I Am Jesus Christ
Posted: Sun Dec 08, 2019 6:57 pm
White Jesus, the video game, coming to Steam:
https://youtu.be/95bUnMnTh4U
Because everyone should be able to indulge a Jesus complex this holiday season...
On the one hand, I can see the game being a positive spin on superhero games where the player takes on the role of Jesus the Christ. It's another form of Batman or Spiderman game and there's probably nothing wrong with that. Emulating Jesus is generally seen as a virtuous effort.
It's the obvious westernized, fundamentalist portrayal of Jesus in the trailer that caught my eye and deserves criticism. If you watch the trailer, you see a clearly white Jesus with white skin tone interacting with four other people. The first is a fairly European-looking elderly blind woman. The second is a darker skinned, dark haired man but with otherwise European features. The last two are the robbers on the crosses on either side of Jesus who also appear to have light skin tone, too.
The context of the trailer suggests the game allows a person to play as Jesus performing a number of the miracles described in the New Testament. But the world of this Jesus isn't historical but it is explicitly tied to the Bible in the trailer through the use of quotes from the New Testament. In other words, the game frames the story of Jesus in the New Testament in a decidedly White Jesus context that allows the player to assume the role of White Jesus in a whitewashed setting as a sort of superhero game.
That seems weirdly dystopian to me.
As a counter point, one of my more favorite songs with Jesus in the title and chorus -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hobfo6Cs8uI
Not the original album version with the full band, this version fits the mood of the song so well it edges the original out as my preferred one.
ETA: reformated since Shades combined my posts.
https://youtu.be/95bUnMnTh4U
Because everyone should be able to indulge a Jesus complex this holiday season...
On the one hand, I can see the game being a positive spin on superhero games where the player takes on the role of Jesus the Christ. It's another form of Batman or Spiderman game and there's probably nothing wrong with that. Emulating Jesus is generally seen as a virtuous effort.
It's the obvious westernized, fundamentalist portrayal of Jesus in the trailer that caught my eye and deserves criticism. If you watch the trailer, you see a clearly white Jesus with white skin tone interacting with four other people. The first is a fairly European-looking elderly blind woman. The second is a darker skinned, dark haired man but with otherwise European features. The last two are the robbers on the crosses on either side of Jesus who also appear to have light skin tone, too.
The context of the trailer suggests the game allows a person to play as Jesus performing a number of the miracles described in the New Testament. But the world of this Jesus isn't historical but it is explicitly tied to the Bible in the trailer through the use of quotes from the New Testament. In other words, the game frames the story of Jesus in the New Testament in a decidedly White Jesus context that allows the player to assume the role of White Jesus in a whitewashed setting as a sort of superhero game.
That seems weirdly dystopian to me.
As a counter point, one of my more favorite songs with Jesus in the title and chorus -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hobfo6Cs8uI
Not the original album version with the full band, this version fits the mood of the song so well it edges the original out as my preferred one.
ETA: reformated since Shades combined my posts.