Posted on 02/16/2004 7:22:27 AM PST by rface
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:11:38 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
MEL GIBSON'S soon-to-be-released film "The Passion of the Christ" -- hailed by some as a powerful account of the last hours of Jesus' life, decried by others as an inflammatory screed with anti-Semitic overtones -- has become a lightning rod in the culture wars. The film's conservative defenders have charged that the criticism is driven by liberal fears of religion's growing influence on society. The critics charge that conservatives are using the issue to whip up a hysteria about alleged persecution of religion. Recently, the debate shifted to another inflammatory issue: Holocaust denial and comparisons between the Holocaust and other atrocities.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
I agree that he's passionate about his religion, and that he felt it should be portrayed on film.
I'm not so willing to agree that that's the "bottom line", in the sense of "the" deciding factor for all issues concerning the film. It's one of the relevant factors, to be sure, but hardly the only one.
Because he has done this, he has become a target.
He has become a controversial person working on a controversial project, but I think it may be overstating it to call him a "target". I've read most of the threads on these flaps over the movie, and what many have taken to be "attacks" on him or the film (or Christianity in general) I see as predictable controversies between differing groups, which are taken (on all sides) as "attacks" by the the others due to longstanding concerns, fears, misunderstandings, and defensiveness (all of which are justified to some degree). In short, I think most folks (all around) are overreacting -- lots of people are taking things pretty personally and ending up feeling persecuted.
But truly, it's highly unlikely that anyone will get fed to lions or put into gas chambers over it, nor most of the less dire concerns I've seen voiced.
People can not believe that someone from Hollywood could actually be a morally good person,
I'd like to point out that a lot of that attitude is seen here on FR every day (directed at almost everyone *but* Gibson).
so they try to take quotes out of context
That's a pretty serious charge, do you have support for it? I haven't read the full interview (it should be hitting the newsstands right about now), but the excerpts were, I believe, first printed by NewsMax.com, which seems unlikely to have a motivation to smear Gibson or his work by misrepresenting his answers.
to try to dirty his name or label him a racist.
Again, I doubt that NewsMax.com would have those motives.
Everyone else who has commented on Gibson's available answers from that interview (including the Cathy Young essay) have just worked from the available quotes, and the Young essay reprints the full question and answer.
From the article, the author feels the need to mention Mel's dad (while coyly saying he is not to be blamed for the sins of his father), and his denial of the holocaust.
She "feels the need" to mention Mel's father because that issue is already being hotly discussed, and has been for many weeks. It is and has been a public part of this issue. She can hardly put that genie back in the bottle.
And why do you presume that her pointing out that Mel can't be blamed for his father's views was due to her being "coy"? It seems to me to be an honorable attempt to remind the reader of that fact -- to leave *out* that reminder would itself have been a "coy" attempt to leave the impression of a closer tie. How many times have we faulted, say, the New York Times for *not* making such clarifiers and instead leaving an implied smear?
Then she gives the following quote given to Noonan "My dad taught me my faith, and I believe what he taught me. The man never lied to me in his life." Note that Mel is talking about his faith. Nowhere in the Bible is the holocaust mentioned, so what is the point of this quote?
"What is in the Bible" is not synonymous with someone's "faith". If it were, no one could have any faith-based belief about any event (including modern ones, and their own modern lives) more recent than about 400AD. People's faith includes their views about what happens every day, and what the meaning is historic events which occurred after the New Testament was first set to paper. People on these threads have expressed their faiths about how Gibson has been inspired to make this movie, regardless of the fact that neither Mel Gibson nor movie-making are mentioned in the Bible. Gibson's father's faith may well include his views on the fate of the Jews in World War II -- plus people's outlook on groups of other faiths is almost by definition a belief of faith. Even if it isn't, see next paragraph, but my point is that it's not accurate to say that a person's faith consists *only* of events written in the Bible.
The first sentence is indeed about his faith. The second appears to be a much broader claim, since it talks about what his father has said in Mel's entire life.
