Our theme for the month of June is “spirits.”
On a recent trip to the movie theater (we were there to see The Sheep Detectives), my brother and I sat through a trailer for the upcoming nativity adaptation Zero A.D. After it finished, my brother leaned over and commented how odd it was that there weren’t more movies based on the Bible. This isn’t strictly speaking true—there are a lot of movies based on Bible stories, but many of them are direct-to-video fare and the remaining don’t usually break out of the Evangelical bubble (which is a big bubble, to be sure) and into the mainstream. And even where Christian media is concerned, the Bible doesn’t always get top billing; on this list of the top ten highest grossing Christian films of all time, only three are adaptations of Bible stories.
I have no interest in Zero A.D., but the conversation its commercial spawned reminded me of the most important Bible movies of my childhood: Dreamworks’ The Prince of Egypt and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (the 1999 film version).
My family owned both of these on VHS, which meant that I, in the way of all children with limited access to media, watched them on repeat until I could quote every line of both. But I had seen neither in years. On a whim and out of an abundance of mere curiosity, I decided to change that.
I started with Joseph, mainly because I had a suspicion that The Prince of Egypt would hold up better. I don’t know why I thought that adult Annaka wouldn’t like revisiting Joseph—I like musicals, I like men in eyeliner, and I like lesbian-coded women aggressively singing the names of colors at me while crouching over a fake sheep.
Somehow I had forgotten that this movie is extremely camp (which is possibly the most effective insulator against badness) or possibly I never realized that it was. Prior to my rewatch, my main memory of the movie is my mother making me fast-forward through the Potiphar’s wife scene, which on the one hand is a shame because Joan Collins kills that role but on the other feels fair, since there are a lot of women rolling around in nude leotards while their boss is forcing a man to strip against his will. (It seems the producers of the VHS tape that we owned also felt this way, as they featured a still of her on the back of the case but Photoshopped her costume to make it more PG. Funnily enough, the DVD that I checked out from the library fully twenty-five years later has also censored Mrs. Potiphar’s beasts on the back of its case.)
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat does not have a serious bone in its body (with the possible exception of “Close Every Door”), whereas the other major Bible movie of my childhood, The Prince of Egypt, takes itself extremely seriously and succeeds because of it. I was right that this movie would hold up beautifully—the writing, the blend of hand-drawn and computer animation, and especially the soundtrack are all still marvelous twenty-five years later.
And, as I discovered to be the case with Joseph, I could still quote every line.
Thinking back on how I experienced these movies twenty years ago or more, I realized that despite their differences in tone and style, my child’s brain conflated these films into their barest essence: these are both Bible movies and therefore the same. While my adult self generally enjoyed the experience of rewatching both, the feelings they evoked couldn’t have been more different. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat made me think, “I really should go see more musicals.” The Prince of Egypt made me nostalgic for the religion of my childhood.
“Religious media is bad” is a pretty tired take, and indeed neither Joseph nor The Prince of Egypt are “religious” films. Their lack of evangelistic instinct is key to their success (and, in the case of Joseph, Maria Friedman’s crop top/maxi skirt/knee-length coat combo). I think that is the case of media that sets out to be religious, too.
But I don’t need to avoid evangelizing to be successful, so here’s my pitch: re-experience the media of your childhood. See how it’s changed, or you have. And if you’ve already done that lately, watch The Prince of Egypt, because it’s still good, or Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, because I need someone to explain to me why those two women in Pharaoh’s court are painted blue.
(And you could also watch Sheep Detectives, which is religious in its own way.)
