About Good Friday
We watched a film, The Long Good Friday, an Aurora Film Society showing, in company with a room full of other film buffs. Yes, this was a chilling gangster film. The leading man in the tale is Harold Shand played by Bob Hoskins. Harold’s girlfriend, Victoria, is played by Helen Mirren.
The film reminded me that tomorrow in fact is Good Friday. Moreover on a personal note, the film’s ‘Good’ Friday church scene is as close as I ever hope to get to another Good Friday worship service. That image projected upon a screen served as a pointed reminder of the person that I once was, with others, (we never become what we are, without help).
The title of the film suggests that a day of high religious portent is to become eternally long, the characters becoming existentially entangled in the gang warfare that irrationally erupts, the effect of an impulsive theft of a few thousand dollars, and of the misunderstanding that follows. Not to rehash the entire plot here, I’ll just say that a scene early in the film is of a visually arresting Good Friday service in an English Cathedral. You can almost smell the incense wafting upward above the congregation, worshipers are queued up waiting their turn to kiss the feet of the Christ statue. The statue is physically held erect by two altar boys. Another altar boy dutifully sanitizes toes with a wipe, after each congregant places his/her lips upon the statue.
Is this a scene of absolute faith and devotion? Or does the scene connote abject servility? Every viewer must decide for him/herself.
Concurrent with the solemn cathedral service, that Good Friday devolves into a mayhem of vehicle bombing and building explosions.
Shand’s terror and rage erupts into up close and personal murder of a close associate. Shand is covered in blood, his blood-lust unleashed, he has just bludgeoned his associate with a broken wine bottle. In shock over what he has done, he gets into Victoria’s vehicle to be taken away from the scene.
In the full on effort to discover the betrayer, the culprit behind the killings of Shand’s gang, there’s a scene that features a walk-in meat locker. Around a dozen men have been rounded up, and are hanging head down on meathooks, waiting to be interrogated, that is to be ‘sacrificed’ on account of the blood fest unleashed upon Shand’s gang. For me the story, is bracketed between those two scenes: a cathedral altar and a meat locker.
What is Good Friday all about? It is a ritual to recall to memory a judicial killing, a single example of the innumerable individuals sacrificed to sustain the Roman hegemony of rule over Mediterranean peoples, African peoples, Britain, and those in today’s northern Europe.
Good Friday is about just one ordinary, run-of-the-mill judicial killing, a muscle-flex by one who holds power, and of everyone who supports him, doing his bidding.
How much of this do you think has changed? Note: the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians, the U.S. governments refusal to repatriate Abrego Garcia deported by mistake because of his tats, the revocation of free speech in the suppression of DEI programs in companies and schools, etc., etc., The victimization goes on and on — for no reason except to demonstrate where power lies.
That’s the meaning of Good Friday. And it is a Long Good Friday, seeming to be interminable.
And no, Jesus was not the ‘son-of-god’ volunteering so that you’d have no need to suffer the consequences of your violent deeds.
He was like you and I, another schmuck to be pitied, sucked into our vortex of human immolation…
2 thoughts on “About Good Friday”
Oh, I like that, “sucked into our vortex of human immolation…” a great use of words to denote the, imagined, coming terror and apocalypse. Such a dim view of humanity I don’t share, at least until the next large meteor comes along.
But what about Good Friday? the gest of your post. I am not Catholic, nor a Christian, in fact I am an atheist. But I would guess I am a Christian atheist since I once went to church and still hold some of those views. My view of Good Friday is quite different than your portrayal. The majority of my childhood and high school friends were Catholic and it posed not even an ounce of discord between us. We would talk of the universe and how it all began, is there a hereafter? Is there a heaven or hell after we die? Ha, they would even talk of a priest who would talk of pigs that could fly. These things, and girls, we talked about while sitting in our cars at the National Tea parking lot in town, sometimes well after midnight.
Now that I have gotten older, 84, and I hope wiser, which is doubtful, I still think of all those things we young boys talked about. I now, every Friday evening, I visit with an old friend, and few others, all are Catholic. He is a believer, just last Friday night I brought over some summer sausage and he wouldn’t eat any of it as it was lent. I respect that. Was he being beaten down by the church, no, just tradition I assume, because he no longer goes to church. and because he was on the church board he realized how things were done and didn’t approve, politics ya know.
A number of years ago his daughter was out jogging in the morning when a hit and run driver killed her. God what a shock that had to be for the family, damn good people. But I could see how his beliefs held his family together. Many times after such a tragedy husbands and wife’s separate, they had the same troubles but their beliefs kept them together.
So what? You may ask. Well, I’ve never seen anything even close to what you described about Good Friday. To me, it was just the Friday before Christ arose from the dead, after being put in the tomb on Friday. While I may be wrong in that, I just don’t see what you see. But maybe it’s because I don’t see myself as a victim.
Gary, as always I feel honored to read your thoughts regarding anything that I have written. You have noted many times before that it is “difference” that gives life zest, the opportunity for learning something new.
The language that I used to describe how humans treat one another was not at all meant to refer to a future apocalypse. My intention was to comment upon how we behave toward one another all along, since the beginning of recorded history. You do not think it worth taking note of the innocent man who has been consigned to a hell-hole prison in El Salvador without any recourse. No suggestion that an apology is owed, that he and his family are owed anything? That this needs to be made right?
This is one, just one of the brutal practices that have happened and are happening in many places around the world. Now this is happening here in spades and you’d turn your head?
Official, organized religion is nothing more than a distraction, a diversion from state-sponsored suffering. Say the rosary, keep your nose in the holy book – so that you do not have to hear about those who are being rounded up, deported to a strange place. Is this not inhuman behavior? Is is not “sick” to feel a surge of satisfaction at such news?
You and your friends may interpret the actions of the cast of the Easter Story in the manner that makes you feel good
, that helps you get through the day. How is that not just a another shaking of the rattle of religion? All of us will grab ahold of any stick or floating log when we are drowning…
A final thought, it is the believers in the traditional interpretation of The Passion story and The Easter story, who see themselves like their divine hero, the victim, the Eternal victim who mercifully has taken their place,… Think about it.