There has been some great discussion on the Harvard Glee Club email list regarding The Passion of the Christ, so I thought I’d post some of that discussion here.
From Patrick Thronson ‘04: The film had a number of quite powerful moments for me, most of which corresponded to the various flashbacks related to Jesus’ life and ministry pre-crucifixion. There were actually some funny moments as well, oddly enough: Judas is tormented by a crowd of children whose faces turn into weird devil-like contortions when he looks at them. In one scene, Satan inexplicably walks around with a baby that looks a lot like a cross between Stimpy and one of the kids from the Rugrats. And Simeon the Cyrenian (who helps Jesus carry the cross) is a dead ringer for Billy Dee Williams, aka Lando Calrissian. Also, the town the movie was set in, somewhere in Southern Italy, was the same town that Pier Paolo Pasolini, a gay athiest Marxist, used to film his 1964 “The Gospel According to St. Matthew” (more Gramsci and less God, in many ways), which, once I realized it, acted as a kind of weird supertext over the movie for me.
Irreverent pokes aside, however, I am completely convinced that this film deserves every charge of anti-Semitism that has been made against it. I went into the film predisposed toward the opposing view, and actually intended for it to deepen and enliven my experience of Good Friday. A good part of what I saw made me angry and ashamed, especially considering Mel Gibson is a Catholic like myself (though a much weirder and patently offensive one).
Every Sunday at Mass, I say the creed, basically a condensed statement of the beliefs of Catholicism. When it gets to the part about the crucifixion, the text of the creed says “He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.” This text has been an official part of the Catholic Mass since the 4th century, and has not been altered since then. Neither the creed, nor any other part of any Catholic service, makes any mention of the Jews (or anyone else) as being responsible for the death of Jesus. Pilate is the sole malefactor.
Naturally, I was shocked to realize in the movie that Pilate is not only the only other round character in the movie besides Christ, not only portrayed in the most sympathetic way possible, but that all traces of any kind of responsibility for the crucifixion have been erased. The movie cooks up a completely horseshit story without any historical/Biblical foundation that Pilate’s hand was forced in allowing Jesus to be crucified because he feared rioting, which Caesar had warned him about, saying that if there were any more uprisings, Pilate would be killed. With this, the entirety of the blame for the crucifixion, as the movie presents it, is laid on the shoulders of the Jewish crowd.
In general, the movie makes a deliberate effort to extract the parts of the gospels that could be seen as painting the Jews in the story in the worst light, even if such parts occur in only one of the four accounts. Three examples in the movie are the cries of the crowd to let Christ’s blood “be on our heads and those of our children,” which is found only in Matthew (and is cunningly unsubtitled in the movie, though it is there), details about the release of Barrabas, and the altered scourging sequence that is found only in John. In this altered sequence, Pilate, in what is described in the movie as an effort to appease the crowd and simultaneously save Jesus from death, sends Jesus to be scourged, then brings him back before the people, who nonetheless demand that he be crucified, even though in the movie he looks absolutely horrifying after the scourging. In the other three gospels, Pilate decides that Jesus will die before he sends him to be scourged, in keeping with the historical practice of scourging at the time, which was performed only as a prelude to certain execution, and not outside of this context. So the construal of Pilate as attempting to save Jesus from execution is extremely unlikely historically. Moreover, Gibson, while almost exclusively sticking to John’s account of this scene, departs from it in one aspect which is spun in such a way as to be highly uncomplementary to the Jews: Barrabas, whom the crowd wants released in place of Jesus, is described as a robber in John, and as an insurrectionist in the other gospels, who had committed murder in a rebellion against the Romans. The movie has Pilate announcing Barrabas (who looks repulsivce) as a multiple-murderer, without any reference to a role in a rebellion. So the movie makes it look like the crowd prefers an ugly serial killer to Jesus, as opposed to a popular hero. Also, John’s gospel has only the chief priests and associated officials calling for Jesus’ crucifixion after he comes back from the scourging, rather than the whole crowd, an alteration that does not paint a good portrait of the Jewish crowd.
