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Abstract
Two diminutive, mass produced statues of Christ, Buddy Christ and Jesus Action Figure seem intended as postmodern anti-Christs to offend Christian sensibilities and mock the image of Christ. I suggest, however, that the statuettes have an excess of meaning that is remaindered as a residual respect for Christ as a spiritual guide, whose enduring political leadership subverts religious hypocrisy. An atheistic/Marxist defence of Christology provides my theoretical base to explore the statuettes, the cult of the Sacred Heart provides an historical example of subversive piety and an editor of the Gay Times' supplies an urgent challenge to reclaim the Christ of Faith as a spiritual and cultural inheritance from the religious right.
Notes
1. Fiachra Gibbons quotes several vox pop responses to the statue. Colin Duggan, from Acton, west London: ‘If that's Jesus Christ, it's a bloody miracle… You couldn't put your faith in someone like that, he's as weak as a kitten’. John Godwin, ‘another doubter’: ‘His smallness just shows what little meaning Christianity has in the world today. He's a typically broken, lily-livered, Anglican Jesus’. But ‘The fact that Wallinger's Jesus is so overshadowed by the monuments around him endeared him to waitress Tracey Tang, 23: ‘I just want to go up there and give him a hug. I never notice the other statues in the square—they're just target practice for pigeons—but he looks so vulnerable you just want to take him home. Seen from the side, it's just amazing. And the closer you get the more young and beautiful he gets’ (Gibbons Citation1999).
2. Buddy Christ™ & ©2000 View Askew Productions Inc., produced under licence by Graphitti Designs, Inc. (http://www.graphittidesigns.com), $12.95.
3. The box top names the product as View Askew's Buddy Christ, with the strapline ‘Dashboard statue’, while the base carries the bar code, trademark and production details and information on how to find the nearest comic speciality store.
4. Jesus Action Figure ©2001 Accoutrements, PO Box 30811, Seattle, WA 98103, USA (http://www.accoutrements.com) marketed through Archie McPhee® (http://www.mcphee.com/items/10746.html), $7.95.
5. There is also a choking hazard warning: ‘Small parts, not suitable for children under 3 years’. A case of ‘Little children may suffer if they come unto me’!
6. ‘The name Jesus means “God saves”. The term Christ is a title for “anointed of God”. For Muslims and some Jews, Jesus was a prophet. Buddhists say he was enlightened. Hindus call him an avatar (the incarnation of a deity in human form) and Christians hail him as the Son of God. So who is he? Jesus was an extraordinary healer. Nearly a quarter of the Gospels describe his powers over sickness. To the downtrodden, he taught restraint and charity in the face of oppression. As a result, the powerless learned to maintain dignity without being arrogant. He delivered this message to the people: “the time has arrived for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. If you believe in this Good News, then it will happen”. He was executed at a young age as a common criminal. Since then he has been the topic of many heated theological debates. Although he is understood in many different ways, everyone seems to agree that he was a remarkable man.’
7. ‘I am the Light that is above them all, I am the All, the All came forth from Me and the All attained to Me. Cleave a piece of wood, I am there; lift up the stone and you will find Me there.’ ‘It is impossible for a man to mount two horses and to stretch two bows, and it is impossible for a servant to serve two masters, otherwise he will honour the one and offend the other.’
8. As a Freudian analyst, Lacan was concerned with the idea of the analytic subject's truth. For Lacan, this truth emerges in analysis as the subject reinterprets his or her relation to a repressed history and arrives at a new understanding of and accommodation with the forgotten trauma. In this way the subject's Imaginary relation to/representation by the Thing lost in the forgotten traumatic Real is interpreted in the Symbolic speech of the psychoanalytic discourse. ‘In the discourse of analysis, the subject develops what is his truth, his integration, his history’ (Lacan Citation1991, 283). Lacan came to regard analysis as a praxis that treats the Real by the Symbolic, along the way encountering the Imaginary (Lacan Citation1979, 6). Put differently, analysis is conducted in the medium of language (Symbolic), deals with the stuff of the unconscious (Imaginary) and aims at uncovering the contents of the subject's truth (Real).
9. Interestingly, CatholicShopper.com ‘Jesus Inspirational Sport Statues’ now offers ‘the perfect gift for every young Catholic athlete’ (http://www.catholicshopper.com/products/inspirational_sport_statues.html). A ‘wonderful way to reinforce Jesus ‘as friend’ in everyday activities, their range of 4¾–6 ½ inch statues each costs $21.95 and has a brass nameplate, ‘Jesus Is My Coach’. The range has been extended to include depictions of non-Caucasian children.
10. There are strong echoes here of Cardinal Glick's reasoning for retiring the crucifix in favour of the Buddy Christ.
13. From an original idea of Stanley Weston in 1962, Hasbro's ‘GI Joe’ was developed as a ‘movable soldier’ (as opposed to a doll), and aimed to appeal to boys. Designed by Walter Hansen and Phil Kraczkowski and marketed with uniforms of the four branches of the service under the name GI Joe (http://joes.propadeutic.com/pre82.html#Joe), the figure was articulated in 21 places and had a trademark scar on its face. The series of figures were produced from 1964 to 1968.
14. I am indebted to the Revd Tom Devonshire-Jones, former Director of Art and Christianity Enquiry, for this deliciously irresistible pun.