CARNAL NATION

In this day and age, a simple picture of two nice Jewish boys in a passionate embrace shouldn't cause that much of a furor. After all, most Americans have better things to worry about. Right? Maybe not, when the young men in question happen to be Jesus of Nazareth and Kal-El, the Last Son of Krypton, aka Superman. (If you have any doubt that Supes is Of the Tribe, just remember that -El is the Hebrew suffix meaning "God" or "of God.") The picture to the right is from Younger Than Jesus, a catalog that accompanies the New Museum's triennial show exhibiting the work of 25 international artists under the age of 33, supposedly the age when Jesus decided to give up carpentry for the preaching gig that eventually got him nailed to a cross. The catalog goes beyond the scope of the exhibit, displaying work from 500 artists from around the world.

Granted, there hasn't been any trouble yet, but if you know comics, you can't help but wait for the other shoe to drop looking at that picture. Next to the wrath of the legal department of DC Comics upon seeing their own Lord and Savior defiled, the antics of Bill Donohue, the Catholic League, and the American Family Association amount to nothing more than a bunch of obnoxious kids yelling in the street. As comics blog Bleeding Cool notes, DC has gone after this sort of thing before with an awfully big legal stick, most notably in the case of an exhibit of paintings by Mark Chamberlain which showed Batman and Robin in explicit homoerotic poses. (NSFW) DC not only tried to get the pictures taken down, but demanded the gallery turn over all unsold art and the invoices for those pieces that had been sold. Happily, free expression triumphed in that case, but not easily. Maybe DC has mellowed out a little bit, especially since the heirs of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel won a court case last year giving them the rights to a large chunk of the character, but we don't want to lay any bets. Good luck to the artist, who's made a work that both elevates and humanizes two of our most important cultural icons, even if many will inexplicably see it as demeaning and disrespectful.