Paul O'Donnell: October 2006 Archives

Ted Neeley, the former rock drummer who played the title superstar in the movie "Jesus Christ Superstar," is still on the road, playing Jesus in the original stage musical. In an interview with The Dialog, the Catholic diocesan paper of Wilmington, Del., Neeley, now 65, remembers the night the show opened in 1971, when protestors lined Broadway and New Yorkers "thought we were going to destroy the culture there."

"Superstar" was the first work to suggest--however quaintly it may seem to our post-"DaVinci Code" sensibilities--a physical relationship between Mary Magdalene and her rabbi. Neeley points out that the musical, despite its famous number, sung by Magdalene, "I Don't Know How to Love Him," never makes that claim. Instead, he says, the true cultural legacy of the show is that it has become "a blueprint for teaching the religious ethic of Christ."

Neeley's own legacy may be that we now know what it would have been like had Jesus stuck around long enough to appear on the "Tonight" show:

Full disclosure: I've never been much of an Audio Adrenaline fan. First of all the name. Adrenaline is a hormone, a glandular fluid that enters the bloodstream for a short-term or circumscribed effect. It didn't promise much in the way of introspection, which I am a fan of, even in rock music; nor did it guarantee visceral fortitude.

But after 15 years in the business, 18 radio hits, countless Dove Award nominations (okay 22), Audio Adrenaline has more than lived down the name. Now that they've decided to call it quits--years of belting it out has left lead singer Mark Stuart's vocal chords in a threateningly tattered condition--the band's contribution to the Christian rock looms even larger.

Entering the Christian rock scene at a time when most Christian bands were pale imitations of mainstream names, Audio A certainly hit some familiar notes--they are most often compared to U2 and the Red Hot Chili Peppers--but had a bright melodic sense that was all their own, catchy hooks that sold their songs, and tons of energy. They first came to attention as an opening band for DC Talk, a band that took Christian rock to a new level; Audio A's success, especially their debut hit "Big House," gave that level some depth. The band and the song also made the genre more fun than it had a reputation for.

There's still time to catch the supergroup on their 35-city farewell tour with Mercy Me. The band will shut down after a final concert in Georgia in April.

Less than a month from now, the video game version of the Left Behind series, "Left Behind: Eternal Forces," will debut at big-box retailers, just in time for Christmas shopping season. The game, set in New York City, follows the basic M.O. of the bestselling Christian adventure novels. Tribulation Forces--those left behind to fight the anti-Christ after the cream of the Christian crop is skimmed off to heaven--force unbelievers to fight or switch. "Conduct physical & spiritual warfare using the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world," says the game's promotion material.

This connection between prayer and violence has raised the hackles of some real-life believers. "We're entertaining ourselves with a crusade against people who don't believe [in Christ]," John B. Thompson, a Christian author, told The Jewish Week. "This is madness." Left Behind Games president Jeff Frichner points out that killing someone actually lowers a player's spirituality, akin to that player's onscreen health or strength.

"Eternal Forces" is also disconcerting to some Jews, who, in the name of versimilitude, make up many of those whom "Left Behind" players will encounter in their virtual quest around Manhattan. Interestingly, both Frichner and the game's developer, Troy London, who helped create Madden NFL games, are both New Yorkers who converted from Judaism to Messianic Judaism--the faith that worships Jesus as Lord while retaining many Jewish traditions.

But the partners say their game is like any other strategic video game. "You have the force of good and the force of evil, you battle against evil and hopefully you can figure out and manage your resources to win each level and, ultimately, the game," says Frichner.

The best hope for the unconverted, perhaps, is that the game will be wildly popular, and keep Christians who would take inspiration from Left Behind fastened securely to their control sets.

The Learning Channel’s 10-part series "The Monastery" has a couple of advantages over your run-of-the-mill reality show. One is that it is shot at Christ in the Desert, a Roman Catholic monastery in northern New Mexico. TLC’s cameras capture the astounding beauty of the canyon setting’s piercing blue skies, hawks dawdling overhead and the lacework of the bare desert trees against red earth. Christ in the Desert itself is beautiful to look at, a combination of local adobe construction and medieval inspired frescoes.

