there are so many moments in jesus christ superstar that i LOVE, but one of my absolute favorites is the way that jesus backtracks in gethsemane
"why, then, am i scared to finish what i started? what YOU started. i didn't start it." jesus in jesus christ superstar is bearing the weight of everyone's expectations and just. doing his best to try to manage them. judas wants him to stay grounded in his humanity and the opinions and thoughts of people on the ground. respectability politics is how you stay under the radar long enough to make lasting change. make the money to give to the poor, keep our reputations up strongly, we can make a real impact here and now if we don't get too loud.
simon wants him to rise up and lead a revolution. the people in need want him to heal all of them right now immediately even though he's just one guy with only so much ability and time and focus.
mary magdalene wants him to chill out and let her take care of him. peter and the background apostle gang want to be his posse as he gets big and use him to get big and famous. "then when we retire we can write the gospels and they'll still talk about us when we've died"
herod wants him to do his magic as a party trick to gain his salvation, as though that could save him
pilate wants him to deny what he's being accused of so that pilate "can save him", as though that was an option.
and then, of course, we have the absent god the father wanting him to die "far too keen on where and how, not so hot on why". and in the 1973 movie version we get this montage of different images of the crucifixion that implies god sent him this vision of how impactful his death will be, but he still doesn't necessarily tell him WHY, and in other versions there's no evidence that jesus gets... any answers. whatsoever.
different characters TRY to be attentive to his needs and thoughts during the musical, but even those who try very hard (mm, judas, pilate) just.. can't get through. because even if jesus told them.... there isn't anything any of them can do. the story was written long before any of them got here. and there are no answers left in its wake
ANOTHER reason why The Last Supper is such an insane turning point is bc Jesus and Judas establish each other's proverbial legacies within 10 seconds of each other.
"You liar, you Judas" is such a raw line, coming from Jesus himself - HE assigns that meaning to the name, on an emotional whim.
And Judas retaliates with the absolute exasperation of "Christ, you deserve it!" again assigning Jesus' name this emotional weight.
just got done watching the 50th anniversary touring production of jesus christ superstar. here are The Thoughts
i've watched either the movie or a different bootleg of jcs during the week of easter for the past 8 years. i LOVE jcs and am very familiar with the material, so this was not a first for me except for seeing it live
i'm not sure if the setup for the staging was unique, but there were 3 big parts: 2 two level bits that were set up towards the back (one that was used almost solely for the instruments) and then in the middle was a very large, elevated cross made of grated metal. it was where the smoke machine bits came through and it had bright lights that hugged the edges.
the way that the cross elevated a bit in the middle of the stage and bisected it was really cool. it let different actors (a lot of the time jesus pre-arrest) elevate themselves over the rest of the scene, and created a pretty clear divide between two different events/sides.
costumes- most of them were what i'd expect from a jcs production, but i was impressed by how lowkey and modern jesus's civilian clothes were (the khaki shorts, the loose white top, the light gray hoodie) and then the way that the leader guy of the I BELIEVE IN YOU AND GOD SO TELLLL ME THAT I'M SAVED! has jesus's exact same outfit but with the colors of the shirt and hoodie swapped. i dunno that worked for me. judas's look, of course, SLAYED in the don't you get me wrong number. sparkling like a star, with his hair all done up in this brilliant and gorgeous updo... *chefs kiss* and then pilot's crown was good and subtle and i love love loved herod and his gang. herod had a big goofy overcoat that gave him a cartoony frame and then he took it off and was in this straight up cabaret bright gold high boots outfit with french revolution aristocracy era face paint and get up. the lackeys had on these striped outfits and harem pants and the like, big circles that surround your head kinda like a dog cone? and at the very end of the number when he's encroaching in on jesus and about to kick him out he kicks the head of every single lackey who's on the ground in a line, like waiting for a beheading? and then it like SPEWS BLOOD along their neckline and the cone. visually appealing, horrifying, and interesting, especially with the french revolution imagery.
they did this really interesting thing with guitars and microphones with the actors. so jesus had a guitar that he carried around with him a lot and peter did too. jesus took it out during emotional moments and the way that they framed the gethsemane number to start with was him just working out his emotions through song? he plays the number himself (and he and peter were playing on pilot's first little number, which is interesting symbolism) and then as he finally builds to a point where he can't keep going he unplugs the guitar from the amp and goes to cry and finish the number with no mic.... just him.
