The Hapless Jew

The humiliated and humbled Jew or Christ of German Matthias Grunewald’s iconoclastic The Mocking of Christ - he has not the divinity of a charlatan or the exuding of some messianic charm, no kingly jest or witty repartee like Socrates to impart, no romantic Hollywood aura or charismatic halo about him, no premonitory brave defiance fitting of a martyr, no passionately clenched fists, in short he has been broken and he has given up, his hands instead are hapless, hanging loose and lax like erogenous conductors splayed toward his neighbours, showing perhaps the only vital signs of life, as he may, just may have been trying to communicate the word of God by touch like in The Creation of Adam as he soon would be mounted for posterity as the invisible hand, while the one extended foot has bulging serpentine nerves lassoed about jutting and poking bones also like a terrain of power pylons, all portending instead an image from the Arab Spring, a panic stricken and terrorized man literally shitting his pants in a moment of extreme unction and agony being dragged kicking and screaming, making a last ditch attempt at communicating a muted plea bargain with a bowed and slanted head with his mouth lidded and puckered towards a largely unappreciative audience of open mouthed vampires in a bloodthirsty stupor, each face filled to the brim with glee, leering at this spectacle of festivity, while that white blindfold symbolizes not only the crown of thorns but also that ever hunted blind deception of Aryan life – the ideal, one of purity and cleansing in this the hour of the merchants and their coronation, the bloody coronation of a godly con or ungodly son.

- Ruwan Laknath Jayakody