I’ll skip my usual note about subscribing today (though you should subscribe!). For those of you who don’t know I work as TA at the University of Illinois-Chicago. I and the rest of me fellow TAs and GAs are currently on strike for better wages and better working conditions. It is my belief that the University has forced us into this position through a constant deevalutaion of the work that we do for UIC and our students every day. Please reach out if you have more questions on this matter. We also have a strike fund you can donate to here, and a letter writing campaign you can take part in here.
On Friday I went to the second Seder of my life. I had a delightful time celebrating Passover with my partner’s family and friends in Cleveland, Ohio. I ate the bitter herb, I mispronounced “Charoset,” while reading a page of the modified Haggadah we were using, and did not drink four full cups of wine. I sang some songs from a song book that mercifully contained the phonetic spelling of the lyrics, shared in some wonderful conversation and was made to feel very welcome. Overall, it was far livelier than most Easter celebrations I’ve been to, despite being a holiday with a far sadder history than Easter, the holiday we celebrated when I was a kid.
I didn’t really celebrate Easter this year. To be honest, I haven’t in years (Sorry Mom!). Based on current church attendance numbers in the United States most people in the same demographic quintile as myself don’t. Instead of celebrating I spent most of the day driving home from Cleveland. On my way back I did see several billboards wishing me a happy Easter, as well as one telling me that Hell Is Real, and a flag that said “Fuck Biden.” I also saw a church with a large “Pray for Our Cops” banner hanging out front and a packed parking lot.
It's not that I don’t think of Easter. It’s just that when I think of Easter I think of two things. Neither of them particularly related to the rising of Christ. One of them is the Church potlucks we used to have a Markham Community Mennonite. This was the church that my family attended when we lived in Evanston, Illinois. The Easter potlucks were amazing. While they couldn’t quite match the Thanksgiving feasts in taste and number of dishes, they held their own. They held their own very well.
The other thing that I think about, and what this newsletter is going to cover, is Monty Python’s The Life of Brian. I’ve never watched Life of Brian around or on Easter, but it does remind me of the holiday.
Life of Brian, for those not in the know, is a Monty Python movie. Probably the greatest of the Python movies. While Monty Python may have fallen out of favor in recent years due to the various hateful and ignorant things it’s members, most vocal among them John Cleese, have said, Life of Brian is still a banger. It tells the story of a Jewish man, Brian, who lives in Ancient Rome and is mistaken for the Messiah because he lives next to Jesus. The film ends with Brian on the cross singing one of Monty Python’s most famous songs “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”
When it came out it was deemed “blasphemous” by any number of church institutions around the world. This of course was an overreaction to one of the funniest satires of organized religion to ever exist. My mom tells a story of how she had to defend the movie to her “Christian Family Living” class in her Mennonite High School because everyone else was saying that it was blasphemous, or evil, or whatever. I’ve always been very proud of her for that. Though when confirming with her the accuracy of my memory of that story I also learned that she defended Meryl Streep’s character in Kramer vs. Kramer in that same calss. Don’t know about that, but my mom says it was because she “just couldn’t abide stupid opinions.” I also learned that the Christian Family Living at IMS (now Hillcrest) seemed to be mostly a film discussion class.
In usual Python fashion however, the movie isn’t just trying to make a stand against organized religion, hitting you on the head with the point over and over again. It’s also supremely silly, which is part of the reason the movie works. Two of the funniest scenes in the movie are in this vein. One of them revolves around a Roman Centurion catching a young graffiti artist who is not sure on his Latin. The other is about a man with a uh, interesting name. You can watch those here and here. I won’t say more on the matter so as not to ruin them.
I’m of course not saying that you should watch Life of Brian instead of celebrating Easter, or Passover, or any number of religious holidays. Hell, Life of Brian doesn’t even take place on Easter, it ends just before the events that would be celebrated millennia later. Unless you want to. That’d be a kind of a fun holiday. As long as you don’t take it too far and try to make a real organized thing with various factions, sects, and schisms. That’d be against the spirit of the whole thing.
I’ve gotten in trouble before for not taking religion seriously enough. Maybe that’s Life of Brian’s fault. To be quite honest that’s my fault though. Life of Brian takes religion very seriously. As it should. Religion, and organized religion specifically has been a political, economic, personal, and cultural force in the world since the beginnings of written history, and even before. Sometimes to the benefit of the world, many times to the opposite. A serious topic to be sure. The thing about serious topics is that they should be approached with humor. If not all the time, then quite often at least. If you can’t see the comedy in whatever you take most seriously you aren’t really taking it seriously. Most of the time seriousness is bullshit anyway. A façade so other people think they’re smart or something. That they don’t have time for simple frivolity and common japes.
At least that’s what I think. Maybe I’m wrong. Probably I’m wrong. I’m really not that smart. I write a newsletter on the internet after all. The one thing that I do know is that you should watch Life of Brian if you haven’t. And if you have? Well, it’s worth revisiting. Especially that one part, with the thing. You know what I’m talking about.
Love live the Judean People’s Front.
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Always a fun movie. You should also watch Jesus Christ Superstar sometime if you haven't done so yet.