By Eric Le Roy
Content 18+ The fabled writer Toni Morrison (1931-2019) once published a book called The Bluest Eye. It is a baleful account of the destruction of a black family (partly the fault of society and partly self-inflicted) which centers around a girl named Pecola Breedlove who eventually goes insane, imagining that her eyes have been changed to the color blue – always her dream. It is of course the color of whiteness.
The themes of the story (it is multi-layered) keep returning to the idea of stereotypes regarding what is considered beautiful and what is ugly. Clearly, Pecola is lacking, not only because she hasn’t got blue eyes but also because she is dark-skinned, another drawback, especially in comparison to the light-skinned (technically ‘black’) classmate Maureen, the product of a rich family and the object of adoration by her peers. The book is painful to read; try it out, and you’ll see what I mean.
Yesterday, I had a conversation with one of my adult students, a man I met in Moscow years ago and am still close to. For some reason (you never know with Misha), the conversation turned to Jesus and what he must have looked like. Well, if it tells you anything, back when I lived Stateside, my black friends always referred to Jesus as the “blue-eyed soul brother.” I liked this moniker then and now because it’s perfect. A lot of white people don’t get it, but for black people the blue-eyed soul brother presents a bit of a problem, and not only because of the azure orbs.
Do any of you remember Charlton Heston? He was the actor who always played the role of Moses or Ben Hur or even Michelangelo. And he was also the perfect Jesus. Gawd Dammmm, did that dude ever look like Jesus! White, bearded, handsome as hell, and, I guess, blue-eyed. (I never looked into them.) Go into any European or American art museum that features the classics and you will see an endless selection of Jesus material. Jesus as an infant, Jesus suffering on the cross, and the dead Jesus draped across his mother’s lap (“La Pieta’).
And it’s always the same guy. Handsome, Caucasian, European: his hair long and straight and, if marble doesn’t yield blue eyes, it should, because this is the ‘received’ Jesus. The one black folks have been praying to all these years. (Who knows, maybe some of them have converted to Islam just to get away from those blue eyes.)
Of course, it should be obvious that the real Jesus – assuming he ever existed in the first place – would not have looked anything like a bearded, long-haired Charlton Heston, Brad Pitt, or Hunter Biden. In fact, he might well have looked a lot like any slightly overweight, balding Jewish businessman of a swarthy complexion. Probably short as well, because they didn’t grow them tall in those days. I used to imagine Jesus looking like a combination of the actor Danny DeVito and Woody Allen. (Maybe your memory fails or you hadn’t been born back then?) Never mind, I’ll help you out with photos.)
OK, maybe these guys aren’t dark enough. Try these:
Maybe you think I am mocking. Or joking. I’m not. There has always been a wide gap between historical narrative and mere, unglamorous fact. The Americans are particularly guilty of this need to cosmetically beautify everything. For example, if you read Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina, you will find her described as a not-quite portly, not-quite middle-aged woman of Russian polite society. Vronsky adored her, but in no place in the book does she come across as a combination of Rapunzel, Cinderella, and the Little Mermaid. Yet in the American film versions, she is ravishing, as if she had just stepped off the cover of Vogue.
Have you ever looked at the beauties of the past since the advent of photography – or even the old court portraits that were designed to flatter? How many of them appear irresistible in the contemporary way? Some are timeless; others, well, as they say, ‘you had to have been there.’
Here, for instance, is a 3-D facial reconstruction of the real Cleopatra, and I shall follow it up with Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra in the film:
Lost your boner, guys? Try this:
You (I am sure) and I both prefer the second one. Marc Antony and Julius Caesar were wild about the first one. She must have been something special. But all it does is prove the old adage: Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.
It comes down to the fact that we need to see ourselves in the gods and goddesses we worship. That, in my opinion, is why Jesus is crucial to Christianity. I guess that’s why they call it Christ-ianity instead of ‘God ianity’. People can talk about ‘God’ all they want to and claim to love ‘Him’ (Her? They, It? – these pronouns are getting harder all the time), but of course they love nothing of the sort. That’s because they can’t see God – and, well I don’t know about you, but I have never fallen in love with – much less been inclined to worship – an abstraction. I am sure that Einstein’s wife was fond of him, but could any of you be in love – erotically or platonically – with E=MC2? Guys, try to imagine yourself in the shower after a good workout, thinking about your lady and getting aroused by groaning over and over “E=MC2, E=MC2, E=MC2, Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! Yesssssssss!” (You might even shout “O God! – but you wouldn’t really mean it.)
It ain’t gonna happen. Hence Jesus. Hence in Europe a European Jesus. Without the human face of Jesus, Christianity is E=MC2.
Misha and I also discussed Adam and Eve. (You know where this is going now, right?) Well, here they a-r-e, right under the Big Top Circus Tent as advertised”
But what if they really looked like….well, see below.
Because that would have been them. Or this:
Do you see anything wrong with that? I don’t. But somehow…it just won’t do, will it? In our modern imaginations, we have to create something better.
