Lil Nas X is brilliant at skewering the twisted zeitgeist of America’s religiosity. “J Christ,” his new music video, is no exception. Dressed as a femme Jesus wearing high-heeled boots and a flowing mane and waving at a moonwalking Michael Jackson, Lil Nas X takes the viewer through a vignette of biblical scenes that only he could imagine. Conservative Christians were quick to condemn it.
The “J Christ” video is a trolling tour de farce, combining celebrity culture, drag, biblical stories and the return of Jesus Christ.
The “J Christ” video is a trolling tour de farce, combining celebrity culture, drag, biblical stories and the return of Jesus Christ. Building off his previous video “Call Me By Your Name,” in which he descends into hell and gives the devil a lap dance, this time Lil Nas X has ascended into heaven. Except the heaven depicted in his video is filled exclusively with celebrities, a biting commentary about America’s cultural moment. The video features lookalikes for Ye, former President Barack Obama, Oprah and Dolly Parton among others mashed up with scenes from the lives of Noah, Moses and Jesus.
There’s also a well-built devil playing basketball.
In this video, we see the evolution of an artist challenging the limits of what is called art by some and blasphemy by others. In his book, “Blasphemy, Art That Offends,” S. Brent Plate declares that “No work of art is blasphemous in and of itself, it must be deemed so from within religious and/or political power structures.”
In the current religious and political power structures of an increasingly homophobic and transphobic American Christianity, Lil Nas X’s new video is garnering criticism by those who are offended by his take on biblical stories such as Noah’s flood, Jesus’ descent into hell, and his use of scripture, particularly 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation: The old has passed away: Behold the new has come.”
Give Lil Nas X credit. He knows how to get people to talk about him, this religion scholar included. He even alludes to that ability in the song’s lyrics, when he asks, “Is he ‘bout to give them something vi-ral?” Once again, he’s started a conversation about Christianity while skewering the marketing juggernaut of American Christianity, where televangelists have 24-7 stations selling Jesus.
Friday’s release of “J Christ” was the culmination of Lil Nas X’s week-long marketing strategy. The week began with the release of short videos of him gobbling up communion wafers and wine, offering up a dream vacation to heaven and transforming from a Christ-like figure on into a, well, Transformer. Depending on your perspective, it was entertaining or vexing. Replying to his detractors on X, Lil Nas X stated that “Jesus’s image is used in people’s art all over the world. I’m not making fun of s—.”
Lil Nas X playing pickup basketball with the devil is a an allusion to an image that appears on some T-shirts of a basketball-dribbling Jesus crossing up the devil.
The scene with Lil Nas X playing pickup basketball with the devil, who’s wearing the much hyped Satan Nikes with Luke 10:18 emblazoned on them, is a nice throwback to “Call Me By Your Name,” but the scene is an allusion to an image that appears on some T-shirts of a basketball-dribbling Jesus crossing up the devil. It’s not merely clever. It’s Lil Nas X calling out the commercialization of Jesus that generally goes without condemnation.
At the risk of making “J Christ” more than just Lil Nas X’s commentary about America’s capitalist and political relationship with Christianity, I’ve been thinking about the recent release of the “God Made Trump” video and the video from the Ron DeSantis campaign, “God made a fighter.” In each video, the claim is that God made that politician to “save America.” On top of that Trump shared a “courtroom sketch” that showed Jesus sitting by his side at the defense table.
Why can’t Lil Nas X envision himself as a Jesus-like figure come to save us from the tyranny of conformity? Why should it only be white male political figures who can envision themselves as messiahs come to save America from “undesirable” elements? If there have been any criticisms of Trump and DeSantis as blasphemers for those videos, then they are soft compared with the criticisms of Lil Nas X’s depictions of himself as a Christ-like figure.
The “J Christ” video, on one level, is about an artist’s view of Christianity and his career, and quite frankly, it hews more closely to scripture than most politicians do. But because Lil Nas X is unabashedly gay, proud and critical of Christianity, his creativity will be contested and lambasted, even by people willing to accept outrages from political figures who are half as entertaining and much more blasphemous.
