I DETEST THIS FILM ..WITH A PASSION [Christopher Hitchens on the Passion of the Christ]

The Mirror ^ | February 27, 2004 | Christopher Hitchens

[ejdrapes]

I DETEST THIS FILM ..WITH A PASSION

A FEW years ago, Mel Gibson got himself into an argument after uttering a series of crude remarks that were hostile to homosexuals.

Now he has made a film that principally appeals to the gay Christian sado-masochistic community: a niche market that hasn't been sufficiently exploited.

If you like seeing handsome young men stripped and tied up and flayed with whips, The Passion Of The Christ is the movie for you.

Some people used to go to Ben-Hur deliberately late, and just watch the chariot race while skipping the boring quasi-Biblical stuff. Alas, that isn't possible with this film.

Along with the protracted torture comes a simple-minded but nonetheless bigoted version of the more questionable bits of the Gospels. It's boring all right - much of the film is excruciatingly tedious - but it also manages to be extraordinarily nasty.

Gibson claims that the Holy Ghost spoke through him in the directing of this movie, and that everything in it is from the Bible. I very much doubt the first claim, and I can safely say that the second one is false.

The Bible does not have an encounter between Jesus and a sort of Satanic succubus figure in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Bible does not have a raven pecking out the eye of one of the crucified thieves. The Bible does not have Judas pursued to his suicide by a horde of supernatural and sinister devil-children.

Moreover, whatever the Bible may say, the Roman authorities in Jerusalem were not minor officials in a Jewish empire, compelled to obey the orders of a gang of bloodthirsty rabbis.

It was Rome that was boss. Indeed, Pontius Pilate was later recalled by the Emperor Tiberius for the extreme brutality with which he treated the Jewish inhabitants (and you had to be quite cruel to get Tiberius to raise his eyebrows).

YET Gibson is evidently obsessed with the Jewish question, and it shows in his film.

It also shows when he's off-screen. Invited by Peggy Noonan - a sympathetic conservative interviewer - in Reader's Digest to say what he thought of the Holocaust, Gibson replied with extreme cold-ness that a lot of people were killed in the Second World War and no doubt some of them were Jews. Shit happens, in other words. He doesn't seem to grasp the point that the war was started by a political party which believed in a Jewish world conspiracy.

He doesn't go as far as his father, who says that the Holocaust story is "mostly fiction" and that there were more Jews at the end of the war than there were at the beginning, but he does say that his old man has "never told me a lie".

And he does say that he bases his film on the visions of the Crucifixion experienced by a 19th-century German nun, Anne-Catherine Emmerich, who believed that the Jews used the blood of Christian children in their Passover rituals. (In case you have forgotten, the setting of the film is the Jewish Passover.)

Yesterday, as the movie opened, a Pentecostal church in Denver, Colorado, put up a big sign on its marquee saying: "Jews Killed The Lord Jesus." Nice going.

In order to keep up this relentless propaganda pressure, Gibson employs the cheap technique of the horror movie director.

Just as you think things can't get any worse, he shoves in a gruesome surprise.

The flogging scene stops, and you think: "Well, that's over." And then the sadistic guards pick up a new kind of flagellating instrument, and start again.

The nails go through the limbs, one by one, and then, for an extra touch, the cross is raised, turned over and dropped face-down with its victim attached, so that the nails can be flattened down on the other side.

The vulg-arity and sensationalism of this would be bad enough if there wasn't a continual accompaniment of jeering, taunting Jews who want more of the same.

The same cynical tactic has been applied to the marketing of the movie.

Gibson is well known to be a member of a Catholic extremist group that rejects the Pope's teachings and denounces the Second Vatican Council (which, among other things, dropped the charge that all Jews were Christ-killers).

He went to some trouble to spread alarm in the Jewish community, which rightly suspected that the film might revive the old religious paranoia.

HE showed the film at the Vatican, and then claimed that the Pope had endorsed it - a claim that the Vatican has flatly denied, but then every little helps.

Then he ran a series of screenings for right-wing fundamentalists only, and refused to show any tapes to anyone who wasn't a religious nut. (It took me ages to get around the ban and get hold of a pirated copy, and I was writing for the Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair.)

Having secured a huge amount of free publicity in this way, and some very lucrative advance block bookings from Christian fundamentalist groups, Gibson now talks self-pityingly about how he has risked his fortune and his career, but doesn't care if he "never works again" because he's done it all for Jesus.

The clear message I get from that is that he'll be boycotted by sinister Hollywood Jews. So it's a win-win for him: big box office or celebrity martyrdom. With any luck, a bit of both. How perfectly nauseating.

In a widely publicised concession, Gibson said that he'd removed the scene where the Jewish mob cries out that it wants the blood of Jesus to descend on the heads of its children's children.

This very questionable episode - it is mentioned in only one of the four gospels - has in fact not been cut. Only the English subtitle has gone. (The film is spoken in Aramaic and Latin, though Roman soldiers actually spoke a dialect of Greek.)

So when the film is later shown, in Russia and Poland, say, or Egypt and Syria, there will be a ready-made propaganda vehicle for those who fancy a bit of torture and murder, with a heavy dose of Jew-baiting thrown in.

Gibson knows very well that this will happen, and he'll be raking it in from exactly those foreign rights to the film.

So my advice is this. Do not go.

Leave it to the sickoes who like this sort of thing, and don't fill the pockets of the sicko who made it.

[AppyPappy]

I doubt most Jews in Jerusalem at that time had any idea who or what Jesus was about. The "crowd" was probably mostly religious leaders.

[conservonator]

I hear silence coming from mainstream Christianity, and it's every bit as deafening as the silence of Islam in the wake of terrorist attacks.

Then you're deaf. Where are the burning Synagogues? Where are the mobs of Christians screaming for the blood of the Jews? Where is the seething hatred spilling from the pulpits of churches? Where are the anti-Jew protests?

You insult all Christians with your hateful ignorant remarks. By unjustly comparing all Christians with Islamists you degrade your stature, not ours. What kind of anti-Christian pathology do you suffer from? How dare you inflict or transpose your bias on us. Just because you are unable to see the true meaning of the passion, weather in scripture or on the silver screen doesn't mean we aren't able to.

We know who killed Christ and we know why He died. If you need to be afraid of something, fear you own inadequacies.

[Matchett-PI]

"I am quite well aware that Christianity's track record in respecting human rights is downright spectacular compared to what arises in atheistic systems (such as Communism)."

You cannot legitimately claim to be an agnostic and speak of "human rights" in the same breath.

In other words, the rights granted to you by other men cannot be rights that are granted to you merely because you're a "human".

Holding opposite beliefs simultaneously results in the mental confusion called 'cognitive dissonance'.

Want to try again --- leaving out the cognitive dissonance?

You do realize that you didn't answer my last question, don't you?

[Matchett-PI]

"I am quite well aware that Christianity's track record in respecting human rights is downright spectacular compared to what arises in atheistic systems (such as Communism)."

You cannot legitimately claim to be an agnostic and speak of "human rights" in the same breath.

In other words, the rights granted to you by other men cannot be rights that are granted to you merely because you're a "human".

Holding opposite beliefs simultaneously results in the mental confusion called 'cognitive dissonance'.

Want to try again --- leaving out the cognitive dissonance?

You do realize that you didn't answer my question, don't you?

[68 grunt]

Damned atheists have their panties in as bad a know as the Jews. Bedfellows, huh? Hmmmmmm ...

[nobody_knows]

So Hitchens...."Have you ever seen a grown man nekid?.....Do you like to watch Gladiator movies?"

[Matchett-PI]

Sorry for the triplicate post. I lost my dial-up connection just as I clicked on 'post'. When I got the connection back, I guess I made two too many 'clicks' :)

[Clintons a commie]

Hitchens hated Mother Theresa, and ran hateful hit pieces about her in the early nineties. He's an anti-Catholic and anti-Christian bigot. He has had some worthy things to say about the Clinton impeachment and after 9/11, but this piece just goes to show he hasn't really changed his stripes.

Not liking the movie is one thing. Calling Gibson and the millions of people-mostly Conservative Catholics and Evangelicals-hateful names is another thing entirely.

This is probably Hitchens way of trying to get back in a little bit with the crowd who has dissed him since his Clinton and 9/11 opinions.

[Migjagger]

The Hollywood power brokers are very powerful. Hats off to Mel Gibson.

[Steve_Seattle]

I'm seeing the film tonight, and I have the sinking feeling that I'm going to end up agreeing with some of what Hitchens says. A film which focuses entirely on the beating and crucifixion of Jesus, without providing any lead-up or context, might very well fail from an artistic and dramatic point of view. Another thing: the film is supposed to be historically accurate, but stills from the movie depict Jesus carrying the entire cross, not just the crosspiece, and very few scholars think that's how it was. Also, an out-take shows the nails about to be driven through the palms of his hands, whereas most scholars believe they were driven through the wrists.

[the invisib1e hand]

reviews tell more about the reviewer than they do the movie.

[Dionysius]

He detests the film because, just as the atheist delights in casting doubts upon my faith, it casts doubts upon his atheism.

[dead]

Damn, I usually enjoy reading Hitchens, but this is just embarassing...

LOL! I thought it was a great read. He was foaming! Nothing’s more entertaining than a foaming angry Hitchens.

He really really really didn’t like this movie! Yowch!

[mvpel]

It seems the only people who are talking non-stop about antisemitism in the film are the so-called "Jewish leaders" who most certainly don't speak for this Jew.

[duckln]

The Jews are condemned --- historically and by some Christians today --- for not converting

Can't agree with you there. IMO, some Christians today fault them for attacking and bashing Christians. Hollywood and the media have been bashing the basic tenets of the Ten Commandments and demonizing nuns and priest at every turn. With partial birth abortion, condoms, same sex marriage its gotten quite sickening. The 'Passion...' is clearing the air and 'checking' the NYT, Disney etc.

[Huck]

What do you make of all this? I thought it was( and much of it probably is) knee jerkism on the part of liberals. But is Gibson's dad a holocaust denier? And is Gibson following the text of someone who held strange notions about Jews and Passover? Is there any there there? I must say, Hitchens makes me wonder. I thought it was cut and dried...a brutal but faithful to the bible depiction. I thought the left was just being hysterical. What gives?

[Tribune7]

the very last person who would stop to render meaningful help to a low-life sinner like him, would be the very, very religious.

I suspect a Mother Teresa would be the first. She did have a good track record there. :-)

[philosofy123]

Before you start dumping on the Christians, and throw around the anti-Semitic label, you must stop and reflect on the status of Jews, Moslems, and Christians on this planet.

First, I must recognize the fact that Jews were killed by the Nazis simply because of their religion. Since that time, you can’t hardly find a case anywhere in the world where Jews were selectively killed because of their religion.

Second, there is Palestinian Moslem Arab hostility to ISRAEL, the Jewish state. This hostility has created cycle of violence and terrorism that has both political and religious roots. During the past fifty years, the Christians were solidly behind the Jewish state and the Jewish people with moral, financial, diplomatic, and military supports. For a Jew to be so arrogant to blame the Christian people for anti-Semitism in today’s world, it is simply the heights of hysteria and irresponsibility.

Third, Moslems throughout their history have targeted and killed Christians, simply for religion reason. Historically, there were cases where Christians under the crusaders leadership counter-attacked the Moslems, but that was several hundred years ago. However, in recent history (past fifty years) there has never been Christians killing Moslems or Jews, just for their religion. Granted, there was hostility in Bosnia, and Kosovo between Moslems, and Christians, but the Christians of the West sided with the Moslems.

Now back to the paranoia of some of the Jewish people regarding the Passion of the Christ; the label of anti-Semitism is dispensed so freely and undeservingly to otherwise good Christian people, who for some reason or another "some" Jewish fanatics don't like their attitude. If you can reflect on how many times you have heard the label of anti-Semitism thrown against some American or European people, and show me the number of Jews killed by these Christian people. The facts are ZERO killing. If Pat Buchanan criticized Israel policies, he is labeled Anti-Semitic. Pat, or Mel Gibson, or even Mel Gibson's father, as far as I know did not kill one single Jew, and fully supports Israel rights.

In today paper: 48 Christian people were killed in Nigeria as they ran to seek refuge in their church by militant Moslems. In the past ten years there was, and still is a systematic holocaust of Christians by Moslems in the Sudan. Millions have been killed. Millions! How do we compare the systematic killing of Christians by the fanatic Moslems throughout the world, with killing of Jews anywhere around the world – recently? I have to submit that the cases where Jews are killed because they are Jews are practically non-existing any more, while the cases of Christians slaughtering are going on every day; hundreds in some countries, thousands in other countries, and MILLIONS in the Sudan.

Christians and Jews should thank God for having the commonsense to live peacefully together. Jews must abandon the hysteria of Anti-Semitism, and work together with the Christians to highlight the agony of the Christian minorities throughout the world under the barbaric Moslem oppressions. Christians and Jews are the target of Moslem terrorism, and should never lose focus.

[HairOfTheDog]

It seems the only people who are talking non-stop about antisemitism in the film are the so-called "Jewish leaders" who most certainly don't speak for this Jew.

I think you are right that they spoke too soon, and too much. It is good that the discussion took place surrounding the film, but the best contribution to the discussion did not come from "Jewish leaders" who seem to be the only ones still thinking in Holocaust mentality. I think most Christians are pretty insulted at the insinuation, which is really the best news.