Easter, Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ
Posted on April 4th, 2010 by Paul Davis
Every Easter, after our dinner guests have gone or we return home from a restaurant or another’s home, my wife and I watch our DVD copy of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
We watch the DVD copy as it is unlikely that Gibson’s controversial film will be played on TV in the way we see The Ten Commandments each year.
I note this and offer an old column I wrote when Gibson’s film was released in 2004 on my most recent post on my blog, http://pauldavisoncrime.blogspot.com.
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Would this be the same Mel Gibson who claimed that Jews are responsible for all the wars in history? The same Mel Gibson whose über-Roman Catholic father took him and his brothers to Australia so they wouldn’t have to serve in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War? The same Mel Gibson who said that he was sorry, but his wife of nearly 30 years, the mother of his seven children, could not make it into heaven because she was not Roman Catholic? The same Mel Gibson whose wife, the non-Roman Catholic mother of his seven children, has filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences, after widespread stories of his infidelity?
Sounds like the same guy. Of course, we mustn’t confuse the artist with the creations of his art.
I was writing about Mel Gibson’s film, not Mel Gibson, but of course your knee-jerk reaction is to attack the man, not the film.
Gibson is very talented, but he is a flawed human being, like most of us. We are all sinners, after all.
Of course, Gibson has the courage, unlike you, to use his real name on his work.
“We are all sinners . . . ”
As certain right-wingers say in connection with evolution, that is only a theory.
@Parsfial
Although we often disagree, I do commend you for your repeated use of the great, great word “twaddle,” which is conspicuous by its absence here. (I can do without the tired “Grand Old White Peoples’ Party” cha cha cha that you love to dish out though.) In the future, I would like to see continued use of “twaddle” and even some expansion of that with “poppycock,” “codswallop”; “horsefeathers”; “claptrap”; “fiddle-ee-foo:; “tommyrot”; and maybe even an occasional profanity, such as “horseshit.”
That said, I take Paul’s side in this dispute. If I couldn’t separate the nauseating and inane views of various pop culture thespians, I couldn’t enjoy ANY movie, song, book, etc. For instance, I find Billy Corgan’s views on vaccines repugnant (he thinks they cause autism, etc). But that doesn’t stop me from listening to GISH and SIAMESE DREAM, which are two of the greatest albums of the 90s.
And regardless of your views on Mel Gibson, he has two things going for him: (i) He appeared in one of the greatest SIMPSONS episodes ever and (ii) He did coin the amazing epithet “Sugar Tits.”
In that regard, Mel Gibson is a champion.
Brief pedantic correction:
This is what I meant to type:
” If I couldn’t separate the nauseating and inane views of various pop culture thespians from their actual work and/or product, I couldn’t enjoy ANY movie, song, book, etc.”
“Piffle” isn’t bad, either, if a tad wispy. I like “codswallop,” but it’s teddibly British, as is “a load of old cobblers,” unfortunately, for it sounds so nice.
“Hogwash” is primarily for heavy objects and things with dirt on them, like lobbyists.
In partial defense of myself (maybe 27 percent), I did say I know we shouldn’t confuse artist and artwork, but Mel Gibson is so reprehensible that I gave in to weakness.
On the other hand, George Orwell, whom I admire more than most other writers/thinkers, said something along the lines that “we have the right to expect decency even of a poet.” In other words, if Mel Gibson is going to make movies he ought to learn to behave himself as the rest of us are required to do.
I could do without the Grand Old White Peoples Party myself — the entire nation would be better off, actually — but it won’t quite go away, despite recent and continuing massive loss of members. I use the term only for its accuracy of description.
Many of the worlds greatest artists have been less than perfect humans, (Beethoven, Picasso, Woody Allen, Polanski and Hemingway to name a few) to say the least.. Their personal character must be put aside when assessing the merit and or quality of their work. In fact the one has little or even nothing to do with the other, especially when considering the latter. Mel Gibson’s work as a director on the movies Apocalypto, the POTC, the much underrated Man Without a Face and yes, Braveheart shows him to be an artist and story teller whose vision and artistic integrity far outweigh whatever indiscretions he commits or bizarre and unfortunate views which he holds. Or if not “outweigh”,
then at least be considered separately and absolutely independent of each other.
