Guest Post: Did early Christians believe that Mary was a teenager?

Christopher A. Frilingos, Michigan State University

On Nov. 13, a fifth Alabama woman came forward to accuse Roy Moore, former judge and current GOP Senate candidate, of sexual assault when she was 16. Condemnation of Moore has been widespread, but Moore himself vehemently denies these allegations. He has backing from many in Alabama.

One of his most controversial statements of support came from Alabama State Auditor Jim Ziegler, who declared: “there’s nothing immoral or illegal here…Maybe just a little unusual.” Ziegler went on to appeal to the Christian story of Mary and Joseph:

“Take Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became parents of Jesus.”

I find the allegations against Moore repulsive. But, in addition, as a scholar of early Christianity, Ziegler’s remarks took my breath away. As most Christians would know, an important tenet of Christian theology is that Jesus was born of a virgin mother.

The holy family.
CC BY

However, there are many other little-known details in early Christian storytelling about the relationship between Mary and Joseph that I learned while researching my book, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: Family Trouble in the Infancy Gospels. Early Christians believed that Mary and Joseph did not have sex, but there was much more that was worth learning from that relationship.

Listen up, Jim Ziegler.

The gospel narratives

The Christian Bible includes four gospels, or narratives, of the life of Jesus. Two of them, the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, include accounts of Jesus’s birth. These two versions of the “Christmas story” supply almost all of the details about Mary and Joseph that can be found in the Christian Bible.

In Matthew 1-2, readers learn about the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, the visit of the Magi or “wise men” to see the newborn and the flight of the holy family to Egypt in order to escape King Herod’s killing of infants. Luke 1-2 describes the birth of John (the cousin of Jesus), an imperial census under the Roman Emperor Augustus and the appearance of angels celebrating the birth of Jesus in the skies above Bethlehem.

Both the gospels seem to agree that Mary conceived by supernatural means, not through sexual intercourse. Meanwhile, whatever Zeigler claims, neither the Gospel of Matthew nor the Gospel of Luke specifies the ages of Mary and Joseph.

The Proto-gospel of James

The earliest source to mention ages is another ancient Christian gospel: the Proto-gospel of James. This gospel is a prequel to the more familiar stories of the first Christmas found in the Christian Bible. It was written in the second century A.D., a hundred years or so after the gospels of the Christian New Testament. Critically, it is mostly unknown to Christians because it is not found in their Bibles.

Even so, the Proto-gospel of James is an important witness to the things that mattered to early Christians. The relationship of Mary and Joseph is one of them.

The Proto-gospel of James tends to fill in gaps left by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. This, for example, is where readers can learn about the parents of Mary – Joachim and Anna – and about the divine intervention that leads to Anna’s conception of Mary.

This gospel also recounts the story of when Mary met Joseph, details absent from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. In this telling, Joseph, an elderly widower, is chosen by lottery to take care of Mary, who is 12 years old at the time.

Like the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, the Proto-gospel of James reports that Mary does not conceive through sexual intercourse. She receives news from the angel Gabriel that she will become pregnant and bear a son, Jesus. But the Proto-gospel of James’s account adds a new wrinkle: Mary forgets about her encounter with the angel. When she realizes that she’s pregnant, she’s overcome with fear and confusion. Joseph is likewise confused by Mary’s pregnancy. He nevertheless remains loyal and protects the 12-year-old girl. He takes her to a cave outside of Bethlehem. Soon there is a blinding flash of light. As it recedes, a child appears.

Jesus has arrived.

Familiar and unfamiliar

Some of these details will be familiar to readers of the New Testament: the town of Bethlehem, for example, and the angelic announcement to Mary – the Annunciation – that she will become pregnant.

Other details, however, will come as a surprise: Wasn’t Jesus born in Bethlehem, and not, as the Proto-gospel of James reports, outside of Bethlehem in a cave? And what about the story of how Mary met Joseph? The Proto-gospel of James adds to and changes elements of the earlier accounts of Matthew and Luke.

And then there are details that some Christians know from their religion that other Christians do not. Most Orthodox and Roman Catholics, for example, know the names of Anna and Joachim, the parents of Mary, even though they do not include the Proto-gospel of James in their Bibles. Most Protestant Christians, by contrast, will be unfamiliar with these figures.

In fact, the Proto-gospel of James is just one example of a wide range of gospels and other early Christian writings that are not included in the Christian Bible. The storytelling about the holy family alone could fill a bookshelf: There is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the History of Joseph the Carpenter. Written at different times in different places, these accounts reflect the early Christian fascination with the household of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Love is not predatory

One final observation that is relevant to Jim Ziegler’s comments: The Proto-gospel of James goes a step further than the Gospels of Matthew and Luke in making the point that there was no sexual contact between Mary and Joseph.

