Superman Jesus

A response to Rachel's Post: 

http://gospelaccordingtobuddychrist.blogspot.com/2012/02/jesus-ill-be-back.html

Rachel,

I do agree with you with respect to the Kozlovic’s model of twenty-five attributes of a Christ figure. We still yet to really figure out why anyone would intentionally be looking for Christ figures in movies. Doesn’t it take away from the actual film? The film as an art piece is then rendered to the audience to look for non-existent subtextual Christ figures. Yes, some directors intentionally want to add the Christ figure in their superhero movie, but what does that do for the audience? Like Rachel said, would it bring out more of a crowd to Transformers if they though Optimus Prime was a Christ figure? Probably not. If people continually go into watching a film looking for Christ figures, what does that do for the experience of watching the film, and again looking at the film as an art piece instead of a religious artifact?

 

I again agree wit Rachel; this list of attributes can be associated with any super hero on the film market. From Charlie Brown to Spock, they all have some of the attributes listed by Kozlovic. I feel like it is a bit ridiculous to be associated characters of films like that, unless they are intentionally but into the repertoire of the character, and meant to be seen as a Christ figure.

To be devils advocate, the only reason in which I could find the reason why people would intentionally look for a Christ figure, would be that it allows the audience to be associated with their “real-life” Jesus. With Christ figures like, Superman for example, you can go watch the movie, or buy his comic books. He is “real life”, right infront of your eyes, instead of the real Jesus in which you can talk to him, but you can never really see him. I argue that Christ figures make Jesus more relatable and maybe even attainable to be able to see a super hero acting like him in the movies, or even in comic books.