In “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “The Passion Of The Christ” King Herod is portrayed as an effeminate foppish oaf. I’m curious, I’ve never read any account of Herod’s confrontation with Jesus that led me to believe him to be the buffoon that he is portrayed as in dramatic pop culture. Any ideas why Andrew Lloyd Weber and Mel Gibson had that interpretation of him?
Well, it’s a very old cliche.
“In truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the prince’s indefinite decorum.”
– “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe
But, I’m pretty sure that trope comes from Herod the Great. Jesus’ encounter was with his son Herod Antipas. Who might have gotten culturally tarred by the association, the sins of the father being visited on the son.
Webber and Rice were following in a long tradition of medieval Passion Plays.
When the citizens of a medieval town put on a Passion Play at Easter time, Herod was always a sought after role for any would-be actor with a hammy streak. Every drama needs some comic relief, and Herod was always the comic relief in the Passion story.
The Gospels don’t actually say much about Herod, except that Pilate sent Jesus to Herod, who was excited to see Jesus, because he was hoping to see some magic tricks. Jesus didn’t do any magic, so Herod got bored and sent Jesus back to Pilate.
Based on that short account, Herod’s part was fleshed out and he was made out to be a prancing dandyish clown begging to see Jesus work some miracles.
Webber and Rice picked up that old meme and ran with it.
And Poe was riffing on Shakespeare:
“O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it.”
-Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2. So even in the early 1600s, theategoers were familiar with actors playing Herod as a scenery-chewing tyrant. That’s different from a foppish oaf, but they’re both over-the-top characterizations.
You really need to ask?
Because it’s entertaining.
Believe it or not, the musical isn’t a history text.
The real irony is that what little we do know of the real Antipas’s personality suggests that he was a dissipated and recklessly randy horndog. He married a [what would now be] Jordanian princess/cousin for political reasons but fell for Herodias, who was the daughter of one of his half-brother’s and wife of another (uncle-niece marriage being very common among the Herodians), making her not only no political advantage but, for several reasons, a liability (offending his Jordanian father-in-law and causing a scandal in both the Jewish and the Roman worlds of which he was a part by taking his brother’s wife [and marrying his niece would have offended his Roman pals since this was a generation before Claudius wed Agrippina]). *
Once he takes Herodias to be his [half] niece and [half] sister-in-law to be his more-or-less-lawful-wife (by virtue of the fact the law is what he says it is on domestic matters) he will fight moral outrage (including those of John the Baptist) and constant border raids from his disgraced first wife’s family for the rest of his reign. BUT, per the Bible, he also falls in lust with Herodias 2.0, her teenaged daugher Salome, who is his stepdaughter, half-niece, and half-grandniece, and (per the Bible) is so smitten he offers her half of (his third of his father’s former) kingdom.
So if Josephus and the story in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark are at all accurate, he was less foppish than debauched with a cruel and reckless streak, and far from being effeminate and “gayish” he was a raging hetero horndog who found kinship a real turn on and couldn’t keep it in his toga. Per historical record he was removed by Rome for making Galilee too expensive to defend, in part due to the enmity of Petra (his ex-wife’s land) and the zealots who hated him for, among many other things, taking his brother’s wife (though the fact she was also his niece was ‘no big thang’ as it wasn’t that terribly uncommon in large rich families).
When removed he was sent into exile in Gaul and disappeared from history. In one of the few intriguing things recorded about their relationship in the historical record, Herodias- whose full brother Agrippa (friend of Claudius) was to be his replacement, was given the option of remaining in Israel/Rome with generous revenues, but she chose to accompany Antipas into exile, implying that perhaps she had some feelings for him. Her daughter Salome went on to marry Antipas and her father’s half-brother Philip (her uncle and granduncle), who left her a very wealthy widow at which point she married a Roman official and had a family. (Pissed me off they never mentioned any of this on True Blood, because it’s a hell of a lot more interesting than the plot they did come up with for her ;).)
But, my understanding is that Herod has been a foppish effeminate oaf since the Middle Ages when that was a stock character and few people read the Gospels, let alone Josephus. This isn’t my era of expertise, but perhaps somebody who studies medieval literature can give a shout out.
And I much prefer Rik Mayall’s take on Herod; you can believe this guy as a man who’d say F.U. to the Jewish laws and to his half-brother and father-in-law to steal his niece and then lust after his jailbait niece-grandniece.
*On the other hand it’s easy to understand from Herodias’s point of view; her first uncle-husband was a minor younger son of Herod the Great who got a house in Rome and the revenues from a few villages so he was comfortable but had no power; Antipas was incomparably richer and ruled roughly a third of Herod the Great’s kingdom, so a move from Maury Povich money/influence to Anderson Cooper money/influence. (Of the remaining two thirds of Herod’s kingdom, one third was ruled by Antipas’s half-brother Philip and the other third was ruled by Rome through procurators [most famously Pilate] after it was taken away from Antipas’s full brother Archelaus.)
I just watched the 2012 Arena Tour of Jesus Christ, Superstar on DVD. Herod was portrayed by Chris Moyles (radio/tv presenter), and it was a chilling presentation of a dangerous tyrant - really, really good.
Unfortunately, much of the rest of the show didn’t match that scene. Melanie C was a good Mary Magdalene, but (sadly) Tim Minchin did not convince me as Judas. A good effort, but I have seen better shows of Superstar.
And neither is the Bible.
Did you really not understand the OP’s question? He’s asking why Gibson and Webber both struck on the same caricature of Herod. Not why their depictions don’t match history.
The answer is apparently that they were both riffing off a tradition established in medieval passion plays.
Has anybody else got “King Herod the foppish oaf” being sung to the tune of “Eric the Half a Bee” stuck in their heads now?
If you do now, then good; my time here ain’t been in vain for nothing.
Thank you for clarifying that for Reality Chuck and saving me the effort.
Warning: Not what you think it is.