An Update

 

“And All My Bones Are Out Of Joint” – An Update, So

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 The inevitable “State of the Podcast” almost-episode, just in case you’re maybe wondering what’s going on with Mondo Christ Almighty, anyway, and is it alive or is it not, and will it back, would you say, or won’t it?

Also, some reflections upon this past year, and the challenges that it presented for anyone wishing to talk with any coherence whatsoever on any topic at all, when all around was chaos and torment and upheaval, and when one’s voice and one’s thoughts felt so removed from one another that they may as well have been positioned on opposite sides of the sun.

All of that.

For further updates and the like, you can follow the podcast on Twitter @MondoChrist, should you wish.

Bibliography

Walter Benajmin, “The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov” in Illuminations. Trans: Harry Zorn. (London: Pimlico, 1999) pp.83-107.

Music

Alabama Sacred Heart Singers – “Present Joys” (1942)

Episode Five: The Gospel Road, The Hollywood Jesus, and The Troubadour of the Anawim

Episode Five: TheGospel Road, The Hollywood Jesus, and The Troubadour of the Anawim

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For this fifth episode, we have followed the star of the East all the way back to 1973, where, fittingly, we find five very different Jesus films and at least five very different Jesuses vying for our attention. For the most part, however, our focus will be trained on just one of those five: Robert Elfstrom’s The Gospel Road: A Story of Jesus Told & Sung By Johnny Cash. Approached from a variety of angles, the film is framed against the backdrop of the faltering revival of the Hollywood Jesus Film inaugurated by the release of Nicholas Ray’s King of Kings in 1961; situated within the context of Johnny Cash’s burgeoning mythos and especially in light of the spiritual re-awakening that presaged his recovery from years of steady substance abuse in the late 1960s; and read with and against the other Jesus Films released that year, Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell principal among them. The episode also explores the film’s innovative use of sound and song, its complex marriage of competing Christologies, its many formal eccentricities, and its navigation of the various inconsistencies on evidence across the four gospels. In addition, a bit of genre theory, some chat about the book of Isaiah, some stuff on those monumental prison albums… so on and so forth.

 

Bibliography

 Lloyd Baugh, Imaging The Divine: Jesus and Christ Figures in Film. Wisconsin: Sheed & Ward, 1997.

 Steve Beard, “Man In Black” in Spiritual Journeys: How Faith Has Influenced Twelve Music Icons. Edited by J. Boyett. Lake Mary: Relevant Books, 2003. pp.1-28

 Richard Beck, Trains Jesus and Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2019.

 Johnny Cash and Patrick Carr, Cash: The Autobiography. California: HarperOne, 1997.

 Johnny Cash, Man in Black: His Own Story in His Own Words. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975.

 Paul Laird. “The Fascinating Moment of Godspell: Its Cinematic Adaptation in the Shadow of Jesus Christ Superstar and Leonard Bernstein's Mass” in The Oxford Handbook of Musical Theatre Screen Adaptations. Edited by Dominic McHugh. New York: Oxford, 2019. pp. 229-252.

 Peter Malone, Screen Jesus: Portrayals of Christ in Television and Film. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press, 2012.

 Steve Neale, “Questions of Genre” in Screen Vol. 31, No.1 (Spring 1990). 45-66.

 Richard Walsh, Reading The Gospels In The Dark: Portrayals Of Jesus In Film. Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 2003.

 

 Web Resources 

 Bible Films Blog

 Time Magazine -  “Top10 Jesus Films”

Johnny Cash’s FBI File

 

Audio Clip Sources

The Gospel Road: A Story of Jesus (1973, dir. Robert Elfstrom)

 

Music

 Various selections from The Gospel Road by Johnny Cash (Columbia, 1973)

 Johnny Cash - “Thisis Nazareth” / “Nazarene” (1969)

 Johnny Cash – “SanQuentin” (1969)

 Alabama Sacred Heart Singers - “Present Joys”   (1942)

Episode 4: Revelation, Rapture, Reds, and Revival

 

