Classical Values :: Blood and guts?

March 08, 2004

Blood and guts?

Tonight I finally saw "The Passion," and I don't know whether this is a review, because I am not sure how I am supposed to analyze the film. (Should this be a review of politics? Religion? Or art?)

Bear in mind that I like these types of films in general. I enjoyed "The Robe," "Quo Vadis," "Demetrius and the Gladiators," "The Sign of the Cross," etc. This one was a lot gorier and a lot bloodier, and I think if I were still a kid I would have been even more excited than I was. Artistically and technically, it was a well made film. I saw it with a friend -- a liberal Democrat whose wife did not want him to see it, although neither of us perceived quite as much anti-Semitism as many did. (But then, we're not Jewish.) I think anyone who watches that film and hates Jews because of it is a lost cause, and perhaps mentally ill. Sure, there were plenty of villainous Jews, but there were many sympathetic Jewish characters. And the small mob shouting in Pilate's courtyard, while that may have been Biblically accurate, it no more typified Jews than a Southern lynch mob typified the South. (The negative portrayal of Jewish religious leaders, though, is more problematic, although I would still question the sanity of anyone who would even remotely factor them into the consideration of any Jews alive today.)

The Romans were portrayed as by far the most sordid and evil of the bunch, and as I said before, history offers scant evidence of what actually happened, so the film has to be seen as one man's interpretation of the Bible. I think he went overboard with the scourging, which is definitely the bloodiest and most sadistic flogging scene in any movie I've seen. But in fairness, the real thing would have been pretty bad to watch, because near-death scourgings were common, and the goal here was to kill the guy. Considering that all Biblical accounts show the man dying after only a few hours on the cross, I think it's a fair guess that they did in fact scourge him nearly to death beforehand. And if you think about it, half killing a guy would make the whole thing easier to accomplish. Try taking a healthy young man and nailing him to a cross. You'd need a dozen strong soldiers just to hold him down. But if you beat him nearly to death, cause him to lose half his blood, he'd be in a state of hypovolemic shock and it would be easy to nail him up. (Repeatedly falling down while attempting to carry the cross also indicates a man on his way out, so, if the stories are taken literally and common sense factored in, extreme scourging seems likely.)

Whether the focus on the details of the death of Jesus is the best way to promote Christianity depends on your perspective. I don't share Gibson's background or religious philosophy, so if I made a religious film about Jesus I probably wouldn't do it the same way.

Personally, I have always been partial to Jesus, and when I like someone I focus on what I like. Perspective, I guess. (But I'm a Christian-Pagan with a broadly heretical, generalized view of things.....)

There were some gratuitous asides with which, because of my background I could not identify and did not like. I thought it unnecessary to create effeminate villains, and this is the third film in which Gibson seems to go out of his way to inject effeminacy into evil. He may not think he's doing that, but it certainly appears that way. And it fails to persuade me of anything at all, because I do not consider effeminacy to be evil -- any more than I consider Jews evil. The devil looked like many of the young gay nightclub types I have known, and while many of them do not live lives of high virtue, linking them to Satan strikes me as ridiculous -- if that was what Gibson meant. (King Herod and his entourage border on being a drag queen show. Why?)

And what's more, Gibson shows Jesus as stomping on a perfectly harmless albino Burmese python. Why? So that I can get all defensive about snakes in my blog, and complain about them being unfairly maligned? (At least he didn't show the Romans with pit bulls! Had he done that I'd really have gone ballistic....) Snakes are not evil, OK? I hate to call it herpetophobia because that sounds very PC, but come on!

So, in light of my defensiveness about effeminacy and snakes, I can understand the concerns about negative Jewish stereotypes. Still, how any rational person who wasn't already bigoted could become bigoted as a result of this film escapes me.

Are there irrational people in this world who will freak out and go on rampages? I don't know -- but I think people should be held responsible for their own actions, and blaming Gibson for their antics makes about as much sense as blaming Howard Stern for creating a "climate" in which Janet Jackson bared her breasts.

Before I saw the film, my friend made me read Frank Rich's review of it from the Sunday New York Times. Rich accuses Gibson of creating a climate, and I generally dislike climatic theories, because they allow people who are wrong to escape individual culpability by blaming others who planted wrong ideas in their heads. Even if Gibson is an anti-Semite and deliberately intended to stir up hatred towards all Jews, this does not make him responsible for the actions of individual crackpots. (But as I said, I just don't see how any thinking person could see that film and seriously blame Jews for poorly recorded events of 2000 years ago.)

Then there's this passage:

There is no question that it rewrites history by making Caiaphas and the other high priests the prime instigators of Jesus' death while softening Pontius Pilate, an infamous Roman thug, into a reluctant and somewhat conscience-stricken executioner.

The problem with that is that Gibson can't rewrite history, because the actual history of Pilate is very scant (see my previous post, especially this link). And whether Rich or anyone else likes it, the Biblical accounts do show Pilate as precisely the "reluctant and somewhat conscience-stricken executioner" he says is a "rewrite" of the history which we do not have.

