Mel Gibson Responds to Passion Question - What's Up With the Ugly Baby?

Christianity Today ^ | March 3, 2004 | Mark Moring

[FrdmLvr]

When asked why he portrayed Satan—an androgynous, almost beautiful being played by Rosalinda Celentano—the 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 good—but not quite.

Satan is Lucifer before he turned against God and was cast out of Heaven. Lucifer was the most handsome angel in Heaven.

[Victoria Delsoul]

Thanks for the explanation. Nothing good comes from the devil, that's for sure.

[GulliverSwift]

I couldn't help but laugh when I saw that. I knew it wasn't supposed to be funny but it was so completely campy I couldn't help myself. It was right out of a B-level horror flick.

[Zechariah11]

True, no doubt; but after all that juicy action I'd find it pretty hard to get into King James.

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.

[GulliverSwift]

I should add, that it ruined the gravity of the scene for me. Seeing the stupid baby dashed the evocation of suffering that was working so well prior to it.

[af_vet_1981]

It was right out of a B-level horror flick.

Artistic license but unscriptural

[VOA]

bump for future read (haven't seen the film yet)...

[fuzzthatwuz]

Swollen with evilcounts! A pictorial that has been flashing through my mind since seeing "The Passion": Try to picture Hillary as the devil walking through the crowds with a Clinton look-a-like baby on her hip. Wish I had Registered's skills!

[radiohead]

just as a Catholic would blot the spilled Precious Blood with a purificator.

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!

[TigersEye]

ping

[Zechariah11]

You might also consider this that the term "blood of Christ" is known as a " synecdoche" a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole. Here the blood of Christ (part) is put in for the whole (physical and spiritual suffering). You will find that in Isaiah, it is the soul-suffering of Christ which propitiates.

(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.

[Dajjal]

From Barbara Nicolosi's blog:

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 much—just 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.

[.30Carbine]

Here are the biblical teachings on the blood:

1 John 5:6
This is the one who came by water and blood–Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.

1 Peter 1:2
who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood

Hebrews 12:24
to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

1 Corinthians 10:16
Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?

1 Peter 1
18For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, 19but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

Matthew 23:35
And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.

John 19:34
Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.

Hebrews 13:20
May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep

Hebrews 10
18And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin. 19Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, 20by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body

Hebrews 13
11The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. 12And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. 13Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore.

John 6:53
Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you."

Matthew 26:28
This is my blood of the [new] covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Matthew 27:4
"I have sinned," he said, "for I have betrayed innocent blood." "What is that to us?" they replied. "That's your responsibility."

Matthew 27:6
The chief priests picked up the coins and said, "It is against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money."

Matthew 27:24
When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. "I am innocent of this man's blood," he said. "It is your responsibility!"

Matthew 27:25
All the people answered, "Let his blood be on us and on our children!"

John 6:55
"For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink."

Acts 5:28
"We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name," he said. "Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood."

Acts 20:28
Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.

Romans 3:25
God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished–

Romans 5:9
Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!

[AFPhys]

I didn't know Helen Thomas had a cameo in this movie??!

Ah Ha! I knew I'd seen that puss before, but couldn't quite figure where (thankfully).

[TomHarkinIsNotFromIowa]

Was the devil carrying Ebert?

[AFPhys]

It'd be silly to argue with Gibson about his own meaning, but I took it to refer to the seed of the serpent in Genesis 3;15

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.

[Zechariah11]

Thanks but I already know how to use a concordance.