additions on gethsemane- as he was winding up to the FIIINNNNEEEEE I'LLLLLL DIIIIIIEEEEE bit, the lights started flashing from all different directions. in the divine intensity. you will be doing this. you don't have a choice. then jesus, who's mainly performed in a much more.... traditional? style than neeley's jesus finally DOES take it into that piercing, 70s rocker falsetto belt.... and to have that happen right before he finally... does give up. just collapse into a little pile of just him, no more lighting anymore but this single spotlight on this sad, tired little man... the heart. it wrenches. then judas comes in from the Super Secret Suprise Entrance Cross and everything just keeps going.
super funny when we got all the apostles looking between each other when judas and jesus have their fight and judas leaves and then peter strums a cord and restarts" ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT I'D BE AN APOOOOSTTTLLLEEEEEE"
caiphas was, unfortunately, hot.
thinking about the shift of the ensemble so quickly from We Are The Sinful Temple Fuckers to We Are The Ailing of the Earth and how the ailing surround and overwhelm jesus and the way that it just. is visually even more in person
the use of the mics was also interesting. the high priests had mic stands that they always came in with as props and the dancing with them was cool and worked well, and then jesus/judas/mary passed around a mic some, both on the mic stand and without it. and especially when it was on the stand it gave this sense of... presence and importance. a lot of the judas-mary altercations were spent moving the mic back and forth and it was +++++ especially since we saw the microphone taken away from jesus when he was arrested (taking away his power along with his guitar, his ability to express himself). the mic's cord was ALSO used in really interesting ways. the first time it really comes up is when judas is realizing that he's been duped by the narrative and he's been left with the bag... and then he stretches the bright red cord out to its full length as he climbs up to the second story and threads the cord to stage the hanging... with the microphone. the lighting in this scene was great and just UUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHH watching judas send the microphone over the edge and leaving IT hanging as the symbol of judas's death. fucking. fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
the other time that the microphone cord itself comes up is in pilot's last number, when the crowd is getting increasingly YOU HAVE NO CHOICE CRUCIFY HIMCRUCIFY HIM! and pilot's like. uh. how about i beat him? will that satisfy your blood lust? and he fucking wraps his mic cord around jesus's hands and holds him in place with it??? like oh my god. that made me feel some kind of way.
peter brought his guitar back out when he and mary magdalene were singing about how jesus should probably make things stop sucking now, please? then them on the smaller, more cut off scene watching jesus get beaten and sentenced to crucifixion. the powerlessness of that staging
jesus spends most of that number physically on the ground. he falls off the cross to the ground. he's so bloody and broken looking and it was painful.
the way the crowd shifts from being the taunting crowd to the JESUS CHRIST! SUPERSTAR! background singers. but. this staging... it had jesus. out during this number. and the chorus kept on hurting him as they KEPT DEMANDING ANSWERS? just like the way that they made every character who did that a guard (they had different roman emperor heads, it was great) and then. jesus is still there. he is still broken and beaten and Not Yet Crucified. and they're passing him around like emma perkins in inevitable.
(and his horror keeps going on)
something about how they gave judas's actor bright white hands after touching the blood money to contrast against his dark brown skin. something about how in this show he gets both pilot and jesus's symbols of being doomed by fate (pilot's bloody hands, jesus's crown of thorns).
like. they do not crucify this poor motherfucker until after the entire staging of "don't you get me wrrrroooonnnngggggg". and then we have to watch him raised onto the cross and his painful cries and everything. a few murmured notes from the crowd. then it's just a few actors helping to take jesus down off the cross and judas sitting on the edge, looking forlorn and regretful and just. so lost.
and a tattered jesus manages to move to the spot across from him, and sends him a tiny smile. he takes the crown of thorns off his own head and passes it over to judas.
the lights go down and the show is over. judas is forgiven. he's elevated! he's trapped!!!!!!! he and jesus are here together in this story that neither of them can control. they share that knowledge, and then the lights go down.
i really like how the “will you touch, will you heal me christ” demonstrates jesus’s point of “i can’t fix every single issue everywhere, judas. right now we’re just chilling” so much better than the speech he makes to judas does.
because judas is making what seems, in the moment, to be a very reasonable point, but if you take it to its utmost extreme... even with jesus’s powers, even if he didn’t know his time was limited, he couldn’t fix judas’s criticisms because as fair as they seem in the moment, they really aren’t, in the same way that any Why Aren’t You Personally Fixing Everything criticisms aren’t. (especially since in jcs it’s pretty clear that jesus IS just a dude and did not sign up for the being a human sacrifice part of the gig)
Judas having a special role in Jesus' life, among the apostles is like.. the plot of JCS but it comes out in small details that still make me lose my mind.
