what I'm gonna do. I ain't gonna take two, four six, eight of you cats, but I'm gonna take all twelve of you studs and straighten you all at the same time. Say, you cats look like you pretty hip." He say, "You buddy with me."
So The Nazz and his buddies was goofin' off down the boulevard one day and they run into a little cat with the bent frame. So The Nazz look at this little cat with the bent frame and he say, "What's a matter wit' you, baby?" Little cat with the bent frame he said, "My frame is bent Nazz, it's been bent from in front." So The Nazz look at the little cat with a bent frame and he put the golden eyes of love on this here little kitty and he look right down into the window of the little cat's soul and he say to the little cat, he say, "Straighten!" Vrooom - Boom! Up went that cat like an arrow and everybody jumpin' up and down say "Look what The Nazz put on that boy! Hah-hah. You dug him before," said "re-dig him now!"
So my pre-teen Jesus was a beatnik hip cat—and was cool.
By the time the late '60s and early '70s rolled around, Jesus was the center of controversy and protests. First came Beatle John Lennon's "More popular than Jesus" remark, which unleashed record burnings and protests from conservative Christians.
In August 1966, five months after Cleave's article appeared in the Evening Standard, an American teen magazine, Datebook, printed Lennon's quote about Christianity on its front cover. There was an immediate response, starting with an announcement by two radio stations in Alabama and Texas that they had banned Beatles' music from their playlists. WAQY DJ Tommy Charles stated: "We just felt it was so absurd and sacrilegious that something ought to be done to show them that they can't get away with this sort of thing". Around two dozen other stations followed suit with similar announcements. Some stations in the South went further, organizing demonstrations with bonfires, drawing hordes of teenagers to publicly burn their Beatles' records and other memorabilia.
The Memphis city council, aware that a Beatles' concert was scheduled at the Mid-South Coliseum during the group's imminent US tour, voted to cancel it rather than have "municipal facilities be used as a forum to ridicule anyone's religion", and also saying, "the Beatles are not welcome in Memphis". The Ku Klux Klan nailed a Beatles' album to a wooden cross, vowing "vengeance", with conservative groups staging further public burnings of Beatles' records. The Reverend Jimmy Stroad stated that a Christian rally in Memphis "would give the youth of the mid-South an opportunity to show Jesus Christ is more popular than the Beatles".The Memphis shows did take place on 19 August; the afternoon show went as planned, but there was a minor panic when a firecracker was set off on stage during the evening performance, which led the group to believe they were the target of gunfire.
The year 1967 saw the birth of rock musical
Hair, on off-Broadway, which was put in the shade by the rock musical extravaganza,
Jesus Christ Superstar, born from an album in 1970.
Until quite recently, you would go to the theatre to see a new musical already familiar with the music. This was certainly the case with Jesus Christ Superstar, the important collaboration between Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, which was a chart-topping double album in 1970 before it opened first on Broadway (in a hectic, psychedelic extravaganza dreamed up by Hair and La Mama director Tom O'Horgan) and then at the Palace theatre in London, where it ran for eight years.
Friends from my generation loved it. I developed a crush on Carl Anderson, who starred as Judas, and stole the show. The fact that he was black was no biggie—to me. But it was one more thing for detractors to get incensed about.
Sir Tim Rice and Lord [Andrew] Lloyd Webber’s 1971 rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar is a four-decade phenomenon. Seven million albums sold; productions in 41 countries; an Oscar-nominated movie adaptation; “the biggest media parley in showbiz history,” according to Variety. But it also deserves another, less obvious accolade. Thanks to its portrayal of its hero as a fallible figure uncertain of his own divinity, Jesus Christ Superstar remains the most protested-against work in the history of musical theatre – and these protests are still being made.
The show was banned last month in Belarus after a campaign by Orthodox prelates, who claimed to be acting on the wishes of “insulted believers”. Its 2011 tour of Ireland was picketed by Presbyterian ministers who denounced it as “an utter blasphemy” produced by “two sinful, blinded, benighted sinners”. In 2008, a Texan Baptist declared: “Every born-again Christian should readily recognize the evil of Jesus Christ Superstar, and should shun it like the plague.” One for the poster, perhaps.
Amazing that folks are still freaking out about it after all these years.
Also out of irreverent Ole England, where these issues of comedy and religion are hotly discussed, came Monty Python, and in 1979 they premiered Monty Python's Life of Brian.
Blasphemy ... oh, my!
