Crucify: An Obsession with Self-Inflicted Pain and the Blasphemous

This is a weird topic for a little update, but I was thinking about crucifixion a lot on the bus into town last week. Ailbhe and I had been working on doing a podcast episode on Olivia Rodrigo, and there’s a line in her song “love is embarrassing” where she says “Watch as I crucify myself / For some weird second string / Loser who’s not worth mentioning”. I love this line. It’s so melodramatic and self-aware of it, almost a whole commentary on her first album. This was something we had gotten into in that podcast; Sour was a perfect encapsulation of teen angst and melodrama. That being a teenager is so awful and emotional and everything is SO important. And it is important to you in that moment. Her use of the word “crucify” stuck out to me as the perfect verb to use for that type of behaviour. You truly are torturing yourself over something that in the grand scheme of your life will have no real importance in six months, but for those weeks or months is all that matters.

The song itself has this tongue-in-cheek frantic energy, where Olivia describes the embarrassing and pathetic actions she did for a man, lamenting the time wasted, but also spinning it into a story where the joke is on her. I don’t know if the podcast will ever be released, but we go in-depth on her public persona, and I have a lot of props to give her for being so open. She is the type of celeb that you could see making a mistake, who isn’t too pretentious or views herself as important. It comes through on this track. I get this image of her in the corner of some party pouring her heart in some frenzied state to some girl who may or may not be passed out.

Enough of the deep-dive on the song though, and back to crucifixion. That word is so powerful sonically, but it also is such an extreme form of torture and connected to the idea of Jesus sacrificing himself as a martyr, that when she uses it to mean “lose herself for a man” it is obviously sarcastic and incredibly amusing. I too feel I have crucified myself for some man that really did not give a shit about me, and it is so dramatic and self-involved. I can be both fully aware of how little it actually matters, and honestly not care that much, but yet be so up in the theatrics and craziness that it I exist in some sort of cognitive dissonance where I don’t care and care all too much. Where I’m serious that I felt like I was crucified, and wholly being hyperbolic.

I’m not really a Christian; I was raised Catholic and I didn’t leave the Church (cause you can’t actually leave the Catholic Church voluntarily I found out), but for all intents and purposes I’m not a Christian. Still, Christianity has actually taken up a big spot in my brain and life. Mainly through Sufjan Stevens, his 2000s work is basically just listening to a gay, uber-Christian man talk about Jesus. And I love it a lot. I also love a lot of Christian imagery and biblical stories as metaphors. The crucifix is such an integral part of Christianity because it represents God’s love, that He would be born human and suffer so intensely for humanity. Back in secondary school, my history teacher told a story about how on some holiday they went to a place where you could experience being crucified. They tied your arms and had you stand up on the cross. How it works is that your body is being strained, and you have to actively keep yourself up. If you don’t, your body is placed under great pressure and you would eventually die from asphyxiation, as the heart would not be able to pump oxygenated blood around the body. A pretty horrible way to go, like seriously painful.

Something that isn’t like being crucified is faking cancer. Yet Vicki Gunvalson would convince you otherwise. Season 10 of Real Housewives of Orange County was the infamous Cancergate scandal, where through the course of a season involving psychics, forged medical records, and a Nancy Drew-esque new Housewive to the cast, Vicki’s boyfriend Brooks is revealed to have been faking his cancer diagnosis. When all is revealed in the season finale this is what Vicki had to say to the women:

I’m being nailed to the Cross like Jesus was and he did nothing wrong! He’s Jesus Christ and he did nothing wrong — he was nailed to the Cross. That’s how I feel.

Now I obviously don’t go to the Housewives for insightful wisdom. I mainly go to them to see rich, egomaniacs be nasty and unintentionally hilarious, but this Vicki scene captures just how narcissistic and self-absorbed these women can be. Being caught out in helping your boyfriend lie about having cancer is certainly not the same as being nailed to a cross and being crucified. If this was someone I actually knew, I would truly feel sick, but I don’t know Vicki, and hopefully never will. She exists solely as a character on screen to me, and through this lens, this might be one of the funniest things I have witnessed. Where in Olivia’s case the juxtaposition is intentional, here it is not. Vicki truly in her heart and mind believes that she is just like Jesus Christ.

Another song that talks about crucifying oneself is the aptly titled “Crucify” by Tori Amos. Like Olivia’s, Tori sings about giving everything to others, and just getting suffering and loneliness in return. Unlike Olivia’s, this song isn’t outwardly sarcastic. Hyperbolic, maybe, but “Crucify” focuses on the imagery of nails and chains, “looking for a saviour beneath these dirty sheets”. There are allusions to panic attacks “I got a bowling ball in my stomach / I got a desert in my mouth” and a cat named “Easter” (a.k.a. Jesus") who tells her to stand up for herself. She states “I gotta have my suffering / So that I can have my cross”. She isn’t necessarily comparing herself to Jesus, but instead relating to the feeling of being misunderstood by all those around her, and feeling alone to suffer the actions of others. Without a reason for the suffering, like how Jesus suffered for the sins of humanity, why must she suffer?

