Owen Land, FKA George Landow made films that are concerned with theological pursuits; what constitutes image and matter, the eternal present, metalepsis – or the extimate form of the holy trinity, often scabrously tested with his mode of Yiddish humour, to connect to an absurdist notion of spirituality. He was born into a conservative Jewish family, converted to Catholicism in his 20’s, orbited the right-on, far-out Christian sects of California in the early 1970s, forming his own religious position between Catholicism and Tantra. In 1973 he was invited by the Christian World Liberation Front, the CWLF, (Monty Python Life of Brian may have heard) on the Berkley campus, to document their spring tour, where the CWLF ‘radical Jesus Freaks’ would meet conservative Christians for discussion.
In 1967, Berkley was the focus of the popular hippie movement and all kinds of counterculture in USA. The street intersection of Haight and Ashbury was its epicentre. Here is Joan Baez, unplugged, on the street corner surrounded by turned-on, (slightly) tuned-in, (maybe not) drop-outs, curious and serious looking:
Meanwhile, young runaways from around the country flocked to the scene, protested, made love, took drugs and lived on the streets. In 1967 the Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC) aspired to the idea that the Berkley hotbed of campus radicalism, the left-wing coalitions of free speech movement and the Vietnam Day Committee (A coalition of left-wing groups that opposed the Vietnam war) could be reached and converted. The CCC were rejected so the infiltration and conversion plan failed. By 1969 many of these hippies were addled with years of LSD, hash, angel dust, speed, quaaludes and heroin, they were homeless, plagued with pre-AIDS Sexually Transmitted Diseases and desperate – ripe for Christian conversion. Jack Sparks, a member of the CCC moved with his family to Berkley to set up the Christian World Liberation Front.
The name Christian World Liberation Front (CWLF) was recuperated from the Third World Liberation Front, the Berkley coalition of Black students union, Latin American, Filipino, Asian American and Mexican-American political student groups who canvassed for campus reform.
The Five Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) Demands, 1969:
- That a school of Ethnic Studies for the ethnic groups involved in the Third World be set up with the students in each particular ethnic organization having the authority and control of the hiring and retention of any faculty member, director and administrator, as well as the curriculum in a specific area study.
- That fifty (50) faculty positions be appropriated to the School of Ethnic Studies, 20 of which would be for the Black Studies Program.
- That in the Spring Semester, the college fulfil its commitment to the non-white students in admitting those that apply.
- That to the Fall of 1969, all applications of non-white students accepted.
- That George Murray, and any other faculty person chosen by non-white people as their teacher, be retained in their position.
The Christian World Liberation Front’s experiment in radical Christianity adopted the modes of political radicalism and typically, recuperated Black and ethnic minority action to present their mission as counter-culturally attractive. The CWLF were considered to be leftwing christians. They described themselves as rising above left and right politics, but this first fundamental move of naming through cultural appropriation, shows them to hold a reactionary stance.
Jack Sparks and The Christian World Liberation Front published their newspaper, Right On! to distribute through the “Cosmic circuit”, a magazine exchange group described by its organiser, Muz Murray, as being for ‘the exchange of underground, upground and overground magazines’. Right On! fronted Jesus as a radical amongst hippies.
Wanted Jesus Christ poster in Right On! No. 2, 1969
Kenneth Anger, to whom George Landow was artistically indebted (amongst others), set a similar, but inverted approach in his 1963 anti-Christian movie Scorpio Rising. Here is a scene where Jesus gives sight to a blind man, who then fellates Jesus, whilst we listen to the groovy pop track ‘He’s a Rebel’ by The Crystals. Recuperation and assault on popular culture, celebrity and religion through desire.
To get a feel for the Jesus freak scene, here is a film of the Jesus People, who ran a shelter for homeless drug addicts in Berkley. The film shows a conservative Christian reporter attempting to denigrate the Jesus People libertarian stance, that they might allow drug addicts into their congregation and accept that they continue a habit. It’s interesting to see how the polemical accusations were between clearly categorised ‘straight’ and ‘radical’ positions, between self-organised group and the institutional presenter.
The Jesus People had another film made about them, this time showing a public debate where non-christians could voice their opinions. Here is a clip of a perhaps Alice Cooper fan, representing the Satan Group. These film clips suggest a time of fervent reappraisal of christianity and of religion, in tension with a more traditional, authoritarian church.
The relation between drop-outs and religion came to a head with the potential government support of Jim Jones infamous Jonestown. It’s a possibility that the position the Jesus Freaks adopted; counter cultural, anti-authoritarian and “left-behind” made space for contemporary Q-Anon and MAGA evangelical Christianity to occupy, all be it twisted towards a far-right position.
In the year that the Christian World Liberation Front commissioned the film of their spring tour, there was to be one of the most hyped religious cult appearances of the 70’s. This was Millennium 73, held over three days in November at the Houston Astrodome by The Divine Light Mission. Here is a movie by TVTV, made up of underground video makers including Ant Farm video collective, reporting on the event.
Their Lord of the Universe, Guru Maharaj Ji, was a fifteen year old boy whose family placed him as a bringer of global peace. Not a bad thing, but for their amassing of wealth from desperate followers, an inability to utter a profound thought and grievous bodily harm as retribution to a custard pie throwing prankster. The Jesus freaks amassed outside the Astrodome to argue with transcendental hippies, amongst inspired talk of levitating the building and the start of a golden age.
So this is a social and political context for George Landow’s film. He was surprised to be asked by the Christian World Liberation Front to document their spring tour, as he was known for his experimental work, although a work one year earlier, ‘What’s Wrong With This Picture part 2’ does include vox-pop.
This post identifies the situation that Landow was working within, not replicated in his work. His overlaying and dismantling of continuous time eludes our comprehension of the polemics of the speakers. He includes their words, giving them a platform, fragmented and encrypted as aaa-bbb-aaa-bbb-aaa, where ‘a’ is a frame of one time and ‘b’ a frame of another. It points to a place beyond the limits of our perception, sliding off their lips into the abyss. We can catch a syllable, or even the occasional word as it falls away. What then becomes more readable is the edit itself, its mise-en-scene, the gestures of audience, the collision of details, that appear satirical. It could be read as a send-up of the CWLF mission, of our perception and of the idea of documentation itself. It could doubly be a spiritual quest, transcendent of time, but the film’s visual satire provokes doubt. Permissive contradiction is at the heart of Landow/Land’s oeuvre.
The slippage in Landow’s work, its contradiction, connects to Freud’s ‘Jokes and their relation to the unconscious’, which we shall encounter in part II through Lacan’s quilt of Wit and the Unconscious, in relation to bald heads, hands, pens and the eternal present. There is also the question of imminent spirituality vs transcendental spirituality, Landow tends towards an absurd understanding of the spirit. So, until next time…
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