Richard Webster comments in his A Brief History of Blasphemy (1990) that, "internalized censorship played a significant role in the handling" of Monty Python's Life of Brian. In his view, "As a satire on religion, this film might well be considered a rather slight production. As blasphemy it was, even in its original version, extremely mild. Yet the film was surrounded from its inception by intense anxiety, in some quarters of the Establishment, about the offence it might cause. As a result it gained a certificate for general release only after some cuts had been made. Perhaps more importantly still, the film was shunned by the BBC and ITV, who declined to show it for fear of offending Christians in the UK. Once again a blasphemy was restrained - or its circulation effectively curtailed - not by the force of law but by the internalisation of this law." On its initial release in the UK, the film was banned by several town councils – some of which had no cinemas within their boundaries, or had not even seen the film. A member of Harrogate council, one of those that banned the film, revealed during a television interview that the council had not seen the film, and had based their opinion on what they had been told by the Nationwide Festival of Light, a grouping with an evangelical Christian base, of which they knew nothing.
Some bans continued into the 21st century. In 2008, Torbay Council finally permitted the film to be shown after it won an online vote for the English Riviera International Comedy Film Festival. In 2009, it was announced that a thirty-year-old ban of the film in the Welsh town of Aberystwyth had finally been lifted, and the subsequent showing was attended by Terry Jones and Michael Palin alongside mayor Sue Jones-Davies (who portrayed Judith Iscariot in the film). However, before the showing, an Aberystwyth University student discovered that the film had never been banned in Aberystwyth, but had been shown (or scheduled to be shown) at a cinema in the town in 1981. In 2013, a German official in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia considered the film to be possibly offensive to Christians and hence subject to a local regulation prohibiting its public screening on Good Friday, despite protests by local atheists.
In New York (the film's release in the US preceded British distribution), screenings were picketed by both rabbis and nuns ("Nuns with banners!" observed Michael Palin). It was also banned for eight years in Ireland and for a year in Norway (it was marketed in Sweden as "The film so funny that it was banned in Norway"). During the film's theatrical run in Finland, a text explaining that the film was a parody of Hollywood historical epics was added to the opening credits.
Not as well known on this side of the pond is Brit comedy duo
Mitchell & Webb, who depict the disciples scolding Jesus for being racist about Samaritans.
Another recent comedic takes on Jesus has him supporting pro-choice positions with Sarah Silverman, infuriating wingnuts, as Wonkette reported. Troy Conrad from The Comedy Jesus Show has a great one liner—"I am black, but I have to show up in America as white or no one will listen."
I'm going to contemplate all this while re-reading George Carlin's When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?.
So as the petitions get filed and protesters march and chronically right-wing Allen West weighs in with "Foul-mouthed Black Jesus coming to your TV. Will you be tuning in?" I know I'm gonna be turnin' my tv on.
Can I get an amen for this comment from ZO?
The first of what we can assume will be countless complaints, petitions and shortsighted attempts to halt the shows premiere has surfaced. Where else, but Shreveport, Louisiana? A Christian group has been protesting the show’s spin on the devout figure, claiming it “mocks and degrades who they know their savior to be” and that “Our Jesus is not an alcoholic. Our Jesus is not riotous and unruly.”
The only problem with that is that if they knew their Jesus as well as they claim, they’d know that he was, of course, all of these things, as reported on CNN, of all places.
In the book of Matthew we find Christ condemned for “drinking with publicans and sinners,” later accused of being “a drunken and a glutton, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” The man was knocking back four glasses of wine with dinner for Christ’s sake (see what I did there?) As far as his riotous nature is concerned, I believe the Romans would find the peaceful characterization of Christ’s nature a bit off-base. I suppose the point is that McGruder’s depiction of this new Compton-based Jesus might be a more accurate portrayal then it seems and if the mere sight of the trailer (with it’s cognac sippin’, blunt burnin’ caricature of Christ) is taken as if it was presenting an infallible truth (as these Black Jesus freaks tend to take it) instead of the blatant attempt at analyzing the God-fearing mentality of poor folks and creating a farce out of that perception, then maybe y’all should just change the channel. Avert your eyes, as some would say.
I want to make it clear—I'm a religious person. Spirit plays an important role in my life.
Laughter for me is spiritual. I'm not here today to rehash the "theism/anti-theism debates" some folks are fond of. As an anthropologist, I appreciate and teach about the religions of many cultures. I admire and respect those Christians who
practice a Jesus who feeds the poor, heals the sick and throws the money lenders out of the temple—Christians like
Rev. Barber from the
Moral Mondays Movement. I fear and abhor fundamentalists of all stripes, like those portrayed in
Jesus Camp, who indoctrinate children, preaching that Harry Potter is the devil and that warlocks are the enemies of God.
If the Christian conservatives are right and not just right-wing, I'm going to hell because I'm a pagan (just joking).
Hell for me is caused by humans, right here on earth—with war, racism, sexism, poverty and destruction of the environment. A little humor lightens our burdens as we go about the task of pushing-back.
I'm gonna be watching Black Jesus this Thursday, come hell or high water. Laughing loudly and taking away with me some food for thought, which McGruder never fails to provide.