“If you don't call Perth a dull city you lack the scope for comparison”
“When you live there you can’t relax because you are so depressed because you know you are living in the most boring city in the world. Thats why it has the highest home burglary rate in the country, because people are bored!”
“perth is not dullsville , the pope is not catholic”
“When you live there you can’t relax because you are so depressed because you know you are living in the most boring city in the world. Thats why it has the highest home burglary rate in the country, because people are bored!”
“perth is not dullsville , the pope is not catholic”
- excerpts from a Yahoo Message Board discussion
You know something is seriously wrong with the city you live in when Yahoo’s search assist mode auto-completes ‘perth d’ as ‘perth dullsville’, or when my making statements like ‘Perth is Texas without the manners’ gets knowing nods without a single outburst of protest. While I’m sure the young frequenters of Perth’s club scene probably find our city to be at least satisfactory given the almost ritualistic frequency of their patronage, for people like myself who are more interested in the art scene, the problem of Dullsville is a very real, very frustrating state of affairs. The issue is of course of great complexity - and Perth’s decidedly conservative political outlook seems to have carried over into its aesthetic outlook - but our state’s dominant daily newspaper the West Australian has a lot to answer for in terms of maintaining a climate of artistic stagnation and right wing hegemony in the arts.
While it is nominally known as a populist paper, the generally right wing tone of the paper’s articles suggests it should be more accurately labeled a conservative journal. Given that West Australian Newspapers Group is the largest media group in the state, it occupies a position of virtual monopoly in setting the agenda for the state’s social, political and economic climate. There is a serious question to be asked here; is the reportage of the West Australian shaped by the conservative leanings of the people, or does it move to actively shape the attitudes and beliefs of Western Australians via editorial bias? Its well documented (and often factually inaccurate) attacks on the (justifiably) embattled state Labor Government aside, the paper has consistently put forth an anti-art agenda, especially in regards to art that pushes the boundaries of accepted aesthetics. Perhaps no case is more blatant than the recent vilification of the Happy Dagger Theatre Company’s controversial production of The York Crucifixion.
The cover page article about the play is a remarkable exercise in spin. Featuring a photograph of actress Renee McIntosh topless as Christ on the crucifix, the article’s lead in paragraph states: “A local theatre production which portrays Jesus as a semi-naked female on the cross has received almost $28,000 in State Government funding.” The paragraph makes no explicit point in favor or against the play – and there is nothing false about it – but with a little logical reasoning it becomes clear that there is an obvious implicit agenda being put forth. Since the majority of the West Australian’s cover articles are political, related to sensationalist portrayals of crime and/or features on sports or sporting personalities, the appearance of this article on the front page is a clear indication that the West Australian wants readers to see this article and that its accompanying illustration was a worthy cover photograph to draw the attention of potential buyers. Perth is a city of such prudish sensibilities that the Art Gallery of Western Australia’s promotional use of Annie Leibovitz’s celebrated photograph of a naked John Lennon hugging a fully clothed Yoko Ono caused outrage in spite of no visible representation of first or secondary sexual characteristics. Thus, it doesn’t take a giant leap in logic to guess what the obvious reaction the public would have to a photograph that depicted the uncensored breasts and nipples of a woman (‘pornography!’) who was furthermore playing the role of Christ in a play (‘blasphemy!’). But this is not outrageous enough; no, the article also plays the ‘waste of taxpayer’s money’ card by highlighting that the play was given almost $28,000 is grants money. The combination of the three paints a picture of ineffective politicians providing poor economic management by funding socially unacceptable acts of blasphemy; The West Australian brilliantly combining the social, political and the economic in a three pronged attack on progressive culture.
But hold on; in the spirit of fair and balanced reportage there has to be some reasonable explanation for the creative decision to cast a woman as Jesus, right? Based on the article, the only information we are given about the creative decision is director Andrew Hale saying: “When I first read the script I really loved the language but I found the whole story really inaccessible and boring,” and, “In every way possible we tried to shake up the story. In my point of view that’s what theatre should be doing.” On face value, even an open-minded reader would have to concede that this sounds a lot like sexploitation and shock-for-shock’s-sake, but the article leaves out several key facts. First is the origin of the source material. The York Crucifixion is a play that was written by an anonymous literary artist and is dated from the period 1463-77. The play was originally performed on a pageant wagon and used broad physical humor as a means of mainstream entertainment for the people of York. Working with a popular text of such antiquity gives credence to Hale’s attestation that the story was ‘really inaccessible and boring’ – at least in terms of the short attention span of contemporary culture - and attempts to shake up the story to return it to a certain level of popular entertainment would seem justified given the circumstances. Shakespeare – a producer of popular entertainment in his day - has been fair game for re-imagining and interpretation, so why not any other playwright?
