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.

[sushiman]

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

---

I like what you said.


ME TOO ! LOL ! Hehehehe !

[Puppage]

Richard Cohen

2 words....NON GENTILE.

[laconic]

The same critics who toss around the words "fascist", "Nazi" and "McCarthyite" with abandon are those who get hysterical in describing the Hollywood blacklisting as "our" darkest chapter. Yet they'll never admit that those blacklisted were dedicated communists who supported history's greatest mass murderers, Stalin and the Bolsheviks, and that most of them worked under assumed names in Hollywood anyway.

[uncbob]

It was not merely that Hitler and, to a lesser extent, Mussolini used force to get their way,

Hitler didn't hate the Jews because of any "Christ Killer" reason
He was an athesist

And this guy better check his history since Mussolini refused to turn the Italian Jews over to the Nazis

[dirtboy]

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.

Gee, maybe it's that way because the Romans were fascistic? DUH.

I guess the liberals are so used to rewriting history that they believe the Gospels should be altered so not to offend their sensibilities.

[uncbob]

Hitler believed in a superior race and hated everyone that was different. Hitler blamed Jews for a lot of the problems that Germany had. Hitler hatred of Jews had nothing to do with Christianity. But this author's hatred and resentment of Christians is quite clear.

Wasn't just the Jews he hated
He considered the Slavs as sub human

[11th Earl of Mar]

I was more like the Roman soldiers who tortured Christ.

At least an honest liberal.

I did not laugh with glee as they did, but

Like my English teacher used to say, "Ant time you put a 'but' in a sentence, it nullifies everything you said right before." ["I was going to leave you an inheritance, but..."]

[gobucks]

"I was bored stiff"

What should we expect from an emissary of the Grahmascian thought cops at the WP group? I bet his goose-step professors in the editorial room are very proud of his prose. And of course, are utterly blind to the irony.

[Taliesan]

There were about a dozen people in the world who came out of that theatre either angry or bored, and about 50 million who walked out in tears of humility and love.

The dozen were nationally known columnists, and the 50 million were not.

Draw your own conclusions about the intellectual elite in America.

[Corporate Law]

Good point. For a change, he did not lapse into his usual "boomers are the greatest; Clintons are the greatest" cheerleading. At least he still one of his three greatest loves in, himself.

[reagan_fanatic]

Does anyone really care what this putrid skinsack thinks?

The movie will do quite well with or without his input on the matter.

Mr. Cohen is irrelevant.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

I am not a Christian and so, I suppose, I am not conditioned to see the Passion of Christ in religious terms. Still, even seeing the torture of an ordinary man should have filled me with revulsion. Yet it didn't. In Gibson's vision, a man became an object and the violence became even more important than the man.

IMO non-Christians cannot relate to this film. It seems that there are a huge amount of non-Christian critics out there reviewing Passion and trashing it, which shows how they dominate the media. After reading this review, I feel like going back to see it again.

[Liz]

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.

Cohen is so transparent. He writes it took him days to figure out the film was "fascistic."

I guess Cohen just happened to "coin the phrase just as the grosses started rolling in, and the film skyrocketed to the top of the box office, a blockbuster hit.

The original plan, as we all recall, was to make the film fail by slapping it with an anti-Semitic label. That plan backfired miserably. Poor Abe Foxman of the ADL had to eat his words.

[Quix]

Violence is God's message.

1) Sin is violence to the relationship with God.
2) Sin is violence to each other as we relate on a corrupt, polluted, sinstained foundation of sin.
3) Sin is violence to all Creation spreading death and violence far and wide.
4) Sin is violence within ourselves against ourselves and our forsaken birthright with God and with the rest of Creation.
5) Sin is violence as satan in his goals of stealing, destroying and killing enlists us so successfully in each of those goals against ourselves, our family members, our friends, our associates and our society.
6) Sin is violence within our own minds as satan twists our philosophies and resulting actions in self-defeating and self-sabotaging efforts aplenty.

And, given our sinstained psyche's, A VERY VIVID DEPICTION is the only one likely to make a dent in our dulled senses.

As Gibson said, Christ could have pricked His finger and saved the world with a couple of drops of His precious blood. The Father saw fit that He pay the horrendous ultimate price at a particular time in history when execution was a horrid, brutal experience instead of a lethal injection. There was a reason.

It is an illustration of the terrible price of sin. Perhaps all of us will be more reminded of that at each decision point after viewing THE PASSION.

[hellinahandcart]

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.This is probably going to break into my Top 20 of Offensive Statements by Elite Snobs by the end of the day. Dick.

And I have a feeling "fascistic" is the new talking point, since "anti-semitic" and "violent" didn't deter anyone from seeing it.

Why are these journalist blowhards doing this? Bleating about the movie the week after its release? If they'd only shut up, nature would take its course and the film's attendance would start to slack off, which is what they want. Supposedly. Isn't that what they want?

Or maybe they are hanging on to the hope that numbers of believing Christians will condemn the movie for the same reasons they have, eventually. Or maybe, in this election year, they want to be able to call believing Christians "anti-semitic violent fascists".

I can't quite figure this out.

[hellinahandcart]

After "fascistic" doesn't work, they will trot out "anti-GLBT" because of the adrogynous Satan character. "The main villain was transgender! Haven't we been oppressed enough?!"

And speaking of characters, here's another liberal who thought Pilate was portrayed positively. I'd heard he was rather Clintonoid.

Can't wait to see it now...

[Crispy]

"I thought it was tawdry, cartoonish, badly acted and anti-Semitic"

What movie is he reviewing again?

[InvisibleChurch]

I abhor violence in movies and avoid films that have more than I think I can tolerate,

either he has a high threshold or he didn't pay attention to any of the talk ... he went so he could complain

i think his review raises more questions than answers

[TaxRelief]

Richard Cohen's thinly-disguised intent, to stop people from going to the movie, will only have the opposite effect. He contradicts himself in so many places, that his review is bound to INCREASE the intrigue surrounding The Passion.

For instance, in the first paragraph Cohen states "...something else about the movie disturbed me,...It is fascistic." (So clearly the he had an emotional reaction for at least two reasons.) Then he goes on to say "I was bored stiff." At least two emotional reactions to the entire movie resulted in boredom? Your nose is growing Mr. Cohen.

Cohen continues to twist himself up into a little ball of confusion by first pointing out that "... even seeing the torture of an ordinary man should have filled me with revulsion. Yet it didn't." And yet one paragraph earlier he said that "The movie was inexcusably gory...." So was it too much violence or wasn't it? You can't have it both ways, Mr. Cohen.

Furthermore, while Mr. Cohen acknowledges that "the message of Christ [can be endorsed by]non-Christians...", he also thinks the only characterization having any merit was the role of Pontius Pilot. I have to conclude that he means Jesus Christ managed to convey a "message" that has lasted 2000 years without the benefit of a personality or "complexity" of character.

Perhaps Mr. Cohen needs to take up his complaints about the "plot", the "scenes", and the "characters" up with the playwright: G-d, Himself.

Mr. Cohen, your plot to keep people out of the theatre is weaker than all of the plots of any of the movies you've reviewed.