Posted on 02/10/2005 7:02:09 AM PST by malakhi
This week's nominations for the film industry's Oscars for the best movies of the year 2004 provided a sigh of relief to some, as it stoked the conspiracy theories harbored by others.
Nearly a year after Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" launched 1,000 commentaries, the 77th Academy Awards ceremony closes the parenthesis on this remarkable cultural phenomenon.
As much as critics blasted it -- while others condemned it for incitement of anti-Semitism -- "The Passion" turned into the surprise blockbuster of the year. As such, its popularity was widely considered a slap in the face to the liberal media/culture establishment.
So while some feared that an Oscar for Gibson or the film would revive the controversy, the unsurprising refusal of the same Hollywood elite that despised the film to honor it will cause the argument to be revisited anyway.
Let us waste no more ink debating the merits of this thoroughly bad film. But I am still interested in the way this story pushes buttons and illustrates the way some Jews look at the world.
Case in point is the way two people have hung on to the controversy and done their best to keep it alive.
They are the Anti-Defamation League's national director, Abe Foxman, and Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a Seattle-based talk-radio host and the head of a small conservative group called Toward Tradition.
Foxman led the charge against the film and its seeming reaffirmation of the myth that placed the responsibility for the death of the Christian messiah on the Jews. He also took the lion's share of blame from those who believed that Gibson used critics to hype a small film into a mega-hit.
Foxman's still smarting from that charge.
He responded in a recent Jerusalem Post opinion piece that restated his reasons for protest and his fears that those who see it in the future will be exposed to "the film's vile notions of Jews."
Blame it on Barbra
On the other end of the spectrum is Lapin, a marginal figure among Jews but someone who enjoys some notoriety among evangelicals who flocked to see the movie. At the time that most other Jews were following Foxman's lead, Lapin was part of Gibson's cheering section.
But rather than merely gloat about Foxman's discomfort, Lapin is attempting to use the "Passion" anniversary to refloat one of his own ideas. He doesn't think the real cause for anti-Semitism lies in the age-old canards that Foxman and others have sought to debunk. For the South African-born rabbi, the cause of hatred for the Jews can be found in the behavior of actors Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand.
What has this famous Jewish duo done?
The answer is that they made a movie that the right-wing rabbi considered far worse than Gibson's.
For Lapin, the Streisand-Hoffman appearance in the regrettable "Meet the Fockers" wasn't merely an exercise in bad taste. For him, it was a defamation of American Jewry.
In the film -- the sequel to the extremely popular "Meet the Parents" -- Streisand and Hoffman portray the oversexed and eccentric Jewish parents of a character played by actor Ben Stiller, a dorky Jewish male nurse who's marrying a gentile goddess. The conceit of the piece lies in a visit by the girl's uptight parents to Miami, home of their Jewish hippy in-laws. Comic complications ensue, some of which deal with the stereotyped connections of the Jewish couple to Judaism.
But rather than dismiss this as cinematic nonsense, Lapin, in a piece widely distributed by his organization, considers it a prime example of how Jews are destroying American morals.
"You'd have to be a recent immigrant from Outer Mongolia not to know of the role that people with Jewish names play in the coarsening of our culture," fulminates Lapin. "Almost every American knows this. It is just that most gentiles are too polite to mention it."
Was Hitler right?
Acknowledging that any ordinary reader would be shocked at such a statement, Lapin remains undaunted, and goes even further with a quote from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. Lapin observes that "that evil megalomaniac roused his nation" not through use of the deicide myth, but by noting the Jewish influence in German cultural life.
"It does not excuse Hitler or his Nazi thugs for us to acknowledge that this maniacal, master propagandist focused on a reality that resonated with the educated, and cultured Germans of his day," writes Lapin.
In other words, according to Lapin, avant-garde Jewish artists "linked Jews and deviant sexuality" in the German imagination, and so set the stage for the Shoah. He sees American Jews as similarly responsible for our country's "cultural decline" -- something that "angers more Americans than the crucifixion."
Lapin is right that some Jews on the left have been all too quick to wrongly stigmatize Christian conservatives as anti-Semites when, in fact, many are ardent supporters of Israel.
He's also right when he condemns the decline of public morality. But who but an anti-Semite or a Jew who hates liberals more than he despises Jew-haters would place the blame for this solely on the Jews?
Blaming liberals for anti-Semitism is as vile as blaming it on Jewish actors.
When Lapin claims that actors who spoof Jewish secularism are practicing anti-Semitism while at the same time rationalizing those who would single out "the Jews" as the destroyers of American decency, the rabbi has crossed the boundary from irresponsible commentary to fomenting hatred of his own people.
Out of all the loopy things that have been said and written about Gibson's film, Lapin's article qualifies as the low point of the discussion. In his zeal to condemn his foes, the talking rabbi has proven that self-hatred isn't a virus that can be solely linked to the Jewish left.
Say what you will about Foxman's dogged attempt to justify his role as Gibson's unwitting foil in last year's cultural follies. But Daniel Lapin represents an example of how "The Passion" helped motivate a cultural conservative to turn on his own people. Viewed in that context, it turns out to be a far scarier movie than anyone may have dreamed.
Maybe he did not have intent but if someone makes two films in a row where your country is the bad guys and are turned into pantomine villains you start to get a complex hence my original post.