While the ‘semi-naked female on the cross’ part of the equation seems to have been the focus of the West Australian’s article, it glosses over the other creative decisions by the director and company. The pageant wagon of its original incarnation ingeniously returns as a transmogrified set piece which is slowly disassembled during the course of the play and reassembled into the site of the crucifixion. Another clever element of the production is how director Andrew Hale utilizes grotesque, malformed and ugly costumes to turn the soldiers/buffoons of the text into Bouffons - originally the most excessively ugly people of France who would entertain the masses via satirical attacks on mainstream culture and the ‘beautiful people’. Given that in the original play the intention was to use physical comedy and buffoonery to make the audience complicit in the mockery and in turn the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the mockery of this most beautiful of human beings only intensifies the elements of the original play.
In fairness to the West Australian, the Arts Section of the paper had a mostly positive review of the play (under the less than flattering title ‘Buffoons Resurrect Easter play’) and in all fairness to a critical reading of the play, I will say that I did find the production to be far from perfect in execution. While I wasn’t totally impressed by the silly pop culture references and overly slapstick approach to acting, I can excuse these as being an attempt at making the production a mainstream entertainment, but the actors playing the four soldiers sped through their lines at such a rate it was almost as if they were only interested in the form of the presentation, and this was at the great expense of the content of the text. It’s certainly not the Bard, but the charm of listening to a temporally outdated vernacular was lost in the flow – a major error given that it renders the whole idea of bringing back such a play as irrelevant.
But these things aside, the issue of the female Jesus is the critical sticking point for the article in terms of the artistic validity of the work, seen by Anglican Archbishop Roger Herft as ‘a distortion of historical fact’ and by Liberal Shadow Arts Minister Barbara Scott as ‘ridiculing the Christian belief’. In terms of a distortion of historical fact, the play never once suggests that the historical Jesus was a woman, and I’m sure if the actors had been more diligent in clearly reading their lines I would have caught a slew of masculine pronouns in reference to the Jesus character of the play. What really surprised me given that Archbishop Herft is a learned doctor of the Church is that no mention was made of the more contentious issue of canon. If one were to accept that the Gospels were absolute historical fact, then any Passion narrative that is outside of the four synoptic Gospels of biblical canon, not based on firsthand historical accounts or not an adaptation of accounts from the Gospels would be a ‘distortion of historical fact’, right? The simple fact is that The York Crucifixion is not a canonical text at all, and there are a plethora of similar texts that have popped up through the ages that have been condoned by the Church in spite of the fact of their historical inaccuracy. Yet the West Australian article simply states ‘The York Crucifixion tells the story of the four soldiers who crucify Christ’, conveniently leaving out that it is a fictional story to begin with. For someone who is quite aware of issues of canon I would think if anything was going to be a problem, it would be the corruption of scripture that the source material represents. But no complaints were aimed at the text itself, and I would hazard a guess that if Jesus had been played by a man this play would have gone to the stage without a single complaint from the clergy of any of the major denominations (and most of the minor ones as well). And really: if you want to talk about ‘distortion of historical fact’ how about the customary portrayal of Jesus as an Aryan poster boy instead of a Jew?
With such variation in Christian belief, it is only natural that some groups and some individuals will find a feminine representation of Jesus to contradict their beliefs, but to suggest a female Jesus ridicules Christianity myopically ignores the symbolic properties of a feminine portrayal of Christ in relation to the beliefs and practices of Christian mysticism and Gnosticism. In some such traditions - which include sections of Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant mysticism - the wisdom of God exists in the form of the feminine Sophia, whom in Gnostic tradition is seen to be in unity with Christ, and is the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. From a Gnostic perspective, Andrew Hale’s casting of Renee McIntosh as Jesus can be read as a representation of Jesus as one with the divine wisdom of Sophia, a symbolic representation of hidden knowledge or gnosis. Obviously such ideas are unconventional when compared to mainstream Christianity, but there is a long standing (if esoteric) tradition of a feminine manifestation of God in Christian faith. This is not a ridiculing of mainstream Christianity or a suggestion that Jesus was a woman, but simply a way of expressing complex idea figuratively, just a Jesus used parables to do the same.
