Violence is Gibson's message

New York Daily News ^ | 3/02/04 | Richard Cohen

[kattracks]

I saw Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" the morning it opened. I thought it was tawdry, cartoonish, badly acted and anti-Semitic, maybe not purposely so, but in the way portions of the New Testament are - an assignment of blame that culminated in the Holocaust. But I wrote none of that because something else about the movie disturbed me, and it took days to figure it out. It is fascistic.

I don't know if I use the word right, but in Richard Evans' brilliant "The Coming of the Third Reich," it becomes clear how violence was so much a part of fascism. It was not merely that Hitler and, to a lesser extent, Mussolini used force to get their way, but also that violence almost became part of the ethic - "the cult of violence." After a while, Germans became inured. That, both precisely and surprisingly, is how I felt watching Gibson's disturbingly nondisturbing movie. I was bored stiff.

I abhor violence in movies and avoid films that have more than I think I can tolerate, so I approached the Gibson movie with some dread. I wished that the Anti-Defamation League and other critics had simply ignored it. I even joked with friends that the ADL's Abraham Foxman must be taking a cut (of the gross) for all the publicity. But my joking mood changed when I entered the theater. I became uneasy.

I need not have worried. The movie was inexcusably gory, but I found myself intrigued: Why wasn't I horrified? Instead, I was more like the Roman soldiers who tortured Christ. I did not laugh with glee as they did, but I did find myself at an emotional remove. There was so much horror that almost immediately I became inured to it all. I felt as a surgeon must in the operating theater. More work.

[kattracks]

I would wager that if the movie had been about some murderer on death row, Cohen would not have found himself "at an emotional remove".

[Qwinn]

They're continuing the anti-semitic shtick after honoring one of Hitler's chief propagandists at the Oscars? Talk about chutzpah.

Qwinn

[Salamander]

A hardened heart, more likely.

Maybe Mel should've had the soldiers kick a starving puppy or two.

[Salamander]

But "fascist" is *such* a wonderfully volatile little "trigger word".
It's so useful when you have no real point to make.

Ideological ad hominem.

[Stallone]

Cohen.

I hate this movie.

Coincidence?

Morons.

[Cacique]

ping

[sushiman]

The shtick continues , but it doesn't seem to be having a negative effect now does it ? Anybody that could be swayed by this leftist pinko ponce wouldn't be moved by the flick anyway .

[Dallas59]

Event's written about a God in disguise as a man who was crucified because he loved the very ones who killed him.

I feel sorry for non Christians who don't get the message.

[Clemenza]

Richard Cohen should go back to shilling for the Clintons. In this article, he fails as both a film critic and theologian.

[Clemenza]

Richard Cohen is an agnostic of Jewish ancestry who hates Israel to boot. I don't think any faction in this debate really wants or needs him.

[goldstategop]

The funny thing liberals hold violence is okay if comes from the tender warm-hearted souls of Planned Parenthood, Jean Bertrand Aristide and Saddam Hussein.

[Salamander]

And someday he'll return with -no- "disguise" and it'll be too late for them.
Anyone with a lick of sense would err on the side of caution, at the -very- least.

[zipper]

This reviewer reminds me of an older guy I had to work with at my job-- that I call a "Jewish atheist". He was born and raised in the Jewish tradition but he himself is not religious and is in fact a self-proclaimed atheist. So he has the ultra-sensitivity of someone with a religious chip on his shoulder but at the same time doesn't care anything for religion. He himself has a personal code that I can only describe as "amoral". Oh yeah, and he's from New York. Very confusing to me, being a Christian and not accustomed to Jewish people, much less "Jewish atheists".

I have a feeling there are a lot of people like that up there. And guess who they probably voted for?

[MinuteGal]

Sorry, Cohen.....the Gibson Success Train has already left the station with a cargo of over a hundred-million clams.

Now be a good boy, go back to your barren cubicle, suck your thumb and have a good cry. You're so irrelevant.

Leni

[tom h]

From a NY Times editorialist who is so impulsively liberal, leftist, and socialist -- I am somehow not surprised by this comment. Richard Cohen doesn't like "Passion." Who cares?

[kitkat]

This article is pretty funny. Cohen thinks he can snuff out the giant flame of success with his puny, little fingertips.

[kcvl]

Who cares what you think, Richard?!

[Caipirabob]

Ah yes, the true message of Christ's profound love and sacrifice is that I should engage in mindless violence. I'm glad this idiot leftist twit has set me straight. I feel better now... /barf

[xm177e2]

Maybe, strictly speaking, the movie cannot be called fascistic - but in the best sense, it cannot stop me from insinuating as much.

[rmh47]

I wonder what he thought of Schindler's List?