Frank Rich: 'Passion' and the U.S. culture war

Frank Rich: 'Passion' and the U.S. culture war Frank Rich NYT Friday, March 5, 2004

NEW YORK Thank God - I think. Mel Gibson has granted me absolution for my sins. As "The Passion of the Christ" approached the $100 million mark, the star appeared on "The Tonight Show,'" where Jay Leno asked if he would forgive me. "Absolutely," he responded, adding that his dispute with me was "not personal." Then he waxed philosophical: "You try to perform an act of love even for those who persecute you, and I think that's the message of the film."

Thus we see the gospel according to Mel. If you criticize his film and the Jew-baiting by which he promoted it, you are persecuting him - all the way to the bank. If he says that he wants you killed, he wants your intestines "on a stick" and he wants to kill your dog - such was his fatwa against me in September - not only is there nothing personal about it but it's an act of love. And that is indeed the message of his film. "The Passion" is far more in love with putting Jesus' intestines on a stick than with dramatizing his godly teachings, which are relegated to a few brief, cryptic flashbacks.

With its laborious build-up to its orgasmic spurtings of blood and other bodily fluids, the film is constructed like nothing so much as a porn movie, replete with slo-mo climaxes and pounding music. Of all the "Passion" critics, no one has nailed its artistic vision more precisely than the journalist Christopher Hitchens, who called it a homoerotic "exercise in lurid sadomasochism" for those who "like seeing handsome young men stripped and flayed alive over a long period of time."

If "The Passion" is a joy ride for sadomasochists, conveniently cloaked in the plain-brown wrapping of religiosity, does that make it bad for the Jews? Not necessarily. As a director, Gibson is no Leni Riefenstahl. His movie is just too ponderous to spark a pogrom on its own - in America anyway. The one ugly incident reported on Ash Wednesday, in which the Lovingway United Pentecostal Church posted a marquee reading "Jews Killed the Lord Jesus," occurred in Denver, where the local archbishop, Charles Chaput, had thrown kindling on the fire by promoting the movie for months. Whether "The Passion" will prove quite as benign in Europe and the Arab world is a story yet to be told.

But speaking as someone who has never experienced serious bigotry, I must confess that, whatever happens abroad, the fracas over "The Passion" has made me feel less secure as a Jew in America than ever before. My quarrel is not with most of the millions of Christian believers who are moved to tears by "The Passion." They bring their own deep feelings to the theater with them, and when Gibson pushes their buttons, however crudely, they generously do his work for him, supplying from their hearts the authentic spirituality that is missing in his jamboree of bloody beefcake. Jews, after all, can overcompensate for mediocre filmmaking in exactly the same way; even the schlockiest movies about the Holocaust (Robin Williams as "Jakob the Liar," anyone?) will move some audiences to tears by simply evoking the story's bare bones in Hollywood kitsch.

What concerns me much more are those with leadership positions in the secular world - including those in the media - who have given Gibson, "The Passion" and its most incendiary hucksters a free pass for behavior that is unambiguously contrived to vilify Jews.

Start with the movie itself. There is no question that it rewrites history by making Caiaphas and the other high priests the prime instigators of Jesus' death while softening Pontius Pilate, an infamous Roman thug, into a reluctant and somewhat conscience-stricken executioner. "The more benign Pilate appears in the movie, the more malignant the Jews are," is how Elaine Pagels describes Gibson's modus operandi in The New Yorker this week. As if that weren't enough, the Jewish high priests are also depicted as grim sadists with bad noses and teeth - Shylocks and Fagins from 19th-century stock. Yet in those early screenings that Gibson famously threw for conservative politicos in Washington last summer and autumn, not a person in attendance, from Robert Novak to Peggy Noonan, seems to have recognized these obvious stereotypes, let alone spoken up about them in their profuse encomiums to the film.

Nor do some of these pundits seem to recognize Holocaust denial when it is staring them in the face. In an interview in the current Reader's Digest, Noonan asks Gibson: "The Holocaust happened, right?" After saying that some of his best friends "have numbers on their arms," he responds: "Yes, of course. Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps." Yes, mistakes happened, atrocities happened, war happened, some of the victims were Jews. This is the classic language of contemporary Holocaust deniers, from David Irving to Gibson's own father, Hutton Gibson, a prominent anti-Semitic author and activist. Their rhetorical strategy is to diminish Hitler's extermination of Jews by folding those deaths into the war's overall casualty figures, as if the Holocaust were an idle byproduct of battle instead of a Third Reich master plan for genocide. Rather than challenge Gibson on this, Noonan merely reinforces his junk history. "So the point is that life is tragic and it is full of fighting and violence, mischief and malice," she replies.

No, that is not the point of the history of the Holocaust. Of course, if a Jew points out such callousness, he is not practicing journalism or trying to clarify the historical record. He is instead "rabidly anti-Christian," as James Dobson of Focus on the Family is fond of describing Jews who raise questions about Gibson. The message is clear: Jews who criticize a poor, defenseless multimillionaire movie star and his film are behaving much as Caiaphas and his cronies do in "The Passion" itself. There's a consistency of animus here.

There is also a mighty strange inversion of reality. America is 82 percent Christian, and 60 percent of the population believes the Bible is historical fact. (The Jewish population is 2 percent.) The president of the United States has endorsed Jesus as his favorite philosopher, and Gibson's movie had almost as large an opening week as "The Lord of the Rings." The star has won his battle. He's hotter than ever in Hollywood, a town whose first commandment is that you never argue with a hit. ("If Hitler did a movie with these numbers, we'd give him his next deal," one Jewish mogul told me in a phone conversation this week.) So by what stretch of the imagination is Gibson so aggrieved that he can go on "The Tonight Show," purport to be a victim and not be laughed at by Leno or anyone else? For all his talk of "suffering" for his art, it's hard to see exactly how Gibson has suffered.