It's obvious in the first half of act 1 when Judas is the only one of them to speak outside of the group dynamic, and also when Jesus singles him out in Poor Jerusalem, etc etc, but it also hits home during The Last Supper because that's the song that really unmasks everyone.
The Last Supper is Sooo fucking insane because it shows the worst of literally anyone and then it all goes to shit. Usually the focus justblies on Jesus and Judas but really, the other apostles expose themselves just as much.
I personally LOVE recordings where they get progressively more drunk (aside from that it's literally in the song so if u dont do that.... Ehat r u even doing) bc... In Vino Veritas. "Always hoped that I'd be an apostle / Knew that I would make it if I tried / Then when we retire we can write the gospels / So they'll still talk about us when we've died"
They were never in it for Jesus or for his cause or for God. Here, they are exposing themselves as vying for fame and glory, and it just contrasts the raw, explosive, intense, intimate, personal relationship Judas has with Jesus and the cause and God.
It becomes so painfully obvious that Judas is the only one thinking for himself and being demonised for it in the end! But Jesus knows!!!!
Ola Salo's Swedish translation goes even harder in that regard, because it contrasts the desinterest the apostles have in the conflict right in front of them (and the narrative they spin from it, like in the last verse where they say they'll hift the blame onto Judas), with the deeply personal conflict Jesus and Judas are actually living in that moment. In a way, they are in their own bubble, talking about their feelings and their relationship ("one who was my love", and in the english original "to think i admired you / now i despise you") and its just SO OBVIOUS how much Judas cares and how much the other apostles don't.
judas’s tearful condemnation of jesus as he leaves the grove is just so gutting
Every time I look at you, I don't understand
Why you let the things you did get so out of hand
You'd have managed better if you'd had it planned
especially with how it comes IMMEDIATELY before gethsemane, where jesus so desperately pleads to have something explained. he wants to have some other option offered to him, but there is nothing else. he had no choice in this situation, whether he personally had a plan or not. and the fact that jesus was completely incapable of planning for his own life and actions spiraling into judas’s betrayal here, the betrayal that was already written in blood before the show even started...
it’s so intricate. it’s so inevitable. it’s so tightly woven and fated that no one was ever going to escape.
i think that jesus christ superstar really is my favorite example of “this was all written already, and we’re just players being moved around by fate”, because even the characters who seem to make choices... aren’t.
pilate doesn’t choose to send jesus to die- he tries to get jesus to give him any reason to release him as he fights against an angry, faceless horde with no real understandable motives for wanting jesus dead so desperately.
jesus doesn’t choose to die. he’s stuck in a situation where he probably couldn’t get out of it, being forced to do so by his father who is literally GOD and did not consult him about this choice. when jesus finally gives in, it’s resignation, not because he’s agreed to the decision.
peter makes the decision to deny jesus those three times, but only after it’s already been stated that it’s going to happen.
the closest thing we have to someone making a bad decision of their own free will is judas, who decides that he wants to try to bring jesus in to try to protect the rest of them... but even with judas... the chief priests have decided that they are going to catch jesus. if they didn’t have an in-man, they would have found someone else or found a different way.
the guy upstairs decided that this was going to happen and then he moved the pawns to make sure that it did.
Autistic Jesus in the 2012 production of Jesus Christ Superstar
An analysis of the behaviours and ideals that make me think Jesus is autistic, from the point of view of an autistic JCS fan that thinks about this headcanon entirely too much.
Let’s start by talking about his body language. One of the most common ways autistic body language differs from allistic body language is how it treats eye contact, and we can see this represented often in the show. Eye contact can take a huge amount of processing power, which here translates into several different behaviours – When he’s entirely focused on processing one thing, especially while not speaking or doing anything else but look, he has a very intense stare. The way Mary has to physically turn his head for him to stop staring at Judas is a perfect example of this. Then there are moments when he’s listening to someone else speak, but not looking at them. This, even though it might be perceived as rude by someone unfamiliar with autistic body language, actually means that he’s making an effort to listen as closely as possible. If eye contact takes up processing power, removing that means you can focus all of your attention on processing that person’s words without wasting any on something that is not actually needed. And finally, there’s the way he very deliberately tries to avoid eye contact when being brought to Pilate for the first time. He’s already overwhelmed by then, which can turn eye contact into something actually painful.