Holy family with the lamb.
Raphael via Wikimedia Commons

In the Gospel of Matthew, Joseph overcomes personal anxiety about Mary’s pregnancy. In the Proto-gospel of James, the pregnancy of Mary becomes a matter of public scrutiny: Both Mary and Joseph must drink the “water of refutation,” a life-and-death ordeal designed to test the truth of their claims of not having had sex with one another. Both pass the test.

But the Proto-gospel of James is not just a story about the virginity of Mary, nor is it just about Joseph’s lack of involvement in the conception of Jesus. Mostly, it is a story about two people being swept up in events that they do not understand.

Together, Mary and Joseph risk everything despite not knowing what it all means. Amid the chaos, they learn to lean on each other. While Mary and Joseph do not, according to the Proto-gospel of James, have a physical relationship, they do love one another.

And love should not be compared to the predatory behavior alleged against Roy Moore.

Christopher A. Frilingos, Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, Michigan State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Nick Robinson and William H. Macy Discuss 'Krystal' in Charlottesville

This past weekend, the Virginia Film Festival celebrated its 30th anniversary in Charlottesville, with several prestige-level feature films, including the coming-of-age drama Call Me by Your Name and the coming-of-age comedy Krystal.

Krystal was screened on Friday evening, followed by a panel discussion with actor-director William H. Macy, the film's lead actor Nick Robinson, and producer Rachel Winter.

Mitch Levine, founder and director of The Film Festival Group, moderated the panel.

According to the Virginia Film Festival's program notes,

Nick Robinson

Tyler Ogburn lives a sheltered life due to a heart condition that prevents him from going to college, playing sports, or pursuing love. That is until enticing ex-stripper and former heroin addict Krystal comes into his life, and he starts attending her Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in order to spend time with her. Also complicating Ogburn’s efforts to pursue Krystal is her son, Bobby, who is confined to a wheelchair and serves as the street-smart voice of reason for the dysfunctional family. This is the third feature from director-actor William H. Macy (Fargo, Shameless).

The cast of Krystal also includes Rosario Dawson, Kathy Bates, Grant Gustin, William Fichtner, and Felicity Huffman.

The video above was recorded at the Paramount Theater in downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, on Friday evening, November 10, 2017.

Guest Post: Why Lord of the Flies is the perfect Christmas gift for 2016

Matthew Whittle, University of Leeds


It’s the story of a society in which democracy descends into tribalism and tyranny. One of a civilisation built by those committed to the rule of law who turn on each other, scapegoating the marginalised and powerless. Ultimately, it’s a reminder of a human barbarism lying just beneath the fragile veneer of decency.

Sound familiar? That’s right: it’s the plot of Lord of the Flies, a novel about a group of English boys who survive a plane crash and are marooned on an island in the South Pacific. After a short period of harmony, a power struggle between the two leaders, Ralph and Jack, causes the group to split. Jack wins out by promising to hunt and kill a common enemy – the strange phantom living in the jungle known only as the Beast. It’s a successful campaign of fear and division.

Lord of the Flies was first published in 1954, largely in response to the rise of Nazism and the horrors of World War II. And yet, in many ways, it speaks directly to the world of 2016, where austerity, the refugee crisis, Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump have emboldened nationalist fervour and stoked societal fragmentation.

The racialised language of tribal “savagery” in the novel quite rightly makes contemporary readers bristle. It marks author William Golding’s failure to move beyond a fundamentally eurocentric and colonialist view of the world. But ultimately, the book’s message is that “savagery” is universal. It is not racially or nationally defined. It’s a moral that encourages us to reflect on just how far-right extremism has crept back into mainstream politics throughout Europe and America.

The far right traffics in the populist language of national allegiance to legitimate racism. America’s so-called alt-right, France’s National Front, UKIP and xenophobic Leavers in Britain all feed off dissatisfaction with globalisation to create enemies within. The solution to complex economic and political realities for these groups is as simple as hunting the Beast. Jack lives on in Trump, Le Pen, and Farage.

The voice of reason

In counterpoint to Jack’s sloganeering and scaremongering, Lord of the Flies gives us Piggy and Simon. The former is a firm believer in scientific progress, but he is also aware that human progress will be halted if “we get frightened of people”. Piggy is debilitated when the boys steal his glasses – his means of vision and clarity – and use them to start a fire. They instantly lose control of the flames, leading to the destruction of part of their new home. Rather than representing the first act of a united civilisation, the making of fire signals the disunity that splits the group and leads, finally, to Piggy’s death at the hands of Jack’s tribe.

If Piggy is “progress” then Simon is “reason”. He knows that the Beast isn’t real and is in fact borne of the boys’ own fear. “However Simon thought of the beast,” we’re told, “there rose before his inward sight the picture of a human at once heroic and sick.” Despite this insight, Simon is regarded as weak and is shunned.

After a lone expedition, he discovers that the Beast is no more than a dead airman – a casualty of the war raging far off in the distance, whose parachute has swept him onto the island. Simon returns to camp to share the news, but the boys’ imagination awakens a blind desire for blood. They no longer see a fellow human being, only a threat to their society. Simon’s screams are drowned out by the “tearing of teeth and claws”.

