Plastic Jesus - Tia Blake

A messy recount of my current thoughts while listening to my October playlist

I should be writing an English essay on a Webster play, but I’m thinking of the song “Plastic Jesus” by Tia Blake. This song perfectly captures the feeling of detaching oneself from religion. Immediately, the plasticity of the Jesus and Mary statues implies a lack of permanence and a loss of meaning. Blake sarcastically puts it, “Going 90, it ain’t scary, as long as I got the Virgin Mary sitting on the dashboard of my car,” expressing how this item holds no significance for her yet seems to soothe her superstition.

Personally, I look at this line and see manufactured scaremongering (which may be a harsh way to describe religion). How many times were you told as a child what was wrong and what was right in a religious context? Growing up in the church was a pivotal aspect of my childhood, yet here I am, calling it ‘manufactured scaremongering’. I think, you know, I did feel safe when I sat in a pew at age nine or when I got confirmed at age twelve. Yet I didn’t feel safe when I fell in love and feared that someone upstairs knew all my secrets, or when I kissed someone on a Saturday night and had to put my faith in an unknown entity on a Sunday morning, praying (literally) that he didn’t know what I had done.

Now that I’ve unpacked my religious experience, I return to the line “I’m in the backseat sinning, Jesus is up there grinning.” This line makes me smile; it somehow soothes me. Blake’s flippant remark takes the weight out of the subject and leads us to think, “Huh, yeah. I guess we’ve all done that!” If we are supposed to see Jesus as the image of God on earth, then surely Jesus would have made out in the back of a car if He could. Blake sees Jesus as a friend: “I don’t care ‘cause he’s my fella”—someone to lean on or rely upon in case she gets t-boned at a junction (my biggest fear as a driver).

Yet we return to the verse, each stating an unrealistic situation in which the plastic statue could help. But isn’t that what we were taught? Here’s a problem: Who’s the solution? Jesus! While realistically, “if it rains or freezes,” God will not help you—find a blanket and try to warm up. Yet the church is so rooted in seeking God as the only answer. Blake detaches herself from these teachings, stating in three separate lines that she is obviously reassured by the presence of a divine being (on the dashboard of her car), yet the likelihood that it will do anything is slim.

Anyways, I love this song, not just because I enjoy folk music, but it always makes me giggle like a child and feel slightly better about kissing girls and being confirmed. So give it a listen if you enjoy folk/blues music or have some unspoken religious experience.