Posted on 03/04/2004 9:43:15 AM PST by NYer
"Please explain the symbolism in the scene showing Satan holding a bald baby. Thank you."
Rosalinda Celentano as Satan |
That's just one of dozens of e-mails we've received in the last few days, asking about a surreal scene in The Passion of The Christ where Satan is shown cradling a hideous baby who looks like he's about 40 years old.
The scene occurs during the flogging of Christ. Satan is passing through a crowd of onlookers, cradling an infant in his arms. The baby turns to face the camera, revealing a sinister infant, creeping out audiences everywhere.
We took your questions straight to the source, e-mailing Mel Gibson's publicist for an answer.
When asked why he portrayed Satanan androgynous, almost beautiful being played by Rosalinda Celentanothe way he did, Gibson replied: "I believe the Devil is real, but I don't believe he shows up too often with horns and smoke and a forked tail. The devil is smarter than that. Evil is alluring, attractive. It looks almost normal, almost goodbut not quite.
"That's what I tried to do with the Devil in the film. The actor's face is symmetric, beautiful in a certain sense, but not completely. For example, we shaved her eyebrows. Then we shot her almost in slow motion so you don't see her blinkthat's not normal. We dubbed in a man's voice in Gethsemane even though the actor is a woman That's what evil is about, taking something that's good and twisting it a little bit."
But what about the ugly baby?
"Again," said Gibson, "it's evil distorting what's good. What is more tender and beautiful than a mother and a child? So the Devil takes that and distorts it just a little bit. Instead of a normal mother and child you have an androgynous figure holding a 40-year-old 'baby' with hair on his back. It is weird, it is shocking, it's almost too muchjust like turning Jesus over to continue scourging him on his chest is shocking and almost too much, which is the exact moment when this appearance of the Devil and the baby takes place."
Satan is Lucifer before he turned against God and was cast out of Heaven. Lucifer was the most handsome angel in Heaven.
This is an excellent point which should not be dismissed so easily by others. The movie was great art, but how many of those who viewed it will turn to our "daily bread", the Scriptures to become occupied with Christ in their hearts and minds. The impressions of the film will eventually fade from our memories.
Artistic license but unscriptural
Thank you so much for posting this! I was struck by it in the film and couldn't figure out why they were doing this. As a former Catholic, I had forgotten this ritual and now I know exactly what they were doing. Of course!
(Isa. 53:10 a) Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief; when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin.
This accounts for the statement and observation of our Lord at the height of His trevail, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
The perfection of the soul of Christ has as its prefiguring OT analogy the blood of spotless Levitical (animal) sacrifices. Animals did not have sinless souls to offer, Christ did.
THE REAL POTC CONTROVERSY: THAT CREEPY BABY?
Thursday, March 04, 2004
THE REAL POTC CONTROVERSY: THAT CREEPY BABY?
Christianity Today goes right to the source to get to the bottom of the creepy baby moment in POTC.
"Again," said Gibson, "it's evil distorting what's good. What is more tender and beautiful than a mother and a child? So the Devil takes that and distorts it just a little bit. Instead of a normal mother and child you have an androgynous figure holding a 40-year-old 'baby' with hair on his back. It is weird, it is shocking, it's almost too muchjust like turning Jesus over to continue scourging him on his chest is shocking and almost too much, which is the exact moment when this appearance of the Devil and the baby takes place."
At the roughcut screening I attended back in June, THIS was the scene that threw the Evangelical minister also in attendance into a hissy fit. (I went home that night and wrote the conversation down, but some of what follows is paraphrasing.) The minister kept pressing Mel to delete from the film, "Anything in the movie that isn't in the Bible."
Mel said, "Like what? What in my movie isn't in the Bible?"
Mel's confusion here comes from the fact that he, like any devout artist, doesn't see artistic license which is consonant with the spirit of the Scriptures to be "not in the Bible." I think he would say, "What I made is in the Bible - between the lines."
Anyway, the pastor guy said, "It isn't in the Bible that Satan talked to Jesus in the Garden."
Mel responded, "Don't you think Satan was there?"
Minister retorted, to the effect of, "It doesn't matter what I THINK. It matters what is written in the Word of God."
At this point, I burst in to the exchange. "Where in the Bible do God and Adam touch index fingers?" The pastor didn't say anything. I think Mel laughed. I stomped all over my point as usual, "The fact is, that image is one of the most enduring and powerful sacred images in human history." I turned to Mel. "Don't change your movie to please the sensibilities of any particular sect in Christendom. Change the movie if you think you are being somehow untrue to the Scriptures."
The minister was not happy with me. He waited a few cold seconds of silence and then talked past me to Mel. "And that scene with the ugly baby. What was that?"
Mel said, "I dunno. I just thought it was really creepy. Didn't you think it was creepy?"
Minister guy: "But what is it supposed to mean?"
Me: "Satan brought a friend. He wanted to share it with a friend."
Mel laughed. "Yeah, he brought a friend!"
Minister guy persisted with exasperation, "But WHERE did you get that from?"
In other words, "You DIDN'T get it in the Bible, because I KNOW the Bible."
Mel, at this point was getting just as exasperated, "I dunno. I guess I just pulled it out of my a##."
FABULOUS! It still makes me laugh! The minister was appropriately horrified. I just thought it was perfectly appropriate.
Is there a better synthesis of the experience of the devout artist who stands back and looks at the work of thier hands, very aware that what they have wrought has come from they don't know where. The Pope speaks about artists as being conduits of Divine revelation. I have experienced every so often getting into a zone with my writing - especially fiction writing - in which the words all of a sudden pour out of me, and I only know "afterwords" that I didn't start writing with anywhere close to the ideas/formulations that suddenly appeared on the page.
Ah Ha! I knew I'd seen that puss before, but couldn't quite figure where (thankfully).
No matter what Gibson's what main thoughts were when he created this work of art, I believe that God inspired it, and incorporated more into it than even Gibson knew or intended. Perhaps there is a far deeper message or meaning involved in this scene, as well as many others.
There are often many facets incorporated into inspired messages from God, whether that message be the Bible, a sermon, Christian art, a prophesy, or this movie. The human instrument is often not aware of all aspects of that message, and is charged to relate it faithfully for God, not to explain it fully.
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