So if a female Jesus is accepted, what about the issue of semi-nakedness? While there are strong attitudes against nudity of any form (the aforementioned furor over the naked John Lennon for example), one need only to go their local newsagent to find that there are plenty of photographic examples of nudity, and I’m not just talking about the items kept in brown paper bags. Pick up a men’s magazine like FHM or a women’s magazine like Elle and it’s quite likely that you’re going to see at least an exposed breast amongst the pages, or a nipple seen through a transparent outfit. Given that at least partial nudity in such publications is quite commonplace, the issue then is not so much nudity per se, but that sexual characteristics – in this case breasts - are being exposed in a representation of the crucifixion of Jesus. The truth is that the loincloth-wearing Jesus we all know from a thousand churches, statues, necklaces and rosaries is actually a distortion of historical fact that came about as a way of maintaining Christ’s modesty. Crucifixion as a means of execution was one of extreme punishment and humiliation, and the crucified were almost always stripped naked – Jesus included. If you don’t believe me, you’ll find all four Gospels feature the story of the soldiers gambling for his clothes. And if you’re thinking; ‘No, that’s just his robes… they may have left the loincloth on’, do you really think after spitting on, beating, flogging, crowning with thorns and forcing to carry a massively heavy wooden crossbeam, they would care enough about how he might feel to make an exception and leave him with a single shred of modesty? It follows then that a historically truthful depiction of the crucifixion would include a totally naked Christ, and as he was a man this means a full-frontal view of his penis and all. This is far more a display of sexual characteristics than Renee McIntosh’s breasts being exposed during the play, especially given she maintained the use of a loincloth to maintain a level of modesty anyway. The display of breasts in public is considered taboo because in Western Culture they are associated with sexual arousal, but there is nothing particularly sexually arousing about the straight-faced presentation of semi-nakedness in the play. And truthfully, if you’re watching a play about a person being crucified simply as a means of titillation, it says more about you than it does the play.
What this all boils down to is sensationalism on the part of the West Australian. While not openly attacking the play, their cover article plays up the controversial elements of Happy Dagger Theatre’s The York Crucifixion and only engages with the production in terms of face-value. By doing this the West Australian discredits the artistic value of the play and by extension discredits State Government arts funding system. This is not the first time they’ve done this, nor will it be the last. Considering the amount of festivals and art-related activities Perth puts on during the year, it’s obvious that we’re trying, we’re really trying very hard to break free of the Dullsville moniker, but we’re not going to get far if every idea that strays just a little away from the norm is shot down as a waste of taxpayer’s money, and it’s a sad state of affairs when gallery owners specifically advise me to not answer questions posed by reporters from the West Australian as ‘they will twist everything you say as a means to discredit you’. In closing, I will say that I agree with people who say that it is fortunate we live in a country that doesn’t a put a person in prison for a production like this, and I agree that Mohammad should be as open to interpretation as Jesus. An artist limited to the subject matter that is safe is virtually an artist in chains, and we should celebrate this freedom instead of squander it.
While it is nominally known as a populist paper, the generally right wing tone of the paper’s articles suggests it should be more accurately labeled a conservative journal. Given that West Australian Newspapers Group is the largest media group in the state, it occupies a position of virtual monopoly in setting the agenda for the state’s social, political and economic climate. There is a serious question to be asked here; is the reportage of the West Australian shaped by the conservative leanings of the people, or does it move to actively shape the attitudes and beliefs of Western Australians via editorial bias? Its well documented (and often factually inaccurate) attacks on the (justifiably) embattled state Labor Government aside, the paper has consistently put forth an anti-art agenda, especially in regards to art that pushes the boundaries of accepted aesthetics. Perhaps no case is more blatant than the recent vilification of the Happy Dagger Theatre Company’s controversial production of The York Crucifixion.
The cover page article about the play is a remarkable exercise in spin. Featuring a photograph of actress Renee McIntosh topless as Christ on the crucifix, the article’s lead in paragraph states: “A local theatre production which portrays Jesus as a semi-naked female on the cross has received almost $28,000 in State Government funding.” The paragraph makes no explicit point in favor or against the play – and there is nothing false about it – but with a little logical reasoning it becomes clear that there is an obvious implicit agenda being put forth. Since the majority of the West Australian’s cover articles are political, related to sensationalist portrayals of crime and/or features on sports or sporting personalities, the appearance of this article on the front page is a clear indication that the West Australian wants readers to see this article and that its accompanying illustration was a worthy cover photograph to draw the attention of potential buyers. Perth is a city of such prudish sensibilities that the Art Gallery of Western Australia’s promotional use of Annie Leibovitz’s celebrated photograph of a naked John Lennon hugging a fully clothed Yoko Ono caused outrage in spite of no visible representation of first or secondary sexual characteristics. Thus, it doesn’t take a giant leap in logic to guess what the obvious reaction the public would have to a photograph that depicted the uncensored breasts and nipples of a woman (‘pornography!’) who was furthermore playing the role of Christ in a play (‘blasphemy!’). But this is not outrageous enough; no, the article also plays the ‘waste of taxpayer’s money’ card by highlighting that the play was given almost $28,000 is grants money. The combination of the three paints a picture of ineffective politicians providing poor economic management by funding socially unacceptable acts of blasphemy; The West Australian brilliantly combining the social, political and the economic in a three pronged attack on progressive culture.