Just to refresh my own memory, I checked the Bible, and here is what I found:

Matthew 27: a clearly waffling pilate who puts the blame on Jews, offered them Barabbas, claims that Jesus has done no wrong, and asks "what shall I do?"

Mark15 (same story)

Luke 13 Pilate says "I find no fault with this man"; wanted to release him; "Crucify him! the mob chanted..."; Pilate then "delivered Jesus unto their will"

John 18-19: Pilate poses interesting questions to Jesus, then says, "Take ye him and judge him according to your law."; Jews reply, "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death"; Pilate asks "Am I a Jew?", "what is truth?"; then says, "I find in him no fault at all", offers to free Jesus, then offers "Not this man but Barabbas" and says again, "I find no fault in him"; mob screams "Crucify him, crucify him"; Pilate answers "Take ye him and crucify him: for I find no fault in him"; answer is "We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God"; Pilate, fearful, again tried to get Jesus to defend himself, and asks "Whence art thou?" (no answer), "Speakest thou not unto me? Knowest thou that I have the power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee?"; finally Jesus says "Thou couldst have no power at all against me, except if it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin"; "Pilate again sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, saying 'If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar.' (That clinched it for Pilate, and he handed him over).

Thus, it becomes inescapable that according to all four accounts (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) Pilate acceded to the demands of the mob. Had Gibson done other than portray Pilate this way, he would not be following the Biblical accounts. He may be an anti-Semite, but to accuse him of "rewriting history" in the face of overwhelming Biblical evidence strikes me as unreasonable. (Which is not to say that the Bible itself doesn't contain anti-Semitic bias, but hell, rewriting the Bible is not a primary goal of this blog. But I do hate stereotypes and I recognize that they exert power over ignorant minds; imagine if the Bible had described the mob as consisting mostly of "Sodomites.")

Perhaps Mr. Rich has some passions of his own, because he is certainly upset about Gibson's offer to put Frank Rich's "intestines on a stick":

If you criticize his film and the Jew-baiting by which he promoted it, you are persecuting him — all the way to the bank. If he says that he wants you killed, he wants your intestines "on a stick" and he wants to kill your dog — such was his fatwa against me in September — not only is there nothing personal about it but it's an act of love. And that is indeed the message of his film. "The Passion" is far more in love with putting Jesus' intestines on a stick than with dramatizing his godly teachings, which are relegated to a few brief, cryptic flashbacks.

I didn't see anything about intestines on a stick, and while I hate to be put in the position of defending Mel Gibson (who I suspect would not like many of the people I have loved), the man is not new to putting intestines on sticks. That's precisely what he did in Braveheart with his own intestines! Maybe that's why he feels free to utter such threats. (Not a new idea, I'm afraid....)

Reading Rich's review gave me irritable bowel syndrome.

These days it takes guts just to remain logical....

posted by Eric on 03.08.04 at 11:28 PM

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Comments

Godly teachings or not, the central focus of Christianity and its validation of Jesus Christ as God incarnate is the fact of his death AND the miracle of his resurrection. This is the fulcrum around which Christianity swings. In a way his godly teachings were... I dunno, is it accidental, or incidental, to his deification through his passion.

OF Jay · March 9, 2004 02:31 AM

This is one of the more thoughtful, balanced responses to The Passion that I've seen on the web.

A couple of points:

- It's my understanding that he meant Satan to be an androgynous being, not an effeminate male. I don't think Gibson had "young gay nightclub types" in mind.

- You ask "whether the focus on the details of the death of Jesus is the best way to promote Christianity," but I think you are misconstruing Gibson's intent. He wasn't trying to promote Christianity in some generalized sense. Rather, he was trying to *show* Christians what the written accounts of Jesus' sacrifice mean.

Roger Ebert seems to grasp precisely what the film's about: "What Gibson has provided for me, for the first time in my life, is a visceral idea of what the Passion consisted of. That his film is superficial in terms of the surrounding message -- that we get only a few passing references to the teachings of Jesus -- is, I suppose, not the point. This is not a sermon or a homily, but a visualization of the central event in the Christian religion. Take it or leave it."

Michael · March 9, 2004 02:38 AM

OF Jay is right.

The Buddha died from eating some bad beans, but, so far as I know, there isn't a bean cult in Buddhism. But, then, Buddhism started out as an atheistic philosophy and only centuries later was transmogrified into a religion, merged with traditional Chinese, Japanese, and other polytheisms.

Christianity is different. The death and resurrection of the Christ is _the_ central doctrine of historic Christianity, just as the death and resurrection of Osiris was _the_ central myth in the ancient Egyptian religion.

Isis did it. I believe it. That settles it!

See also the myth of Inanna and Dumuzi in the Sumerian mythology (which, for the Babylonians, was identified with the myth of Ishtar and Tammuz.)

