Deconstructing the Icon: Popular and Academic (Mis)Conceptions of the Cinematic Jesus ^†

Abstract

This paper investigates claims about the typical physical characteristics of Jesus when he is portrayed in film. A number of critics have referred to a recurring blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus. In reviewing the academic literature, a lack of clarity was found as to any patterns that do exist in this area. An ensuing analysis of the top-grossing films from the last forty years revealed that the recent pattern may be very different from what critics and academics describe.

1. Introduction

Typical popular reviews of movies tend to focus on elements critics feel will determine an audience member’s appreciation for the film. They might consider the development of characters, the strength of the plot, or the believability of the story as a whole.

In writing about Jeymes Samuel’s recent film The Book of Clarence, a number of reviewers veered into a different area of consideration. Alison Willmore (2024), writing for New York Magazine, suggested the film’s portrayal helps the audience consider the “whitening of Jesus” in the entertainment industry. In Rolling Stone, David Fear (2024) claimed that the Jesus of The Book of Clarence does not resemble the “thin, white duke” that we have grown used to seeing on the screen. Presumably, Fear may have been referring to the character musician David Bowie often portrayed on stage. Other writers focused on similar physical attributes. In Variety, Guy Lodge (2024) said that Clarence disrupts the “mainstream conception of Jesus as a white man with flowing chestnut locks.” Michael O’Sullivan (2024) of The Washington Post suggested that Samuel’s vision is likely more accurate than the “California-surfer Jesus” we are presumably accustomed to.

Those involved in the making of the motion picture added to this general theme. In an interview with NPR, Samuel, the director of the film, introduced the “white Jesus” idea and affirmed interviewer Alyesha Rascoe when the latter referred to “this idea of white Jesus” with “blue eyes” (Rascoe 2024). In USA Today, David Oyelowo, one of the main actors in Clarence, used a traditionally religious term for filmic portrayals of Christ, suggesting they are icons of sorts. In his own words:

“We are so used to that iconography of a white, sometimes blond, blue-eyed Jesus with this cross. Having it so far outside of what we have previously seen means you are suddenly able to engage with that in a different way.” (Truitt 2024).

Undoubtedly, then, there exists within popular culture, and in the minds of those who write about it, a view that a common cinematic image of Jesus is one of someone very “white,” and perhaps even someone with blond hair and blue eyes. Be that as it may, neither Hollywood creators nor those who write reviews of Hollywood productions bear any responsibility for performing formal research, for example, content analysis of media. These comments, then, raise a question: How do we know the extent to which Jesus has been portrayed in film as blond or blue-eyed, or anything else?

Given the above, the purpose of this study is rather simple. First, a review of the academic literature will be performed to determine what scholars—a group who truly are responsible for performing formal analysis of media content—claim to know about the appearance of Jesus in motion pictures. Based on that review, a systematic analysis of the cinematic portrayal of Christ follows, considering the extent to which popular and academic notions match the realities of recent media content.

2. Academic Perspectives

A review of the literature related to the physiological characteristics of Jesus when he is portrayed in film suggests that the topic is certainly of interest to a number of scholars. In addition, the review reveals that many of the researchers who have written on the topic do conclude that the image of Christ as “white,” having “blond” hair, and even “blue” eyes is somewhat common. As will be shown below, though, the academic literature on this topic is rather unclear regarding how researchers came to the determination of this image’s regularity. In addition, there are other difficulties we face when attempting to make substantive claims based on the academic literature discussed below. A number of scholars who studied provided little explanation of how they determined which films were considered in the process of opining about the features of Jesus in film. Additionally, scholars sometimes relied on very old information to make claims about current representations.

2.1. Absence of Knowledge

Before discussing the various ways in which scholars have attempted to describe the physical appearance of Jesus in films, we might briefly note one interesting aspect of many of the studies described below. Some scholars admitted that little is known about the physical features of the man the synoptic gospels see as Jesus the Christ. Jones and Tajima (2015) stated, “The fact remains that the Bible offers no specific details about Jesus’s physical characteristics…” (p. 206). Telford (2001), similarly, said, “The canonical Gospels do not tell us what Jesus looked like…” (p. 272). Reiterating the point, another author claimed “...the New Testament gives no details about his appearance” (Bowes 2022, p. 47). To top all of this off, Bakker (2009, p. 62) made another important point: not only do the New Testament writings fail to paint a visual picture of Jesus, but the early Christian church actually forbade making images of him. So, there is another reason no one can claim with certainty that any cinema image of Jesus is most like the man first-century Judeans beheld.

2.2. Why We Want Knowledge

One might presume that if we do not really know what Christ looked like, there is no reason to investigate any person’s portrayal of him. Even so, scholars did have a lot of motivations for addressing such an issue, and they clearly explained those motivations in their work. The explanations were quite varied. For this paper, these rationales for research are not interrogated in depth, but recognizing some of the reasons for concern may be worthwhile.