And just as an aside, for the most part the Mohawks were allied with the British :0)
I can understand that, as I noted it was the British being debased, even if it was for dramatic effect. The historical background of Braveheart I don't know enough about to judge.
Well, I think if he made a movie showing the Americans getting beaten in battle when the Americans in fact were beaten in battle, I would be all right with that.
If this guy Tarleton (just guessing that his portrayal is the one that bothered you) was considered by fellow Brits to be "bloodthirsty" to the point that they were made uncomfortable by his actions, I don't see a problem with Gibson expressing that point of view on film.
I'm glad you found some quotes from Mel that corrected your impression of his interviews.
Probably not, he wasn't known for giving quarter, but I don't think anyone contends there's any basis for the Church incident, and I don't think there's any basis for portraying him as killing women, children, or prisoners en masse as in the "hospital" scene.
Did the Brits Burn Churches?
Couper Samuelson
Posted Monday, July 10, 2000, at 3:00 PM PT
In the new Mel Gibson film The Patriot, British soldiers are shown committing various atrocities against colonials during the American Revolution, such as locking civilians in a church and setting it on fire. Did the British actually violate the rules of war as the film alleges?
Many histories of the war document instances in which British and American soldiers shot prisoners of war or, more commonly, enemy soldiers trying to surrender. (This was considered a violation of the rules of war at the time and remains so today.)
Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton--the model for The Patriot's main villain--reportedly killed more than a hundred colonial prisoners in South Carolina and was dubbed "Bloody Ban." The term "Tarleton's quarter" signified no quarter at all.
The journal of Thomas McCarty, a sergeant in the 8th Virginia Regiment, reports that British regulars shot civilians (at least two of them women) who were tending to wounded colonials after a nighttime engagement near New Brunswick on Feb. 1, 1777. After a skirmish in Newtown, N.Y., in 1779, two lieutenant colonels under Gen. John Sullivan were captured by the British. A fellow prisoner, John Salmon, recounted in his diary that when the two officers refused to give up the location of Sullivan's army, they "were put to death with terrible torture."
But historians generally agree that the rebels probably violated the rules of war more often than the British. Francis Marion, who led a band of militiamen in South Carolina (and whom Gibson's character most closely resembles), ordered his men to fire upon a group of British regulars and American Tories who had surrendered. A witness described it thus: "Numerous Tories died with their hands in the air."
In 1778, Georgia militiamen captured, stripped, and killed British Lt. John Kemp along with nine of his men for refusing to renounce the king. And the term "lynching" comes from Col. Charles Lynch of Virginia, who became famous for extra-legal executions of Tory sympathizers.
The church-burning scene in The Patriot is actually based on an incident from World War II, when Nazi soldiers burned a group of French villagers alive. There is no evidence that a similar event took place during the American Revolution.
Couper Samuelson is a Slate intern.
The link I posted said "he never spared prisoners" (but I don't remember "the 'hospital' scene", so I could be making a bad comparison).
I haven't seen anything about women and children yet.
As a leader of the cavalry, many British historians consider him to be one of the most dynamic of his day, but it’s his horrid treatment of civilians and soldiers in the South that dominates his legacy. Ironically, he has been largely forgotten in British history, but was so hated in the South that he's still very much remembered in Revolutionary history.
But historians generally agree that the rebels probably violated the rules of war more often than the British. Francis Marion, who led a band of militiamen in South Carolina (and whom Gibson's character most closely resembles), ordered his men to fire upon a group of British regulars and American Tories who had surrendered. A witness described it thus: "Numerous Tories died with their hands in the air."
In 1778, Georgia militiamen captured, stripped, and killed British Lt. John Kemp along with nine of his men for refusing to renounce the king. And the term "lynching" comes from Col. Charles Lynch of Virginia, who became famous for extra-legal executions of Tory sympathizers.
The church-burning scene in The Patriot is actually based on an incident from World War II, when Nazi soldiers burned a group of French villagers alive. There is no evidence that a similar event took place during the American Revolution.
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Wow. Thank you for that. I knew there were innaccuracies that could be linked to Gibson being less than honest in his portrayal of the Brits.
Hey, I admitted that an hour ago - both sides committed atrocities... I never claimed the colonists didn't commit them.
Yeh you did. But changing the facts in the movie with the church burning jogged my memory. I remember that article from a while back and it does go to prove that the British were held in an innaccurate light by Gibson.
Yeah, but it's Hollywood - everythign they do is inaccurate. ;0)
That being said, you need to see if you can locate a copy of "History of the Campaigns of 1780 and 1781 in the Southern Provinces of North America", which was written by Tarleton in 1786, in which he attempts to justify his "savagery"... Interesting read, if you can get it. :)
Oh, and by the way? It really dosn't matter what "side" committed atrocities during that war, since the people fighting on both sides were British ;0)
(I kill me...)
LOL
I don't think anybody told Mel that though....
Look, the bottom line is that I can understand the brits being a little peeved about Braveheart and The Patriot, but I just hope you keep in mind that most Americans don't hate the british - the movie was entertainment plain and simple, and I don't think the brits really have anything to worry about. :)
Oh absolutely. Ditto for the Brits not hating the US.
Although a lot of them hate Bush despite my protests.
I would love to see some well-done accurate movies made about the Revolution, but I don't ever see that happening from Hollywood...
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