Posted on 02/27/2004 3:40:31 AM PST by ejdrapes
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.I DETEST THIS FILM ..WITH A PASSION
They do exist, the Daniel Pearl video (where his throat is cut by his Muslim captors) being the most famous example. The ones I know about are mostly Muslims videotaping themselves as they kill Russian prisoners in Chechnia.
My time is long enought to know us regulars oldtimers (my current join date notwhitstandin) are the opposite of what you say. But if you insist on not being able to credit others with the ability that fails liberals, namely distinguishing between the messenger and the message, you are welcome to contineu in ignorance.
Sure, but you're being disingenuous. LOTR isn't explicitly about the Jewish power establishment in Jerusalem conspiring with the Romans to torture and kill mankind's savior. Gibson's film is.
I'm not referring too the spiritual aspect, the Hight Preist, Sadducees and Pharisees, turned Jesus over to the Roman authorities for Blasphemy and broke all kinds of their own rules to have his trial.
What do you think the penalty was for claiming you were God...stoning on the spot, this was the Jewish custom they had picked up stones several times, but he got away!
The Jewish Hierarchy did not kill Jesus, but they surely didn't stop him from being crucified. Don't tell me you're ignorant of that?
You don't have to be anti-semitic to repeat the story.
People keep on saying this. It isn't true. You might consider what happened to Stephen a few years later. You might consider that at one point in His ministry they were ready to stone Him and at another to throw Him off a cliff.
There was another reason why they handed Him over to the Romans.
Sounds like Chris is just Andy Rooney's type, maybe they should get together for some loving poop-sex!
Not sure just what I'm being disingenous about. I don't think I am. The allegation in the Hitchens article that's the subject of this thread is that the subtitles in foreign language editions ARE going to include "His blood be on us...".
That is what Hitchens states in his article, and a few FReepers picked right up on as the latest (false) drum beat about The Passion. There is no source that supports that allegation. That is what I originally pointed out and you responded that, yes, but it could happen and we should be concerned about it.
So, you and I are left discussing whether someone might insert that subtitle in the film against the director's wishes. My issue with that comment is that there would be no way to prevent such a thing, no matter the subject of the film or the name of the director. If you don't care for my LotR analogy because it differs in subject matter, how about The Last Temptation of Christ, a movie Christians consider blasphemous? Couldn't the same thing happen that you fear? Why didn't anyone raise that alarm bell with Scorcese?
At any rate, I see we're discussing a straw man fallacy, so I'm going to move along. Thanks for your courtesy.
Same to you. To restate my original concern one more time, it's that while it's one thing to discuss the reality of antisemitism in the U.S., and how this film might inflame that (it won't), it's legitimate to feel more concerned about how it will be watched and used in countries with more active and ingrained antisemitic attitudes.
It is all God's word.
I can understand criticisms based on artistic interpretations, the viewers like or dislike of technique or storyline, but it appears to me that Hitchens entire review is is projection of his own hatred of catholicism onto the film and Mr. Gibson.
True enough. However, knowing the "spiritual aspect" of the story and choosing to leave it out of any discussion of the story is a little disingenous, and leaves your motives (as some have noted in this thread) open to question.
The Jewish leaders along with the Romans were used by God as a tool to carry out his own perfect plan - just the same as were Pharoah and Moses.
Any further discussion then about "blame" is pointless. Christ came to earth to give himself as a sacrifice. That the Jews were "chosen" as the vehicle to help facilitate this task, is God's buisiness - wouldn't you agree?
If so, to continue harping on the fact that "the jews killed Jesus" without acknowledging "the plan", IMHO, borders on anti-semitism.
Thank you for being such an ardent supporter of those of us who defend our faith, and realize that there was no anti-semetism invloved with this movie.
God Bless, and Shalom!
I grew up in a strong Catholic faith, and at no time were the Jewish people blamed on the death of Jesus.
I often wonder if that isn't a front just to defend the anti-Christian attacks that are permeating out there?
but i just saw the film reviewer Tom Friedman, on the Passion, on hannity and colmes and his take is just ludicrous and is a front for an attack, i will grant you that.
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