The point of including the quote is to show why some people have concerns about whether Mel's father passed to his son his views about the Holocaust, and whether Mel believed them. Mel's statement seems a broad endorsement of everything his father may have passed on to him.
No, it's not "proof" that he agrees with all his father's views, but the point is that it's the sort of statement that raises the question, "um, exactly *how* do you mean that?" In short, it can be taken several ways, and some of those possible meanings would be real cause for concern.
To make the reader think Mel's dad's view on the holocaust is linked to what has been taught to Mel as his faith. Is that accurate journalism? No.
*May* be linked to what has been taut to Mel. Thus the raised eyebrows. Is covering an existing controversy responsible journalism? Yes.
Mel then talks of the people he knows who survived the holocaust. He also lists other atrocities of the war. She then quotes a law prof saying that Mel is close to skirting the issue.
And the law prof is correct. Gibson's answer was, unfortunately, too close to the way in which Holocaust deniers/minimizers tend to try to divert the issue when it is raised. At the very time when he should have been trying to put people's concerns to rest, Gibson managed to only raise more red flags. Not a smooth move, *whatever* his actual beliefs.
Is someone not allowed to talk about all the atrocities of the war in the same paragraph without being accused of being a minimizer of the holocaust? I guess not.
Oh please. Of course they are. However, when someone is already the son of a Holocaust denier, *and* working on a project which could be harmful to Jews if handled poorly or with any sort of lingering animus, and is given an explicit invitation to "go on the record" with their views about the Holocaust, it really *isn't* a bright time to stray from the specific topic and sound like you might be waffling or saying in effect "well, things have been tough all over".
At the very least Gibson should have known that that was not the time to launch into a laundry list of the tragedies of war during the first half of the century, in answer to a very specific question on a topic where his beliefs were already called into some sort of question.
Picture this: Your parents have been brutally murdered in cold blood, but you're beginning to have doubts about whether the detective on the case is truly concerned about catching the killer. You ask him point-blank how seriously he takes that task, and whether he understands what it means to you, and he replies, "I have the crime photos in my file. Of course your parents were killed. Tragedies happen. Crime is horrible. Criminals killed thousands of people this year. Some of them were your parents. Many people lost their lives. In Colombia, drug lords killed countless victims in the 1980's. During the last century, tribal violence in Africa killed millions." Now... Would you feel reassured? Or would you wonder why the detective was babbling about Africa?
Next she talks about how listing all the horrors of the war is somehow now a controversial topic, because I guess no one is allowed to do that anymore.
That's hardly a fair summary of what she said.
And how Mel has just hung himself with his own words.
She didn't say that either, but she did say that he blew an opportunity to allay people's concerns, and instead heightened them by sounding too similar to the sort of answers that Holocaust deniers tend to give. Not his best performance, at the very least.
Two thoughts...
First, I have to wonder if he might have made ambiguous, eyebrow raising answers intentionally because he knew the resulting uproar would bring more publicity to the project.
Second, Gibson may have given an answer which sounded too much like the kind a Holocaust denier would make, because he had so often heard his father approach the topic in that way and Mel had unconsciously picked up the verbal "script" even if he didn't share the beliefs.
I do not see it that way at all. I see a man that made a movie he believes in. He is a publicly religious man and is not afraid to admit it.
I agree.
Now, he is a marked man, because the world is not ready to have a star that is a morally good person.
And here's where I can't agree -- this is way too much of a "persecution" viewpoint for me. I see no evidence that anyone is "after" Gibson because he is a "morally good person", or any other "good person" for that matter. Nor do I think that any of the critics are particularly of the opinion that he is an unusually "good person". His being a "good person" or not seems irrelevant to the players in this drama. If anything, his critics are concerned that he may *not* be a good enough person to make the film without inciting bad feelings among some viewers. In short, I think you have their concerns upside down.
Is Hollywood or the world so cynical that they refuse to believe that something can be done because a good person felt it was the right movie to do?
