How would people react to a movie about Jesus in which everyone was dark skinned and all the men had short hair?

Depends on the kind of people. There are those who are more open minded and those who ignore probabilities based on science. The former wouldn’t mind so much while the latter might be agitated a bit.

I have the suspicion that a lot of the kristian konservatives would accuse “the left” of “rewriting history”.

They likely did look semetic with dark hair and olive skin. My husband, who has that coloring, has worn his hair long with some facial hair at times and I call it his Jesus look. His hair is curly, but as it grows long it weighs down and is just wavy. His paternal family is Jewish from the midde east. I think there is no way to know for sure how fair Jesus might have been. My husband’s skin is quite fair when not exposed to sunlight, but he tans very fast and can get quite dark if he bothers to. His siblings are all darker than he. I think most people would actually be fine with depicting Jesus that way. A few people might be upset about it.

I just thought to add that when I went to school in Michigan (in America) a few people were surprised I was Jewish because of my very fair skin, medium brown hair and blue eyes. They had this idea in their head that Jewish people all looked like they were from the middle east with dark hair and dark eyes. These were people who had never met any Jewish people before and were basically unaware of who was Jewish in the media. You would be surprised how many people are clueless about who is Jewish, they have no idea what surnames are Jewish, etc. Christians know Jesus was Jewish, so I would think they would accept he “looked” Jewish. Even though in reality Jews come in every different color of skin, hair, and eyes.

Probably about the same way they’d react to a Jesus who didn’t speak English.

There was a movie made in the 1936 called “the Green Pastures”. It featured an all-black cast and portrayed several old-testament stories from the perspective of a black person of the time. It isn’t particularly politically correct by today’s standards, but it was nominated for several awards in it’s play format. I would imagine some sensitive black people might accusing the movie of ‘stereotyping black people’. But it is a really great movie based on morality and the changing times of the era in American history. The bible stories depicted in the movie are, however Old Testament stories so aren’t exactly in line with the question.

@glacial, Having foreign characters speak English is a convenience for being able to tell the story. The same does not hold for skin color.

@majorrich,
That brings up another interesting point. Suppose that children’s Bible story books had pictures of Adam and Eve, Noah and Moses as dark skinned. Would parents have a problem with that?

I had it in VHS a long time ago, just ordered it from Amazon on DVD. I think you can see it on youtube in parts now.

I think most would be fine with it, with the exception of a few nutjobs.