In August, Life of Brian hits its 40th anniversary. I feel old.
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40 years ago, I graduated high school and shipped off to Minnesota to attend Bethel College (now University) because my parents had made it clear: if I wanted to go away to college, it had to be a Christian school. (At least, that’s how I remember it, though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I’m misremembering.)
It wasn’t a big burden. Minnesota was beautiful—that year’s winter was mild, which my thin California blood appreciated—and Bethel was no Bob Jones University. I was still a fairly serious Christian, and—despite being a dismal singer/songwriter (I’ve got the demos to prove it!)—I was eager to “share” my faith through music. So I connected with an organization—something with “Harvest” in the name, I think—who encouraged my Randy Stonehill wannabe-ness and helped me set up gigs at local coffee bars and church groups.
I can’t point to many things that played a clear role in my “falling away” from that faith. For the most part, it was a gradual slide, like watching a kid grow up: you don’t really notice that anything’s changed until something—a photo from way back, or the comment of a friend you haven’t seen for awhile, or the sudden discovery that they’re taller than you—draws attention to how much they really have changed.
Life of Brian is one of the exceptions.
It wasn’t the movie itself. I was “strong” enough as a Christian that a little religious satire wasn’t going to shake me up. But the Christian response to the film? That was a different story.
I remember sitting on a bench in the hallway outside my acting class, next to a bulletin board on which someone had posted a review, probably from the school paper, decrying the film before it had even been released. I probably wouldn’t have noticed the article, and certainly wouldn’t have bothered to read it, had I not heard two students discussing it. I don’t remember the conversation exactly—it was 40 years ago, for crying out loud!—but it ran something like this:
FIRST STUDENT: What a horrible movie! Why would anyone show this? It treats Jesus like a joke. So offensive!
SECOND STUDENT: Have you seen it?
FIRST STUDENT: No! I would never go to see such trash.
On reflection, it’s not surprising that a student at a Christian school wouldn’t want to see the movie. There was enough ink spilled about it—blasphemy! heresy!—and church leaders had spoken out against it internationally. Several British towns, and even a couple countries (Ireland and Norway) banned it outright. In other places, and most often in the US, theaters were picketed—probably increasing interest in the film.
Nonetheless, I remember feeling that such harsh judgment seemed a bit much—a mix of fear and sanctimony.
So I decided I should see it.
Since I grew up without much TV, I’m pretty sure I’d never even heard of Monty Python. I don’t think I’d seen a single skit—not “The Cheese Shop,” not “The Dead Parrot,” not “The Argument Clinic.” I hadn’t seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Life of Brian was a revelation! The mix of comedy—physical, intellectual, juvenile—with religious and political satire… I was in awe.
There’s a debate that aired on the BBC a couple months after Brian was released. I didn’t see it at the time, but it perfectly captures the issues as I saw them then. On one side, two Christian intellectuals—a bishop and a satirist—complained that the film lampoons Jesus and the crucifixion, which (they argued) lies at the foundation of our “whole civilization.” (Also: “I think of Mother Theresa . . . .”)
On the other side, John Cleese and Michael Palin argued that the film satirizes closed systems of thought, which are impervious to any light from the outside—a way of thinking that their opponents embodied throughout the entire debate.
It didn’t help, either, that the two (oh, so pompous!) Christians stepped way outside the bounds of reasonable debate with lots of cheap shots: the bishop said the film reminded him of his days as governor of a “mentally deficient school,” and the satirist dismissed the film as “cheap” and “tenth-rate,” a “miserable little film,” a “squalid little number”—predicting that, in the end, Life of Brian would have “no influence in the long run.”
Well, it had an influence on me. Unlike many of my fellow Christians at the time, I didn’t see the film so much as a satire of the life of Jesus as a satire of Christianity (and organized religion, more generally). But the closed-minded response shook something loose in my mind. I accepted that the satire was targeted at me, a relatively unquestioning follower of a closed system of thought.
My journey out of that closed system took well over a decade—a slow collection of mostly imperceptible developments. But Life of Brian—or, more accurately, the backlash against it—was among the first cracks in that system.
This is part of a series, echoing the “10 Day Movie Challenge” that I got sucked into on Facebook:
Every day I must select an image from a film that has impacted me in some way, present it without a single explanation and nominate somebody to take the challenge by starting his/her own post and selecting someone to continue.
Without a single explanation? Nice try.
Previous posts:
- #day1 – For your eyes only
- #day2 – Wait until dark
- #day3 – Blade runner
- #day4 – Flashdance
- #day5 – Star wars
- #day6 – The aristocats