Episode 4: Revelation, Rapture, Reds, and Revival

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In this episode, we’re wading into the weird old waters of Christploitation and Evangelical Prophecy Horror, concerning ourselves less with portrayals of Jesus himself than with the ways in which certain tenets of fundamentalist Christian doctrine pertaining to the Second Coming and the End of Days found expression in two low budget, high stakes independent films produced in the early 1970s: Ron Ormond’s deliriously gruesome If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (1971), and Donald W. Thompson’s widely circulated rapture thriller A Thief In The Night (1972). The episode situates readings of both films within the wider context of a discussion touching upon rapture anxiety, premillennial dispensationalism, revivalism, and the evangelical thriller’s utilisation and weaponization of elements more readily associated with exploitation cinema.

 

Bibliography

 Tom Aitken. “Perversion and Fulfilment: Revivalist Christianity in The Night of The Hunter” in Cinéma Divinité: Religion, Theology And The Bible In Film. Edited by Eric S. Christianson, Peter Francis, and William R. Telford. London: SCM Press, 2005. 253-265.  

 Matthew Guest. “Keeping the End in Mind: Left Behind, the Apocalypse and the Evangelical Imagination.” Literature and Theology Vol. 26, No. 4 (November 2012). 474-488

 Andrew Leavold, “’That’s Godsploitation!’: Tim Ormond on his family’s Christian gore films.” Mondo Stumpo! November 25, 2007. Available Online.

 S. Brent Plate. “Apocalyptabuse, Or How To Survive ‘The End.’” Killing The Buddah, May 6 2020. Available Online. https://killingthebuddha.com/mag/damnation/apocalyptabuse-or-how-to-survive-the-end/

 Daniel Radosh, Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture. New York: Scribner, 2008.

 Tony Shaw. “Martyrs, Miracles, and Martians: Religion and Cold War Cinematic Propaganda in the 1950s.” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol.4, No.2 (Spring 2002). 3-22.

 Andrew B. Stone. “’Overcoming Peasant Backwardness’: The Khrushchev Antireligious Campaign and the Rural Soviet Union.” The Russian Review, Vol. 67, No.2 (April 2008). 296-320.

 Molly Worthen. “Culture Wars and the Christian Right.” University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. 2017. Lecture.

 

Web Resources

 Churchwave-VBS

 

 Audio Clip Sources

 A Thief In The Night (1972, dir. Donald W. Thompson)

 If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do? (1971, dir. Ron Ormond)

 The Late, Great Planet Earth (1978, dirs.. Robert Amram, Rolf Forsberg)

Episode Three: Visions of Ecstasy

 Episode Three: Visions of Ecstasy

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This episode takes as its subject Nigel Wingrove’s notorious and provocative short feature Visions of Ecstasy (1989), exploring its interpretation of the autobiographical writings of Teresa of Ávila, its merging of the mystical and the erotic, and its eroticisation of the figure of Jesus in the context of a wider discussion touching upon negative theology, censorship, sacrilege, and the great blasphemy wars of the 1980s.

 

Bibliography

Steven C. Dubin, Arresting Images: Impolitic Art and Uncivil Actions. London: Routledge, 1994.

 Jacques Lacan, “God and Woman’s jouissance.” Jacques-Alain Miller, ed, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XX, Encore 1972-1973: On Feminine Sexuality, The Limits of Love and Knowledge. Trans. Bruce Fink. New York: Norton, 1999. 64-77

 James Newton, “Nunsploitation: The Forgotten Cycle.” Off/Screen, July 2014. Available Online.

 S Brent Plate, Blasphemy: Art That Offends. London: Black Dog, 2006.

 Teresa of Ávila, The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila by Herself.  London: Penguin, 1987.

 

Audio Clip Sources

Visions of Ecstasy (1989, dir. Nigel Wingrove)

 

Music

Alabama Sacred Heart Singers - “Present Joys”   (1942)

 Steven Severin - Music for Visions of Ecstasy (1989)