One of the most common motivations for scholars to write on this topic was to address issues of “accuracy” or “authenticity.” Along with this, though, some suggested that a lack of accuracy was worth studying due to its roots in and its resulting effects of racism. Among many others, Brunstad (2001); Eklund (2017); and Nguyen (2010) used some variation in the root word “accurate” in their studies. Oliver (2014), showing both our cultural concern for accuracy and a high respect for science, highlighted this importance. He mentioned work performed by a team led by Richard Neave from the University of Manchester that combined art and forensic anthropology to recreate what a man living in first-century Judea and Samaria might look like. A copy of the image is available in a story on the subject from the BBC (Taylor 2015) (https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35120965 (accessed on 30 October 2024). In an attempt to demonstrate a contrast between most film images of Jesus and this scientific approach to representation, Oliver wrote, “If anyone could create an accurate portrait of Jesus, it would be Neave” (p. 110). Notably, Oliver’s article was about the “skin color” of Jesus, and this shows how the “accuracy” rationale for study occasionally blends with others. Namely, a number of scholars desired to understand how portraying Jesus in certain ways supports racism, more specifically, white supremacy, a problem that many scholars are attempting to understand across a variety of media and content areas. Jones and Tajima (2015) took this approach, as did Blum and Harvey (2012). Bowes (2022, p. 47) echoed this notion, suggesting that the problem he saw in many depictions of Jesus was the idea of “the moral superiority of light skin.” Oliver (2014) and Jones and Tajima (2015) probably leaned into this most heavily. The latter authors offered a good summary of these concerns, writing: “As such a racialized structural organization, Hollywood uses films about Jesus to disseminate ideologies, such as white supremacy or the idea that safety and security are tied to a Caucasian Jesus.”

Quite differently, though, some scholars of religion have actually taken a communicative view of these films. That is, the productions were viewed as a means of spreading the good news, and (perhaps) the physical characteristics of the person portraying the savior might have an impact on whether diverse audiences were willing to accept that good news. Allen (2008), for example, took this approach. Interestingly, it need not be divorced from issues of accuracy and race. Eklund (2017, p. 1) put these two dimensions of importance together, suggesting that “historical accuracy” and “symbolic value” are both important, especially in regard to the importance of understanding “whiteness.” She also, though, considered the communicative argument of how particular depictions might or might not “resonate with various audiences” (p. 12).

Finally, some scholars have taken a more purely academic theological approach to the issue. Brunstad (2001) provided one case of this, suggesting that these films address a “Christological” question. That is, the motion pictures asked what the actual nature of Christ was. Brunstad’s paper suggested that two traditional camps in regard to that issue are the Antiochan and Alexandrian views. Whether Jesus was presented in certain physiological forms is related to this key question.

2.3. What We Know

So, what are these physiological forms? Scholars made claims about them, but there seems to be quite a bit of disagreement between those who have investigated the issue.

To start, we might note that there are academics who have engaged in extended surveys of how Jesus has been portrayed in film, but pay little attention to any recurring elements of physical appearance. Baugh (1997), for example, discusses the casting and imagery of Christ in films from the earliest silents to the late twentieth century, but devotes scant text to patterns in skin color, eye color, hair color, etc. Walsh (2003) makes little mention of the color of Jesus’s skin, hair, or eyes in the numerous films he examines. Even when discussing the possibility of a “non-American Jesus” (p. 182) he avoids those topics.

Then, there are scholars who have shared their perceptions of a general pattern, but in some wordings reveal the pattern to be one of absence, not the recurring presence of something like blond hair or blue eyes. That is, they suggested that, on average, actors who played the role did not look as a person likely would if born in Jesus’s place and time. Reinhartz (2007) indicated the common features of the celluloid Christ were not “how first-century Judean men really looked” (p. 48). Bowes (2022) suggested that films about Jesus failed to present him as an ancient “Mediterranean rabbi” (p. 42). What is interesting about Bowes’ remarks is that he, on two occasions, suggested this was a pattern, not an individual occurrence. In both, he spoke of the “majority” (pp. 42, 48) of films not hitting the mark.

Bowes and Reinhartz merely indicated that the Jesus of the silver screen was not Semitic enough. Other scholars specified that a particular physiological feature was inaccurate. Notably, quite a few referenced his eye color, but did so without making reference to (specifically) blond hair. Some of these claims provided little indication of the scholar’s sense of how common it was for Jesus to be portrayed with blue eyes. Wheeler (2014), for example, simply raised a question as a way of indicating something she observed. “Why then,” she asked, “do some filmmakers insist on a blue-eyed Jesus?” (p. 186). Miner (1995) also raised objections to this ocular coloration, saying of the savior in one particular film, “But at least this adult Jesus doesn’t have blue eyes (p. 66).” Presumably, given the phrasing, a number of other films Miner watched did include blue-eyed Jesuses, but the author gave no specific indication of how many.

Neither did a number of other scholars studied here, but they, in contrast to Wheeler and Miner, used words to indicate that blue eyes are among the most common features of Jesus in film. Some did that with a degree of reservation, such as when Jones and Tajima (2015) claimed audiences worldwide would believe Jesus had blue eyes as is “typically pictured on-screen” (p. 213). Elsewhere, they indicated that film images of Jesus without blue eyes were a “break from tradition” (p. 208). Several others seemed to indicate that blue eyes are among the most common features of Jesus. Kozlovic (2004) said blue eyes have become a “defacto Hollywood convention” (p. 20). Nguyen (2010) stated with assurance that Jesus is “typically” blue-eyed (p. 194). Reinhartz (2007) was even more assertive, boldly proposing that the cinematic Jesus “almost always” has “piercing blue eyes” (p. 48).

