By Nilanjana Goswami
At the latest in a series of attacks unleashed upon selected cultural events in Brazil, conservative groups have begun protests against the one-woman play, “The Gospel according to Jesus, Queen of Heaven”. The play presents transgender actress Renata Carvalho as Christ, coming down from heaven and sharing Biblical stories and parables about tolerance with the audience. At the end of the show, she breaks bread with the audience and passes the communion wine around, symbolizing the tradition of the Eucharist. The play—a monologue written by the Scottish playwright Jo Clifford—has been performed more than 60 times during a tour of Brazil. Performances at the Outburst Queer Arts Festival in 2015 and in Glasgow in 2009 also attracted massive amounts of protesters. Natalia Mallo, the director of the play, observes that most of the abuse they faced was from those adhering to the evangelical disposition. “With Jesus embodied in a trans woman, it addresses all the oppression and violence suffered by this population,” she said.
Legal disruption against the play
The performance in Sao Paulo caused members of the conservative factions to leap onto the stage and disrupt the performance, calling for a ban on the show. An injunction was granted by a court, with the judge calling it, “disrespectful” and “in bad taste”, but this decision was subsequently overturned by another court as two other prominent judges refused the appeal and rejected further petitions. “The performance of this horrific spectacle is equal to the persecution suffered by Christians in the first centuries when they were thrown to wild animals in the arenas of Rome as a form of entertainment,” said one of the petitions calling for an injunction.
Similar instances of backlash in art
The play isn’t alone in facing virulent backlash; recently two art exhibitions came under fire from the conservative faction for apparently promoting paedophilia and peddling explicit content to minors. The Santander Cultural Association in Porto Alegre put on an exhibition called Queer Museum depicting various forms of sexuality. However, it had to be shut down within September due to a wave of protests by the evangelical lobby aided by the Free Brazil Movement, who accused the exhibition of freely displaying pornographic and paedophilic content and promoting bestiality. Sao Paulo’s Museum of Modern Art has also come under fire for its La Bête exhibition, which was criticized by the conservative faction as encouraging paedophilia due to allegations that visitors to the show, including a child, had been encouraged to touch a nude man.
Political and social offence or curbed freedom
The tussle between the authorities regarding this draconian ban on freedom of expression continues. A resolution to the “culture wars” is hard to come by, because the protests also reflect the political reality of Brazil in the upcoming national elections next year. Religious evangelicals are a fraction of the population who follow the word of the Bible closely and throw their weight behind reforms that seem to be in concord with the “Word of God”. From accounting for only five er cent of the population a few decades ago, they now account for 20 per cent of the same. Brazil is one of the most deeply Catholic nations in the world, and recent cases of corruption brought to light among the Brazilian government have turned the tide in their favour.
The Free Brazil Movement, a liberal group in support of free-market ideas, is one among the many newfound organizations that have grown out of this instability. As a result of the loss of faith in existing polity, many Brazilians have increasingly started demanding a stronger moral integrity and leadership at the centre. There has also been a steady rise in religious fervour, coupled with the persecution of minority communities like LGBTQ rights groups. LGBTQ activists and evangelical groups have also clashed upon the judicial favour shown to the psychologist Rozangela Justino, who openly stated that being gay was a condition that could be cured by proper religious guidance, and also provided conversion therapy endeavouring to “cure” homosexuality. Candidates campaigning for the elections include far-right congressman Jair Bolsnaro, who once stated that being gay was a sure sign that your parents didn’t hit you hard enough when you were a child.
The crux of the matter
The state of affairs is worrying, to say the least: despite hosting the largest queer pride parade in the world, Brazil also records an extremely violent attitude towards members of the LGBTQ community, and phobic attitudes towards the community often result in despicable crimes committed against them. Christianity’s stance against homosexuality has been a bone of contention for centuries, but the recent stage of developments in the LGBTQ movements calls for a stock-taking within the higher echelons of Catholicism. One should understand that hatred and exclusivist attitudes can never be the foundational base of any religion. One should, moreover, remember at all times that no such power rests with any human being as to enable them to snatch faith and belief from another, no matter how “different” they are perceived to be from them.
Featured Image Source: Flickr
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