The famous Elizabethan playwright Cristopher Marlowe described Helen of Troy as follows:
Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies!
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
Which one is Helen? Or did she look like this?
That’s the real Bonnie Parker (as in Bonnie and Clyde). But here she is again, in the American film starring Faye Dunaway:
Well, there you go. Life has many fictions.
It may surprise you, but nothing here has been intended to ridicule anyone or anything. It’s just that I find myself intrigued by the way all of us invent ‘reality’ as we go along, and that includes the ’realities’ of the past, many of which are pure inventions also. It’s as if life were a long, dusty road in a foreign country, and the road is full of kiosks, fruit stands, and the like. Most of the faces are nondescript – faces of the wind and dust – but every now and then you come across one that sparkles. And as you march along, mile after mile after mile, those fleeting faces that came and went (or was it you who came and went?) become the legends of which the inns and alehouses of your soul are constituted. Those men become the guys of your soul’s toil and battle and after-work laughter, and those women become the mistresses of your elderly musings.
Who were they really?
Can you imagine walking around in Galilee a couple of thousand years ago and asking the local lads in front of the bar, “Say, do any of you guys know of a fellow named Jesus? Jesus of Nazareth?”
“Well, hell yeah. That’s him, right over there. Well, shit, he was there. Hang on a sec. He’ll be back. Ah, yeah, there he is.”
Sure enough, a man is standing there. Copper and stocky, and you can see right away that he possesses a certain self-assurance, like maybe he is the son of the mayor. Or maybe just a hustler, a lady’s man, a sturdy piece of work down at the pool hall.
So you approach, somewhat cautiously, and stand before him. He isn’t what you would call awesome, but you feel a sense of awe anyway, if for no other reason than you figure that’s what you are supposed to feel.
Finally, he looks up. A little disgruntled at being stared at, the way people don’t like it when you look over their shoulder while they are trying to read the newspaper. “Yeah? Can I help you?”
Suddenly, the cat has got your tongue. Even though what you see is not the Christ of Leonardo or Michelangelo, you are ready to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Ah, I was just wondering: Are you Jesus? Jesus of Nazareth? Jesus Christ?”
“Jesus who??”
“Never mind”
“I am a carpenter, if that’s what you’re looking for.” He rubs his nose (must be an itch) and spits in the street. You watch his ‘holy’ saliva sink in the sand.
Suddenly, you blurt it out. ”Are you really the Son of God?”
His eyes dance with amazement. He looks over at a row of small houses. The sun is fierce and beads of sweat form on his brow. He has a stubble of growth on his chin; his eyes are mahogany with white gleams in them that, maybe, on a bright blue day there by the Sea of Galilee might briefly radiate with a touch of indigo.
From across the way, a woman steps outside, She is very dark and wearing a shawl. She is young but seems an ordinary woman. Nothing but a regular young woman like so many others in that dusty place. She carries a basket.
“Hey Mary,” he cries out with amusement. “Am I the Son of God?”
She smiles, a slightly coquettish smile although somehow, now that she moves closer, she looks older than you thought. There are lines in her forehead and the sun has hardened her face. But, in fact, she is rather pretty.
“What do you think?” she says to her man, who, accepting it as a well-deserved compliment, returns his gaze toward you and says, “Well, I guess that’s your answer.”
You speak. “You are Mary? Which Mary?”
“Which Mary?”
“Yes,’’ you hurriedly insist, fishing for answers. “Magdalene or the Virgin?” Immediately you regret saying this. It sounds like you are shopping for postcards.
She and the man exchange mischievous glances. “Well, I am not a virgin!” she says and they both laugh heartily.
Then, drawing attention to the situation, the man says, “So, yes my name is Jesus and you can make of that what you want. But do you need a carpenter, or am I repeating myself?”
As they wait, you look at them. Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene. It must be them. It has to be them. But they could be anybody. A dark man and a darker woman. And now a gust of wind kicks up and blows dust in their faces, so that, for just an instant it seems that they are made of dust.
You are silent.
Finally the dark man says, “I guess not. Well, goodbye, we are going to have lunch and then lie down for a while. It’s the weather.” Jesus winks at Mary and she winks back. “Goodbye, stranger.”
You watch them as they cross the sand and open the little door, disappearing inside and shutting the wooden door behind them.
You go and sit in a bar until dusk, hoping to see them again. But for all the faces, even the darkest cheeks made rosy with wine, they do not come.
There will be many bar stools for you. Many people will come and go. Multitudes. O, how they tramp, timelessly, through time. You age, along with everything else. Sometimes, for unaccountable reasons, you remember those two that you saw that day. You do remember the names: Jesus. Mary. Which Mary? Must have been the wife.
You tell this story to your old faithful dog and sometimes he tilts his head, as if to understand. Jesus and Mary, yes that was it, but for the life of you, you can’t remember what they looked like, just that they seemed ordinary. Maybe you expected too much out there in the dust where nothing much seemed to be going on.
