Jesus Christ is the Son of God, not a rock star. It is disrespectful.
I'm sure there are people all over the world who have mis-conceptions as to who Jesus Christ is or was. I believe Superstar is a good first step to open people's minds to deeper study and eventually meeting Christ for hemselves. IMHO, it is no more disrespectful to have Him sing His lines than to have Him speak English (his native tongue being either Hebrew or Aramaic).
Of course, you're talking to someone who was profoundly impacted by Superstar to take Christ more seriously. I had to unlearn a lot later, but I might never have even asked the questions had Superstar not come out.
As for my children, I'd rather have them singing:
Buddha, was he where it's at? Is he where You are?
Could Mohammed move a mountain? Or was that just PR?
any day over the sexually charged music on the radio today.
The Last Temptation of Christ depicting Jesus having sex with a woman - that is not only disrespectful but blasphemous. I see no such attempt to denegrate Christ in Supserstar
Shalom.
He's not portrayed as a rock star. There's one song in which he's referred to (by people questioning him) as a "superstar", but he's not portrayed that way. It's actually a relatively thoughtful portrayal.
It is disrespectful.
That's what I thought. Then I watched it. There's nothing blasphemous or disrespectful about it, in context. Obviously Herod's song is disrespectful. So are Herod's words, as quoted in the gospel. It's an interpretation of the Gospel. You may not like the music, you may not care for the interpretation, you may not like the staging. That's fine. But the show itself is not inherently blasphemous or disrespectful.
(Obviously, the above is my opinion. I speak for myself, not for anyone else. If you want to tell me that that's my opinion only, don't bother - I already know that.)
I thought the same thing the first time I heard it over 30 yrs. ago. But I've since read interviews with Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber about their thoughts when they were writing it. They intended no disrespect, just wondered what it would have been like if Jesus had come to earth in the 20th century instead of the first. If you listen closely to the words, you'll see they are not mocking Jesus, except in those areas in which the Scripture mentions the mockery of the Pharisees and the Romans. It is simply a 'what if' done in the style of the times, that is, rock and roll. It actually shows the limitations of man's imagination when dealing with the power of God.
I've never thought rock and roll was the work of the devil, though some of the folks who sing it are questionable, so I never had a knee jerk reaction about the style of music. I've never seen it performed on stage, but Sir SuziQ and I walked out of the movie because Teddy Neely as Jesus had such a wimpy voice that it was very annoying and not enjoyable. I would love to see it done on stage by a really good cast sometime.
But this school sounds like they'd put up with about as much as they could stand with this family. If the family is not Catholic, it is no wonder they did not agree with stuff going on in the school, whether the school was more liberal or even more traditionally Catholic.