If you want a good understanding of the teachings of Jesus, I strongly recommend Robert Farrar Capon's trilogy "The Parables of the Kingdom", "The Parables of Grace", and "The Parables of the Kingdom". No movie has been made out of these books, but Capon is a terrific writer, my favorite Christian writer up there with G. K. Chesterton. Whether or not you are a Christian, you will love his _style_.

As for Mel Gibson's "The Passion" being too violent, as I pointed out in an earlier comment, the entire Bible is violent as well as sexy, and if a movie was made of "The Bible: Nothing Added, Nothing Subtracted", it would be X-rated and more controversial than Janet Jackson's tit, even though the Bible is the literal and infallible Word of God.

And, as I said, that's NOT a criticism of the Bible, for all the ancient myths and sagas, including the aforementioned holy myth of Osiris and Isis, and the Eddas, the Iliad, the Vedas, the Kalevala, the Kojiki, etc., were also X-rated by today's standards. Good!

I've seen lots of violent movies, including "A Clockwork Orange", "Pulp Fiction", "Saving Private Ryan", and a number of others, and none of them turned me into a psychopath. I've also read the Marquis de Sade.

("Schindler's List" was violent, by necessity, but I must say that it was actually extremely mild in its portrayal of the Nazis. If Spielberg actually showed what the Nazis did to the Jews, nobody seeing it would be able to eat for a week!)

I haven't yet seen Gibson's film (I hope to finally get around to doing so today), but I doubt it will turn me into a psychopath. And I doubt it will turn anyone into an anti-Semite who isn't one already.

I'd rather it be too gory and grisly and gruesome (which is what crucifixion was intended by the Romans to be, as a deterrent to uppity slaves and barbarians) than sappy and saccharine and Sunday-schoolish, as most films about Jesus typically have been.

I don't think I want to see it "too close before dinner" (as an old Bircher once said about taxes, ha! ha!), but I do want to see it. Precisely because of the bogus criticisms being levelled against it. Contrary and perverse, did you say I am? That's me!!

Syeven Malcolm Anderson the Lesbian-eating pho-loving aesthete-worshipping gun · March 9, 2004 12:52 PM

"The devil looked like many of the young gay nightclub types I have known, and while many of them do not live lives of high virtue, linking them to Satan strikes me as ridiculous...". Yes. It's a peculiar sort of silliness to see a beautiful actress, Rosalinda Celentano, and think - "Ah, he seems familiar." Gibson meant this just for you? Or perhaps he was coveying that Evil is neither more masculine nor more feminine. Where you see Gibson covertly linking gays to Evil, I wonder if a staunch feminist might be irked that Gibson seems to hint Evil is female or too female to be "realistic". As I've heard him state his aim was to present Evil as androgynous, it may be he's succeeded. At least in that.

Just Passing Thruogh · March 10, 2004 03:06 AM

Now we see how "Passion" leads to a greater awareness of how we abused the Holy Christ Spirit when it returned, as Jesus promised (Matt24:14, Luke21:24, Matt24:15) three times, in what turned out to be the year 1844, the year when, May 22nd, the Holy One came down from heaven and was recognized by an ordinary human, thus effectively ending Jesus' day and beginning 'the new day'.

Did we love Him? He was The Gate, through Whom the Lord of Hosts would come, as Jesus promised, and yes, we loved Him. But we also let the priests (FOCAL REALITY) vilify and abuse Him, just as they did with Jesus. (Focus on 'priests' and 'priesthoods' being challenged by an outsider, whether such priesthoods are Jewish, Christian or Muslim, and you're on-track to understanding the dynamics through history)

The clergy imprisoned Him, scourged his feet with the bastinado (yes, they were beaten bloody!) then, when He refused to recant or yield to their tender ministrations, they hung Him by the arms in a barrack-square in Tabriz, with a believer who begged to die with Him, and under the gaze of 10,000 antagonistic onlookers, had a rifle regiment of 750 Armenian Christians kill him, because this would 'prove' that He was not the Holy One, Who was prophecied to die at Muslim hands... just as 'no Holy One will ever be hung from a tree' was done specifically to 'prove' Jesus was NOT the Holy One...

When the point-blank blasts of 750 riflemen not only failed to kill Him, but instead freed Him and His follower, the Christian regiment left, and a Muslim regiment was brought in to finish the clergy's dirty work.

They did, and the splintered, intermingled bodies were tossed on the side of a nearby moat-canal, and guards posted (as with Jesus' tomb), but His followers were able to get His mortal remains and bury them atop Mount Carmel, as was promised in Holy Scripture.

The golden dome of the Tomb of the Bab (the Gate) shines gloriously from atop Mount Carmel, Haifa, Israel to this day, beckoning airborne travelers miles out to sea, in daylight or nighttime, to investigate for themselves the miraculous story that Jesus actually told the truth, despite all Christian clergy scoffing and denying our Lord Who redeems us could possibly have returned as He promised, at the time He promised, in the manner He promised! (II Peter 2:1)

Eye Opener · March 11, 2004 11:01 PM