@ Gracchus
Yeah, I know all that crap. Heard it countless times in countless versions in and out of countless university forums and books and debates. And of course it’s true, which I acknowledged twice. Good sermon, though, albeit leaning toward pomposity.
The fact remains that Mel Gibson is just a dick, a fact that prompted my rant, and not especially noteworthy as an actor or filmmaker. But people will disagree about the latter. And about everything else; that’s why there are horse races.
Emotionally, though, I keep coming back to Orwell’s sentiment.
“The fact remains that Mel Gibson is just a dick, a fact that prompted my rant, and not especially noteworthy as an actor or filmmaker. But people will disagree about the latter. And about everything else; that’s why there are horse races.”
I agree with Parsifal here. Gibson is a douchebag and The Passion of the Christ is torture porn masquerading as art; it also continues the historical tradition of passion plays, barbaric and anti-Semitic polemics which fomented Christian anger leading to numerous pogroms upon local Jews. When the film came out, I was a little young to know how to feel about it morally but I know that my dad (a Jew) and most other Jews I knew wanted nothing to do with it. The xenophobia of the picture is more symbolic than explicit, but make no mistake, it’s there.
I saw it anyway and found it mostly boring aside from the sustained periods of hyperviolence.
And yet it’s so fucking somber and serious and religious… of course I suppose that’s the point, but to me it was really just a drag. And I was raised Christian. It’s sort of hilarious how seriously the film takes itself, given that undoubtedly for many viewers the only thing that holds their interest is a sick curiosity to see how they’ll abuse Jesus next. In that way it seems almost Satanic in its effect–rather than producing a new devoutness, or a new appreciation for the sacrifice of Christ, this piece of shock shlock, like a gory videogame or a Tarantino film (with far less substance), offers little more than a hollow, nihilistic catharsis.
@ Calvin
“The Passion of the Christ is torture porn masquerading as art; it also continues the historical tradition of passion plays, barbaric and anti-Semitic polemics which fomented Christian anger leading to numerous pogroms upon local Jews.”
I wish I’d said that.
“Torture porn”: Jesus, that’s good.
Right there with the folks saying that the bad outweighs the good here, as far as Gibson goes. I am not commenting on the film, as I have not seen it. I did read about the anti-Semitism in the film, and I will admit that did turn me off. But I was a fan of Mel Gibson throughout much of his career. I find now, though, that I am not willing to watch any of his movies, including the ones I always liked. I refuse to contribute any of my money or time to the benefit of someone who has proven himself to be an anti-Semite and a Holocaust-denier.
Yes, I am sure there are others out there whom I continue to patronize who probably have done and said some bad things of which I am unaware. If I become aware, I can deal with that then. With Mel Gibson, I am very aware.
I saw it not in the theater, but on DVD. Or, rather, most of it. I threw in the towel somewhere short of two hours, I believe, not being able to take any more of the lip-smacking violence so ably described by Calvin above.
So I don’t know how the movie turned out.
Paul Davis’ article was about the movie TPOTC. The continuing attacks on Mel Gibson’s character are out of place here.
So back to the film……which, in a manner better than any other before, depicts how events such as these really went down in that time and place in history. If you don’t like graphic depictions of violence, fine.Don’t watch. If it was unsettling and disturbing then it did what it was supposed to do.
As well, it is documented in the Christian scriptures (upon which the movie is based) and elsewhere that Jewish clergy of that time and place were instrumental in the arrest and condemnation of people like JC who posed a threat to their authority. In the context, their actions make sense. How a depiction of this can be construed as being anti Semitic does not make sense. That Pontius Pilate is shown as being conflicted and the Jewish clerics as one- dimensional is arguably a bias on the part of the director. But JC is the hero of the movie and the clerics, the villains. It is the prerogative of any artist to draw such lines. And before you get worked up at my assertion here I would like to propose that in the same way that Islamic terrorists do not represent the vast majority of Muslims, the fanatical Jewish clerics in the movie don’t represent the vast majority of Jews.