Notably, these scholars only referred to the eye color of Jesus in film, not his hair color. What, then, of the “iconic” blue-eyed Jesus who presumably has blond hair? Did scholars make mention of the presence of such a character in film? And, if they made reference to him, did they provide any indications as to how commonly he appeared in the medium? Here, unfortunately, there was not a lot of clarity.

One of the researchers encountered, specifically suggests that Jesus was sometimes portrayed in this fashion, but he provided little indication of its “iconic” status. Bakker, in discussing the fact that directors somehow avoided having a Jewish actor play Jesus, made a brief reference to “The blond blue-eyed Jesus” and suggested a singular film he discussed was “no exception” to this principle (Bakker 2009, p. 76). The reference seems to indicate we would all recognize the blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus, but nothing in Bakker’s wording provided a sense of frequency.

Some, on the other hand, described things in a way that intimated the blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus was revealed frequently. Brunstad (2001) qualified the claim temporally, saying that, “Until the 1960s” Jesus was portrayed as a “pale, blond, blue-eyed person” (p. 146). Kidd (2006) provided no time frame for his claim on this matter, stating:

“What art has bequeathed Hollywood is the icon of the blond, bearded, long-haired, blue-eyed, white-robed Aryan. This image became standard in motion pictures from Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings (1927)” (Kidd 2006, p. 45).

In other words, since the 1920s, presumably, Jesus was blond with blue eyes more often than he was not. Allen (2008) referred to this hair and eye color combination with a similar idea of commonality, saying it was a “classical trope,” and easily recognized by “the most casual viewer” (Allen 2008, p. 82). It should be noted that both authors wrote these words in the 21st century.

Beyond a simple lack of clarity, the literature on Jesus’s appearance in films includes problems with contradictory information. Sometimes those contradictions are subtle and occur between works. Within all of these overlapping observations, there appear to be occasional direct contradictions. For example, it was just mentioned that several scholars suggested the trope, or, “the standard” image of Jesus, included blond hair. Oddly, other scholars who presumably watched the same motion pictures completely disagreed. Reinhartz (2007, p. 48) stated with a confident tone that “The cinematic Jesus is almost always of medium height, with medium brown hair…” Other contradictions come within the body of a single research publication. Jones & Tajima, for example, stated “The Hollywood version of Jesus virtually always has long, brown hair, a beard, blue eyes, and—most important—white skin. This image has consistently been promoted in almost every film about Christ and is commented on by multiple authors.” To support this, they cited Brunstad (2001), among other earlier works. The problem, however, is that Brunstad, as was mentioned earlier in this study, claimed cinematic portrayals of Jesus until the 1960s were blond, not brown-haired.

To summarize, then, there seems to be a lot of confusion among scholars as to the variety of portrayals of Jesus in film, and how common any one portrayal might be. One of the strongest themes is that Jesus is most often portrayed by pale or white characters. Other than that, there is significant disagreement as to whether he is typically of blond hair or brown, and whether his eyes are blue, or some other color.

2.4. How Do We Know Today’s Cinematic Jesus?

More startling, perhaps, than the fact that few of the scholars above provided any indication of determining what was “a trope,” or “iconic,” is the fact that few provided any indication as to which films they viewed in order to make such claims. One might expect popular writers to use anecdotal evidence to make a point. When reading works by academics, especially if that work entails content analysis, one expects those academics to explain how they determined what to analyze and what the boundaries of the selected works were.

There were a few clear statements in the literature, however, that revealed the specific date range of films examined and how scholars selected films to consider within that range. Some academics provided an explanation, but the explanation was rather vague. As an example, Bakker (2009) selected sixteen films for his analysis of how Jesus has been portrayed. He did not clearly explain, though, how he selected that grouping. At one point, he claimed it included the “most important Jesus biopics” (p. 13). What made them important, he never said. Though his focus was not specifically on film, Oliver (2014, p. 99) made the claim that popular perceptions of Jesus’s physical characteristics come from modern art and films. In regard to the latter, he specifically listed three. Eklund (2017) used terms such as the “consistency of Jesus’ portrayal” and the “ubiquity of a white, Western Jesus in film” (p. 17), but never provided a clear indication of the full range of films that these words describe. Admittedly, she did state that she was focused only on films specifically about Jesus, not those in which he is a “supporting character” (p. 30).

In addition to the problem of not giving a detailed account of what films they were considering and how those films were chosen, some scholars made claims without providing any explanation of the basis for the claims or attributing the claims to earlier research. For example, when Brunstad (2001) claimed films until the 1960s portrayed Jesus as blond and blue-eyed, he provided no list of those films—much less a description of the portrayal of Jesus in each. Neither did he cite an earlier scholar who had performed such homework. Similarly, Kidd (2006) made claims with little support for them. The reader might recall that the respected historian stated that the earlier world of art had been the basis upon which the new medium of cinema created a blond and blue-eyed Jesus. Kidd, however, used the term “motion pictures” and the word “film” very few times in the entire text of his book. Nowhere was there any indication of how the author determined the blond, blue-eyed version of Christ is what he referred to as the cinematic “standard” (p. 45).

