Hyper-Male and Hyper-Feminine Portraits of Jesus

 

God is spoken of in the Bible in mostly masculine terms but there are several feminine references as well. God encompasses male, female, and more. He is other, but has given us the Bible and Jesus to show us what he is like.

We do not know what Jesus looked like but he certainly was not a fair-skinned, blond or light brown-haired, blue-eyed European and he did not look like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_of_Christ

            Some people believe that he is depicted on the controversial Shroud of Turin but the dating of the cloth is highly, even sometimes hotly, disputed.

            Various Christian artists have rendered Jesus in paintings and drawings. Some have emphasized his masculinity, sometimes to absurd levels, and others have stressed his tenderness by depicting him in ways which many would consider to be effeminate.

Google AI says: “The term "effeminate" reflects modern sensibilities; historically, it was about portraying divine perfection and spiritual grace, not necessarily gender ambiguity in a modern sense, though it challenged traditional notions of masculine strength.”

A few examples:

Stephen S. Sawyer’s Undefeated

https://www.art4god.com/store/undefeated

A display of a series of portraits collected by an objectivist (look up objectivist)

https://oneobjectivistsartobjectoftheday.blogspot.com/2011/03/unusual-depictions-of-jesus-week.html

A controversial portrayal of Jesus as a black woman

https://janetmckenzie.com/joppage1.html

The Christ child as a little girl

https://smarthistory.org/ayala-obidos-child-salvator-mundi/

What Did jesus Look Like?

The Bible says nothing about the physical appearance of the man, Jesus of Nazareth.  I believe that this fact points out an important point.  The Jews were looking for a Messiah who would be an impressive military leader who would throw off Roman rule.  He might even, if successful, have become a king.

Kings, for all the history known up to that time, were massively egotistical self promoters, repeatedly building monuments and cities named for themselves. The king was always touted as a god of a man, handsome, brave, rich, powerful; his queen was the most beautiful woman in the land.  The greatest kings were known for their wealth, power, and military conquests.  How well, or how poorly, they dealt with their subjects was secondary.  This attitude toward kings has been repeated down through the centuries since the time of Christ.

Jesus was a nobody, a carpenter from an ignored small country town.  He probably looked like everyone else, like one of the modern West Bank Palestinians we regularly see on the nightly news.  While He could read and write and was obviously very intelligent (He amazed the Pharisees with His knowledge at age twelve, Luke 2:41-52), He is not mentioned as having specialized theological training or as being recognized as a Pharisee.  That He didn't stand out by his appearance is shown by the fact that the traitor, Judas Iscariot, had to point HIm out to the Roman soldiers who came to arrest Him. (Matthew 26:47-56, Mark 14:43-51, Luke 22:47-53, John 18: 1-11)

The Iconoclastic Controversy arose in the Christian community over whether or not representations of Jesus and the other persons mentioned in the Bible should be allowed within the Christian Church. The issue still causes controversy.  Of the artwork depicting Jesus, possibly the most recognizable in history (known to have been reproduced over 500,000 times) is The Head of Christ  by Warner Sallman.

Other representations of Jesus abound and reflect many different understandings of the same man.  Most appear to be honest attempts to emphasize some particular aspect of the Lord.

In Undefeated by Stephen S. Sawyer, Jesus is seen as a handsome, muscular boxer   The painting is based on Psalm 136:12.

Christ Walking on the Sea , a print by Nathaniel Currier (of Currier & Ives), emphasizes Jesus's gentleness, calmness, and kindness.  Some viewers, me included, feel that this print makes Jesus so gentle that He seems to be effeminate.  The event depicted is recorded in John 6:16-21, Mark 6:45-52, and in Matthew 14:22-33.

Sister Wendy Beckett , host of the Public broadcasting System program, "Sister Wendy's Story of Painting," in 1999 chose Jesus of the People  as the winner of the National Catholic Reporter's competition for a new image of Jesus, a peasant Jesus. 