The vilification of Jews by Gibson, his film and some of his allies, unchallenged by his media enablers, is not happening in a vacuum. We are in the midst of an escalating election-year culture war in which those of "faith" are demonizing so-called secularists - any Jews critical of Gibson and their fellow travelers, liberals.

Politicians, we are learning, seem increasingly eager to wrap themselves in "The Passion of the Christ" as a handy signal to indicate they are opposed to all those "secularists" whose conspiracy is undermining all that right-thinking Americans hold near and dear. Predictably enough, both the president and Mrs. Bush have publicly indicated their desire to see Gibson's film. But when even Connecticut's John Rowland, a scandal-ridden governor facing impeachment, starts to rave about "The Passion" in public ("unbelievable!" "breathtaking!"), as he did last weekend, it's clear that we're witnessing the birth of a phenomenon. You come away from this whole sorry story feeling that Jesus died in "The Passion of the Christ" so cynics, whether seeking bucks or votes, could inherit the earth.

Contrast with this:

Gibson transcends electronic medium with a passion
The Australian ^ | March 4, 04 | Frank Devine
Posted on 03/04/2004 5:00:15 PM PST by churchillbuff

Gibson transcends electronic medium with a passion

March 05, 2004 IT'S gratifying to learn that Mel Gibson has got $US146 million ($194 million) back in a week from his $US40 million personal financing of The Passion of the Christ. The opening burst is from North America only. The picture hasn't yet been released in most parts of the world.

One reason for my interest in the money-spinning side of Gibson's risky venture - when others are more high-mindedly concerned with its religious and cultural aspects - is simple mean-spiritedness. It's one in the eye for The New York Times.

After a year of breaking its back and its principles, first to prevent the movie getting a showing, and then to condemn it as encouraging anti-Semitism and being faithless to the scriptural record, the Times published a spiteful little story last week under the headline, "New movie may harm Gibson's career".

It quoted two Hollywood studio chiefs saying, in effect, that Mel would never eat lunch in this town again. They would, themselves, never do business with him.

Hollywood being Hollywood and shareholders being shareholders, it's hard to credit studio heads black-balling a maker of (conceivably) a billion- dollar movie. According to The Los Angeles Times, Gibson avoided the Oscar ceremonies this week, having been invited to attend as a presenter, because he was afraid of being booed.

If this was really the reason for his absence, Mel should probably have taken his chances. Hollywood being Hollywood, a take of $US125 million in the first week would have caused an awful lot of boos to catch in the throat. It may well be in my nature to linger over the coarsely materialistic aspects of Gibson's success against the odds, but there is no question that there are other, far more powerful benefits in Passion's securing a large audience.

Consider that the nine other movies in the present top 10 US box office winners are: 50 First Dates, Twisted (of the serial killer genre), Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, Miracle (about the victory of the 1980 American Olympic ice hockey team over the Russians), Eurotrip (teenage sex comedy), Welcome to Mooseport (political farce), Barbershop 2 and Broken Lizard's Club Dread (yet another slasher horror flick spoof).

Since I have seen none of them, it would be impetuous to dismiss them as gunk, though I don't believe the danger of error is high. However, every one of these pictures - with their plot synopses a pretty reliable guide - is the work of a collective of marketers, money changers, publicists, opinion pollsters and studio chiefs steeped in cynicism.

Gibson's picture, by contrast, is a work of personal inspiration. Its success at the box office may erode the hegemony of the depraved collective, especially as it provides far less leeway for rip-off imitation than other successful movies of originality and individuality.

Then there is the matter of accusations against The Passion of fostering anti-Semitism. Writing with transparent honesty (unlike some of his colleagues) in The New York Times, William Safire asserts that Gibson searches in the movie for someone to blame for Jesus's tortures, and settles on the Jews.

I am entirely unable to share this perception. The high priest Caiphas is depicted as villainous, a cruel, power-seeking political schemer.

But a considerable number of dissenters in the Jewish leadership are shown being brutally silenced by Caiphas's claque.

As others have pointed out, all the good people in the picture are Jews. In a telling scene, a Roman soldier uses "Jew!" as an insult against the noble Simon of Cyrene, who helps Jesus carry his cross and tries to protect him from the clubs and whips of the soldiers.

A large audience, I think, ensures a greater plurality against the evil foolishness of attributing Caiphas's wickedness to others. Finally, I need to turn to the personal to make the most important point about Gibson's movie.

It's always been my feeling that religious belief belongs to one's inner life, nurtured and strengthened during a lifetime of experience, observation and contemplation. Externalities just provide the scaffolding. On the other hand, religion has inspired all forms of art through all the generations, and religious art stirs the emotions.

Sometimes it brings tears, not for Jesus, because his suffering and death are awesome, but for the frail human beings in his company. For poor Judas. For Peter, bravely following Jesus to his place of trial, and then devoting the rest of his life to expiating his failure of nerve under direct threat. For the women who followed Jesus to Calvary.

Until now, the new mediums - moving pictures with sound, electronically transmitted - have for the most part resisted depiction of transcendent concepts.

Gibson may have drawn the first sketchy explorer's map. The Passion of the Christ is a true work of art, and enters the inner life.

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