The only time we see him making eye contact in a completely typical allistic way is at a protest, interacting with people that have come to support him. It’s a clear and deliberate performance.
There is actually a very interesting duality when it comes to the rest of his body language. Autistic people can feel emotions in a very strong, physical way, and this clearly spills over into the way Jesus moves. Some feelings are so intense that he HAS to channel them into movement because it’s impossible to just keep them inside. He gestures a lot while giving speeches, he has quite exaggerated facial expressions reacting to certain things, like Mary’s touch, and he moves around when he’s upset. Negative emotions are sometimes focused into sharp, sudden movements, like the physical outbursts he has against both Peter and Judas.
So we see all this freely expressed emotion in his body language, but there is also a contrast in any situation where he’s overwhelmed and doesn’t feel in control, when he’ll stay very still, to the point of looking visibly stiff and tense sometimes. There are several times when everyone else is dancing wildly around him (during Simon’s song, for example) and he is standing still in the middle of it, showing an extremely limited body language as a way to express discomfort.
And the reason he is uncomfortable in such situations brings me to my next point, sensory issues. Autistic people process the input their senses are receiving from the world differently than allistic people do, and as a result something that an allistic person can experience without discomfort can be uncomfortable, unappealing or painful for autistic people. Autistic people can be hyposensitive (As is my headcanon for autistic Simon in this production, but that’s a different topic), meaning that their sensitivity to sensory stimuli is a lot lower than is usually considered ‘normal’, or hypersensitive, when their sensitivity to sensory stimuli is very heightened. This can be fluid, and an autistic person might be hyposensitive to some things and hypersensitive to others, but there’s a tendency to lean heavily one way or the other.
Jesus is hypersensitive. This means too much sensory input is overwhelming and difficult to handle for him. Stimming, or self-stimulatory behaviour, is a broad term that encompasses many kinds of repetitive actions autistic people do to self-regulate their sensory processing, counteract negative sensations, soothe themselves or express a great range of emotion. This can be very subtle, especially when the person is calm and comfortable (for an example of this, we see him hold hands with some of his followers, which I personally find to be a very nice casual form of light pressure stimming), and a lot more obvious when they’re trying to cope with sensory overload. He’s rocking back and forth slightly at the end of Everything’s Alright, and even more so towards the end of Gethsemane, in which he also keeps rubbing the edge of one of the stairs as a tactile stim, because smooth textures are often soothing.
The way he reacts to touch also clearly shows his hypersensitivity. It’s common for touch tolerance to fluctuate in autistic people depending on their current mood, or who the person touching them is. Again, we see him hold hands, and hug his friends, when he’s feeling comfortable. Otherwise, later in the show when he’s suffering from sensory overload, he reacts to touch in a very different way, especially when Herod touches him while he’s having a shutdown and he looks like his touch is physically painful to him. The only exception at this time is Judas and how tightly he hugs him right before he is arrested, which I believe is very significant and actually tells us a lot about his feelings for him.
But Jesus is, definitely, in a state of shutdown towards the end of the show. For autistic people, ‘having a shutdown’ means experiencing a certain form of withdrawal and almost dissociation, in the way that you are very disconnected from the world around you and retreating into yourself when everything simply becomes too much. It can be a consequence of pushing yourself way past your limits, like Jesus had clearly been doing. He becomes nonverbal, often looks confused and unfocused, and moving at all becomes difficult. Going back to Herod, the way Jesus acts during his song shows all these symptoms very clearly. Even though he obviously would like Herod not to touch him, he finds himself unable to move away or speak up. He sits very still, very tense, hands tightly gripping the armrests of the chair, and he is very overwhelmed by everything going on around him. But when you’re having a shutdown, you’re often left without any real way to react, or take any steps to remove yourself from an unpleasant situation, so you’re only left with the option of enduring it and suffering and trying to get through it.
He won’t get up when he’s brought to Pilate again, giving him a reply obviously takes a great deal of effort and exhausts any energy he had left, holding himself up is not even an option anymore.