Finally, there is a question of the time frame for films studied. As indicated above, some scholars have dug deeply into the full range of cinematic portrayals and have discussed the image of Jesus over a long period of time. Baugh (1997), for example, even goes back as far as the 1890s to determine how Jesus was revealed on screen. Note, however, that he concluded his work in the late 1990s. Thus, even if his work is considered thorough, it is not up to date. Oliver’s (2014) claim that Western people have derived from modern film a “fixed mental perception of a white Jesus” (p. 99) is supported by mentioning three works. One of those is The Greatest Story Ever Told, released almost fifty years earlier. Even some of the most recent research appears to be very limited in this regard. For their 2015 study, Jones and Tajima, for example, analyzed what they call an “exemplary trio” of motion pictures. Two of the three “exemplary” films are now over 45 years old.

3. The Question and the Approach to the Question

Though the previous section clearly indicates that scholars have made a number of claims about the presence of blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus in cinema, it also showed that they did not provide a detailed analysis to give us a better understanding of where the presence occurs and how common it is in comparison to other visions of him. Admittedly, many scholars cited here study in areas such as literature, film, and religion, and they often take a humanistic approach to understanding the world. Even so, when academics make claims that an image is “the standard” (Kidd 2006, p. 45), a “defacto Hollywood tradition” (Kozlovic 2004, p. 20) or a “classical trope” (Allen 2008, p. 82), readers might like a rigorous and systematic study of the products about which these claims are made.

From the beginning of this paper, a key question has been whether the image of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus is iconic, standard, a tradition, or even common in American cinema. Lacking a clear answer in the literature, the rest of the paper will provide relevant information from a clearly bounded range of films.

One potential weakness noted in earlier research was that scholars may have selected films to view that were not representative of a larger body. To avoid this problem here, a third party was used to set the parameters of analysis. Box Office Mojo (sometimes abbreviated “BOM” below) is an online resource that is part of the larger Internet Movie Database. It provides weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual data regarding how much revenue films have made from domestic and international screenings. Though there are certainly other ways to create a list of films to be considered when attempting to discern how Jesus is portrayed therein, using this database prevents investigators from purposely selecting films that help make their point or purposely avoiding consideration of films that do not. Granted, the database has a cutoff below which films that generated very little revenue are not reported, but if an image has the potential to add to the “iconicity” of a culture, it is presumably circulated in products that are seen by large numbers of viewers.

In regard to medium, Box Office Mojo’s main focus is on ticket sales at theaters. So, generally, database entries are narrative fiction films. Documentaries shown in theaters occasionally appear on the database’s lists. Video programming not shown at traditional theaters does not. This is, of course, a limitation, but, again, it adds to research reliability. This limitation will be analyzed further in Section 5 of the paper.

Box Office Mojo was also used to set the time parameters of the films to be analyzed. The database goes back as far as 1977, but several of the earliest years include very incomplete representations of the revenue. By 1984, figures gathered allowed BOM to show a much more complete picture of annual revenue, with that year showing data for 169 films. Most years after that, the database has cut off its data presentation to the top 200 revenue earners.

The selection of the films to be analyzed was initially implemented by searching for titles within the database itself. Each year was searched for keywords presumed to relate to the portrayal of Jesus. Keywords “Jesus,” “Christ,” “Messiah,” “savior,” “son,” “God,” and “Bible” were used at this stage of the search. Recognizing that some films might not have such keywords in the title but still have images of the savior, internet-based lists of films that include Jesus were examined. As an example, Wikipedia, the online non-profit encyclopedia, has a list of “Actors who have played Jesus” to which volunteers can add any films they are aware of. Numerous other online lists also exist. Any item from these lists was checked to see if it was included in the “Yearly” Box Office Mojo data from 1984 to 2024. Only images of Christ that were characters in the script played by an actor were considered. If there was no listing of “Jesus” as a character in IMDB, the film would not be included below. Also, very obviously, this means the study of “image” here was limited to roles played by actors. Portraits, statues, and other representations of Christ appearing within scenes of films were not considered. The process outlined above did not ensure that every film with an image of Jesus was collected, but the search system was systematic, thorough, and as free of biases as possible.

There are three advantages to relying on BOM as a whole, and the forty year period examined. As noted earlier, there is no researcher bias involved here, given the fact that relying exclusively on BOM means that (beyond that choice) the researcher had no control over which movies were examined and which were not. In addition, presumably, limiting discussion to the top 200 earners each year focused attention on products that most people have actually seen. Though there might be scholarly value in analyzing little-known artistic productions about Jesus that were screened exclusively at a museum, for example, that value does not apply if we are trying to understand the way the general public obtains its vision of what Jesus looked like. Finally, in an interesting way, BOM allows us to come back to an observation that played a part in generating this research. It was actor David Oyelowo who raised the interesting question of how iconic the blond, blue-eyed Jesus might be. Oyelowo was born in 1976. Presuming that he did not watch (or remember) movies from his earliest childhood years, the forty year period of 1984–2024 provides a good snapshot of the films that most impacted his generation’s image of Christ.

