The type of art that one would die for

I had a conversation with a friend about a month or two ago. We were talking about the movie the Dark Knight at the time. We were talking about Heath Ledger's acting of the role "the Joker". My friend (who is into acting more than myself) said a really thought provoking comment. He said something along the lines of "[Heath Ledger] dying to play the acting role of the joker, now that's good/worthy art". The essence of what he said stuck with me. While I don't think that actors should die for their acting roles, the lingering comment in my head started to make some parallels in my spiritual life.

Christ calls us to "deny ourselves" and "lose our lives" to follow him (Luke 9:23-24). Now Jesus is clearly not telling his followers to commit suicide, or annihilate themselves. He is telling his followers (aka his "imitators") to die to their own selfish will and life for God's will, or in Dallas Willard's words, to "no longer live to get one's own way, but live for God's way".

Think about actors engaging in the art of acting. These professional actors who specialize in imitating characters of different roles are engaging in something that is more than mere behaviour modification. They really have to "become" the character from the inside in a way. The don't just enter the world of the character. You can say that the world of the character also enters them.

http://submittedforyourperusal.com/2008/03/01/did-the-joker-kill-heath-ledger

Notice the excerpts from the Rolling Stones obituary of Heath Ledger commenting on him "entering the role" of the Joker:

1. “He couldn’t seem to disengage; the inexactness bothered him.”
2. “Ledger had no formal training, and there’s this to be said for acting school: it teaches you to approach a role as foreign, as a language you’ll temporarily speak. Ledger didn’t appear to have that. He needed to dig for (and inhabit) the part of himself that was the character. ‘Performance comes from absolutely believing what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘You convince yourself, and believe in the story with all your heart.’ It didn’t always shut off when a production did, and I think it ground him.”
3. “As The Joker in next summer’s The Dark Knight, he will appear as a man severed from all connection. A ‘psychopathic, mass-murdering clown with zero empathy,’ is how he described it to the New York Times. On set, Michael Caine said the performance sometimes turned so frightening he forgot his own lines.”

I also heard that Heath Ledger locked himself up in a room for month(s) to really enter into the character to play his role as crisp, natural, and authentic as possible. One can say that he not only became the Joker. The Joker became him.

I am reminded by an excerpt from a book called "I told me so" by Gregg Elshof (a book primarily about self-deception). He is very insightful when he talks about us "imitating" Jesus:



Jesus was down on hypocrisy - he didn't seem to have much room for it at all. As followers of Jesus, we're called to live lives of authenticity and candor. At the same time, though, we're called to a lifestyle of imitation. We are imitators of Jesus.

Think about imitation.

When I imitate something or someone, I adopt patterns of being that are external to me, foreign, and unnatural. The presumption of the New Testament is that I do not presently have the character of Christ. Instead, I am twisted and broken. My present opportunity is to play at having the heart of Christ - to imitate him - in an attempt to cooperate with the Holy Spirit as Christ is realized in me. With the help of God's Spirit, I put off the old self, that which is authentically me at present, and put on the new self, that which is authentically Christ. Over time, that which was at first artificial, foreign, and unnatural takes root, and I am transformed. I begin by blessing those who curse me, even though everything in me is pushing a curse through my lips. I'm playing. I'm imitating the one for whom the blessing comes naturally. Over time, with the help of the Holy Spirit, that which was once forced and unnatural becomes the reflex response I begin by deciding to give when my heart is selfish. I'm playing. I'm imitating the one for whom generosity is instinctive. Over time, with the help of the Holy Spirit, that which was once opposed to my nature becomes natural for me - as it was and is for Jesus. We play at being Christ's followers in order to become his followers.

But this whole process of transformation through imitation is unavailable to the hyper-authentic. They will bless only when they feel a genuine desire for the well-being of the other. They will give only when they feel generous. Hyper-authenticity rules out the possibility of imitating anyone other than yourself - and so it rules out the possibility of cooperating with the Holy Spirit in your own spiritual re-formation by imitating the Master.

When I was in college, I picked up the guitar. I played for years without formal instruction before I finally decided to get some lessons. By that time I had settled into some pretty bad habits. At my first lesson, my teacher positioned my thumb differently on the back of the neck of the guitar. Suddenly, I was completely incapable of playing even the simple things I had played before. I felt awkward and unnatural. But the teacher assured me that if I stuck with it, I'd get used to it and, in time, this new position would free me to reach chords I could never have reached using my old method.

Insofar as I am not yet perfectly like Christ, the imitation of Christ will, at times, feel false, unnatural, and insincere. But if we trust the Master, we'll obey even when obedience isn't what comes naturally - even when obedience runs contrary to what we're feeling at the moment. This isn't hypocrisy; we don't act contrary to our impulses in an attempt to fake anybody out. We act contrary to our impulses because we wish to be re-trained. We wish to be something other than what we are today. We wish to be putting off the old self and putting on the new.

Imitation, then, can be perfectly authentic. It can be the outworking of an authentic intention to take on the heart and character of Christ. But imitation precludes hyper-authenticity. So if you want to be a student of Jesus, beware of hyper-authenticity.



I think us Jesus followers can learn a lot in a modified channeling of Heath Ledger's death due to his engagement (at least partially) with his assigned acting role as the Joker.

If secular actors can physically die due to turning into the characters that they wish to imitate through art, us Christians can and should spiritually die to ourselves in our pursuit the "art" of imitating Jesus and becoming like him.

I should imitate Jesus in the attitude of a professional actor so much to the extent that not only I enter the role of Jesus, but Jesus enters the role of me, and in some mysterious way, becomes me as I aspire to become like him.

Dostoevsky said something along the lines of "First art would imitate life. Then life would imitate art. Then life would find its very meaning for existence from the arts."

Oh Jesus, allow me to devote my entire life to "acting" and entering the role of a 21st Century North American incarnation of you as I try to imitate how you would literally walk, speak, sleep, eat, interact with others, serve others, and relate to the Father through the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. So much to the extent that my old self is dead, remains dead, and the world sees you alive through my dead self.