Shutdowns, though, are only one kind of possible reaction to sensory overload. Meltdowns can have very similar causes, but are instead focused on a more external reaction, a release in the form of physical energy, which we’ve already established Jesus is prone to. He has a meltdown after the crowd of people looking to be healed overwhelms him and makes him panic, as well as in the Temple, which is the perfect example of an environment that would be sensory hell for hypersensitive people.
There’s something else contributing to his meltdown in the Temple, another autistic trait known as black and white thinking. Ultimately, the world is by instinct seen in very simple terms. This is a big part of what creates the idealism we see in the beginning, what shapes the message of Hope and unconditional Compassion in the first place (along with some Hyperempathy, which makes him feel the suffering of others in a very personal way), but also what makes him fall into profound despair once forced to face the complexities of the real world. It’s the ‘all or nothing’ mentality that makes him feel completely abandoned and betrayed by everyone towards the end. Intellectually, he is probably able to understand every layer of it, the way most of them were only playing roles predetermined for them and how they each had their own complex feelings and reasons to do whatever they did, but emotionally it’s a very different story. It’s on the darkest extreme of that black and white thinking.
It makes it difficult not to see things as a hard binary, one or the other. Adoring followers or hateful betrayers. Power and glory or death, and the most absolute defeat, a complete loss of any purpose or meaning. The crowd seen as either an unstoppable protest force or a suffocating mob. So when he goes to the nightclub that is the Temple here, there’s no space in his mind for it to be seen as a place otherwise decent and normal people go to have some carefree fun and forget their worries – It’s immediately classified as a ‘Den of thieves’, completely and unsalvageably immoral.
Black and white thinking can be very influenced by hypermorality. What I’m referring to as hypermorality here is an autistic trait that causes a person to have extremely strong internal ideas of what is Right and Wrong. This can be a very pervasive, inescapable feeling, and often overrides any external forces that try to regulate behaviour, like the law or social acceptance.
It can also manifest as internalising a certain set of rules by adopting it as your own and sticking to it to unreasonable extremes. We can see both kinds in Jesus; the internal sense of Right and Wrong that contributes to his deep sense of justice, and makes things like being an outcast in society or breaking the law be nearly meaningless consequences of doing the Right thing; and on the other side there’s the unquestionable adherence to God’s rules, imposed unto him.
Knowing what the Right thing is is more of an emotional feeling than an intellectual one, and can in fact be quite irrational. Following your instinct to Do the Right Thing can be a compulsion impossible to resist. All the possible consequences feel justified. It can feel like you don’t have a choice, and manifest, specially to the eyes of everyone else around you, as extreme stubbornness, hyperfixation and unwillingness to compromise.
Knowing that something is Right gives you the most unshakeable kind of confidence. The kind of belief strong enough to pull others into it, which explains how Jesus’ message is so convincing and inspired people to follow him, moving even Judas, usually so realistic and cynical.
By contrast, when something is Wrong, you have to stand up against it. Knowing that something is Wrong is like a feverish rage filling your brain, like your entire body is screaming. It’s a feeling that’s impossible to ignore, because it renders you unable to think about anything else. Sometimes it just makes you avoid or stay away from something, without a true rational reason for it, or sometimes you feel compelled to stop the Wrong thing by any means necessary, like Jesus did at the Temple.
External rules, though, no matter how internalised, can eventually stop feeling true and good because they don’t come from that same internal place. I believe we can see these breaking in Gethsemane, but by then it is too late – God’s plan is already in motion, Jesus is trapped in it.
At this point, all he can do is go through the motions, and let it happen. He has no energy left to face the tremendous Change of doing anything else. Change is something that can be very upsetting and difficult for autistic people. During the show, we see Jesus at his most stressed when things are changing around him. It’s very hard to handle periods of transition and change in life when what you truly want is for everything to stay the same, safe and familiar, and you need a lot of time to process each change or to make decisions. Time Jesus simply doesn’t have. Everything is moving too fast for him to truly process properly, much less control.
Resistance to change is what, ironically, stagnates a revolutionary movement that should be all about change and progress, making Jesus choose to keep doing the same thing as they’ve always done when Simon urges him to make a move against Rome. Rather than going through the kind of radical change that would result from defying it, it feels much easier to just go along with God’s plan and, ultimately, die to fulfil it.