During his 1962 lecture tour of American universities, Golding discussed his reasons for writing Lord of the Flies:

My book was to say: you think that now the [Second World War] is over and an evil thing destroyed, you are safe because you are naturally kind and decent. But I know why the thing rose in Germany. I know it could happen in any country.

So far, so bleak. And yet, while Golding depicts humankind’s propensity for prejudice, there is a small glimmer of hope. After fleeing the manhunt ordered by Jack, Ralph encounters a uniformed naval officer whose vessel has landed after seeing the smoke rising from the scorched island. As Ralph weeps “for the end of innocence”, the officer turns around to let his eyes rest on his warship in the distance. This final image of the book is a moment of self-reflection. In the savagery and environmental catastrophe of the boys’ rudimentary civilisation, the adult world is afforded a vision of its own folly.

The moral of Lord of the Flies isn’t just that barbarity knows no borders. It’s also that it can be prevented from flourishing through the commitment to a shared humanity. “If humanity has a future on this planet of a hundred million years,” said Golding in his 1962 lecture, “it is unthinkable that it should spend those aeons in a ferment of national self-satisfaction and chauvinistic idiocies.”

The novel may not be a heart-warming Christmas tale, but it gifts us an unflinching portrayal of a society driven by fear. For readers in 2016, it remains both an urgent warning and an invocation.



Matthew Whittle, Teaching Fellow in English (Contemporary and Postcolonial), University of Leeds

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Are Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber an 'Emerging Threat'?

Last week the celebrity gossip pages were reporting the news that the on-again, off-again romance of bad boy Justin Bieber and Disney Channel songstress Selena Gomez was on again.

The 21-year-old ex Disney star and the Canadian pop star reportedly spent the past few days together riding Bieber's three-wheeled motorcycle and attending mutual friend Alfredo Flores' birthday party.

"Justin and Selena are definitely full-on back together at the moment," a source told Us. "They spent all day riding together on a Can-Am Spyder on Sunset Blvd. Justin drove while Selena sat on the back holding on to [him]."

The insider added that Bieber "was incredibly sweet with her and they looked super happy and in love."

Someone at UPI decided to have fun with the story.  In an email news roundup, the story headlined "Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez back together again" was listed under "emerging threats."

Here's a screen shot:

When I had the chance last week, I should have asked Virginia Senator Mark Warner whether Justin Bieber is such a threat that he should be deported back to Canada.

When Squirt Guns Are Outlawed ...

You know our society's threshold for panic has sunk to new low levels when a local police department sends out a warning to citizens about teenagers playing with squirt guns.

This sort of warning was, in fact, distributed by Montgomery Township (New Jersey) police in an email dated April 23. The web version of the email says, in part (telephone number redacted to reduce the number of justifiable crank calls):

A portion of Montgomery High School seniors are participating in a Township wide game known as "senior assassin." The game is not supported nor condoned by the School District. The game involves teams of students seeking out each other and squirting them with water guns. The activity causes both residents and law enforcement alarm due to the devices and methods used by the participants. Citizens may notice an increase in both vehicular and pedestrian traffic involving groups of high school youths. Motorists are asked to use extra caution especially during evening and early morning hours. Parents of participating students are asked to caution their children on the dangers of possessing realistic looking weapons, careless driving, and overall risky behavior. Residents should not attribute suspicious activity to the game and contact Montgomery Police at (908)xxx-xxxx or 9-1-1 in case of an emergency.

The game in question -- here called "senior assassin" but which goes by other names such as "Gotcha, Assassins, KAOS (Killing as organized sport), Juggernaut, Battle Royal, Paranoia, Killer, Elimination, or Circle of Death" -- is not a new phenomenon. I remember playing a version of it in my college dorm in 1980 (I was eliminated in the first round) and the game is a principal plot element in the 1985 Cold War comedy thriller, Gotcha!, starring Anthony Edwards when he still had a full head of hair.

It has been years since commercially-available squirt guns have borne any resemblance to actual firearms, so the police department's stated caution about "possessing realistic looking weapons" is a bit disingenuous.

Maybe New Jerseyans have a different temperament than Virginians, but what really disturbs me is how this innocent game "causes both residents and law enforcement alarm."

As I recall from The Sopranos, therapists are available in New Jersey. Anyone who is "alarmed" by squirt gun fights among teenagers really needs to be under the care of a licensed psychologist.

The last sentence of the missive offers me some comfort, however, and a suspicion that even the communications staff at police HQ in Belle Mead, New Jersey, are rolling their eyes in disbelief at what they are compelled to do. If you read it grammatically, the last sentence says: "Residents should not ... contact Montgomery Police..."

(Cross-posted from Bearing Drift.)