But hold on; in the spirit of fair and balanced reportage there has to be some reasonable explanation for the creative decision to cast a woman as Jesus, right? Based on the article, the only information we are given about the creative decision is director Andrew Hale saying: “When I first read the script I really loved the language but I found the whole story really inaccessible and boring,” and, “In every way possible we tried to shake up the story. In my point of view that’s what theatre should be doing.” On face value, even an open-minded reader would have to concede that this sounds a lot like sexploitation and shock-for-shock’s-sake, but the article leaves out several key facts. First is the origin of the source material. The York Crucifixion is a play that was written by an anonymous literary artist and is dated from the period 1463-77. The play was originally performed on a pageant wagon and used broad physical humor as a means of mainstream entertainment for the people of York. Working with a popular text of such antiquity gives credence to Hale’s attestation that the story was ‘really inaccessible and boring’ – at least in terms of the short attention span of contemporary culture - and attempts to shake up the story to return it to a certain level of popular entertainment would seem justified given the circumstances. Shakespeare – a producer of popular entertainment in his day - has been fair game for re-imagining and interpretation, so why not any other playwright?
While the ‘semi-naked female on the cross’ part of the equation seems to have been the focus of the West Australian’s article, it glosses over the other creative decisions by the director and company. The pageant wagon of its original incarnation ingeniously returns as a transmogrified set piece which is slowly disassembled during the course of the play and reassembled into the site of the crucifixion. Another clever element of the production is how director Andrew Hale utilizes grotesque, malformed and ugly costumes to turn the soldiers/buffoons of the text into Bouffons - originally the most excessively ugly people of France who would entertain the masses via satirical attacks on mainstream culture and the ‘beautiful people’. Given that in the original play the intention was to use physical comedy and buffoonery to make the audience complicit in the mockery and in turn the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the mockery of this most beautiful of human beings only intensifies the elements of the original play.
In fairness to the West Australian, the Arts Section of the paper had a mostly positive review of the play (under the less than flattering title ‘Buffoons Resurrect Easter play’) and in all fairness to a critical reading of the play, I will say that I did find the production to be far from perfect in execution. While I wasn’t totally impressed by the silly pop culture references and overly slapstick approach to acting, I can excuse these as being an attempt at making the production a mainstream entertainment, but the actors playing the four soldiers sped through their lines at such a rate it was almost as if they were only interested in the form of the presentation, and this was at the great expense of the content of the text. It’s certainly not the Bard, but the charm of listening to a temporally outdated vernacular was lost in the flow – a major error given that it renders the whole idea of bringing back such a play as irrelevant.
But these things aside, the issue of the female Jesus is the critical sticking point for the article in terms of the artistic validity of the work, seen by Anglican Archbishop Roger Herft as ‘a distortion of historical fact’ and by Liberal Shadow Arts Minister Barbara Scott as ‘ridiculing the Christian belief’. In terms of a distortion of historical fact, the play never once suggests that the historical Jesus was a woman, and I’m sure if the actors had been more diligent in clearly reading their lines I would have caught a slew of masculine pronouns in reference to the Jesus character of the play. What really surprised me given that Archbishop Herft is a learned doctor of the Church is that no mention was made of the more contentious issue of canon. If one were to accept that the Gospels were absolute historical fact, then any Passion narrative that is outside of the four synoptic Gospels of biblical canon, not based on firsthand historical accounts or not an adaptation of accounts from the Gospels would be a ‘distortion of historical fact’, right? The simple fact is that The York Crucifixion is not a canonical text at all, and there are a plethora of similar texts that have popped up through the ages that have been condoned by the Church in spite of the fact of their historical inaccuracy. Yet the West Australian article simply states ‘The York Crucifixion tells the story of the four soldiers who crucify Christ’, conveniently leaving out that it is a fictional story to begin with. For someone who is quite aware of issues of canon I would think if anything was going to be a problem, it would be the corruption of scripture that the source material represents. But no complaints were aimed at the text itself, and I would hazard a guess that if Jesus had been played by a man this play would have gone to the stage without a single complaint from the clergy of any of the major denominations (and most of the minor ones as well). And really: if you want to talk about ‘distortion of historical fact’ how about the customary portrayal of Jesus as an Aryan poster boy instead of a Jew?