That's entirely beside the point. Their concern is actually that "good person" or not, if he's not careful he may inflame anti-semitism given the nature of the subject matter. It's a touchy subject (just look at this thread, *cough*), and sure to raise passions (no pun intended) among viewers. It's a possible powderkeg, and some of the likely targets of the potential explosion are just nervous and wanting some reassurances from Gibson that he's going to be appropriately careful with the keg and the matches. And it doesn't help that his father was an arsonist, so to speak.
Nor does it help when Mel seems unresponsive, ambiguous, or flippant in his answers to people's concerns. The author's point is, in a nutshell, "Mel, you had a golden opportunity to calm things down, and you blew it and added fuel to the fire -- no one to blame but yourself for that one."
This is not about "targeting" people because they are "good".
Why are people so afraid of Christians anymore that if there is public display of love for the Lord that person then must be hiding some dark secret.
I haven't seen any evidence that that's anyone's motivation. And it's not like this came out of thin air, or that people were "looking" for any "dark secret". Possible backlash against Jews is a real concern for *any* Passion story (and has been for centuries), and Mel's father's known beliefs about Jews are clearly a very related topic, it's not like someone's concerned about his feelings about tax reform or whatever. Attitudes about Jews *is* the issue.
Then, it is up to any and everyone to do whatever is necessary to destroy that person.
"Everyone" is to "destroy" him, eh? Oookay.
Sorry, I don't agree, and I don't see anyone out to "destroy" him -- or "stop" the film or "keep" people from seeing it, which are other common claims about this fooforah.
The concern about how much he may have been influenced by his father's views, and how much that may have affected the portrayals in the film is a legitimate one, even if in the end it turns out to be unfounded. But until the film is released in its final form, it's not irrational to have concerns about whether it might be inflammatory or not, and to express those concerns in the hopes of either being reassured, or having some influence on ensuring that the film is done responsibly.
That seems to well explain all the flap that has been going on, and I see no need to invoke conspiracies to "destroy" people for being "good".
Well, that and the ADL's maneuvering for their own publicity.
Every negative thing I have read about Mel was due to quotes taken out of context
Again, I ask you to please substantiate this claim.
or quotes that were put in that are totally off subject to deceive the reader.
Issues of how sensitive he might be to the concerns of Jews, while making a film of a subject historically proven to be able to inflame some people against Jews, are hardly "totally off subject".
I am not falling for it.
I don't think anyone is trying to deceive you.
I don't care who the journalist is or what she/he wrote before.
My only reason for presenting passages of essays that the author has written before was to demonstrate how incorrect it was to naively denounce her as a "liberal", "socialist", "anti-Christian", "Trotskyite", etc. The quoted passages made it clear that she very often lambasted liberals and socialists, had no love for the old Soviet system, and stood up for Christians when they were being discriminated against.
I was under no illusion that the quality of prior essays necessarily made the current one any stronger or weaker.
In my first post on this thread, I took no issue with anyone for disagreeing with the essay or disagreeing with my views of it. My only point in that post was that rather than discussing the contents of the essay, I was disappointed that way too many Freepers chose to dismissively "label" the author based on what they imagined (incorrectly in most cases) her political or religious stance might be, or what opinion they presumed she might hold on another topic. Presuming and calling someone, say, a "liberal" for no reason other than a dislike of their opinion is not only an ad hominem insult, it's extremely sloppy thinking -- if it can even be called "thinking". I expect that sort of behavior at DU. I like to think we're better than that here -- and usually we are.
Again, thank you for your thoughtful post. While I didn't agree with all of it, I do very much appreciate it when anyone takes the time to explain their positions and reasons, and present them in a good-natured way. After our first few snipes at each other, it was good of you to set that aside and make the effort to start fresh. My hat's off to you.
Fair enough.
In this article, Young inferred that Gibson had discounted the severity of the offense of Nazi Germany by daring to refer to the horrors of communist Russia in the same breath.
