18 thoughts on “SNARK WEEK: Biblical Shit

    1. The reviewer who reviewed the costumes in Bernadette Banner’s costume review in 2023 was unimpressed and she didn’t even mention the pink tie-dye looking headwrap worn by Jesus’ mother.

      What bothers me personally is Mary Magdalene’s loose hair hanging down all the time. (NO HAIRPINS!) She has a veil but it’s pretty much an afterthought, which is a massive no no for a Jewish woman at the time.

  1. One Night with the King – an adaptation of Esther- has plenty of color, especially in the court scenes, though I don’t know how accurate the costumes are.

  2. One Night with the King – an adaptation of Esther- has plenty of color, especially in the royal palace scenes. Though I don’t know how accurate the costumes are.

  3. I haven’t seen it but I keep getting clips of a new TV show The Promised Land on my social media. It tells the story of Moses but as a comedic mockumentary. Still quite a bit of nubbly linen but at least they have interesting colours of nubbly linen and the female characters seem to at least get some jewelry.

  4. WHERE IS “THE LIFE OF BRIAN”?! (And what is your actual opinion of LoB’s costuming?) But I must admit that Gina Lollobrigida’s gold lame is beyond fabulous.

  5. Re peacocks in ancient Gaza: the peacock is native to India but was introduced into Greece via Persia in the 5th century BC, and made its way into Egyptian art and mythology, presumably around the same time. It’s anybody’s guess when the Samson story originated, but AFAIK the Book of Judges is currently thought to have been written around the 7th-6th century BCE. So probably a bit early for peacocks in Gaza, but not outrageously so.

    https://persianthings.wordpress.com/2013/07/27/peacock/

  6. The era when BCE met AD absolutely had colourful fabrics! As well as Pompei murals there are murals & mosaics in other parts of the Roman world showing how people dressed. As with most eras of history, it’s not colour but wearing white that showed your privilege!

  7. I just get cranky when the only people in Biblical times who have invented hemming technology are the Romans. Let’s have cloth the texture of potato sacking, and let the edges ravel free! Who cares, fabric isn’t expensive or anything wheeeeeee!

    1. Well how on Earth are we to tell the Godly are Godly if they don’t look elaborately indifferent to the finer things in life?

  8. I’d take issue with The Bible being branded ‘fiction’ – if nothing else this is an over-simplification of that remarkable smorgasbord of sermon, propaganda, prophecy, genealogy, ‘Just So’ stories, folk tales and folk history transmitted by the longest, most complicated and most ferociously-controversial games of Chinese Whispers in human history – but that would not be in the spirit of Snark Week (and I doubt it would be a fun discussion for either of us).

    On a less cantankerous note, I’d like to point out that using frescoes from the ‘Riviera of Ancient Rome’ to draw conclusions about what the Children of Israel might have worn in the lifetime of Christ Jesus is risky, to apply that approach to a period of at least two thousand years before the birth of Christ is best regarded as tongue-in-cheek (Think of the former as equivalent to using an Italian tourist trap to get an idea of what the Orthodox Jews of Israel are wearing, only more so).

    On a less serious note, it’s always amusing to see reminders of Old Hollywood’s tendency to treat the Old Testament as a golden excuse for some hot odalisque action AND a gun-show.

  9. On a note of sheer pedantry, might I please ask if those images from THE NATIVITY STORY (2006) and JESUS OF NAZARETH (1977) are meant to depict the Man Jesus? (The former depicts Mr Oscar Isaac as Joseph, Christ’s adoptive/Earthly father and the latter depicts Mr Ian McShane as Judas Iscariot, if memory serves).

  10. As a Roman official shouldn’t Pontius Pilate be wearing a toga? At least when he’s conducting official business, he might go around in a tunic off-duty.
    In which case his clothes should be white, but also elaborately draped. (Medieval art tended to depict Biblical persons in contemporary or almost-contemporary costume, so it’s not a good guide for Pilate specifically.)

  11. So for anyone who hasn’t read the story of Samson and Delilah, it’s important to point out that Samson is DUMB AS DIRT. As in, everyone keeps telling him, “man, Delilah is just out to get you killed,” and he keeps talking to her, telling her all his secrets. (Incidentally, the bit about the hair has to do with a consecrated vow. It’s not that his power is in his hair magically; it’s that he was breaking the terms of the vow left and right, and losing his strength when his hair was cut was a means of showing him how badly he screwed up.)

    In regards to Jesus, one of the Gospel depictions of the Crucifixion has the Roman soldiers dressing him up in a fine, brightly colored robe while they’re mocking him. Statues showing him in a red robe over a white garment with the crown of thorns are directly referencing that moment. Yes, they took it away before marching him off to the cross, but that’s because why would you destroy a nice garment? They even took his tunic, which is specifically mentioned to be one unstitched piece (therefore extra labor and more valuable.)

    I’d love to see more color in historical films. There’s so much information about dyes available at various periods, so all you have to do is look up the people who have already gathered it!

    1. In all fairness Judge Samson seems to be perfectly aware that Delilah is after something (Note his repeatedly misleading her as to his ‘Nazorite kryptonite’, quite possibly as one of the earlier cases of ‘poisoning the well’ when it came to an enemy agent), but seems to have found it impossible to permanently dispense with her (Possibly because she kept feeding him painfully optimistic Philistines, possibly because he was dangerously fascinated by a lady with the sheer brass to keep coming back to every Sunday School teacher’s favourite Person of Mass Destruction, after failing to betray him).

      …

      Never mind Hedy Lamarr, they should have cast Marlene Dietrich!

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