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

IHT ^ | 03/05/04 | Frank Rich

[Pikamax]

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.

[h.a. cherev]

Just because I understand your view doesn't mean I agree with it.

I have to run. Thanks for taking the time to chat and have a great day.

[h.a. cherev]

Thanks...and thanks for taking the time to chat. I have to run, so have a great day.

[hchutch]

When someone squeals like this... does that mean a nerve's been struck?

[stanz]

Frank Rich is a miserable human being who probably has few friends and was shunned in high school. But, of course, HE is not biased. No, he's just another sad Metrosexual employed by a leftist organization. What can you expect?

[Poohbah]

When you throw a stick at a pack of dogs...the one who yelps is the one you hit.

[stanz]

A very innocuous photo for such a miserable man.

[Aggie1]

If films like this are going to be denounced for inciting violence against Jews will Nazi films be denounced for inciting violence against Germans?

I will not see the film as it is inappropriate to portray God the Son in a play taking artistic liberty with what He said and did. Besides, I've read The Book. I really don't understand why so many Christians seem much more excited about the movie but not nearly as excited about The Book. My take on it is it's because Christians aren't necessarily immune from the Hollywood and cultural influence of the times. Feelings and emotions trump thought and reason.

However, from what I have read it follows close to what actually took place. The truth can be brutal and hurt. The Jews and Romans were simply the agents while we were all the cause of His death. Let's not loose the forest because we can't see past the trees.

See Isaiah 53:5-6, "But he [was] wounded for our transgressions, [he was] bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace [was] upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all".

And so the issue of the suffering and death of Christ is summed up by Paul: 1Cr 15:1-4, "Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand,by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures".

[Dr.Deth]

Yawwwwn. You still at it? I wish I cared enough to argue with you, but I'll just let you run about and be wrong for a while longer.

[betty boop]

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.

O my. This fellow has some kind of persecution complex. No one is vilifying Jews for heaven's sake; but it's open-season on liberals because Rich is right: We are in a culture war. The "so-called secularists" are fair game. Rich should just stop crying and whining and realize that men of the Left do not own the "commons" -- the public discourse -- lock, stock, and barrel.

Perhaps this very realization is what has driven Frank Rich into such a frenzy over Mel Gibson and The Passion.

[walden]

"'All that tells me is that your local Jewish paper is run by a bunch of liberals.'

I don't see how. They published quotes from Jewish and Christian clergy. How could you conclude anything about their politics from that?"

Because I recognize the positions of the Christian clergy as coinciding with the liberal branch of every Christian denomination. (I do a lot of reading in the religion forum as well, and my own denomination, Episcopal, is split perhaps worse than any of them.) Liberal Christians want forgiveness without repentence, and would prefer never to hear the word "sin", whereas conservative Christianity is much more muscular. Liberal Christians "interpret" (by which I mean "re-invent") the bible in the same way that political liberals "interpret" the U.S. Constitution.

So, the paper chose religious leaders from both faiths, but all of the same political orientation. The question is not so much split on the Jewish/Christian axis so much as on the Liberal/Conservative axis.

Whether you see the movie or not, I would caution you that reading the Gospels is just a start on understanding Christianity. Beyond them I would recommend the rest of the New Testament, "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis, and, if you really want to get into it, "A Short History of Christian Thought" by Linwood Urban.

However, the more I read of these "Passion" reviews, the more I am coming to believe that Christianity is something that can only truly be understood, if at all, from the inside. Sort of like how no woman truly understands men, or vice-versa. Know what I mean?

[walden]

I wish you would stop beating around the bush and just come out and tell us how you really feel. ;)

[jpl]

My quarrel is not with most of the millions of Christian believers who are moved to tears by "The Passion."

Oh Frank, your lies are so transparent.

[x]

This is taking the personal a little too far. Frank and Mel could exchange angry letters among themselves, and leave the rest of the public alone. Times readers would have benefited from reading someone who wasn't so directly involved in the controversy.

When a columnist -- like Rich or Dowd -- becomes a machine that simply responds automatically when certain buttons are pushed, what's the point of reading their work?

[mombonn]

Well, I tried to read it, but it was too nauseating. I can't wait to read the replies.

What a moron.

[Ann Archy]

You asked if Rich is gay....I asked that myself....he sure ACTS gay. I think he's married, but she could be a beard. He was the Broadway critic for many years....maybe he saw one too many musicals!

[Polybius]

It seems that "anti-Semitism" has been defined as anything that portrays any Jew at any time in history as less than good and blameless. ……… I doubt that. But I can understand why you might feel this way.

I guess I should make it clear that I am writing rhetorically in regards to the Leftists who make it a profession to be easily offended.

Is there no concept of the individual Jew as imperfect human beings apart from the entire Jewish people?……………. Were the Nazi's Christian?……. No need to respond to these questions, but I've asked them of other Christians. Would you be surprised to learn that they don't consider any of these types to be Christian? The only ones they consider Christians were those who helped the Jews.

Was Nazi Germany “Christian”? You betcha.

Of course, it can be argued that the top Nazi leadership was atheist and that “true Christians” would not have act that way, etc. Be that as it may, most of the rank and file German troops in the trenches considered themselves to be “good Germans” and “good Christians”. Their religious education was obscenely warped by the Hitler Youth but they truly believed they were saving Christianity and Germany by acting like savages towards the Jews, the Slavs and the other untermenchen.

Their belt buckles even declared “Gott Mit Uns”……..”God is with us”.

To answer your question more directly, no Jew likes to learn that someone who was born Jewish has committed some misdeed which might reflect badly on all Jews. But, strange as you may find it, that's how we think...that the misdeeds of one are reflected upon us all.

