jcs sideblog

i think mostly the second one. going entirely off the lyrics of this jesus must die (not including twad because most productions don't) your baseline pharisees are utilitarian leaders of an occupied nation who are willing to kill one man to save many. their appearances in later songs are the same - they just want jesus dead - and unlike judas (whose goals align at first with the pharisees, the only difference being that he knows jesus personally and wants him to stay alive) and pilate they don't really get any humanising scenes which alw and rice seemed to realise because now then we are decided exists.

even without twad, productions could very easily portray the pharisees as like. panicked middle management doing what they think is best but they don't because then you lose an easy villain. so you get a load of productions where pharisees are absolutely delighted at the idea of killing this guy. and productions like to adapt or reinterpret characters for different settings except they're not adapting the pharisees, they're adapting the stand-in bad guys who have taken the pharisees place, and you end up with nyack 1998. or 2012at. or just generically evil people in suits, completely ignoring who they are and how they're written as well as being just. distasteful. and sure its a free world you can do what you like with the characters but when its always "lets make them more evil" you do start to wonder.

examples: