Good Friday essay: Passion plays and the ethics of spectacular violence

They also criticise humanity's capacity to eschew compassion

In 1985 Filipino carpenter Ruben Enaje fell three storeys and remarkably, survived. To give thanks for this good fortune, he has, for the past 30 Good Fridays, dressed up as Jesus and allowed actors portraying Roman soldiers to nail his hands and feet to a cross in the climax of his small village’s Passion play.

Passion plays are dramatic renditions of Christ’s arrest, trial, lashing, and crucifixion (and often other elements of his life such as the Resurrection). They occur all over the world around Easter.

This year, a group in Manchester briefly