Frankly, I hate Christpher Hitchens ...
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
I haven't seen this movie yet. From what I understand it might leave one a little bit confused about what went on and why(nonbeliever)...It is important that people understand that the Jewish hierarchy was not about to let Jesus ruin their system of religion. People were following him ya know.
Do you not know he was betrayed to the Jewish leaders for 30 peices of silver or have you dismissed this fact? It ALL ties together...
I'm not a Jew basher, or I would not go as far as to say the Jews killed Jesus, but what I will point out is what scripture notates, becauses it is all important to grasp why it happened historically as well as spiritually. The Jewish religious leaders rejected Jesus as the messiah, that is scriptural.
You know, I've been around Christians all of my life. I even grew up in the (shudder) "Deep South." (Ooooh!) Never in my life have I once heard a Christian blame Jews for the death of Christ. Not once. Not even a hint of this.
Whenever this has come up (not all that often, but often enough which is to say too often) it has been in the context of Jews criticizing Christians for this alleged belief.
That has been my experience and I have had numerous friends confirm that their experience has been exactly the same.
OK, I had not really been aware of this, though it does seem obvious that the point of the Crucifiction, that Christ died to offer mankind salvation, implies that the participants in the event were acting according to God's wishes.
Yes, agreed that Judaism and Christianity are closely related, share the same moral code. I suppose you could say that both are "Jewish" religions.
Sorry to take so long to get back to you, have not had the chance to get next to the computer since yesterday morning. Thanks for your replies and thoughts.
I agree, Carton, the two religions are surely very closely related, one sprang from the other. I think a Christian might almost say that Judaism is contained within Christianity.
I was trying to make a point that the persons who actually killed Christ were fulfilling the wishes of (the Christian God), so no matter who it was, why hate them?
Wouldn't you say more "attempted" murder? or "attempted" deicide? Although I believe the thing was done through the due process of the day.
"Thankfully, God is much smarter than any human "
That may be understating it a little...using the word smart, I mean...God is infinite and all encompassing, I think.
"It did happen, it was terrible, but we move on with life and learn from our mistakes."
I'm not going to accept that it justifies anti Semitism even if it had been a recent event, or even then, I guess I mean. After all, back then most Christians were Jews, while they may have been upset with the court, I doubt they became "anti Semitic."
Something to chew on though...
I just finished watching Franco Zeffirelli's made for tv viewing of Jesus of Nazareth. (1977 release) I was curious as to how the Pharisees would be portrayed, and they seem just as conniving as I am sure they are in the Passion of the Christ.
I recall no outcry then that this movie was anti-semetic. A a matter of fact I don't think anyone thought this portrayal to be consider anything other than the story of Christ. It was played for several years during the Lenten Season but eventually fell to the wayside in the 1980's.
Why now, 27 years later is Gibson's movie, that shows The Passion, considered controversial? How have we changed that much in 27 years in regards to our perceptions of faith and God?! (I am talking society now... not you or I.)
Now they show the movie The Ten Commandments, which has little to do with the Passion, other than Jesus coming from the House of David.
The Ten Commandments is played on Easter Sunday.
Dittoes.
You know, this movie has brought so much to light. The whole notion of "antisemitism" is now stood on its head.
I watch the cynical Foxman testing the power of the the "antisemite" bludgeon. The terrible thing he may be finding out is that its not as powerful a weapon as he thought it was.
Last night on Scarborough I saw Carl Berstein claim that "he didn't throw around the antisemite label that easily. After all, he'd been a vocal critic of Israel himself."
Like we're not very used to liberal Jews condemning Israel?
But why is it ok to criticize a legitmate part of the Catholic Church, and not get labeled anti-Catholic?
I know that they stoned Stephen, but they took Jesus to Pilate because they did not have the authority to put someone to death.
John 18:28-31 - Then led they Jesus from Caiaphas unto the hall of judgment: and it was early, and they themselves went not into the judgment hall lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover. Pilate then went out unto them and said, What accusation bring ye against this man? They answered and said until him, If he were no a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up unto the. Then said Pilate unto them, Take ye and judge him according to your law. The Jews therefore said unto him, It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.
Wrong! You might note that this was news to Pilate.
This was Jewish law not Roman and it had to do with the Passover. If they had chosen any other time then they could. That is why they took him to Pilate. Not because they couldn't at any time but because of the time of the year it was they would have defiled themselves.
This was a passing of the buck. They wanted Jesus gone and, maybe deliberately, they chose the one time of the year when they, by their law not Roman law, would have to have the Romans do it.
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