Posted on 04/11/2004 1:41:56 PM PDT by Mark
Hollywood-- critics now silent?
That's because the "critics, pundits, and social activists" are worthless narcissists. Seems the only people to take a bad message from the movie are bad themselves.
That there was no anti-Semitic reaction was entirely predictable, though. When the Pope travels to a city, even though hundreds of thousands travel to see him, the crime rates drop drastically. These are the same kind of people who made this film a hit, and any objective person would have been able to predict that no violence would come from this movie.
This is not your run of the mill blood and guts film, glorifying violence. This is a very deep film. One that transforms us from within. I pray that these family members and friends of mine will eventually experience it, but they were indeed not ready. I respect that - I also find it strangely comforting that they do view this film and the content as something serious, not just a "flick".
I was thinking that this would be the case. This movie will have a profound effect on many people when the DVD is released. Compared to a theater, renting or buying a movie is a much more private, personal experience. In the theaters, Mel is still largely preaching to the choir, but the DVD will reach the prodigal sons.
Almost all the critiques of this film were thinly (sometimes REALLY thinly) veiled attacks against Christians and Christianity, rather than the film itself. And Christians have displayed far better character than their attackers.
Now that's enlightening.
Hollyweird's usual response to complaints about film and TV tripe is, " It's only a movie. If you don't like it, turn it off (or don't go)."
Hollyweirdos expect us to believe that hour after hour, day after day, of vioent and sexually explicit films, TV, and music have no effect whatsoever on our culture.
Yet, a 15 sec TV commercial is expected to make hundreds of millions of Americans run out and buy billions of dollars worth of soup, deodorant, cars, and coca-cola.
They can't have it both ways.
I am sick and tired of having to clean up the cultural messes of these secular slobs. They've littered our culture with their secular garbage for far too long.
America has learned to its grief that morally neutral l secular nostrums result in the sordidness of serial school killings, disturbed one-parent kids, and crime waves of titanic proportions. Schools teaching the destructive, morally neutral secular NEA--PP'hood agenda brings on sexual license, ever younger teen and pre-teen pregnancies, throw-away babies, abortion on demand including infanticide, the lawless homosexual takeover.......and so on and so forth, ad infinitum, add nauseaum.
Gibson has totally silenced the H'wood bigwigs and so-called friends who trashed him during production.
The Passion shows clearly that a major event was taking place that has influenced the world and impacted the lives of billions of people around the globe for centuries.
However, Jews, even the learned priests of the temple totally missed the significance of Christ's presence among them, and the import of His suffering and death on the cross. Christians have to be sensitive to the fact that Jews do not like to be reminded of this.
In the last analysis, labeling The Passion anti-Semitic was intended to stigmatize the film in a futile effort to make it fail.
Excellent point.
No one will soon forget secularists looking down with haughty condescension on millions of Mr and Mrs Middle-Class Believers lined up at theatres to see The Passion.
Secularists made a huge mistake by sending out the shock troops to bash The Passion.
The first foray had ADL Abe claim The Passion was anti-Semitic. That didn't work. NYT's Frank Rich attacked next----said is was fascistic. Then his NYT colleague Maureen Dowd said it was crass. That didn't work. Andy Rooney trashed it on CBS and SNL evilly caricatured it on NBC. That didn't work either.
Newsweek's Evan Thomas told Imus it was a snuff film. Even so-called conservative Krauthammer bashed it, and Hitchens---in his usual drunken stupor--said it was homo-erotic. Secularists stooped to the lowest levels of condescension to bash Mel, the film, and believers. Nothing worked.
And that set the stage for their losing battle in the culture wars. Secularists polarized the culture into two distinct, opposing camps........elite secularists and masses upon masses of believers.
The Christian beliefs that secularists have demeaned and trivialized for so long have been legitimized with the primeval power of this magnificent film
Mocked, ridiculed and condemned, only to triumph in the end, "The Passion of the Christ" has experienced a small Easter of its own.
BTW: It returned to the top spot at the box office this week.
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