The Search for Jesus (ABC News Special)
Picture: B
Sound: B Extras: D Main Program: B-
ABC News Productions rounds up the usual players for this
scholarly and journalistic “gangs-all-here” investigation into the historical
Jesus – a seemingly objective theological project whose very ambition already
demonstrates a certain bias tendency of the academy on religion. Marcus Borg. Paula Fredriksen. Robert
Funk. John Dominic Crossan. Anyone who has seen almost any treatment of
Jesus on the Discovery Channel, or From Jesus to Christ (inspired by Paula
Fredriksen’s book of the same name) ought to recognize these names – or at
least these faces. Especially John
Dominic Crossan who somehow manages to turn up for anything ABC does that is
even remotely about Jesus – that includes ABC’s Primetime Special Event: Mel
Gibson’s Passion with Diane Sawyer, or Nightline with Ted
Koppel. While many have already pointed
out The Search for Jesus’s over-reliance on members from the well-respected,
but in my opinion very suspect Jesus Seminar, to me it only makes sense that
Peter Jennings in an attempt to be “reliable” might be drawn to the more
critical and suspicious scholars of the New Testament. And this isn’t such a bad thing. How informative would a documentary entitled
The Search for Jesus be if Jennings only interviewed those who have already
found Jesus – even if only in their own minds?
This is precisely the problem not so much with documentaries about
Jesus, but with those who participate on either side of the debate. To question the validity of the New
Testament, or to consider for just a moment that Jesus may not have had blonde
hair and blue eyes – the latter assumption being made by nearly everyone Jennings
queries in this disc – are taboo for those on the Right, and essential for
those on the Left. But even the
scholars here, at times, give way more to their own idiosyncratic politics than
to academic rigor or study. I mean
really, how can Paula Fredriksen honestly imagine Jesus as a “combination of
Pacino and DeNiro” without subscribing to the past 30 years of Hollywood white
privileging ideology that have positioned these very personas – not as Eastern
Mediterranean messiahs but as white American males in every sense of the word? Just see the compelling article in the April
2004 edition of GQ Magazine on the fading De Niro-Pacino-Nicholson mystique, if
you don’t want to take my word for it.
I guess what I’m saying is that at the end of the day, nobody is really
objective – and the most dangerous accounts are those that purport to be. (So,
yes, I admit – even this review will be a bit slanted.)
In terms of this disc, when Jennings takes us from Bethlehem where we hear from
natives who insist that Jesus was born in Bethlehem simply because this is the
way it is to Louisiana with the
Pentecostals of Alexandria where we view excerpts from what Jennings calls an
“extravaganza”, but what more properly appears to be another stage rendering of
what just might be labeled in the wake of criticism of Gibson’s The Passion of
the Christ a hip passion play, I still found myself hesitant to side with
eithers unintellectual approach to faith.
But either way, despite being interspersed with intellectual commentary
on the historical personage of John the Baptist, when Jennings problematically
asserts John the Baptist must have looked just like the Southern computer
scientist who plays him on stage, it instantly becomes very clear to me whose
side this report is on. Unlike say a
Michael Moore, or any competent documentary filmmaker who doesn’t bother hiding
bias since it inevitably will always be there, Jennings and his producers go
out of their way to appear decidedly in the middle about the question of
Jesus. And this where is where the
program flounders as an exercise in journalistic trepidation and not
daring. (And so regardless of what one
thinks of Michael Moore – I happen to like him – he certainly cannot be accused
of pandering to cowardly status quo politics in his albeit flawed, but
undeniable stabs at truth in the face of groupthink and spin.) Unfortunately, I cannot say the same here
for Jennings.
In The Search for Jesus unlike say, Fahrenheit
9/11, one must work a little harder to see the agendas. But subtle clues still give ABC’s politics
away – like for instance when they quote a particular passage of the Bible, but
decide to not capitalize the “h” in the pronoun whose antecedent is Jesus – a
grammatical tradition common to most English Bible translations. Little moves like this let us know that The
Search for Jesus is more concerned with not offending the Left than with
offering any real truth or apologetic insight that might show both the Left and
the Right a thing or two. How can you
really expect us to believe you’re searching for Jesus if you’re afraid to
exercise a grammatical tradition that even atheists subscribe too? In this way, in places, this disc might
better be called “The Search for Nielsen.”
But this is not to say that The Search for Jesus
taught me nothing. I did learn a few things
– like not everyone thinks John the Baptist was an Essene – here he’s linked
here with an independent movement of his own making. I don’t necessarily buy this, but it’s an interesting viewpoint
that is more prevalent among mainstream scholars than I realized. I also think Jennings does a notable job of
piecing the program together so that it remains at least interesting, if not
only mildly informative. Besides, both
the landscapes and b-roll shots of the indigenous people of Bethlehem and
Jerusalem are absolutely gorgeous – and for the record, even through the bias
lens of ABC, most of the people, even today, do not look like De Niro or Pacino
types. In the end, The Search for
Jesus isn’t the best made-for-prime-time-documentary work I’ve seen on the
topic, but it’s certainly not the worst.
It’s competent, but unprovocative.
Slickly woven together, but sloppily ambiguous about its own viewpoint. But if you don’t mind the clichéd
talking-heads documentary approach, and you want to know what some of the more
popular religious scholars of the day look like, then this special-featureless
DVD just might be worth checking out.
But if you are actually searching for Jesus, and this is you’re only
source, like many of the scholars on this disc, you’re probably going to end up
a bit disappointed.
- Gregory Allen
Gregory Allen -- filmmaker, scholar, and critic -- is an
assistant Professor in the Cinema and Digital Arts Department at Point Park
University, and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of
Pittsburgh. He also oversees the
student film production organization The Sprocket Guild www.sprocketguild.org and can be contacted at info@sprocketguild.org.