It’s here that five men from all walks of life have come to sort out their spirituality. Some, like the television writer Tom, have had a loose faith in God tested by addiction or tough experiences. Others, like a former gang member-turned-counselor and a Satanist-turned-Episcopalian, are looking to develop a strong devotion. Still others have no faith at all. They learn how to pray eight hours a day, work and eat in silence, and each is mentored by one of the monks to seek God. Not all of them make it, and those that do don’t do so in predictable ways.

The other advantage of "The Monastery" is the Rule of St. Benedict, the code that guides much of Western monastic life, including the monks we meet here—and the personal development the men go through. Part of my impatience with reality TV is watching folks like you and me make choices driven by the same dull sentiments and blind ethical assumptions that got them in whatever hole they’re in to begin with (including having their lives splashed on TV). "The Monastery" instead has a moral and spiritual "plot" furnished in large part by how the men react the to rule and the monks.

Strong faith is no guarantee of success. One character warming again to his youthful Catholic faith bridles at his mentor's suggestion that he abide by the Church’s sacramental regime. At one point the Episcopalian disgustedly calls the monastery "a fortress guarding nothing." You don’t have to suscribe to the monks’ faith or their rule to find these bends in the spiritual path suspenseful and absorbing. The show debuts Sunday at 10.

The poor Anti-Defamation League. The champions of tolerance--sworn especially to fight anti-Semitism--have been reduced by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen to fretting in a press release that the cute, totally ironic anti-Semitic digs in Cohen's new movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," might be "too sophisticated for the average moviegoer."

In the movie, Cohen plays Borat, a Kazakhstani ignoramus on a documentary tour of the United States. The setup lets Borat to take satirical pokes at American life, while also lampooning the benightedness of what might be termed either New Europe or Old Middle Asia. In Borat's Kazakhstan, women are property, horses have the vote, and every bit of hard luck is blamed on a Jewish conspiracy. In one publicity gag for the movie, Borat suggested the Kazakhstan government "sue the Jew" who erected a website in the .kz domain advertising the movie. The Jew in question is Cohen himself.

Funny, right? If you have misgivings, leave them at the door. The twisty power of irony is that it turns its critics into humorless, irrelevant drudges the moment they take the ironist to task. The Kazakhstani government, who took down the website, looked ridiculous stating, for the record, that rape is not condoned within its borders. Trying to avoid that trap, the ADL is choosing to, in the words of the blogger Wonkette, "teach comedy to Americans." Those who see the film, says the ADL, need to understand that it aims to "unmask the absurd and irrational side of anti-Semitism and other phobias born of ignorance and fear."

Or maybe the ADL is indulging in a little irony of its own. The average American moviegoer, of course, is a teenager, who already gets that bigotry is born of ignorance and fear--tolerance has been drummed into our teens since they were preschoolers--but teens will also get immediately the brute power of brandishing the word "Jew," and how Cohen plays it for laughs. The average moviegoer, in other words, is plenty sophisticated enough to mimic Cohen's multilayered humor. Fans of the Borat movie will likely be unmasking the irrational side of anti-Semitism for the rest of their lives.

Like any serious rockers, Christian musicians have had flings with their keyboard players, divorced their cokehead husbands, and had fans sue them for being too drunk to perform. But as this story from The Onion—still the country's most reliable fictional...

The trademark Mohawk is looking a little sparse, and age has begun to scrunch further his bulldog features, but Mr. T, who laid claim to the tagline "I pity the fool" a quarter-century ago, is back in a reality series,...

The re-release of Warren Beatty's 1981 film "Reds" has put the star in the usual rotation of magazines and TV interviews. My favorite so far is Premiere's wonderfully entrancing interview, in which the recollections of Beatty's friends and co-workers are...