Though in the section that follows, a count of the number of films from the BOM lists is provided, a precise quantitative assessment of hair or eye color is not. An interpretive approach is used, similar to the studies cited in the literature review. The question to be addressed is whether, looked at as a whole, the films in question provide any consistent image of Christ in a way that the image might be seen as representative of the group as a whole. With this in mind, the goal was to allow images to speak more than any verbal interpretation on the part of the researcher. The interpretation provided below is the background of the actor and the nature of the film. As the main issue in discussion is not who played the role, but how the role actually appeared, for each film’s depictions of Christ, a screenshot provides a good indication of the physiological features of the character as portrayed on screen in that particular motion picture. Other matters will be left for Section 5 at the end of the paper.

4. Two Generations of Jesus at the Movies

The process described above provided a collection of fourteen total entries. These ranged from August 1988 to January 2024, obviously with sizable time gaps between some portrayals. Below, for each of these films, we have provided the year of release, title of the work, and its ranking in box office revenue for the year, with one being the top box office earner. In addition, brief information about the actor is provided. Physical attributes of the actor himself are not given, as these are often altered in filming or post-production. For example, Jim Caviezel, who played the role of Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, has naturally blue eyes, but as Blum and Harvey (2012, p. 261) point out, the creators of the film “digitally altered” them to make them brown, so the character would appear “more Jewish and less feminine.” Some context for films is provided, such as how important the role of Jesus is within a film or its genre. A brief description of the physical attributes of the Messiah as he was portrayed visually is sometimes provided. Lastly, an Appendix A at the end of the paper provides a still shot from the production that provides a good view of the character’s skin, hair, and eye color.

• 1988
• Last Temptation of Christ (97)
• The first film to be encountered in the Box Office Mojo database after 1984 was The Last Temptation of Christ, released in theaters in August of 1998. The role of Jesus was played by Willem Dafoe, an American actor. As the film was a drama about the life of Christ, Dafoe’s portrayal is prominent in the film (Figure A1).

• 1992
• Bad Lieutenant (157)
• Bad Lieutenant was a contemporary drama released in 1994. It starred Harvey Keitel in the role of a police officer investigating the rape of a nun. In one short scene from the film, Keitel’s character is in a church and has a vision of Jesus, played by American actor Paul Hipp. Hipp’s Jesus is shown in wide angle, with no medium shots or close-ups other than a brief moment where Keitel’s character crawls toward him. When the character kisses the savior’s feet, those are shown in close-up, revealing the nail scars. When the cop raises his eyes to look at Jesus, the apparition has disappeared (Figure A2).

• 1999
• Superstar (70)
• Superstar was a comedy about Mary Katherine Gallagher, a recurring character from the skit television show Saturday Night Live. It began its box office run in the fall of 1999. Oddly, the scene here bore similarities to that in Bad Lieutenant, in that it was very short and dealt with a vision of Christ by a contemporary character. In this instance, it was comical, though. Mary Katherine, in the midst of praying, briefly saw Jesus appear to talk to her in person. Will Ferrell–an American actor and SNL alumnus–played the role of Jesus. It should be noted that in this humorous movie, Ferrell also played the role of Sky Corrigan, the most popular boy in Mary Katherine’s school (Figure A3).

• 2000
• Dracula 2000 (106)
• Dracula 2000, which arrived at theaters that year in the calendar, was a horror film about the eponymous character and contemporary vampires in New Orleans. A distinctive feature of this rendition of the horror staple is a backstory suggesting the lead character was not originally a Romanian prince from the 15th century. Rather, he was Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Christ. This is played out in a very short scene of the film where Judas kisses Jesus at the last supper. Canadian actor David J. Francis played Christ, but was only on screen for a few seconds (Figure A4).

• 2003
• The Gospel of John (199)
• Unlike the previous entry, The Gospel of John presented lengthy, recurring images of what the director thought Jesus to be like. It was shown in theaters in the fall of 2003. As the title suggests, this film attempted to encapsulate one of the four biblical accounts of Jesus’s life. The actor who played Christ, Henry Ian Cusick, was born in Peru to a Peruvian mother and Scottish father (Figure A5).

• 2004
• The Passion of the Christ (3)
• As with The Gospel of John, The Passion of the Christ retold the biblical account of Jesus, but focused primarily on his final days, from his betrayal to his crucifixion. American actor Jim Caviezel played the role of Jesus. The film had a lengthy theatrical release from February through May of 2004 (Figure A6).

• 2014
• Heaven is for Real (33)
• Heaven is for Real was a contemporary drama based on a New York Times bestseller, which told the story of a young boy’s near-death experience. In the film version released in 2014, the boy had a vision of himself sitting in a church being visited by Jesus. As in Bad Lieutenant, the scene was very brief (under one minute) and Jesus was never shown in a close-up. In fact, most of the scene was shot from behind the actor playing Jesus, or was backlit, so that the image was mostly a silhouette. IMDB listed Mike Mohrhardt for this role, but very little online information is available about the actor (Figure A7).

• 2014
• Son of God (53)
• Son of God was another cinematic version of the gospel. Its box office premiere was in 2014. In many ways similar to the Gospel of John, it covered the life of Christ from his teaching ministry to his crucifixion and resurrection. So, the portrayal provided by Portuguese actor Diogo Morgado took up much of the screen time. As with the 2003 gospel retelling and The Passion of the Christ, viewers saw a lot of images portraying the physical features of Jesus (Figure A8).