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From the Archives: 1988's 'The why of teen-age suicides'

The topic of suicide by gay teenagers is in the news again, illustrated most vividly by the death of a Rutgers University student, Tyler Clementi, who leapt from the George Washington Bridge last month.  (The circumstances of Clementi's suicide are fraught with questions and not a little hyperbole, so I will not be commenting directly on that particular case.)

Some gay activists have called four suicides by gay teenagers in the past month an "epidemic," although it does not appear that any of them were related to each other.  (They occurred in California, Indiana, and Texas, in addition to Clementi's death in New Jersey.)

David Link on the Independent Gay Forum and conservative columnist (and, as of today, Eliot Spitzer's sparring partner on CNN) Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post both draw attention to a new project on YouTube called "It Gets Better," initiated by advice columnist Dan Savage and supported by talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres.

The aim of the It Gets Better Project is to showcase the personal stories of gay men and lesbians who used to be gay and lesbian children or teenagers. In short video clips, today's young (and some not-so-young) adults explain, from their own perspective, that bullying, disrespect, alienation, and disorientation are temporary phenomena that can be overcome with time, patience, and effort. In a phrase, "it gets better" -- life gets better, and it's worthwhile to stick around to find out where it takes us.

Although it is not a topic I have followed closely in recent years, I first wrote about gay teen suicide in 1988 -- about two years before I came out to more than my close circle of friends and classmates.  The article appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and, although the statistics cited may be different (and probably more accurate) today, the general theme remains solid.

I am grateful to an email correspondent (and old friend) who reminded me of this article and gave me a reason to repost it as an archival piece on this blog.  (I do not believe the article, given its age, is available in any easily accessible electronic format on-line.)

Here it is as it appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Saturday, December 10, 1988.

The why of teen-age suicides

WASHINGTON
The drama is played out again and again in towns and cities across the country.

A young man of 16 or 17, good-looking. personable, popular, intelligent, often the captain of the football team or president of his class, takes his own life.

This tragedy grips family and friends, who question: “Why?” There seems to be no explanation for this senseless act. “No warning signs,” “every reason to live,” “not even his girlfriend had a clue” — these phrases are numbly repeated, in vain.

Wherever you turn, the tragedy of teen suicide has attracted enormous attention. Each year 5,000 people between the ages of 15 and 24 kill themselves. The rate has tripled over the past 30 years and doubled since 1960, so that today suicide Is the third leading cause of death in this age group.

Why do so many of our young people consider suicide, attempt it, and sometimes succeed at it?

Multiple causes are likely. Certainly the familiar woes of adolescence are a part of it, as are parental and peer-group pressures toward often contradictory goals — the drive for high grades or a well-paying job and the abuse of drugs and alcohol. Yet one factor deserves special attention, perhaps most of all because fear and prejudice have prevented our taking it fully into account.

This factor has been illuminated by films that portray the suicide of adolescents with sexual problems. In "Another Country," an English schoolboy hangs himself in the chapel after a teacher catches him in the passionate embrace of a fellow student. In "Ode to Billy Joe," the title character leaps off the Tallahatchee Bridge, unable to deal with the fact that he had been seduced by an older man.

These gripping images may help explain the deaths of so many “handsome young men” with “every reason to live.”

Contemporary discussions of teen-age suicide generally neglect to touch on the contributing factor of adolescent homosexuality. Reasons for this are vague. Society’s taboos against discussing teen sexuality In general and homosexuality in particular have hindered full examinations of adolescent suicide. In fact, outside the medical literature, only publications with primarily gay and lesbian readers do the story justice.

In 1986, sociologist Joseph Harry of Northern Illinois University reported that young people who are homosexual are six times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. Dr. Harry’s research indicates that as many as half the males in the 15-24 age group who try to kill themselves are gay. His conclusions were partially confirmed in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association in July 1987.

Future studies of the teen-suicide problem must explore this factor more thoroughly. Shervert Frazier of the National Institute of Mental Health insists: “There’s no question that the issue of gay and lesbian adolescents who have suicidal behavior has to be considered.”

Statistics dictate such an examination: While only 3 percent of heterosexual men and 14 percent of heterosexual women attempt suicide, as many as 18 percent of gay men and 23 percent of lesbians do so. This is a striking comparison.

Considering that gay men constitute at most 10 percent of the male population, and lesbians an even smaller percentage of women, this attempted suicide rate is significantly out of proportion. It suggests that gay people encounter social pressures that undermine their sense of self-worth and undercut their basic human dignity unlike anything heterosexuals experience.

Our society continues to castigate and condemn gay and lesbian youth. In spite of the constant teaching of most religions that homosexuals should be treated with the same compassion as all other people, some Christians and Jews still ostracize gay men and women — teenagers, too — not so much for what they do but for who they are.

According to family counselor Wayne Pawlowski, young homosexuals have a lot of unique worries: “condemnation, rejection by family, friends, society at large; forced isolation from the family and/or peers; physical abuse; discrimination, legal problems; constraints on educational and career goals. In addition to these realistic fears, the same adolescents lack positive role models.”

