Soeharto is gone, but the long-time tyrant continues to bring about discontent in Indonesia.

The cover of the Feb. 4-10 issue of Tempo magazine depicted the recently deceased Soeharto and his children in the manner of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, and naturally provoked plenty of gripes from Christian organizations.

Indeed, the analogy between Soeharto and Jesus set off a few alarms. An email with an attached document regarding Tempo magazine circulated on my high school alumni mailing list. But being suspicious of email attachments, I only learned of the furor later through the Feb. 6 front page and editorial of Komentar.

The Manado-based newspaper editorial described Tempo's cover as "certainly offensive," as "Christians consider the image of he Last Supper to be sacred." In other words, Tempo not only had come uninvited to the holy communion reserved for Christians, but it had made Soeharto the guest of honor. For playing with the Supper, the magazine's chief editor was made to eat humble pie.

All right, so I spiced up that last part. But allow me to join in the rhetorical feast and perhaps break bread with my fellow Christians who were particularly offended by the slight.

To say that we as Christians were snubbed by the parody of da Vinci's work is to say that we felt violated by its unflattering use. The association of Jesus with scandal-ridden Soeharto was not only erroneous, many would say, it was also unwarranted.

But our disapproval may be premature, because who's to say that Christians have a monopoly on da Vinci's imaginative creation -- a product completed centuries before the concept of intellectual rights even existed? When Tempo parodied The Last Supper, who did it violate -- Christians or da Vinci?

We ought to be able to discern our view of the revered God, as embodied by Jesus, from an artistic work of an Italian painter. In other words, we need take the magic out of the object.

And historical context often proves handy when it comes to exorcising the illusion of holiness.

The famous mural by da Vinci is documented to have been created in the closing years of the 15th century for the Duke of Milan, whose family emblem and images adorn the painting.

It was a material object created from a painter's imagination, not by divine revelation, as evident in the photographic position of the figures in the painting -- they all sit in one row as if to pose for the painter. The actual Lord's Supper presumably had Jesus and the twelve apostles sitting around the table.

And rumor has it that da Vinci hired a bakery boy to pose for Jesus, while Judas was modeled after a tough-looking convict. Such stories behind The Last Supper may very well be cooked up, but they serve as a good reminder that there is nothing inherently sacred in the painting.

The aura of godliness comes instead from elsewhere. If we are to believe the Marxist philosopher Walter Benjamin, it is partly a product of capitalist production. To summarize him, before the time of mass reproduction, an object like a painting on church wall carried a ceremonial value and radiated a religious aura.

But when technology permits reproduction of the painting in infinite numbers and forms, the object takes on a different kind of aura that comes from its exhibition value (people fly half way around the globe just to see The Last Supper in Milan), singularity (there's only one in the entire world), originality (an authentic da Vinci!), age, even history of ownership.

The supposed sanctity of The Last Supper is not likely to have come from the actual mural, as those offended by the parody are not likely to have seen it, but is arguably the effect of the painting's mass reproduction. Replicas of da Vinci's rendering of the Lord's Supper so saturate our culture -- pop and religious -- that they are now dislodged from the historical context and stand as representations of the actual Lord's Supper.

Mass reproduction also guarantees recognizability. The illustrator at Tempo didn't need to spell out what the cover alluded to. Replicas of the mural are ubiquitous and recognizable enough to get across the thematic association. Alas, an artistic rendition of the sacred moment is mistaken as the actual sacred thing -- thus its parody, an insult.

The church is partly to blame for this muddle. Some churches encourage a credulous mind-set with regards to religious objects. A friend of mine, for instance, refused to take part in the Catholic communion, because as a child in Catholic school she was told that the sacramental bread and wine are the real flesh and blood of Jesus. I didn't dispute her story because I, too, was told similar thing, hence we're not supposed to chew the bread. In vino veritas with a twist -- in wine is the real thing!

Call it an unholy alliance -- where religious institutions and capitalist productions actually feed each other, where material objects are used to nourish faith and faith helps sell the objects. Thus we have a parody of a work of art charged with blasphemy.

Tempo's clever use of da Vinci's work indeed got people's attention, which is perhaps what the magazine really wanted. But it's a shame if our attention stops at the cover. At issue, rather, is what we need to do with Soeharto's sinister legacy. Let's chew on that.

The writer lectures at the International Center, Keio University, Tokyo. She can be reached at elizabeth.chandra@gmail.com.

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