Don't You Know Jesus Christ is a Sausage?

incipit parodia: je m’ens fous

I.

Flicking through the pages of Paul Gorman's magnificent new biography of Malcolm McLaren, I was pleased to be reminded of an amusing incident that occurred during the filming of a little watched reality TV series called The Baron in May 2007, which culminated with the Sex Pistol being threatened by a mob of angry villagers after he insulted them, their community, and their Saviour.  

The show was set in the small fishing village of Gardenstown, Aberdeenshire, and co-starred the actor/comedian Mike Reid and former Hear'Say singer Suzanne Shaw. Each contestant was competing for the courtesy title of 13th Baron of Troup, as chosen by the locals via a public vote.    

Gorman writes:

"Within a few days, McLaren had alienated villagers [...] and annoyed one fisherman in particular by painting the encircled anarchist 'A' on the side of his boat.
      This was small beer, but the election address enabled McLaren to provoke the jeering villagers en masse. He opened his speech by describing their home as 'absolutely boring, the worst place I've ever been to in my entire life ...' 
      To growing catcalls and boos, McLaren played up the pantomime aspects of his character by announcing his aim to become 'the wickedest, baddest, most hooligan-ish and sexiest Baron ever ...'
      McLaren also proposed the annual construction of a folkloric wickerman on the beach. He suggested the villagers should sit around this at night and 'take lots of drugs and drink yourselves stupid'. At this point Gardenstown harbourmaster Michael Watt leapt to the stage and attempted to manhandle the candidate away from the microphone. Eventually he succeeded, but not before McLaren shouted, 'I'd like to transform Gardenstown into a heathen's paradise,' and finished with the exclamation, 'Don't you know Jesus Christ is a sausage?'"

It was this final statement that tipped things over the edge and prompted the production company's security team to intervene and escort Malcolm out of town for his own safety:

"Not that the harbourmaster, the townsfolk, the TV crew or the viewers were to know, but in uttering the blasphemy McLaren was, in fact, quoting from a stunt by the early twentieth-century German Dadaist prankster Johannes Baader." [1]


II.

Johannes Baader, was, actually, not merely a merry prankster, but a certified madman, having been declared legally insane in 1917 after suffering with manic depression. So his outrageous public performances and statements - in which he often assumed mythic identities à la Nietzsche in his post-breakdown letters - were not merely stunts. 

In the same year as he was certified insane, Baader was appointed head of a society founded by fellow Dadaist Raoul Hausmann called Christus GmbH (or, in English, Christ Ltd.). The idea was to recruit members who, for a 50 mark fee, would be accorded Christ-like status rendering them free from all earthly authority and unfit for military service.  

The scandal for which Baader is best remembered, however - and which McLaren was re-enacting - happened on 17 November, 1918. Baader entered Berlin Cathedral and disrupted the sermon by shouting out (amongst other things): Christus ist euch Wurst! He was briefly arrested, though this didn't deter him from declaring himself the President of the Universe shortly afterwards.
   

What, readers might ask, did he mean by this - on the face of it - ludicrous statement?

In order to make sense of it, one must know something about the German tradition of buffoonery known as Hanswurst and also be familiar with Nietzsche's philosophy ...


III.

In one sense, Baader was simply re-announcing the Death of God; basically saying that Christ had become turned into a cheap commodity and something to be easily consumed; no longer a figure to be taken seriously, Jesus was just another clown in the religious circus known as the Church. 

But he was perhaps also alluding to the fact that, in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche says it's preferable to be thought of as Hans Wurst - or a silly sausage, as we might say in English - than as any kind of guru or holy man. Christine Battersby notes:

"In his so-called 'late' period, Nietzsche denies that there is any underlying or sublime 'truth' that is covered over - and healed - by art. Instead, we are left with a play of surfaces, and with the affirmation of life as the new ideal. Indeed, in Ecce Homo Nietzsche takes an additional step as he aligns himself with the Hanswurst: with a mode of the ridiculous, the crude and the all-too-human - with that which is, above all, not elevated, self-denying or sublime in the Schopenhauerian sense." [2]
 
So, it's arguable that calling Jesus a sausage isn't intended as an insult, but as a compliment; it's conceiving of Jesus as trickster and as a comedian of the ascetic ideal, rather than as the martyred figure on the Cross (all tears, and nails, and thorns); a punk Jesus that even McLaren might have found attractive, disguised in a pointed green hat, causing chaos and committing monstrous action and crime.    

Notes

[1] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, (Constable, 2020), pp. 756-57.

[2] Christine Battersby, 'Behold the Buffoon: Dada, Nietzsche's Ecce Homo and the Sublime', in The Art of the Sublime, ed. Nigel Llewellyn and Christine Riding, (Tate Research Publication, January 2013): click here.

It's interesting to recall that Greggs the bakers had to apologise in 2017 for swapping Jesus for a sausage roll in a promotional image of the nativity scene; it's an idea, it seems, that just keeps giving!  

To watch a clip from the final episode of The Baron, uploaded to YouTube, in which Malcolm delivers his sausage remark, click here.