Henry Byron Warner died of a heart attack at the age of 82. Jeffrey Hunter, at 42, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, lost consciousness, and died fatally injured in the head. Max von Sydow left us last March, full of days, as we are accustomed to saying about anyone who has passed 90. Ted Neeley is still alive – today he is 77 years old – with a steady downward trend in his career. In contrast, Robert Powell, a year younger than Neeley, has recorded a steady upward trend in his own career, mainly in television. Willem Dafoe, 65, also alive, has an even more impressive career to show. Jim Caviezel, 52, was lucky to survive a series of accidents, although his career never took off the way he had hoped. Graham Chapman died at 48, stricken with cancer. Alexis Golfis died at 59, a homeless scavenger, despite making a lot of money from time to time. Christian Bale, 51, is currently at the peak of his artistic success. Diogo Morgado, 39, is considered one of the hottest stars of his generation.
The data is drawn from an article by Christina Katsantoni, published on the website The Toc in April 2014, enriched with 2020 data. The inventive title of the article – “Is Jesus’ “curse” really valid?” – reveals, among other things, the only connecting link between all these more or less important actors: all of them, at some stage in their careers – usually early – played Jesus Christ in film or television productions, conventional or unconventional, orthodox or heretical, in terms of the artistic ‘reading’ of the Divine Drama. Over the years, their careers and private lives have been highlighted or silenced by most of the media, depending on whether they refuted or confirmed the urban legend of the “Curse of Jesus”. Like dozens of other urban legends, this one was too spicy and catchy to bother with the annoying question of whether it corresponds even approximately to reality.
Right from the start, a reasonable question arises: since the Christian religion, in almost all its doctrinal variations (with the exception of some extreme fundamentalist marginal offshoots), is not opposed to the depiction and representation of the Passion of the Nazarene, why should Jesus Christ ‘curse’ specifically those actors who embodied him and not the iconographers, sculptors or melodists who took the liberty – often, by poetic license, quite much liberty – to deal with him? Did the ‘curse’ have to do with the existence or absence of the appropriate religious respect in the artistic approach? The data do not support such an interpretation, even when we refer to film or television adaptations by the same ‘heretical’ creator, such as Nikos Kazantzakis: Alexis Golfis of “Christ Recrucified” may have had an accident in his life, but Willem Dafoe of “The Last Temptation” did just fine. Furthermore, a thorough investigation into the careers or private lives of the actors who “had an accident” it would be very difficult to connect their evil deed (years or even decades later) with their performance in the specific production – unless, what else can we say, the Nazarene never forgives bad acting…
Obviously, then, we must look elsewhere to find the explanation for the durability over time, not only of the urban myth in question, but also of most of its counterparts. The trick, so that we don’t get lost in the maze of genuine and fabricated information, is offered to us by one of the most restless spirits of our time. “Hello,” he introduces himself in one of the popular lectures of the non-profit organization TED, “I’m Michael Shermer, director of the Skeptics Association, publisher of the magazine “Skeptic”. We investigate claims about the paranormal, pseudoscience, non-science, junk science, voodoo science, pathological science, bad science, scientific nonsense and classical nonsense. And unless you’ve been to Mars recently, you know there’s plenty of it out there.”
The fruit of the American historian of science’s many years of meticulous study of every strange concept, no matter how obviously ridiculous or pretentiously serious – telepathy, magic, reincarnation, ghosts, alien abductions, supposedly ‘scientific’ Creationism, Holocaust denial, and so on – was his book “Why Do People Believe in Strange Things?”. The answer he gives to the question in the title is complex and seemingly contradictory: because we are beings ‘programmed’ or ‘condemned’ (let us choose what comforts us more) always to seek an ‘explanation’ that satisfies both our curiosity and our logic; because, alas, our curiosity is usually unlimited, but our logic is generally limited. The result? With enormous mental acrobatics, leaps impermissible to common sense, we connect the unconnected and discover connections where they clearly do not exist. And if the cheerful destiny of Max von Sydow is inconsistent with the gloomy Curse of Jesus? All the more worse for it. We ignore it.
Another historian, British Darren Aldridge, in “Strange Tales of the Middle Ages”, comes to lend a helping hand to Shermer. Aldridge tells us that medieval man, even when he carried out the most outrageous acts of irrationality – when he judged, for example, pigs or horses that had caused some damage – was anxiously searching for a rational loophole, a branch of wisdom to grab onto and not be swept away by the current of madness. He never doubted for a moment that he would give his account before the Lord at the Second Coming, but he was worried about which of his “bodies” he would appear before Him: the “body” of an infant, a toddler, a child, a teenager, an adult, a middle-aged man, or an old man? And what if in the meantime his “body” had been burned or dismembered? As strange as it may sound, these little rays of doubt, the annoying how, when, where, and why, kept our sanity intact even in the darkest centuries.
Petros Tatsopoulos is a writer and former Member of the Greek Parliament.
Adaptation to English of the original article published in “Ta Nea” newspaper, April 17, 2020)