As a result, he writes, gay teen-agers suffer “low self-esteem, poor self-image, guilt, loneliness, confusion, fear of being sick and different, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts.”

Society’s treatment of homosexual youth contributes to the high incidence of runaways and their prostitution, exploitation and drug abuse. Many families discard gay and lesbian teenagers when their sexual orientation surfaces. Directly or indirectly, these children are told by their families that they are unwanted and unloved — so they choose to run away or commit suicide. Either risk seems better than the real pain they encounter.

Coming to terms with one’s sexuality is always stressful. To return to Dr. Harry’s report, gay young people have experiences and characteristics that “may create special difficulties for them. And for some, suicide may seem preferable to other solutions.”

Suicide can be an escape from painful schoolyard taunts of “faggot” and “dyke” — and, worse than taunts, threats and assaults as well. Such intolerance is not limited to junior high or high school. It continues ever among “mature” college students.

Parents, friends, siblings and teachers who have had to face the suicide or attempted suicide of a young person should not be ashamed or afraid to consider the combination of homosexuality and homophobia (the irrational fear and hatred of homosexuals) as a motivation for this drastic act. There is much more to fear from covering it up, and much more shame in ignorance.

The captain of the football team or class president who kills himself is only the most visible and attractive example of a phenomenon that is much more far-reaching. Having hidden their sexual orientation for most of their lives from those closest to them, it was easy to hide the most recent troubles that have pushed them over the brink. That is why there were no clues. In almost every one of these cases, a little digging will reveal that the victim was either gay or thought he was or, sometimes, he had had an isolated homosexual experience — in either case, death appeared to be preferable to lifelong humiliation.

To combat this phenomenon, adults and teens alike must be more compassionate toward those who are or who think they may be gay. As one doctor urged in the Journal of the American Medical Association, we must all treat each other in a way “that promotes self-acceptance and tolerance of individual differences.” Only then can we fully grapple with the tragedy of teen suicide.

Richard Sincere is a Washington-based policy analyst and writer.

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Blogging from CPAC

The world already knows the big news about the annual straw poll at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference:  U.S. Representative Ron Paul  (R-Texas) was the winner among attendees as the most favored presidential candidate for the Republican Party in 2012, followed distantly by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.  Paul's victory was met with boos from the audience, though as one person put it on Twitter, since only about a quarter of attendees voted in the straw poll, the majority were "booing themselves."

Now Glenn Beck is talking about how the Republican Party has lost its soul and needs redemption.  He's repeating his trope about being a recovering alcoholic blah blah blah.

Rather than watching Beck -- who despite his criticism of "clown shows" is an exemplar of clownishness -- I have been uploading to YouTube a number of short videos that I took over the past two days.

The first one garnered over 120 hits within the first hour it was on the Web:  Jimmy LaSalvia, executive director of GOProud (www.goproud.org) standing up to the National Organization "for" Marriage and asking, "Who is the pansy at CPAC?"  (GOProud is a group of gay and lesbian conservatives.)

I also was able to get a few comments from Jacob Hornberger, introducing his organization, the Future of Freedom Foundation (www.fff.org):

I made a special effort to get some short interviews from authors about their books.

For instance, here is young Jonathan Krohn talking about his book, Defining Conservatism:

I also spoke to Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, about his book, Leave Us Alone, which makes the case for the "leave-us-alone coalition" of people who believe in limited government:

I also had a nice colloquy with the Wall Street Journal's John Fund, who was signing copies of a revised and updated edition of his book, Stealing Elections:

Two constitutional scholars, Bob Levy of the Cato Institute and Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation, spoke on a panel about judicial overreach. They each signed copies of their books in the CPAC exhibit area: Spalding's is called We Still Hold These Truths and Levy's is an examination of Supreme Court cases called The Dirty Dozen.

Last year there was a big Tea Party-related march on Washington on September 12, turning "9/12" into a new catchphrase. Colin Hanna, president of an organization called Let Freedom Ring, gathered together photos and text about th 9/12 March in a volume called Grandma's Not Shovel-Ready!



I caught U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) in a corridor of the Wardman Park Marriott surrounded by a gaggle of fans, just as she was asked whether she is supporting Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty for President in 2012. Here's her response:

I had a nice chat with Frank Enten, who for more than 50 years has been in the business of producing and selling campaign buttons. (I bought two Goldwater buttons from the 1964 campaign and one unique Nixon button from either 1968 or 1972, which I may photograph and blog about later.) Enten is known as "the Button Man" and he's had quite a career:

Finally -- at least for now, as I have more video to edit and upload -- Michael Barone of the Washington Examiner offered a few words about CPAC and its participants:

Glenn Beck is still droning on, this time about bottoms (there are titters in the bloggers' room). I will have more videos and photos from CPAC 2010 later this weekend. Be sure to visit again to see what other surprises I have in store.

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And Now for Something Completely Different ...

