CROWN OF THORNS ANCIENT PROPHECY AND THE (POST)MODERN SPECTACLE William Stewart William Stewart is Adjunct Lecturer at Ridley College, The University of Melbourne. Correspondence to William Stewart: williamstewart@aapt.net.au This article juxtaposes actress Rachel Griffiths’ ‘art installation, one-woman protest’ at Crown Casino, Melbourne, in 1997, with Jesus of Nazareth’s ‘provocative one-man street theatre’ in the Jerusalem temple reported in the biblical Gospels (Mark 11:15-19 and parallels). I consider that Griffiths’ casino-action echoes the style and content of the ancient prophetic symbolic actions (sign-acts) in the Bible. The juxtaposition is therefore undertaken as a means of apprehending in the (post)modern world the radical nature of ancient prophetic symbolic actions, such as Jesus’ temple-action. I suggest that the affronting and offensive style and content of such actions may generate an ‘alienation-effect’ (Brecht) provoking critical engagement with a commonly assumed reality. And in the ‘society of spectacle’ (Debord), in which a revolution against the spectacle can only take the form of spectacle (Baudrillard), the appropriation of powerful images from the Bible may introduce an alternative reality. In the beginning was the performance; not the word alone, not the deed alone, but both, each indelibly marked with the other forever (Crossan 1991 p. xi). Figure 1 Rachel Griffiths arrested at Crown Casino The Photograph by Samb Brown © Samb Brown 1997 The greatest tragedy in theology in the past three centuries has been the divorce of the theologian from the poet, the dancer, the musician, the painter, the dramatist, the actress, the movie-maker (MD Chenu, cited in Fox 1983 p. 180). ARTICLES THE BIBLE AND CRITICAL THEORY, VOLUME 2, NUMBER 1, 2006 MONASH UNIVERSITY EPRESS 04.1