Why watching 1973’s ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ is the gayest way to celebrate Easter weekend
Welcome back to our queer film retrospective, “A Gay Old Time.” In a very special Easter edition of the column, we’re revisiting the campy 1973 adaptation of the rock musical Jesus Christ Superstar.The canon for “queer movies about Easter” isn’t exactly the most robust one.
Because of its close and obvious link with Christianity and Catholicism (religions that obscure us at best and actively fight against us at worst), not many films depict the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection through an explicit queer lens—even if there are many works of religious film with heavy homoerotic subtext (see our previous column on Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane, for example).However, this week we take a turn into queer-adjacent territory with the film adaptation of one of the most famous shows in musical theater history, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar.
Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.It’s as close to a queer interpretation of Jesus’ last days as we’re probably ever going to get, and the film staging (as well as some of the character dynamics) definitely speak directly into the interests of our community.Jesus Christ Superstar was conceived first as a concept album by Lloyd Webber and Rice (who did the music and lyrics, respectively) in 1970, before being performed for the first time on Broadway a year later.
The show is a sung-through rock opera based on the Gospel’s recounting of the days leading to the death and resurrection of Jesus.