It was forty years ago today -- October 5, 1969 -- that Monty Python's Flying Circus first took to the airwaves on the BBC. A leader in today's Guardian notes:

"I'll give you 13 shows, but that's all," said the BBC's head of light entertainment in 1969, and Monty Python's Flying Circus aired to a perplexed, but eventually grateful, British audience on Monday 5 October that same year. Over the subsequent 45 shows, the rules of television comedy were rewritten as John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Terry Gilliam created lunatic characters and sketches, as funny today as they were 40 years ago.

The Oxbridge-educated group brought silliness and erudition in nearly equal amounts to television sketch comedy. Not exactly sui generis -- the Pythons had roots in pantomime, music hall, and British radio and movie comedies of the 1940s and '50s, as well as the satirical shows at Oxford and Cambridge, the Edinburgh Fringe, and even Beyond the Fringe -- when it reached America via public television, Monty Python seemed revolutionary.

In Milwaukee in the mid-1970s, Monty Python's Flying Circus was played on Tuesday evenings at 10:30 on WMVS-TV (Channel 10), so on Wednesday mornings, the senior lounge, the Blue & Gold Room, and the cafeteria at Marquette University High School were all abuzz with teenage boys imitating and trying their best to recreate, verbatim, the sketches they had seen the night before. It's a tribute to the quality of Python performances that, even after a single viewing, they could be recreated (at least by the smartest ones). Later, when vinyl LP recordings became available, memorization became easier, if a bit less daunting. We would spend hours on "The Argument Clinic," "Dead Parrot," and, among many others, "The Spanish Inquisition." (Bet you didn't expect that!) For a sample of Monty Python's influence on MUHS students, check out "Life on Film" from 2007.

It was under the influence of Monty Python -- how else would 16-year-old Midwesterners be introduced to existential philosophers? -- that I and some of my classmates came up with this cheer for the MUHS sports teams (nicknamed the Hilltoppers):

Socrates, Plato, Bertrand Russell
Here we go, Toppers --
Husserl, Husserl!

It might not have inspired anyone to audition for place kicker, but whoever said public TV can't be educational?

Monty Python's Flying Circus is being celebrated all over the web today. For instance, Stephen Beard, a correspondence for public radio's Marketplace, had a report on today's broadcast about how many of the early Monty Python sketches reflected the socio-economic realities of Britain in the 1950s and 1960s.

Entertainment Weekly's Josh Wolk offers "10 Ways Monty Python Changed Comedy," in which he mentions The Whitest Kids U' Know (brainchild of Charlottesville's Trevor Moore and his co-conspirators) in the same breath as Python and The Kids in the Hall.

Michael Saba at Paste Magazine offers four of his favorite Python moments, with videos culled from YouTube.

The Christian Science Monitor notes:

It's Monty Python week on IFC, where the cable film channel marks the 40th anniversary of the cheeky, British comedy troupe. Events will include a six-episode interview/documentary, "Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut)," featuring all of the remaining group members discussing the ensemble's cultural impact and legacy. The week will also include, of course, the classic Python films.

Radio Times has a whole set of Monty Python features, including a collection of Python-related covers, film reviews (for Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, Monty Python's Life Of Brian, and Erik the Viking), and a blog post with Terry Jones' favorite Python moments.

And here, ladies and Bruces, from a live performance at the Hollywood Bowl, Monty Python performs "The Philosophers' Song":

"I drink, therefore I am." Now that's a way to get high school boys interested in serious philosophical discourse!



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Daniel Radcliffe and The Trevor Project

Daniel Radcliffe, the rapidly maturing, title-role star of the series of movies based on J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels, is putting his celebrity to good use by supporting and endorsing The Trevor Project, a foundation that helps gay kids deal with adversity.

According to a news release posted today on PR Newswire:

The Trevor Project, the non-profit organization that operates the only nationwide, around-the-clock crisis and suicide prevention helpline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth, today announced that it has received a major donation from Daniel Radcliffe, the critically-acclaimed star of the "Harry Potter" film series and Broadway's "Equus." The 20-year-old actor joined The Trevor Project's Circle of Hope, a community of major donors which plays an essential role in providing the financial leadership that makes the organization's lifesaving work possible.

The Trevor Project was founded in 1998 by three filmmakers whose film, "Trevor," a comedy/drama about a gay teenager who attempts suicide, received the 1994 Academy Award(R) for Best Short Film (Live Action). Since its founding, The Trevor Helpline has received hundreds of thousands of calls from LGBTQ youth across the country. In the past year alone, call volume to The Trevor Helpline has increased more than 300 percent.

"I am very pleased to begin my support of The Trevor Project, which saves lives every day through its critical work," said Daniel Radcliffe. "It's extremely distressing to consider that in 2009 suicide is a top three killer of young people, and it's truly devastating to learn that LGBTQ youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. I deeply hope my support can raise the organization's visibility so even more despondent youth become aware of The Trevor Helpline's highly trained counselors and Trevor's many other resources. It's vitally important that young people understand they are not alone and, perhaps even more important, that their young lives have real value."

