The Wrong Good Friday.

As you must have expected I’m not going to spend my Good Friday watching church services followed by some lame biblical epic from the early 60’s with Charlton Heston as God and Tony Curtis as Jesus and Sidney Poitier as Pontius Pilate. With Marilyn Monroe as the Virgin Mary. And so on. If they still made films like that today we’ve become so wet we’d have to make sure the cast included people of all faiths and colours and cater for every sexual leaning and liberal baiting peccadillo.
Jesus would have been martyred for having gender re-assignment on the NHS. God would be black, or even better, Chinese. But not North Korean, of course. That would be crazy! The Virgin Mary would be living on benefits and be nursing a clutch of miraculous sprogs already. One of whom would be called Jayden or Priyanka. But this wouldn’t break her down, oh no. She would be a fearless spokesperson for LGBT rights and would probably have something to say about female genital mutilation as well. And land mines.
Pontius Pilate on the other hand would be a member of some far right neo-Nazi group.  Perhaps they could make him more interesting by including some soft lit, suggestive scenes in which he exposes his sexual desire for one of the gospel chaps. I was thinking Matthew. But Luke would do. He’d also probably have a pit bull terrier called Alfonso.
It would be co-directed by a woman with Tourette’s and a man in a wheelchair and everybody would be so happy and everybody would see it and it would win all the Oscars and Stephen Fry would cry about it at the Bafta’s and Dame Judi Dench would run out and give him a hug and then the world would, in an impulsive moment of celestial intuition, hold hands and then suddenly we’d have world peace.
Anyway, a quick glance at the news today doesn’t suggest this Friday has much to be good about. ‘The wife’ mentioned female genital mutilation before we even got out of bed. It’s just one of those things that keeps our marriage going. The act of female genital mutilation makes me squirm up like a slug in a salt shower. In reality it must be 10,000 time worse than that. It’s barbaric and backwards and anyone who thinks it’s a good idea automatically qualifies as a lifetime member of the ‘Unspeakable Bastard Club’.
A quick solution, as is usually the best way, would simply insist that anyone who performs, or feels they have the right to perform, female genital mutilation should first have to undergo genital mutilation themselves. It might not completely sort the problem but it would be a start. And if you don’t think it’s important to be discussing a topic like this then you’re wrong.
When I sat down to write this morning I was set to do a glowing appraisal of Bob Dylan and then compare him very to Ed Sheeran, but that will have to wait. Go on, off you go. Go and enjoy your Good Friday. I expect most shops will be open.
G B Hewitt 14.4.2017
I don’t want to appear smug but I’m very pleased with the title.