With such variation in Christian belief, it is only natural that some groups and some individuals will find a feminine representation of Jesus to contradict their beliefs, but to suggest a female Jesus ridicules Christianity myopically ignores the symbolic properties of a feminine portrayal of Christ in relation to the beliefs and practices of Christian mysticism and Gnosticism. In some such traditions - which include sections of Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant mysticism - the wisdom of God exists in the form of the feminine Sophia, whom in Gnostic tradition is seen to be in unity with Christ, and is the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. From a Gnostic perspective, Andrew Hale’s casting of Renee McIntosh as Jesus can be read as a representation of Jesus as one with the divine wisdom of Sophia, a symbolic representation of hidden knowledge or gnosis. Obviously such ideas are unconventional when compared to mainstream Christianity, but there is a long standing (if esoteric) tradition of a feminine manifestation of God in Christian faith. This is not a ridiculing of mainstream Christianity or a suggestion that Jesus was a woman, but simply a way of expressing complex idea figuratively, just a Jesus used parables to do the same.
So if a female Jesus is accepted, what about the issue of semi-nakedness? While there are strong attitudes against nudity of any form (the aforementioned furor over the naked John Lennon for example), one need only to go their local newsagent to find that there are plenty of photographic examples of nudity, and I’m not just talking about the items kept in brown paper bags. Pick up a men’s magazine like FHM or a women’s magazine like Elle and it’s quite likely that you’re going to see at least an exposed breast amongst the pages, or a nipple seen through a transparent outfit. Given that at least partial nudity in such publications is quite commonplace, the issue then is not so much nudity per se, but that sexual characteristics – in this case breasts - are being exposed in a representation of the crucifixion of Jesus. The truth is that the loincloth-wearing Jesus we all know from a thousand churches, statues, necklaces and rosaries is actually a distortion of historical fact that came about as a way of maintaining Christ’s modesty. Crucifixion as a means of execution was one of extreme punishment and humiliation, and the crucified were almost always stripped naked – Jesus included. If you don’t believe me, you’ll find all four Gospels feature the story of the soldiers gambling for his clothes. And if you’re thinking; ‘No, that’s just his robes… they may have left the loincloth on’, do you really think after spitting on, beating, flogging, crowning with thorns and forcing to carry a massively heavy wooden crossbeam, they would care enough about how he might feel to make an exception and leave him with a single shred of modesty? It follows then that a historically truthful depiction of the crucifixion would include a totally naked Christ, and as he was a man this means a full-frontal view of his penis and all. This is far more a display of sexual characteristics than Renee McIntosh’s breasts being exposed during the play, especially given she maintained the use of a loincloth to maintain a level of modesty anyway. The display of breasts in public is considered taboo because in Western Culture they are associated with sexual arousal, but there is nothing particularly sexually arousing about the straight-faced presentation of semi-nakedness in the play. And truthfully, if you’re watching a play about a person being crucified simply as a means of titillation, it says more about you than it does the play.
What this all boils down to is sensationalism on the part of the West Australian. While not openly attacking the play, their cover article plays up the controversial elements of Happy Dagger Theatre’s The York Crucifixion and only engages with the production in terms of face-value. By doing this the West Australian discredits the artistic value of the play and by extension discredits State Government arts funding system. This is not the first time they’ve done this, nor will it be the last. Considering the amount of festivals and art-related activities Perth puts on during the year, it’s obvious that we’re trying, we’re really trying very hard to break free of the Dullsville moniker, but we’re not going to get far if every idea that strays just a little away from the norm is shot down as a waste of taxpayer’s money, and it’s a sad state of affairs when gallery owners specifically advise me to not answer questions posed by reporters from the West Australian as ‘they will twist everything you say as a means to discredit you’. In closing, I will say that I agree with people who say that it is fortunate we live in a country that doesn’t a put a person in prison for a production like this, and I agree that Mohammad should be as open to interpretation as Jesus. An artist limited to the subject matter that is safe is virtually an artist in chains, and we should celebrate this freedom instead of squander it.