No, actually, she didn't. She pointed out that by giving the same sort of answer that Holocaust deniers use to discount the severity of the Holocaust, Gibson managed to raise more concerns about what his beliefs might be instead of soothing concerns, right when he had been given an engraved invitation to do so.
I expanded on this in the post I made right before this one, if you'd like to read it.
My point was that she projected her own sentiments upon Gibson's, and in so doing invalidated her assertion.
On what grounds do you claim to know "her own sentiments"?
She implicitly discounts the severity of the offenses of communists, who inflicted far more evil upon the world and its citizens, than did Hitler,
Okay, I'll bite -- exactly where do you think she did this?
On the contrary, she makes a point of pointing out the hypocrisy of people who *do* "discount the severity of the offenses of communists. Consider again the following passage from her essay:
The double standard applied to Nazi and communist crimes has long been a sore point among critics of the Western left, and it's a legitimate charge -- made, among others, by British writer Martin Amis in the 2002 book about Stalin's reign of terror, "Koba the Dread."This is a clear statement *condemning* a double standard, and *explicitly* stating that "the Soviet regime engaged in mass murder on a Nazi-like scale".Gulag revisionism is not stigmatized the way Holocaust revisionism is. Historian Robert Thurston's 1996 book, "Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia," which argued that bad things happened but there was no systematic deliberate terror, was published by Yale University Press and received blurbs from respected scholars hailing it as "thought-provoking" and "original." Meanwhile, "The Black Book of Communism," a 1999 book documenting communism's bloody record, was widely criticized as sensationalist and biased.
So yes, there is a double standard because communism is seen as having "progressive" goals. And yes, the Soviet regime engaged in mass murder on a Nazi-like scale.
So again I ask, how do you manage to arrive at the conclusion that "her own sentiments" are somehow to "implicitly discount the severity of the offenses of communists"?
in order to paint Gibson with foul innuendo that cannot be sustained with fact.
Which "foul innuendo" would that be -- that he blew his chance to clear things up and managed to make it worse? Seems pretty unarguable to me.
I did not insult her: I asserted that, based upon the point of view of her article, one intimating much proving little, she must have an agenda to advance that she cannot sustain with facts.
Maybe you don't consider it an insult to falsely accuse someone of excusing mass murder when communists do it, but *I* would sure be insulted if you made such a false claim about me -- and I suspect you would to were you the subject of such a charge.
In fact, you present it *as* a condemnation of her, so why do you now say that it would be no insult?
I concluded that she wished to suppress viewing of the movie.
Based on...? This "conclusion" seems to have arrived out of the blue, even taking into account your misreading of her comments about the Soviet mass murders.
My pivotal conclusion, one derived from the apparent intellectual dishonesty displayed in crafting the article,
Would you care to revise that assessment after taking another look at what she *actually* wrote about the Soviet mass murders?
was that she fears piety and Christian religious sentiment, or believe them to be impossible or dishonest.
Yet another conclusion which appears to have been pulled out of a hat, instead of built upon a logical progression founded upon facts in evidence. Would you care to spell out the missing steps?
She implicitly doubts Gibson's piety by implying him to be insincere (the "yes, but" accusation).
No, she doubts Gibson's PR-savvy when he sticks his foot that far into his own mouth when he should have been staying on topic (topic: Attitudes towards Jews, not a global review of warfare over the past century.)
In that, I may have erred.
I suggest that you have.
On the other hand, Young may have erred in authoring an article charged with innuendo and potentially, with intellectual dishonesty.
Or you may have misread it.
I suggest that she might be more careful in her condemnations, if she wishes to avoid criticism, in the future. I do not owe her an apology.
Not even for accusing her of excusing murders by communists, when she explicitly condemned the double standard by which some on the left do so?
That my comments were taken out of context - and called simple-minded as a result of that - might suggest that I am owed one.
I think I'll stand by that assessment unless you can salvage your argument.
By the by, I am still proud to be a Freeper, more than ever.