The Oscar-winning short film, Trevor, is available for purchase at Amazon.com. The Trevor Project has a web site with links to its various programs. There is also a Trevor Project page on Facebook.

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The Trevor Moore Movie Review

There are a number of words that work as simple descriptors of the new movie, Miss March.

Puerile. Sophomoric. Juvenile. Tasteless. Scatological. Formulaic.

Those are the words that first come to mind. On reflection, however, there are a few more words that also apply.

Touching. Heartfelt. Promising.

I will confess that were it not for Charlottesville celebrity Trevor Moore's involvement in this project (he stars, co-directs, and co-wrote the screenplay), I would not have felt an urge to see it. I would have expected more of Moore's local fans to have been similarly attracted, but the audience at the 9:50 screening on Friday night could not have numbered more than 20.

Then it occurred to me: The primary audience for Miss March can't be admitted to cinemas to see it. The movie is rated R, and the target demographic is 15-year-old boys.

Those boys will have to wait for the movie to come out on DVD, sometime next month.

Those boys will enjoy the story of two friends making their way across the country (from South Carolina to California by way of Chicago) to the Playboy Mansion. Why? They are seeking the high-school girlfriend of one of them (Eugene, who has been in a coma for four years), who turns out to be the Playboy centerfold in the magazine's March issue. (Hence the title, "Miss March.")

To be sure, Moore and his co-director/screenwriter Zach Cregger show a lot of promise. They seem to have absorbed many of the lessons learned by watching countless buddy flicks/road pictures. Hope and Crosby, they ain't -- but the final scene in Miss March (over the credits) suggests a sequel may be on its way. (That would depend on how much money this one makes, of course.)

The problem is, Miss March is an uneven product. While its set pieces evoke a few chuckles, it's not LOL funny. It even generally lacks the cleverness that Charlottesville cable TV watchers learned to expect from the old "Trevor Moore Show." (That sly sense of humor rises above the surface in a few places, but it's generally overwhelmed by predictable poop jokes.)

From my seat in the dark, it looked like Creggar and Moore aimed for Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle but only achieved Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. All the hallmarks of a buddy/road picture are there, including a private meeting with an eminence grise (in this case, Hugh Hefner, whose presence was welcome but who appeared to be reading his lines off of cue cards) as well as the requisite number of obstacles, obstructions, setbacks, and pratfalls (not to mention numerous shots of naked breasts and buttocks).

One directorial shortcoming is the characterization of Tucker (played by Moore). While Cregger's character, Eugene, is portrayed exactly as he should be -- quiet and reserved, keeping a cap on Eugene's anger and anguish until just the right moment -- Moore's Tucker is just a bit too loopy and about as sharp as the corners on a round table. If he had toned it down a bit and let Tucker be more of a parallel to Eugene with an added soupçon of sex obsession, Moore's character would have been more believable and, frankly, funnier. (Note to Moore and Cregger: go back and watch more Hope and Crosby. Really.)

I don't wish to dismiss Miss March entirely. I am confident that it will win guffaws from teenage boys across America. And that is as it should be.

I am also confident that this is the start of great careers for both Moore, a natural comic, and Cregger, a natural leading man -- careers in front of and behind the camera. Still, it's a start that will embarrass both a bit in 25 years, when they'll be faced with clips of Miss March at an AFI tribute dinner.

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If It's Monday ...

On Monday and Tuesday evenings at around 10:30 p.m. (EDT), this blog begins to get a spike of visitors, nearly all searching for Hunter Parrish with one modifier or another. This corresponds to the weekly broadcast of a new episode of Weeds, the dark Showtime comedy that features Parrish as Silas Botwin, the elder son of Mary-Louise Parker's character, Nancy Botwin, a suburban drug dealer in southern California.

Parrish is so popular here, in fact, that searches for his name add up to at least 22.2 percent of all visits to this blog. (Technically, 22.2 percent of the last 4,000 visits -- a big chunk by any estimation.)

This is odd because a Google Trends analysis shows that the name Hunter Parrish -- as talented and studly as he might be -- barely registers:



This low level of interest is demonstrated in relative terms when one compares the popularity of searches for "Hunter Parrish" with a celebrity of similar age and attractiveness, actor William Moseley of the Narnia movies:



So it must be something about this blog, in particular, in which interest in Hunter Parrish converges with other topics that results in disproportionate popularity. (Among "cute guys," the next most popular searches that lead here are Josh Hutcherson and Tyler Whitney -- one a movie actor, the other a political activist. Aaron Carter used to be a rival but his popularity has dissipated.)

It seems that the number one question on the mind of those searching for Hunter Parrish is this: Is Hunter Parrish gay? The secondary concern seems to be a desire to see him either shirtless or nude.

