Thread by @FW_Medieval

Before my piece in @voxdotcom, the most likely time for me to really speak about my roofing experience and medieval culture was in reference to the York Play of the Crucifixion, my favorite of the so-called cycle plays. Particularly appropriate for Good Friday 1/

The cycle plays were collections of dramatic retellings of biblical stories from later medieval England. On the feast of Corpus Christi in June the guilds-people of a town would put on these plays on pageant wagons pulled through the city. Each guild 2/

Would have a short play telling all of Christian time from Creation until the Last Judgement. These plays were creative & interpretive taking sometimes single sentences from the Bible and fleshing them out into mini dramas with multiple speaking parts 3/

One of the fullest collections of these plays survives from the city of York. Of the 47 plays the largest number not surprising have to do with the life of Jesus and most of them deal with the events of Holy Week. One entire play is devoted to the logistics 4/

of the crucifixion & it's this play that makes me think about my roofing days. Because this play about literally attaching Jesus to the cross and raising it up is told entirely from the point of view of four surly workers who have a very shitty job to do. They sound just like 5/

the guys I used to work with. Not only do they complain about the work, they make all kinds of inappropriate crude jokes while performing the work. The work of nailing Jesus to the cross and raising it up. All of which would have been performed on stage with another 6/

actor portraying Jesus. 90% of the dialogue in this play is what my dad would have called "bitching & moaning" or "belly aching." The kind of crude banter that takes place on a job site especially when the boss is not around. The tone of dialogue 7/

reminds me of the conversations of roofers on a hot roof. In her recent edition for @broadviewpress @cfitz325 calls it "cringe-worthy". Definitely. It's dark dark humor with an aggressive edge. It's performative "humor" that does not cause joy. The roofers 8/

I worked with constantly "joked" but rarely laughed. It's vicious humor. A way to cope with the extreme often inhumane conditions on a roof. I remember telling my dad once that it's funny that medieval people imagined Hell as a place of extreme heat, endless labor 9/

noxious fumes and boiling tar & pitch. It's a fucking roof. It's what I studied during the year & did during the summers. And that's the other thing, if you've never been there you cannot imagine how crude the language on a roof can be. "Fuck" serves as every part of speech 10/

as well as punctuation. I had no idea my dad could talk this way until I got on my first roof. Everybody talks that way. You have to talk that way. So when I first read and taught the York Play of the Crucifixion I was like "i know these guys; I've worked with these guys" 11/

But most of my students have never had the particular experience of working brutal physical labor on a crew. So I endeavored to translate the York Play to what it would have sounded like if the guild performing it was Long Island roofers. I never finished it, but here's my 12/

opening of my draft of the New York Play of the Crucifixion. WARNING the language in what follows is extremely crude and offensive. There are more than 35 Fucks in 2 pages 13/

CONTENT WARNING: CRUDE BLASPHEMOUS LANGUAGE

I've tried to represent strong Long Island accents (which are non-rhotic) phonetically. If you're unfamiliar a Jersey Shore accent can be substituted.

The original Middle English can be read here d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/dav…

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The power of this play is it puts us in shoes of the workers crucifying Jesus rather than (say Mel Gibson's Passion) which depicts the events from the point of view of Jesus. We are made gawking spectators at the crucifixion. The only lines not spoken by the workers 16/

are spoken eloquently by Jesus from the cross and are immediately mocked. We can imagine an audience potentially getting caught up in this humor & for a time become participants & witnesses to the crucifixion. But not on the side we like to imagine ourselves on 17/

if the Play works, Jesus's final lines on the cross become vividly poignant: "Father forgive them, they don't know what they are doing." Referring to the four men who have crucified him as well as the literal audience in York on a summer day who have laughed along with them 18/

oh jeez thanks! PAGE 2

PAGE 2 got lost here:

as the kids say, "I feel that."

The play gives cuts back to the workers though and doesn't even let that sink into before the banter continues again. The final line if the play is basically "let's get the eff out of here, this is a waste of time 19/

I find this take on the central event of Christianity devastatingly acute. At the same time as this play, affective piety was a huge deal: putting yourself in Jesus's place or the place of Mary at the cross. But I think it's brilliant + 20/

to suggest it's bold of you to assume you would have been on the right side of history at this moment. This play points at the audience and says you would have laughed too. Maybe 21/

but this is a very hard take to sell. I once made a course poster for the class in which we read this play. I wanted it to be provocative, but not disingenuously so. It literally raises the question we addressed in class: Can the Crucifixion be Funny? 22/

a student at my school was apparently offended enough by this poster to tear it down, look me up, and come visit me in my office. He was very upset. As calmly as I could I tried to give him a quick overview of quite frankly the history of Christian literature 23/

I think it was my best approach. I didn't want to get into a "free speech" debate. Instead I used it as an opportunity to try to introduce some diverse Christianities to a student who immediately self-identified as Christian 24/

he was strongly under the impression that Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ was the "most accurate" depiction of the what happened to Jesus. That film is a fascinating cultural object informed by medieval devotional practices but also utterly 21st century 25/

But that's for another day.

For today Happy Good Friday!

26/and that's it end of thread thank you

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