All three of these representations of Jesus are meant in reverence. Some object to them, especially to Jesus of the People, but why?  Jesus is the Lord of every individual on Earth and His Church includes people from every race, nationality and country on the Earth.  None of these pictures above are blasphemous, unlike those detailed below, which are.  The difference is in the intent: to glorify Christ or to show contempt for Him.

Piss Christ 
Christ the Yogi 
The Truth 

Interesting discussions of what Jesus may have looked like are here  and here .  The truth is, no one knows.

Juno Whips It

The two Ellen Page (b. 1987, Canada) movies, Juno (2007) and Whip It (2009) are usually seen as female empowerment films. I loved these two films and agree, but see another consistent theme, strong families headed by men who take seriously their responsibilities as fathers.

In Juno, a teenager has to respond to finding herself pregnant. The "boy" is Paulie Bleecker (Michael Cera), an immature and nerdishly nerdy nerd. I mean it; nerd.

Fighting back his urge to punch Paulie in an unhappy place, Dad (J.K. Simmons) decides instead to support his daughter Juno in whatever decision she makes.

At the abortion clinic, Juno can't stop thinking about what the lone protester outside, a Chinese girl (Valerie Tran) has told her. Juno makes her decision; to bring the baby to term and place the child with a family she chooses. Her dad supports her all the way.

In Whip It, Bliss Cavendar is destined, according to her mother (Marcia Gay Harden), to be a beauty pageant queen, just like Mom was. Mom is going to make sure of it.

Seventeen year old Bliss unhappily works as a waitress at the Oink Joint, a barbecue diner, and dreams of escaping little Bodeen, Texas ... and her mother.

While on a shopping trip to Austin, the nearby big city, Bliss sees THEM; roller derby girls, and her future opens up before her. She pulls out her long discarded roller skates and actually makes the team roster of The Hurl Scouts, eventually becoming their star player.

At the height of her success, everything suddenly unfolds until Dad (Daniel Stern) decides that his role as Father is more important than the unrealistic fantasies of his wife and his own indecision and cocooning from real life. He chooses his daughter and his family.

Neither of these movies are Christian films, but there are two things I find significant about these comedies.
1. The fathers are treated as important to their families. In much of modern entertainment in films and television, the father is presented as absent, disinterested, or as an ineffectual doofus. Think of Al Bundy.
2. The main characters, Juno MacGuff and Bliss "Babe Ruthless" Cavendar, take responsibility for their own lives. In much of modern culture, everything is someone else's fault. I'm the way I am or I did that because ... 1,2,3,4, etc.

In Whip It, Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig) tells Bliss to "Be your own hero," In other words, don't depend on someone else to straighten out your life. You have to make the choice.

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The movie title, Whip It, refers to a classic roller derby move in which two players skate arm in arm and a third holds onto the outstretched leg of the second skater, who whips the third skater forward at a very fast speed.

Film Comment: Vegas in Space

Vegas in Space (1991) is one of the weirdest movies you will ever see.

Three outer space soldiers take pills to transform themselves into women in order to go undercover (as showgirls!) to Vegas in Space, the capital city of an all-female planet. They're there trying to find out who stole Queen Veneer's jewels.

All but two of the parts are played by drag queens, two of whom died of AIDS the same year the film was released. There are unrelenting gowns, glitter, wigs, thick pancake makeup, 27 cent sets, and atrocious over-acting. This movie is up your nose with all it's garishness. I suspect that it is not really intended so much as a film but as an in your face "so what do I care what you think?" statement. It drips hostility to societal norms from every sequin.

What the film actually represents is the final level of moral relativism, where each person defines their own "truth." Each person lives as they choose unconstrained by any norms or common moral ground; "being themselves." Man has no higher judge and any moral rules are merely individual preferences. Many see this as ultimate freedom and personal valuation but, in truth, it declares that there is no real value to anything, including human life. Human life can be manipulated and even discarded, The door is open to the development of fascism.