I don't have any shirtless or nude pictures of Hunter Parrish, but I do know of a video with him whistling. It's a promotional clip from Showtime in which the network was challenging fans to whistle "Little Boxes," the song that served as the theme of Weeds during its first three seasons.

I have no doubt that seekers of Hunter Parrish will be pleased to learn of the next step in his career. He'll be starring in a Broadway musical:

The producers of Spring Awakening announce “Weeds” Star Hunter Parrish will join Broadway’s groundbreaking musical hit in the central role of Melchior, the brilliant young radical, on August 18. Featured in Vanity Fair’s cover feature “Hollywood’s New Wave-The Hottest Kids in Hollywood" spread (August issue), on newsstands July 9, Hunter can currently be seen as Silas, the rabble-rousing older son of Mary-Louise Parker on the highly acclaimed Showtime series WEEDS. The show’s 4th season premiered last month. Moviegoers can next see Parrish on the big screen in “17 Again” opposite Zac Efron and Matthew Perry. Other screen roles include “Freedom Writers” with Hilary Swank and Patrick Dempsey, and Barry Sonnefeld’s comedy “RV” playing the son of Jeff Daniels and Kristen Chenoweth.

I have always hoped that my passion for the theatre would eventually lead me to Broadway, says Parrish. "Spring Awakening is a truly one-of-a-kind show with its timeless story, commanding music and innovative imagery. I am elated to have the opportunity to become a part of it."

As it happens, the Jewish Daily Forward last week featured an article about Weeds that took issue with the portrayal of some of the Jewish characters in the show.

Written by Adam Wilson, whose other recent work appears in a book entitled Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex, the article begins:

Who were the first Jewish potheads? The Old Testament seems filled with early precursors: Daniel, the interpreter of colorful dreams; Ezekiel, with his visions of flying chariots; perhaps even David, whose tunes of ethereal majesty were conceivably inspired by some seriously bitter herbs. Other scholars might go back to Genesis — Adam and Eve in that ripe, green pleasure-palace, hungry enough to eat forbidden apples. And then there’s slightly more recent history: Allen Ginsberg extolled the virtues of marijuana in pulsing, desperate verse, and Leonard Michaels wrote short stories about Jews on New York City’s Lower East Side getting stoned with sweet-smiling shiksas and then devouring leftover kugel sent over by their own mothers.

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that Showtime’s series “Weeds,” a quasi-sitcom about an attractive, widowed suburbanite who sells marijuana in order to support her family and her addiction to iced lattes, is filled with Jews, half-Jews and attractive women married — or once married — to Jews. Over its first three seasons, “Weeds,” more than any other show, has created Jewish characters that defy stereotype. Andy Botwin, the brother-in-law/partner-in-pot-dealing of our protagonist, Nancy, is a blue-eyed, fair-haired Jewish man with toned triceps and a fierce slacker wit. His only talent is his ability to create delightfully unkosher gourmet meals. Andy’s brother — Nancy’s deceased husband, Judah, who we see in dream sequences and in home movies — is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the muscle-bound heartthrob who captured the loins of Katherine Heigl and plenty of American women in his role as Denny Duquette on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.” Then there’s Dean Hodes, a Jewish lawyer more interested in getting stoned than in making money. As we learn in one episode, he is anatomically very well endowed.

Wilson expresses dismay at a recent turn in the plot and character presentation of Weeds:

These characters are exciting because they both play on and contradict our expectations about Jewish types. They are not old yiddlers munching gefilte fish, or nebbished-out neurotic nerds (like Larry David), or money-hungry misanthropes (like Larry David). Instead, the Jews on “Weeds” come from a contemporary Jewish America in which some Jews have blue eyes, some yeshiva employees are into S&M and some Semitic men have large penises.

All of which is why it is so disappointing that the show’s fourth season, which premiered in early June, has introduced a totally uninteresting Jewish character who lives up to every negative stereotype there is about Jews.

Wilson is especially perturbed by the character of Lenny, played by Albert Brooks, who is "a creep and a jerk":

What irks me about Lenny is not that he is a creep and a jerk — the world is filled with Jewish creeps and jerks, and it would be unfair to ask that all Jewish characters have redeeming qualities — but that his creepiness and his jerkiness seem directly tied to his Jewishness. (When Lenny plays Bubbe’s concentration camp numbers in the lottery, it’s hard not to see it as reiterating the stereotype that Jews exploit their tragedies for financial gain.)

Wilson will no doubt be happy to learn -- if he hasn't already -- that Lenny's character arc ended after the first four episodes of Weeds' new season. Albert Brooks has left the building.

But Hunter Parrish is still there. And for that I am grateful, since it brings new eyes here -- even if they don't find the shirtlessness they are looking for.

Update, July 31, 10:00 p.m.: The numbers keep rising. Searches for "Hunter Parrish" (including various spellings) amount to a minimum of 26.9 percent of visitors to this blog. And I don't even offer any actual nude or shirtless pictures of him!