Digest Quickies: Jesus, You Scare Me

You know something? People get really mad when you fuck around with religious iconography. I GUESS I understand why. It's all "sacred" and "holy" or something. Before I begin this quickie post I must admit that I used to find Jesus a bit creepy to begin with.

As a child, all men used to scare me, but what really scared me were men with long hair and beards---but mostly just long hair. When I used to have to go to Sunday school (which was on Tuesday after school and they gave us stale cookies and diet Sprite...bastards) all the pictures of Jesus would freak me out a little. By far the scariest were all the pictures of Jesus being crucified. For a religion that largely detests violent imagery and blah blah no sex and blah--they sure don't mind exposing young children to the horrors of violent crucifixion. I can also recount being shown a grizzly film of the crucifixion AND a stoning...why they turned down my suggestion to watch Antichrist, we'll never know. But anyways. Enough of that.

Often times in movies focusing on religion, or films that in some way depict religion as doing the mental saving of one or more of our characters--there is also as one would guess, a lot of religious iconography. In some cases, these figures of either Jesus or Mary or some random Saint, have been made to look utterly and inexplicably creepy. Sometimes they are vandalized and other times it appears as though the characters were just really after the creepiest looking figurine of Jesus they could find. Since I find Jesus to already be at least a little creepy, these creepy Jesus's and other religious stuff are almost too much to handle.

This Jesus as seen in The Legend of Hell House is really old. Also the glossy sheen of his muscles provides a little too much detail to his skin and bones than I would prefer. I really wish people would stop finding the creepiest representations of Jesus on the planet, I mean come on--there has to be something a little better than this. Nice muscle definition though.

I don't think this is Jesus, but I mean it's in a church so it counts right? I do admit I was pleasantly creeped out through almost the entirety of The Exorcist III and seeing this was not what I would call a help. My main question is, how did those vandals finagle a perfectly sized and shaped Joker mask onto this statue? It is Joker right? If it was Pazuzu then I guess he has style after all.

Poor Mary. She never asked to be defaced like this. When I was little I used to strongly avoid this scene from The Exorcist because for some reason it scared the crap out of me. I'm guessing this was due to the large paper mache boobs and saggy devil penis but I'm not sure. This is really messed up--just wanted to clarify.

I really do not need to sum up the fact that every single piece of Jesus imagery in Carrie is worth shouting about. I too would go absolutely bonkers if everywhere I looked, a creepy picture of Jesus was starring back at me. Carrie can't even find peace and solace while looking in a mirror for CHRIST'S sake. God, Jesus. Leave her alone. Although...nothing is worse than the Jesus closet. A fun fact is that this is NOT Jesus, but St. Sebastian. Just so you know, I am not a religious know it all, I just read IMDB trivia when I'm feeling lonely.

I know for a fact this gives more than a few people the willies. Were his eyes lit up like that on purpose? Or was Jesus just really upset that Carrie got her period? I've always wanted to know. P.S. WHAT THE HELL was Carrie's mother thinking about when she decided to use this terrifying gnome, shriveled, potato carved demon replica of St. Sebastian in the Jesus shrine? She might want to check the box because I'm pretty sure the only person who's eyes glow like that is the devil.

God, I'm so darned upset over that creepy thing that I can't think of any other creepy Jesus or religious imagery. If you would like to submit a creepy Jesus suggestion let me know, and I'll add it once I'm fully recovered.