Queer performance and indecent theology in the Gospel according to Porta dos Fundos

Abstract

ABSTRACT In December 2019 Netflix dropped The First Temptation of Christ, a Christmas special by the Brazilian comedy group Porta dos Fundos. The drama ensues when Jesus returns home on his thirtieth birthday after forty days in the desert with his flamboyantly gay lover Orlando. Outrage greeted the film’s release in Brazil and North America. On-line petitions demanded Netflix to take down the film, churches in Brazil filed lawsuits, and on Christmas eve an extremist group threw two Molotov cocktails at Porta’s office in Rio de Janeiro. We demonstrate that the film stages queer performance that disidentifies with toxic tropes from mainstream cultural sources. Porta’s liberative praxis creates queer Christian possibilities as it disrupts the present with queer futurity and hope. The film thus provides a source for indecent theology re-figuring a Christology that correlates more profoundly with how people live and love.