• 2016
• Risen (77)
• Risen was a drama that used elements of the biblical story woven into fictional accounts of other characters. It reached theaters in the winter of 2016. The protagonist was Clavius, a Roman soldier assigned to investigate the cause of Jesus’ empty tomb after the crucifixion. The part of Christ was played by Cliff Curtis, a New Zealander. Though Clavius was the character portrayed most explicitly throughout the movie, Jesus was visualized clearly in scenes of miracles, the crucifixion, and at a gathering of the disciples after the resurrection (Figure A9).

• 2016
• Young Messiah (162)
• The Young Messiah was another extra-biblical tale. The film was based on a novel by American fiction writer Anne Rice. As the title indicates, the movie’s attention was exclusively on Jesus as a child, specifically, seven years old. British actor Adam Greaves-Neal played the lead role. The film was released in 2016 (Figure A10).

• 2016
• Ben Hur (99)
• Ben-Hur was a 2016 adaptation of Lew Wallace’s 19th-century novel of the same name. The book had previously been filmed several times, most prominently by MGM over fifty years earlier. The tale was of a young man in Israel at the time of Christ who was wronged and sought revenge. Most of the plot was about the title character, but he had several encounters with Jesus during his life. The latter was played by Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro, who spent a significant amount of time on screen (Figure A11).

• 2017
• The Shack (49)
• Released in 2017, The Shack was a contemporary tale of a man who experienced a series of traumatic events in his life, including the kidnapping of his young daughter. He receives a mysterious letter asking him to return to the shack, the place where his daughter was presumably killed. Finding no answers there, he is invited to a nearby home where he meets three strangers, characters who represent God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus, the last played by Israeli actor Avraham Aviv Alush. Though the film clearly communicated that the Alush character is the same Jesus spoken of in the Bible, his attire and communicative style (portrayed throughout much of the film) were very contemporary (Figure A12).

• 2022
• The Chosen Season 3: Episodes 1 and 2 (59)
• These episodes of The Chosen are an unusual entry here. As the term “episode” implies, they were created as part of a series of television Biblical dramas. Given the size of its audience via streaming service and the success of faith-based films at the box office, some segments were released in theaters. Jonathan Roumie, who has Syrian/Lebanese heritage, played Jesus, prominent in the series. Several other episodes were released after this initial attempt and also earned places on the BOM list (Figure A13).

• 2024
• The Book of Clarence (120)
• This film by singer and filmmaker Jeymes Samuel was released in January 2024. It was about a first-century citizen of Jerusalem who pretended to be a Messiah for the purpose of overcoming financial problems. During his escapades in the city, this character, Clarence, meets Jesus of Nazareth. The latter was played by Nicholas Pinnock, a British actor of Jamaican descent (Figure A14).

5. Discussion

Before discussing the specifics of the portrayal of Christ, there are a number of contextual matters that might be addressed. Along those lines, one limitation that occurs from focusing on the most recent years of mainstream cinema is that there is little room here to discuss the broader historical context of what we think of as Western culture. That culture arose from parts of Europe where a relatively fair complexion was the norm and blond hair was common. Hundreds of years of art from this milieu reflected the physiological features of the local people. Certainly, the cultural bedrock just described has an impact on many of our mental images of Christ. Lacking space to delve into the issues related to those deep historical wells, this study can only consider a portion of what today’s citizens see, and what might lead them to visualize in regard to Jesus. Much has been written about the matters just introduced, and they certainly have a connection to all of the ideas introduced below. For scholars of history, the connection between today’s images of Jesus and important foundational notions from a century ago is certainly worthy of further study.

Even if we limit our inquiry to “today,” though, there are contextual matters that must be considered. Questions related to genre and distribution would seem to be of great importance here. Though the question of whether average cinema audience members develop a certain expectation of Jesus’s appearance on the basis of what they see on screen cannot be answered by a mere collection of the content from recent films, there is information provided above that should pique the curiosity of those interested in media and religion.

Certainly, one interesting fact from the list of films is that most years saw no cinematic representation of Christ. In the forty year period, on average, Jesus appeared on screen less than once every two years. Oddly, after the release of The Passion of the Christ, Jesus disappeared from major film releases for almost ten years. Given how infrequently he is seen in theaters, one might wonder if film has much influence at all on how the average person sees Christ. To provide a comparative dimension to this thinking, it might be noted that during the same period studied here, the number of portrayals of Jesus was actually fewer than that for Batman (Langman 2023).

Also worth noting is the variety of genres and plot situations in which Jesus was revealed. There were certainly a number of products here that were largely a retelling of the Biblical message about him. The Gospel of John, The Passion of the Christ, and Son of God each fit that description. In addition, there were films where some element of the Jesus story inspired a rather reverential extension of that story. Risen and Ben Hur are good examples. There were also, though, films where Jesus is merely a plot device, such as Bad Lieutenant and Dracula 2000. One of these, Superstar, certainly did this in a comedic manner. Whether such films, where the character of Christ is seen very briefly as a way of telling a larger contemporary story, have any sway on what audiences think he looks like is certainly debatable. It should be noted, though, that if these brief and sometimes irreverent depictions of Jesus were deleted from the list, one would speculate that young people are much more likely to have preconceptions of Batman’s appearance than they are Christ’s. In fact, a good question is whether young people exposed to newer media are less likely to be able to visually imagine Jesus than older people are.

