There are many really funny moments about being Catholic. Like, there are times when you are about to spit and suddenly remember you’ve just had communion. (You don’t spit the body of Christ, do you? You swallow back your spit.) Or when you see statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary clutching a rosary, and ask whether Mama Mary prays the Hail Mary too.
Nevertheless, as a Roman Catholic, I am sensitive and pious enough to get slighted when non-Catholics make fun of my faith (as when Borat made fun of Christ’s crucifixion). Only Catholics, I thought, have the right to make fun of Catholic things.
So, despite Arbet's promise of a good time, I was ready to bash this musical upon learning from Gibbs Cadiz’s review that it is a spoof of the Catholic religion, aside from a spoof of boy bands and Christianized pop culture. But my fears of sacrilege being made yet again in the holy name of art (hello, Dogma etc.) were a bit baseless, it turned out. I never imagined anyone can actually poke fun on such sensitive and heavy stuff as sin, evangelization, exorcism, and the reality of life's intense trials that bring about existential questions and spiritual desolation. I was completely mistaken, it turned out: A few scenes were indeed daring enough in their irreverence, profanity, and yes, raunchiness, but if the main objective is purely to spoof – which in essence is good-natured joshing - then The Altar Boyz pulls it off.
The minute the boys enter center stage, one never stops giggling guiltily that one’s shoulder blades get a thorough workout. The very idea of forming a Christian boy band is indeed hilarious enough, for who could conceive of such a thing in the first place when Catholicism has always been critical of the worldly Western pop culture? White-robed sacristans doing a yucky impression of ‘N Sync or, eew, Backstreet Boys? I don't know about you, but that’s really funny to me, especially if it’s one led by a boy in tight-fitting black shirt and an outsize silver cross on his breast (the better to drive away the devil and drive home the message, my dear); plus a lost kid, most likely an illegal, from Tijuana, Mexico, looking for his parents; a boy from da hiphop ‘hood spouting urbandictionary.com-worthy Negroid neologisms like “fo' shizzle” and “hishouze”; a screamingly gay boy with bleached hair; and, get this, their Jewish high school classmate who happens to have native songwriting talent.
An effectively nasty cast is thus made, with none except that lead guy named Matthew (is that your nephew Jego?) having a modicum of star quality, which is, of course, part of the joke (as my friend Malou pointed out). As the sacristy and altar apostles gyrate and do all that bad boy-band routine, one can’t help but be seized by fear of lighting striking and fits of fun laughter. If Greenbelt’s Onstage theater remains intact as of this writing, it’s maybe because the musical play’s irreverence is measured and never mean-spirited or malicious enough. The play, overall, comes off as merely a playful jibe at Catholics and Catholicism, not a material that openly risks the angry censure of the Catholic League of America or perhaps the ever-vigilant local version of the Defensores Fidei. If the intent is to satirize – which is, in essence, an expression of anger (valid or invalid) couched in humor – then The Altar Boyz is only a weak satire. Thankfully, though, it helps that Catholicism is not an insecure religion, it can afford to be heaped upon with insults from all directions, including those from atheists and its own adherents, whether the satire is lame or not.
Make no mistake, though: A typically pious churchgoer might not like the naughty wordplays and temerarious double entendres at all. I certainly wouldn’t recommend the whole family to go watch this play, for wholesome it ain’t. If you don’t want to risk your kid hearing a certain unmentionable word and an embarrassing innuendo in your presence, by all means, skip this one. But for those who have the tolerance and generosity for a dangerous brand of humor, hah, you know what to expect: The spirit of spoofy fun triumphs here, and such type of comedy, methinks, is not among the devil’s claims to fame. Besides, there is wisdom, I believe, in subjecting one’s faith to the humor test, if only to see its alleged flaws and inconsistencies according to the uninitiated or the apostates. Perhaps God Himself wouldn’t mind being treated to man’s twisted sense of humor from time to time. What is clear is that The Altar Boyz’s version of God is that of the Laughing Christ (have you seen that image yet?).
I strongly suspect the authors are themselves Catholic, though -- else why the intimate familiarity with Catholicism's inner dynamics?
What is even clearer is that the scriptwriters (playwrights?) have such a low regard for boy bands. You have to watch the show to see what I mean. The way the choreography (by someone from the Gary V's dance group) bashes the American-led pop concept, you’d be grateful it is now extinct (or is it really?). Boy-bandism was, of course, all the rage sometime back in the uninspired, prefab, and fake-boob parts of the 1990s and early 00s, although personally I see nothing wrong with boy bands, provided you’re a young boy who loves mindlessly enjoyable pop music and epileptic dance steps or a girl swooning over boyish charm. But, sure, I’ll agree readily that something is inherently wrong with boy-bandism, but only in so far as the music being inauthentic is concerned and the dance steps just a cheap staging of some uncredited dance instructor’s moves.
If I may dissuade one particular religious group from watching, I’d dissuade the Pentecostals because they were single-handedly bashed for homophobia or something (in boy band member-apostle Mark's catty aside). I thought that short gesture to be unfair not only because I love and am kinda grateful to the Pentecostals, having borrowed some concepts and practices from them, especially the concept of a “personal God” (which is not to say such a thing is absent in Catholicism; it’s just that it’s totally alien in my own milieu at the time), but also because – let’s face it – all religions are homophobic.
If I may take up a more serious issue with The Altar Boyz, it’s its failure to spoof Christianity as a whole. Why focus on the Catholics alone, given the playwrights’ confidence on Christianity’s prodigious ability to take insults? I was at least half-expecting a joke or two on the consequences of the Protestants’ rejection of traditional ecclesiastical art, for example, which alone is ripe for so many comedic possibilities. (See an old post of mine about the same affliction hitting some modern Catholic institutions: "Painstakingly ugly." I've briefly reported the same on Protestants, but I'd rather not lead you to that for the sake of world peace.) I was also expecting a jibe at the constricting environment of many Protestant and fundamentalist churches in terms of encouraging artistic creativity. And why not spoof Protestantism, which is America’s main version of Christianity? Catholicism is hardly ever a representative of the American scene. Then there’s the unrelenting edict, as it were, to “Hate one another,” the scandalous, constant, and exponential division in Christendom to consider. I know this fourth other suggestion would already border on the bilious, but the folly of the Christian churches' being obscurantist about pedophile priests and pastors is something that I thought is really worthy of ridicule. After all, the authors went so far as to render the most sacred things in a funny light, they might as well go all the way in the service of equal-opportunity swipes.
Barring that, though, The Altar Boyz gave me a good, if guilty, laugh and a chance to think and react.
Posts