I'm glad to hear that, as am I most of the time.
Regards.
And to you.
What did you select for dinner?
I don't. You chose to take my use of the word ignorant and link it to an idea 2 paragrahs down. My comment regarding your ignorance was in response to:
1) Your implicit assertion that my 4 great uncles were Nazi soldiers, who on that basis deserved their deaths,
2) Your implicit assertion that my family was in part responsible for Hitler's rise and reign, and
3) Your ignorance of what a Mennonite is - a strict, seperatist sect of Christianity who are pacifists, shun most modern conveniences, avoid contact with non-Mennonites and live in remote, agrarian areas.
***
You derived and extracted the word complicit from the phrase bear the responsibility.
One can be responsible without being complicit or one can be both. I don't know that your great uncles were complicit. Your story portrays them as martyrs. If they were genuine Christians they surely would have resisted evil unto death and been martyrs. Therefore they would not have been complicit. Their level of responsibility would have depended on their knowledge about Germany and what actions they took.
There is no need to call names.
Ah, but it's okay to accuse my family of being Nazis and "bearing responsibility" for the rise of Hitler. And now, just for good measure, accuse them of not being genuine Christians if they didn't resist the Nazis and become martyrs. How dare you, sir! Just because they don't meet your sense of ethics, faith or martyrdom does not make them any less "genuine" of a Christian. In some faiths, your act of volunteering for military duty is viewed as being contrary to the Christian faith. I don't hold that view, but it was rude for you to make such a statement.
You said I portrayed them as martyrs. I never said they were martyrs. I do think they were victims of the atrocities of war.
Which goes back to the point of my entire participation in this thread. Mel Gibson is being attacked, in part, because of his statement that many atrocities occurred in the last century and his refusal to kowtow to the PC notion of Jewish exclusivity of victimhood status.
Another poster got off on a tangent about which ethnic group suffered more and I responded. Most Americans whose families are not recent immigrants have little knowledge of living in a war zone and the atrocities of war. I tried to relate a little of my family history to help FReepers understand and you chose to impugn my family honor in response.
The victims of the atrocities of the last century remain dead, infirm or dispossessed. Playing the blame game or debating which ethnic group suffered more is pointless.
To be honest, I haven't seen much in you that reminds me of what I read in the book about the Christian side. You believe otherwise, I'm sure, but that's your perogative. I wouldn't dream of telling you what you should believe.
You wrote that they were conscripted into the German army (which was run by the Nazis). Did they participate in the Nazi German army or were they martyred for resisting ? Did they kill Americans ? I don't see them as "victims of the atrocities of war" if they fought for the Nazis. You have to tell us which it was.
I think that the term "rancid dingbat" was quite mild. I would have said something much worse.
Sort of like comparing an aborted innocent baby being compared to a convicted murderer receiving a death sentence...Yet, the liberal left think it's okay to abort the babies and are horrified that we could sentence a mass murderer to death.
It is an article of faith for many Christians, that we are NOT of this world. For the Amish or Mennonites or Quakers, they have taken this Biblical scripture to separating themselves from society.
I'm all done debating with your circular logic and will ignore your posts in the future.
Who the hell are YOU to judge what is moral or right, what ones duty to others should be or who or what is evil?
"For if the Pope was the infallible head of the church, how was it that different popes proclaimed different views? How could they all be infallible?"
is certainly not something derived from your personal experiences. It evidences a serious misunderstanding of the doctrine of infallibility. It is an anti-Catholic statement, since it implicitly condemns Catholic doctrine as false and also implies that Catholicism is a false religion. It may not be hateful, but it is anti-Catholic.
Regards.
Doctrines have never changed. We need to clarify what you mean by positions and principles, in order for us to clarify what the Church actually teaches about papal infallibility. A policy certainly us not the same thing as a doctrine, so we may drop that term from the discussion.
It is indeed a pity that a cleric said something so stupid to you about attending public school and salvation. That has never been a teaching of the Church, believe me. Regards.
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