Finally, in relation to these contextual issues, there is the question of how much money is invested in the production and distribution of these varied products. Interestingly, some of the scholars studied in this paper intimated that changes may be coming, even while suggesting the cinematic view of Jesus was somewhat homogeneous and even unhealthy. As far back as 2003, Walsh recognized that digital advances such as DVDs would possibly change how many images of Jesus we might be exposed to. Blum and Harvey (2012) admitted that in the digital age, Jesus might become “...a deity remade and displayed numberless times” (p. 237). The numbers in the present study indicate young people today might not be exposed to that many images of Jesus in theaters, but what about streaming and shorter content made to be shared directly on web channels?

Setting those questions aside, we can return to the main point of inquiry. If audiences were to watch all of the filmic visions of Jesus from the last 40 years, would those audiences develop a unified vision of the physical characteristics of the varied portrayals? Is there a “standard” that one can sense upon looking at images from all the motion pictures listed above? Perhaps. But, there is certainly a significant variety of representation, so the standard, if it exists, could entail only a limited number of specific features.

One representation we have interrogated here is that of the “blond-haired blue-eyed Jesus.” In relation to hair and eyes, one of the starkest and easiest observations to be made in relation to the film collection above is that the first and the final productions in the sequence probably presented the most contrasting views in this area. Willem Dafoe’s Jesus, from The Last Temptation of Christ, was certainly among the “blondest” characters in this body of work. His eyes were somewhat blue (with touches of gray). At the opposite end of the timeline, and the opposite end of the visual spectrum, perhaps, was Nicholas Pinnock, who in The Book of Clarence showed us a Jesus with black hair and dark brown eyes.

With the exception of Superstar, a film with only a brief, comedic visual image of Jesus, the films in between Last Temptation and Clarence showed significant variation from those two extremes. Hair color tended not to be blond, but neither was it black. Eye color was rather consistently brown, with various shadings. Thus, to the question of whether in contemporary film there is a preponderance of blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus characters, the answer is certainly that there is not. Such characters exist, but one would be hard pressed to refer to them as a standard, a trope, or iconic.

Beyond hair and eyes, there is the question of skin color. Notably, here, some of the terminology used in the academic literature blunts the possibility of perceptual nuance. Much of the research (see Blum and Harvey 2012; Eklund 2017; Jones and Tajima 2015; Oliver 2014) frequently used the terms “black” or “white” in reference to actors and characters. The result, then, is a nominal variable. More so, the result is a nominal variable that is dichotomous. Presumably, for these scholars, each representation of Jesus was easily placed into one of two categories. For the fourteen productions studied here, a humanistic scholar who was forced to place the Jesus characters of the films into one of two categories would most likely situate all but one of them in the “white” category. Nicholas Pinnock’s portrayal would probably be the sole exception.

Admittedly, if scholars do see race as a binary, the exception might be said to prove the rule. That is, one could argue that even in the contemporary setting of the last forty years, the “standard” is that of a “white” Jesus. This may be seen as a settled claim, downplaying the importance of some of the ideas shared later in this paper. At the same time, it can be seen as the basis for further study. One area of questioning could be in regard to breaking the standard. How many portrayals, such as Pinnock’s, need to occur before the standard is no longer the standard? We might consider it as follows. With so few portrayals of Christ in contemporary cinema, if Cynthia Erivo’s portrayal of him in a recent stage production of Jesus Christ Superstar were soon to be replicated on the silver screen, would that represent a significant dent in the standard? As we can see, the future of this area of research poses significant methodological problems. They are certainly problems worth wrestling with, however.

Even without looking to the future, though, we can see challenges with considering “black” and “white” as the primary variables to be considered. One challenge is that the binary creates difficulties in regard to another negative observation regarding the portrayal of Jesus. There exists some dissonance between the desire to cast Jesus as something other than “white,” but also to cast him as Jewish. One complaint about the look of Jesus in earlier films was that the consistent casting of whites implied racism and white supremacy. In addition, though, according to some of the scholars (Blum and Harvey 2012; Eklund 2017; Jones and Tajima 2015), another weakness was a failure to portray Christ as “Semitic.” In examining the whole range of films from recent years, we discovered that two of the actors who portrayed Jesus would possibly fit the “Semitic” label. Israeli actor Avraham Aviv Alush, from The Shack, certainly would appear to. More recently, Jonathan Roumie, who has Syrian heritage, might appease those seeking a more “Semitic” looking Jesus. But, as noted above, a dichotomous view of racial characteristics would probably lead us to categorize these two characterizations as “white.” Obviously, this suggests that producers, directors, and casting directors are in a difficult position. If the options available are merely seen as black or white, those wishing to hire a “black” actor would also have to give up the goal of casting a Semitic person in the role.

Moreover, the desire to create a more Semitic Jesus contradicts another contemporary complaint in reference to dominant media messaging. While some critics are demanding that producers and directors portray Jesus as more Jewish, there are also voices critiquing the media for engaging in visual stereotyping. The latter discussion is resonant in the academy (Goldblatt 2003; Jacobson 2020; Jütte 2020). It is also present in journalism and opinion writing. The latter bubbled up most recently when Bradley Cooper donned a prosthetic nose to play the role of composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein (Murray 2023; Rakhamilova 2023). Given all of this, there might be some awkwardness in asking whether actor Jonathan Roumie looks “Semitic” enough to satisfy those critics who express concerns about northern Europeans playing the role of Jesus. There is also awkwardness in recognizing that Jim Caviezel’s nose was altered in The Passion of the Christ (Blum and Harvey 2012, p. 261).

