the story of the Stick figure Jesus
Grade school kid draws this stick figure cross figure. The teacher sends the kid to the school psychiaritrist, seeing it as a kid burdened with a Persecution Complex swarming with resentments. The father throws out a gripe of Religious Persecution — the kid drew Jesus on the Cross, for Pete’s Sake!
It is one of those stories that I can’t help but note and pause for a second. I haven’t quite a handle on this. Why would this be enough to warrent a psychological evaluation? If isolated, I can’t think it fits, if part of a larger pattern of sudden shifts into severe despondency — maybe.
So the easy answer is to suggest that everyone over-reacted slightly, and regret the fact that this has riven its way into a small amount of national conciousness — I mean, this is a diversionary story from what we should be following by way of the Culture Wars: every shift and turn in the “Meep Ban” story – and that the father looks the most inane — see this quotation: “It hurts me that they did this to my kid,” Chester Johnson, the boy’s father, told the Globe. “They can’t mess with our religion; they owe us a small lump sum for this.” You will forgive me for wondering about his real motivation — the “relgious persecution” angle is dissipating — it is enough to make me line up and demand Tort Reform against Frivulous lawsuits.
The thing becomes a little bit muddled. A middle school art teacher once told me the story of how she wearily forbid her class from depictions of killing dead people in an art assignments, only to regret doing so because it gave her demented students the idea of handing in an armful of mutilated animal depictions. But that becomes a problem of crudity — there was no particular imagination in the middle school students’ tormentations to her teacher. In the grade school students’ case and his either persecution complex or Jesusy way — with his money grubbing father — I would prefer some allowance for an expression in art along the lines of John Lennon’s Beatles lyrics ” Christ you know it ain’t easy, you know how hard it can be. The way things are going They’re going to crucify me.” Though, I suppose nothing works in a vacuum, and the teacher will be scratching his or her head wondering who’s doing the persecution. Maybe better to go the “You load sixteen tons an’ what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.” route as a statement against homework.