With Jesus Christ Superstar, the segment most often pincered for separate analysis is the younger generation—or sliced even thinner for microscopy, and for sensational copy, the counterculture and the Jesus Movements. Yet these ripples in American society are only peripherally related to the popularity of Superstar…. (p. 262)

The very first fact that the critic must deal with—rationally, not in righteous indignation—is the tremendous popularity of Jesus Christ Superstar…. Like the Beatles, though without apology, Superstar is probably more popular than Christ himself. (p. 263)

[The] immediate question is popular with whom? Certainly not with most critics, though a few have had the temerity to emphasize favorable aspects, and the usual number have hidden their judgments equivocally behind banter until they could see how Clive Barnes voted. The most common assumption is that the affluent young are making the work a superstar, and that the counterculture, "Jesus Freaks" and other Jesus movements are boosting it. But young people's reactions vary a great deal…. Perhaps the only common denominator is that most think it's worth listening to at least once….

The Jesus Movements seem to have little to do with Superstar directly…. Superstar seems to have as many enemies as friends on the religious fringes.

And although the apostles ask "What's that in the bread? It's gone to my head," the counterculture is only marginally related to the work…. [The] counterculture can't afford to go to [the] extravaganza…. [To] see this Jesus as mainly "the passion of our counterculture," another rock star who buckles under the demands of his followers, makes the work a self-parody of the McLuhan message-medium and grossly distorts the effect of a Superstar Christ on most of the audience. To be sure, Superstar reflects current cultural preoccupations, but it neither arose directly from nor seems to be influencing either the Jesus Movements or the counterculture.

Nor is it a youthful New Testament for our time. Someone suggests that Superstar provides the beginnings of a substitute religion for the young…. But the market is already too crowded with ersatz religions to support another. Setting up a Superstar Christ as another opiate of the people—more poppycock?—fails to take into account its relation to the original opiate…. [It] preaches nothing, and neither Christ nor Judas are prophetic pop heroes. Yet some critics take it as an anticlimactic apex of all youth movements … and denounce it for not fulfilling what it never claimed to attempt.

But I have been trying to define the main audience of the work. As one observer noted before Superstar opened on Broadway, so far most of its following seems to be "Middle America."… They are neither "all the people," fooled this time, nor that portion of the people which can be fooled all the time, though critical conceptions of mass audiences tend to oscillate between these extremes. Rather, they are apparently a very mixed group…. (pp. 262-65)

The conception of mass audiences …, and consequently the nature of popular art, is very Protean…. People can shape what they like out of much popular art; indeed, malleability helps determine success. Whatever can be all things to all people—or the most things to the most people—will be the most successful. I don't mean to have titillated you to an anticlimax. It just seems to me that critics have failed to deal adequately with the greatest force in any mass culture: inertia…. Works like Jesus Christ Superstar, which "ask the right questions" but allow each individual to provide his own answers, will be appropriated by nearly all—the atheist, the agnostic, and the believer. Only the indifferent will remain unimpressed; only the devout and the aesthetically critical may be offended. Since Superstar is basically neutral, it can profit from nearly everyone's inertia.

With a great deal of religious controversy supposedly surrounding Superstar, it may seem paradoxical to call it a theological neutral. Certainly some specific aspects of it seem anything but orthodox: Judas is given star status at times; Mary Magdalene, by implication, may have also cooled the fires between Jesus' head and feet; and Jesus himself is so human in his doubts and frustrations that several have objected to his lack of divinity and assurance. But Tim Rice has been very careful to balance most unorthodoxies with opposing evidence, and most protesters have apparently been part of small minorities. Judas the betrayer is not a man anyone would trust implicitly, and he is terribly inconsistent and unsure of his motives…. After that early titillating suggestion that Magdalene is Christ's mistress, Rice clarifies his position: "Only a moron or a gorilla could say that Christ and Mary had an affair…. The last verse of Mary's song proves there was no affair." Furthermore, Christ may be either man or God in the piece: "We approach Christ as a man—the human angle—rather than as God. But we don't want to destroy anyone's belief. Christ as a God is there if you want it." (pp. 266-67)

Rice and Webber indicate that the work is primarily agnostic, but intentionally leaves room for both faith and atheism…. The opera does not take up the resurrection because of the difficulty of projecting a neutral interpretation of the event; it's either a hoax or a miracle. Similarly, Mary the mother of Jesus, a potential for high controversy between Protestants and Catholics, is left out entirely. (pp. 267-68)

This interpretation of Superstar's popularity implies several things about popular art…. If inertia, or the adaptation of a piece to one's own beliefs and prejudices, is a major force in popular art, then art may never be a great reformer of masses…. Similarly, popular art is unlikely to convert many critics. The very ambiguity that provides a lowest common denominator for the broadest audience frustrates the critic demanding a consistent interpretation. And while ambiguity and ambivalence can be beautifully balanced in a work of art, and have made several classic works popular, they may also slide into simple inconsistency and incoherence. The critic's reaction is therefore likely to be frustrated rejection. (p. 269)