jesus christ superstar bravely asks the question: what if you and your homoerotic best friend in occupied judea built a radical leftist political movement together based on principles you hold dear but as the movement grows more followers join who seem less committed to its message and more interested in your homoerotic bestie as a charismatic leader, and then they even start saying some crazy shit about him being the son of god, and you try to ask him about it because surely he doesn't think that's true and he's weirdly noncommittal like "oh, yknow, if that's what they think who am i to tell them no, it brings more people to the movement anyways," and you're like i guess... but then this son of god stuff gets really serious and people are calling him a king too, and you're like this is gonna end badly if the romans catch wind of it, so you try to tell him to drop the son of god stuff but at this point he's so intensely beloved you can't even have a private conversation with him, and you start to think is he just drunk on his own power, because now he's barely staying on message and even actively contradicting your founding principles--not only that but he starts getting weirdly morbid, talking about his death coming soon and limited time on earth, etc. he seems unwell and frankly irresponsible, randomly lashing out in anger and filled with bitterness towards the followers he's cultivated, and towards you, too, and meanwhile your volatile homoerotic bestie is being hounded by tens of thousands of maniac zealots urging him towards open war with rome, and you're really the only one capable of stopping it, all you have to do is turn him in to the pharisees, but every time you think about it it makes you sweat because you could swear he already knows you're going to do it, he almost seems to want you to do it yet he hates you for it too, but someone needs to keep him from bringing the full might of rome down on the jews (again), so what if he hates you, is he even the person you thought he was anymore, regardless he could never love you the way you love him, and you need to do this, you have to do this, it's the only way. Would that be fucked up or what?
it also asks the question: what if you'd spent three years rising from complete obscurity to being a massively popular charismatic political leader, and every day you are fucking hounded by thousands of people all trying to get you to Do Something For Them and not giving you a fucking break for two fucking seconds, which might be flattering except you know that almost none of the people who follow you really care about you as a person and only care about what they can get out of you and will just as quickly turn against you the hot second things start going bad, which is a problem because you are absolutely gonna be tortured and killed in a couple of days (which is perhaps the most bad "going bad" can get) and NONE of them can get this through their heads and all of them are like "no no no we love you" and it's FAKE, you know it's fake, and your most homoerotic bestie is going to be the worst fucking one because he's going to be the guy who sells you out and gets you killed all while truly believing he's doing the right thing, and the worst part of it is that you know all of this is going to happen but you have no idea if your abandonment and torture and death will actually accomplish anything or if you'll have sacrificed your entire fucking life for absolutely nothing. anyway would that be fucked up or what?