In some ways, then, making evident the varied portrayals of Jesus in the last forty years can assist both academics and popular writers in seeing that some of their preconceptions need more nuance or further consideration. One final observation on racial characteristics, accuracy, and the Semitic nature of Jesus is worth noting here. Much of the discussion above seems to indicate that a person’s racial background is a key feature in their appearance and their ability to accurately represent their people group. It was noted earlier, for example, that Oliver (2014) suggested a cinematic portrayal of Jesus should closely resemble the appearance of a first-century man from the Levant. Going further, he said Richard Neave’s attempt at recreating that image might provide helpful guidance in this area. In scanning all of the images in Appendix A, the portrayal that comes closest to Neave’s rendering—with the exception of Pinnock—is probably Cliff Curtis in Risen. Curtis’s racial background is Maori, the indigenous group who have long inhabited the islands of what we now call New Zealand. Ironically, New Zealand is more geographically distant from Israel than almost every other location on the globe. If, as some suggest, actors should hail from the same geographical region where the character they are portraying lived, this certainly raises issues. An actor with Maori ancestry may look more like what we expect a 1st century Jew to look. Does it matter that his forebears had less geographic connection to Fertile Crescent than an actor raised in Barcelona or Marseille might?

The discussion above largely relates to questions of accuracy/representation along with overlapping matters of racism. One limitation in this study is that it provides no basis for addressing the extent to which different renditions of Jesus increase varying audiences’ positive reception of any form of message the films present. That issue was a rationale for some scholars to have studied cinematic portrayals. Of course, questions of accuracy may overlap with questions of reception for many viewers. We might assume, for example, a film with images of Christ that do not align with what audiences think a 1st century Jew may have looked like would be unpersuasive in other ways. Assumptions, of course, need to be studied carefully.

On the other hand, when balancing accusations of white supremacy, some of the scholars studied here (Nguyen 2010; Bowes 2022) admitted it was quite natural that a somewhat racially homogeneous culture in Western Europe created images of Jesus that looked like themselves. If that is the case, it might be worth future investigation to see if the varied representations of Jesus in early 21st-century film have a potentially positive effect of helping diverse audiences relate to him. Given human migration patterns and increasingly heterogeneous communities, might we not expect more varied images of Jesus, and might those varied images allow distinct audiences to have greater appreciation for the one most like them?

A positive answer to this question would make sense in regard to another feature of the time frame studied here. Unlike the periods that produced many of the earlier films that scholars have investigated, such as King of Kings, the media landscape now is much more diverse and fragmented. This study focused on box office revenues. Given the increasing power of streaming services to reach audiences, future research into how Jesus is portrayed will need to look more closely at series television and also short videos on channels such as YouTube and TikTok. In fact, one of the “films” noted here was The Chosen, which was produced via crowdfunding and originally distributed on a lesser-known streaming service. In spite of their humble origins, these episodes earned enough box office revenue to appear on Mojo’s annual lists for their respective years. (It is certainly a methodological anomaly in regard to this study, and was only listed once.) The broader point here is that we really have no idea if most of us today obtain our visual imagery of Jesus from The Chosen and full-length features that specifically re-tell the Gospel story, or from brief visual references to Christ in films such as Superstar, or from possibly even briefer visual portrayals of Christ that happen to go viral via social media. We have significant research—such as presented by Brunstad (2001) or Eklund (2017)—about the first of those categories, but little on the second and third.

Even if we limit our discussion to traditional theatrical-release cinema, though, one of the most important findings here is that both academic researchers and popular writers need to be observant of changes. If the reports of scholars reviewed in this study are sound, there was a period in American cinema when most every rendition of Jesus showed him with a pale complexion and fair hair. Often, these scholars say, he had blue eyes. Today, the cinematic offerings that draw the largest audiences appear to present a savior with a very different appearance. He might be pale, but might be olive-skinned, or even very darkly complected. He will most likely have some shade of what we would call brown hair. He is almost certain to have brown eyes. A variety of people from many places in the world can probably encounter one of these filmic Christs and feel he looks somewhat like them.

If the description in the previous paragraph is accurate, most would probably describe the change noted immediately above as positive. Whether such positive change will continue into the future is not a question that can be answered here, but it leads to another key area of questioning for scholars and journalists who write about culture.

If these changes continue, at what point will observers acknowledge them? Both popular writers and academics appear to rely on the “blond blue-eyed Jesus” trope quite frequently. They write as if the mediated world, especially film, is permeated with such imagery. Even so, there seems to be evidence this is changing. Though we might not see Jesus in cinema frequently today, when we do, his varied portrayals, taken as a whole, tend to reflect the physical attributes of many of the world’s peoples. Much of the world’s population can now find a “Hollywood Jesus,” somewhere, who bears at least some of their physical attributes. At what point will popular articles and scholarly studies acknowledge that? This question can also move from the realm of description to the realm of value judgments. If the findings here are reflective of real changes, will those writers who have approached the subject of cinematic Jesus with a very judgmental and somber moral tone begin to celebrate the changes that appear to be taking place?