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MyTH, INTERCULTURALITY, AND RELIGION IN ELFRIEDE JELINEK’S AND FALK RICHTER’S WORK... Eric Bazilian wrote the song that was recorded for Osborne’s debut album Relish, and One of us has become her most successful track. It is, at first glance, a simple proclamation of faith: “Yeah, God is great!” But now imagine mimicking the words, slurring the “yeah”, like a teenager being asked to clean their room. It becomes dismissive. Even more obviously in the second verse. If “you” could see God, would you want to, if it “meant that you would have to believe.” It’s an approach to faith similar to Thomas’ — seeing is believing — but in opposition to Jesus’: But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said unto them, ‘Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe.” And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, ‘Peace be unto you.’ Then saith he to Thomas, ‘Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands’; and ‘reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing’. And Thomas answered and said unto him, ‘My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him, “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." You are blessed if you do not have to see. But in Bazilians/Osbornes text, seeing seems to be the foundation of a newfound faith of an otherwise unbelieving “you.” The song is critical of a society that has lost its faith. God, who is “one of us”, is lonely. Nobody calls him, except “maybe” the Pope. In a secular society, God has a very low phone bill. While this song is being sung, with the slurred “yeahs,” by a masked king (a tone of voice that makes the song sound even threatening), the stage is transformed. Like altar servers, carrying crosses to the sanctuary, the choir (that had been blinded before and is now seeing once more) creates a sacral stage. The video clips projected behind the actors and actresses show religious art as well as images of current and historical events. The video collage mimics the intertextual construction of quotes within Jelinek’s text: it now seems to show the “other stuff” Jelinek refers to at the end of her play. One could try sorting through the clips — from religious monuments and art to videos of pilgrims and newsreaders, televangelists, and text, communions, and the American flag, that from time to time dissolve into psychedelic colors — but it is questionable if the research would have the longed-for interpretive benefits. It is 37 Jn 20:24-29. See also Braungart: Ästhetik der Politik, 39-50. e 201"