It works because the tone is dark and depressing, she describes feeling outcasted and alone, desperately looking for meaning. Her sorrow is a human one: loneliness and the experience of trying to plug internal holes with external validation. Her grief is about how others treat her, and whether she should allow it to continue for some greater purpose, or if she is just being a pushover, who is allowing others to take advantage of her. Tori’s father is a Christian minister, so her words feel less blasphemous, as she does have an understanding of the crucifixion. As I said, this type of imagery is dramatic, but this song is just as dramatic. “Crucify” fits well on its album, Little Earthquakes, as all these songs are dramatic and use intense imagery to get their point across. It’s the opener of the album, followed by the track “Girl”, a song about womanhood, and feeling used: “She’s been everybody else’s Girl / Maybe one day she’ll be her own”. It is haunting and upsetting to hear Tori describe a life composed of identities that exist only in connection to others. The rest of Little Earthquakes is like this; haunting. If you have the time and you’re looking for more music, listen to this album, recommendations include the songs mentioned, but also “Winter”, “Silent All These Years”, “Happy Phantom”, and “Leather”.

There are a lot of other songs that mention crucifixion as a metaphor. “Crucify Your Mind” by Rodriguez talks of leaving a cheating lover, with the hopes that it will benefit and help them change. “Crucified” by Army of Lovers is a very on-the-nose song about feeling persecuted. Its dance sound amongst a bunch of very explicit Christian references (and some very strange ones like “Guinness Record baker”) is very garish and weird, though I guess most would consider it camp. “Babylon” by SZA is a song that has the refrain of “Crucify me” and the line “Bring on the thorny crown”. It’s a song about feeling hated by those you love, like Jesus felt. The title is a reference to the city of Babylon, a large beautiful city, but a population of people who turned against God and wanted to build a tower to Heaven. SZA sings of a relationship, most likely sexual, where she loves him, but he is a bad person, like the city of Babylon.

“Bloody Mary” by Gaga is an intentionally(?) blasphemous song, or maybe its use of Christian imagery is from a place of respect, as the Born This Way album is about being an outsider, an outcast, and blends Christianity with homosexuality, leather bikers and the Apostles. Anyway, the song’s lyrics contain “I’m not gonna crucify the things you do” and in particular “I’ll dance x3 / with my hands x3 / above my head x3 / like Jesus said” which I take as a reference to Jesus slumped on the Cross, with Gaga taking on the role of Mary Magdalene, forgiving those who caused Jesus’ crucifixion. Another Gaga song about Jesus and events that led to the Crucifixion is “Judas”, a song that compares being in love with a bad man to Judas Iscariot, the man who gave up Jesus. The whole of the Born This Way album, as I said previously, is built off a lot of Christian imagery, and a lot of it can be read as blasphemous, but I see it as highlighting how the institution of the Church turns its back away from the LGBT community and those who are outcasted from society (sometimes because of the church), and how Jesus would disagree with this treatment. Some other songs about Jesus include “Black Jesus † Amen Fashion” which includes the literal crucifix in its title, and “Fashion of His Love”. Both these songs, whilst tributes to Alexander McQueen, the “Black Sheep of Fashion”, use their lyrics to also allude to God and Jesus.

Speaking of Gaga, someone who is known for REALLY straddling the line between reverence and blasphemy is Madonna. Even her name is a Christian reference to the Virgin Madonna, Mother Mary. She’s had music videos of stigmata wounds and burning crosses and Black Jesus for a song about worshipping Jesus and also sucking dick. She’s been banned from the Vatican. Some of her albums include The Immaculate Collection and Confessions on a Dance Floor. Aside from Like a Prayer’s connection to crucifixion, however, the main one I wanted to talk about was her Confessions Tour in 2006, where during “Live to Tell” Madonna stands upon a mirrored cross (almost a discocross), wearing a crown of thorns. Obviously, the Vatican and Church were pissed, calling it another blasphemy from Madonna. Her response was that it was just like wearing a crucifix, that:

Rather, it is my plea to the audience to encourage mankind to help one another and to see the world as a unified whole. I believe in my heart that if Jesus were alive today he would be doing the same thing.

During the performance a running tally behind her makes note of the 12 million children (at the time in 2006) orphaned by AIDs.

My specific intent is to bring attention to the millions of children in Africa who are dying every day, and are living without care, without medicine and without hope. I am asking people to open their hearts and minds to get involved in whatever way they can. The song ends with a quote from the Bible's Book of Matthew: "For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick and you took care of me and God replied, 'Whatever you did for the least of my brothers ... you did it to me.'

Critics saw the performance largely as gimmicky and a dull moment of an otherwise great tour, as the sound quality from the Cross was not great, and it seemed almost comical seeing Madonna up there, and I must agree. It is definitely not one of her best controversies, as it all just seems a bit “meh”.

I could talk about this shit for hours, and probably lead it into some topic completely disconnected without even realizing it, so I’m gonna leave it here. Like I said at the start, I’ve been working on some sort of a podcast which may or may not happen, but if it does, I will probably make short posts advertising each episode with a summary or brief introduction to the topic so you can follow along if you don’t know anything about it. I’m also working on a magazine (not MY magazine, just A magazine) so when that comes out I might post the article(s?) I will have in it. I feel a bit more motivated to start doing more projects, especially involving posting online, whether that be Substack posts, videos, or podcast episodes.

Thank you for reading this :)
- Steeqhen