It goes both ways. It is very embarrassing to know that young Germans believed that they were being good Catholics and good Lutherans by serving the Third Reich. It is comforting to know that millions of American Catholics and Protestants though they were serving God and Country by fighting such evil.

However, the problem comes when the guilt felt by one party is acted out in such a way so that a second party must never mention any wrongs of the first party.

My particular family tree all goes back to Spain. So, I have to face the fact that some of my ancestors acted wrongly towards some of your Sefardi ancestors or distant cousins during the Inquisition.

In America, with it’s Protestant heritage, the sins of Spain and the Catholic Church are magnified and those of England are minimized. Everyone knows about the Spanish Inquisition and about the expulsion of the Jews from Spain after 1492. However, how many Americans know that, in 1217, English Jews were made to wear yellow badges or that all Jews were expelled from England in 1290 not to return for 350 years?

For 200 years, while Jews lived in the Catholic Kingdoms of Spain, England had been ethnically cleansed of all Jews. But, today, only Spain is vilified for it's treatment of the Jews.

The History of the Jews in England

I do not take it personally but, rather, as a reminder that Mankind is made up of saints and the most despicable sinners and everything in between.

Caiphas and Toquemada and Calvin and Cromwell were all peas in the same pod of intolerance of any deviation from their religious orthodoxy.

Be that as it may, I haven't seen any movies about Torquemada or Henry VIII. Nor have I seen any movies where Christians were stereotyped. Maybe I need to spend less time on FR and more time in the theaters. :-)

You wanna Toquemada movie? How about a musical?

Go out and rent Mel Brooks’ “History of the World, Part I” and treat yourself to “The Inquisiton Song”. I promise I won’t take it personally. ;-)

The Inquisition (Let's begin)
The Inquisition (Look out sin)
We have a mission to convert the Jews (Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew, Jew)
We're gonna teach them wrong from right.
We're gonna help them see the light
and make an offer that they can't refuse. (That those Jews just can't refuse)

"Hey Toquemada, walk this way."
"I just got back from the Auto-de-fe."
"Hey Toquemada, walk this way. We got a little game that you might wanna play,
so pull that handle, try you're luck."
"Who knows, Toq, you might win a buck!"

"How we doin', any converts today?"
"Not a one, nay, nay, nay."
"We flattened their fingers, we branded their buns!
Nothing is working! Send in the nuns!"

[h.a. cherev]

Because I recognize the positions of the Christian clergy as coinciding with the liberal branch of every Christian denomination.

An amazing piece of deductive reasoning...except that you're mistaken. I know several of the clergy who were quoted in the article. One (a Presbyterian Minister) is coming over to my house for Passover seder. Although I joke that I am the most right wing person in the world (when I look to my right, no one is there) this man, as well as several others, are not what I would consider to be liberal. Moreover, I know the editor of the paper. Although I would consider him liberal, he is fair in publishing opinions which differ radically from his....fairness is not a mark of the average liberal....I'm sure you'll agree with that.

However, the more I read of these "Passion" reviews, the more I am coming to believe that Christianity is something that can only truly be understood, if at all, from the inside. Sort of like how no woman truly understands men, or vice-versa. Know what I mean?

Yes, I do.

I've enjoyed our chat and wish you well. The last comment is yours.

[h.a. cherev]

I guess I should make it clear that I am writing rhetorically in regards to the Leftists who make it a profession to be easily offended.

I see. I've met more than a few freepers on these Passion threads who might fit that description. But then the term, "easily offended" is sort of an elastic yardstick. No matter, the Foxman's of the world have rendered the term "anti-Semitism" meaningless through their overuse.

Was Nazi Germany ?Christian?? You betcha.

Well, there's a first time for everything.

Their religious education was obscenely warped by the Hitler Youth but they truly believed they were saving Christianity and Germany by acting like savages towards the Jews, the Slavs and the other untermenchen.

Could you clarify this for me, please. It seems you are saying that the feelings for the Jews in Christian Europe was only warped by the Hitler Youth. I probably am misreading you.

However, the problem comes when the guilt felt by one party is acted out in such a way so that a second party must never mention any wrongs of the first party.

I don't think that's the case here but I can understand your position. Several of the reviews mentioned not only some historical inaccuracies regarding Pilate and the Jewish High Priest, but decribed the Jewish mob in stereotypical terms. I don't think it's a question of mentioning the wrongs of one particular party, but how those wrongs are portrayed.

Just to set the record straight, I have no problem with the movie whatsoever. But I can see how others would.

However, how many Americans know that, in 1217, English Jews were made to wear yellow badges or that all Jews were expelled from England in 1290 not to return for 350 years?

Very, very few. Besides, those of us who are not too thrilled with the English don't have to go back that far to find something to justify our feelings.

For 200 years, while Jews lived in the Catholic Kingdoms of Spain, England had been ethnically cleansed of all Jews. But, today, only Spain is vilified for it's treatment of the Jews.

I think "vilified" is a little strong. After all, it was over 500 years ago. I've been around quite a while and while I know many people who won't touch anything made in Germany, I haven't heard anyone say they won't buy Spanish products.

You wanna Toquemada movie? How about a musical?

Go out and rent Mel Brooks? ?History of the World, Part I? and treat yourself to ?The Inquisiton Song?. I promise I won?t take it personally. ;-)

OK, OK, we're going to start joking now.

[Edmund Burke]

"The Passion has made me feel less secure as a Jew in America than ever before"....

If I were you, if you want to feel "more secure", I would try keeping a lower profile instead of trying to run the country when, self admitingly you only comprise 2% of the population. Keep your mouth shut and just sit back and enjoy the ride.

[Edmund Burke]

oops! bad spelling...self admitedly?