Oscaring Mel Gibson (American Spectator article by Freeper)

Both the Golden Globes and the Broadcast Film Critics passed over The Passion of The Christ for any major nominations this year. The American Film Institute made no mention of The Passion in its 2004 best films of the year announcement. And according to USA Today's Oscar Oracle, The Passion isn't on the radar screen for even a single nomination when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out nominations at the end of January.

In the shadow of a public debate over the propriety of the words "Merry Christmas" at department stores, a big battle in the culture war is looming. The Passion of The Christ, one of the most powerful, commercially successful, and, by any measure, brilliant films of the year is being utterly rejected by the Hollywood elites this award season, demonstrating yet again their tone deaf disdain for all things middle-American.

What's going on here? Well, the cultural elites took a whooping on Election Day, 2004. And they are taking it out on Mel Gibson.

The official reasons for denying The Passion an Oscar nomination are fivefold. Herewith, I will attempt to discredit them all:

The Passion is just a sadomasochistic bloodbath with quasi-religious overtones.

The body count in The Passion is one (actually it's zero, but that argument is too big a leap for the average Academy member, so we'll just stick with one), far fewer than Mel Gibson's 1995 Best Picture winner Braveheart, 1974's The Godfather Part II, or even 1991's The Silence of the Lambs in which the main character is a cannibal.

In 1994 The Academy nominated Pulp Fiction in which an overdosed woman is resuscitated with a hypodermic stab to the heart. Fargo, in which a murder victim is shredded to bits in a wood chipper, was nominated for Best Picture in 1996. And two years later Saving Private Ryan was nominated because it depicted some of the most graphic and realistic war scenes in cinematic history, not despite it.

The Academy has a long-running love affair with blood and guts, so the idea that The Passion was just too gory doesn't hold water.

This argument is a little sturdier. But on closer examination, we determine it, too is a fallacy. Ben Hur won the Best Picture Oscar in 1959. Schindler's List won in 1993. The Ten Commandments was nominated in 1956. The Diary of Anne Frank was nominated in 1959, as was The Nun's Story. The Exorcist was nominated in 1973.

Just last year The Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King won the Oscar for Best Picture and its director Peter Jackson won for Best Director. Said J.R.R. Tolkien of his master work, "The Lord of the Rings is, of course, a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision."

The Passion just reflects Mel Gibson's obscure brand of extreme Catholicism.

Not true. Regardless of Mel Gibson's own denominational oddities, the film depicts an event no orthodox Christian -- Catholic or Protestant -- denies occurred. Contemporary non-Christian texts from Roman Jewish historian Josephus substantiate at least the gist of what Gibson captures on screen.

Moreover, Martin Scorsese was nominated for his direction of 1988's The Last Temptation of Christ, which includes artistic creations for which there is no scriptural support.

There are only two serious "errors" in The Passion so far as I understand this argument. The first is that none of the Gospels has Satan moving through the crowd of Jews during Christ's passion, as Gibson does in the film.

This is a legitimate theological gripe, but a cinematic one? Besides, who's to say Satan wasn't there? Satan obviously took a considerable interest in the life, suffering, and death of Jesus.

The second criticism is that the ten graphic minutes Gibson dedicates to the flogging of Jesus is drenched in gruesome detail for which there is no scriptural substantiation. Matthew, Mark and John only say Christ was flogged; they mention no amount of time and the severity is never indicated. But it would be irrational to believe the flogging was mild considering the intensity of Jesus' suffering throughout the balance of his Passion, about which the Gospels leave little to the imagination.

Regardless, given the Academy has named Titanic Best Picture and nominated Oliver Stone for Best Director (JFK), we can reasonably assert that historical accuracy is not a prerequisite for Oscar glory.

This myth actually applies to the Golden Globes, not the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Academy nominated La Vita é Bella (AKA: Life is Beautiful) for Best Picture in 1998. The film's leading man, Roberto Benigni, won the Best Actor that year.

Red Staters may have won on Election Day. But the cultural elites will always have Hollywood.

Patrick Hynes is an account executive with the Republican consulting firm Marsh Copsey + Scott and the proprietor of the websites www.passionforfairness.com and www.crushkerry.com

Sidebar vanity:

Wishlist time. Now we have the Passion, what of other biblical epics in Panavision/THX/DTS/IMAX?

I wanna see Solomonic Israel in its glory, complete with Holy Of Holies scenes of course, and I want to see the temptation of his chase for wisdom and his fall into the clutches of heathenism/reincarnation/fertility/pantheism. It would be a wonderful dig at the looming era of religious melange. The world governor will need a cult(s) to soothe over the cracks between the spectrum of ideologies from fundamentalists and the humanist-secularlists. The clash of the civilizations is a great opportunity to foist a global peace relying on curbing certain religious "antagonisms". The classic one is between Judeo-Christians and the Islamo-fascists but the other biggie -on the back burner since 9/11- is the Hindu-Islamic one in the Indus regions (where they have nukes ready to fly right now...)

"Catholicism is not and never has been a demomination."

I bet you think it's not a denomination, either. But here's what a denomination is: 4 : a religious organization uniting local congregations in a single legal and administrative body. Seems to me the Catholic church fits that definition just fine.

There is no question but this film inspired many, including a couple of criminals to confess.

BTW, in one poll on aol and also in USA today, Pat Tillman was vote the most inspiring person.

Anyone know where I heard/read a reference to early heathenism inspiration coming from the snakes? Somehwere I picked the story that rebellious and 'wise' souls looking to diss monotheism and judgement day were inspired by the 'death and rebirth' of snakes: their skins were found around the place. Hello reincarnation. The body had 'died' of a certain age (shed its skin) but then been reborn. Must have made for quite a convincing religious foundation.

Just makes the Hollywood crowd look more stupid than usual.

Mel made them look stupid in many ways, but the ways that must hurt the most are dollar gross and residuals. Of which you got nothing, Hollywood. NOTHING.

Hollyweird has been doing everything it can to drive off a mass audience since the 1960's. They've maxed out their core audience of teens and young adults. The only way they can increase revenues is to make movies that appeal to the Passion audience or raise ticket prices. They'll do the latter.

It's amazing they're taking the, "I'm shocked, shocked to discover there's violence in this movie," line. Their bread and butter is blood and guts "action" movies and gross-out movies directed at male teens. Whatta bunch of high-brows.

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