A Marriage Made in Hell

Charles Downey’s review at Ionarts of Jerry Springer: The Opera leaves me feeling just fine about missing it. Jerry Springer has famously hosted the worst of the trash talk television shows. Naturally, the opera found its share of critical acclaim.

“It’s filthy, it’s funny, it’s brilliantly original…
A THRILLING, TRULY GROUNDBREAKING SMASH.”
-The Daily Telegraph

“THERE’S NOTHING MORE ENTERTAINING TO BE SEEN ANYWHERE.”
-The Mail on Sunday

“Nothing more entertaining” is certainly a sad commentary. For Downey, the combination of debased Springer and exalted opera is “a marriage made in hell.”

Springer‘s second act, which casts God, Jesus, Mary, and Satan as guests on an infernal edition of The Jerry Springer Show, has drawn protests of outrage from conservative Christian groups, something that has dogged the show in all of its subsequent openings. No doubt about it, Jerry Springer is foul-mouthed, outrageous, and blasphemous. As satire of Christianity, Springer is ham-handed, a blunt hammer instead of a scalpel. If the best satire knows its target, Springer is wide of the mark. For example, Jesus says, “Talk to the stigmata” as he shows his hand, but the stigmata are mystical wounds that other people receive in imitation of Jesus’ wounds – Jesus did not receive the stigmata. For a show that exults in deflating piety, the pious ending reconciling God and Satan with the platitude “There are no absolutes of good and evil” rang hypocritical.

No doubt, but hypocrisy seems like a flimsy stick to beat this opera with. The message that good and evil are fictitious and result merely from a misunderstanding – indeed a cosmic spat between God and Satan that man might mediate – surely deserves more robust criticism.

It is hard to satirize a bad joke like Jerry Springer, who lacks sufficient substance and seriousness to fuel a good satire. Downey argues that people should lighten up their criticism of the opera because the religious satire is lame. But I fail to see why satirizing something incompetently gives you a pass.

And his reference to protests by “conservative Christian groups” leaves me wondering where non-conservative Christians stand. Are they indifferent or supportive – or merely silent? Downey doesn’t defend the opera’s inane take on religion and gives it rather low marks musically, but he still seems to recommend it.

In the second act, the chorus and all the characters return to assist in the judgment of Jerry in hell. It would be too weighty a conclusion for such a grotesquely silly piece, except that, as noted above, it only becomes more irreverent and less actually about anything theological, philosophical, or serious. In that spirit, Jerry Springer: The Opera offers an evening of hilarity and groan-inducing one-liners (“I can’t go to hell! I’m Jewish!”). It will also certainly exceed your expectations as to how much of the book could possibly be taken up with naughty words.

If the opera is a “grotesquely silly piece” that fails as satire, fails musically, and serves merely as a vehicle for foul language, one wonders on what basis it can be summed up as “an evening of hilarity.”