Formalist Perspective on "Jesus, I'd Like to Eat Now"

Viktor Shklovsky describes the purpose of art to be the recovery of sensation in life, to make one feel things and to sensationalize things so much so that they are not recognized He continues, “Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object: the object is not important…”(16). However, the picture depicted in “Jesus, I’d Like to Eat Now” cannot be perceived as formalist because one cannot look at the picture without turning it into an object because it is set out to translate a purpose; it carries significance that makes it difficult to defamiliarize the picture. What would happen if the words were removed from the picture and only the people remained dining at what looks to be the final dinner before Jesus’ crucifixion? What allows for a piece of art to remain in the formalist technique is looking at the design of art and not the object which is being presented. The technique use in the picture then becomes that LGBTIQQ Community, which is deeply scrutinized and sought to be made a sin, is being placed in the position that Jesus was in before being crucified. In that sense, though, it can be said that not that much thought about Jesus’ embodiment was placed, but was instead done for shock value and comedy. The difficulty in being able to defamiliarize oneself with a very iconic image of Christ at the table with His Disciples becomes a query because, though the object is in new perception, it still very much connects itself to the image Christians, and the like, have of Christ. Nonetheless, one may provide then that formalism takes on the molding of defamiliarization of objects in all forms of art and literature and focus primarily on the essence of the art presented.


Shklovsky, Viktor. "Art as Technique." Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed. Ed. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. Malden, Ma: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. 15-21.