In other words, Gibson makes deliberate selections and even outright falsifications to the gospels in order to paint the worst possible picture of the Jews. Frankly, it’s difficult to expect anything more from a man who says that his father never lied to him, despite the fact that his father was an avowed Holocaust-denier. We have to realize, though, that this movie has ramifications far beyond fueling the rhetoric of the Jerry Fallwells of America. Right now, The Passion is the biggest movie in the Arab states. Many, after seeing the movie, have compared the suffering of Jesus under the Jews to the suffering of the Palestinians under the Jews (!), and have said that, even though Islamic theology does not hold that Jesus was crucified, if he had been it would have been at the hands of the Jews. To release a movie of this kind at the present time exceeds mere irresponsibility, and passes over into the realm of fueling ideological hatred and acts of terror. It is shocking that, with only 60 years having passed since the Holocaust, Gibson is completely unaware of the destruction a cultural heritage of anti-Semitism, a heritage created entirely by Christians, can do when utilized on a mass scale. Gibson has publicly said that he believes he is doing the will of God in making this movie. This cannot be the case. Rather, he is a fraudulent redactor of Scripture, whose work may be inspiring Christians to a deeper relationship at Christ in the U.S., but is potentially fueling hatred abroad.
I guess the focus of my disagreement is with the sequence where Jesus is condemned to die, not with the subsequent narrative/stations. I agree that, however Gibson may have chosen to portray the Passion, some people could have used it as anti-Semitic ammo. However, it’s really really clear that Gibson deliberately spun the story, through highly selective exegesis and outright textual falsification, to make it as easy as could be for the movie to be used in the service of anti-Semitic agendas. The absolutely ridiculous and unrealistic amount of carnage doesn’t help matters—it made the crowd’s call for crucifixion after he returned from the scourging look utterly sadistic. (It also made identification with Jesus as a human being almost impossible, as the amount of bloodloss/shock the movie portrayed the scourging as causing would surely kill any mere human).
While the somewhat esoteric portrayal of the story (i.e., no reason that would be clear to a non-Christian as to why Jesus died) might lead me to believe that it was intended primarily for a knowledgable Christian audience, I’m still left with the fact that Gibson is marketing the film all over the world, to countries that are predominantly Christian as well as to many that are not, including in the Arab states, where it has the potential to do a lot of damage. From initial reactions there, it seems as if the film is being taken as an accurate portrayal of the event, with (scary) implications for the present. Even in America, as Hosfield pointed out, many people may not be very familiar with the text to be able to distinguish where Gibson was taking hermeneutic/artistic license from where he was sticking to the text, which would lead to the impression that the movie=the truth. This makes me uneasy, and should have made Gibson uneasy, given the history of the past century, and the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and in the Middle East. He had a historic opportunity to present the story of Christ’s death in a manner that healed deep cultural and religious wounds surrounding the event and its interpretation, and I think he totally blew it with a movie that is ripe for creating division and sparking old hatred.
And a response by Michael Cover ‘04:
And Simeon the Cyrenian (who helps Jesus carry the cross) is a dead ringer for Billy Dee Williams, aka Lando Calrissian.
Not sure what to say about this, but that it’s Simon of Cyrene. His character, I believe, is the strongest evidence that the film goes out of it’s way to avoid antisemitism. You may remember the scene when Christ falls under the cross, and the Roman soldiers begin to kick Jesus, women are screaming, and Simon of Cyrene cries out “I will go no further if you do not stop beating this man.” That is not Biblical. nor is it Biblical several lines earlier when a particularly orcish Roman soldier, compelling Simon to take up the cross, spits at him and says malignantly, “Jew.” Jesus and Simon look at each other for a moment, Jesus with thankfulness, Simon with awe and pity, and then entwine their arms behind the cross and walk together. the scene is entirely non-Biblical, anti-Roman, pro-Jew.
Naturally, I was shocked to realize in the movie that Pilate is not only the only other round character in the movie besides Christ, not only portrayed in the most sympathetic way possible, but that all traces of any kind of responsibility for the crucifixion have been erased. The movie cooks up a completely horseshit story without any historical/Biblical foundation that Pilate’s hand was forced in allowing Jesus to be crucified because he feared rioting, which Caesar had warned him about, saying that if there were any more uprisings, Pilate would be killed. With this, the entirety of the blame for the crucifixion, as the movie presents it, is laid on the shoulders of the Jewish crowd.
You will find in the Gospels that Pilate did actually have problems condemning Jesus. see, for example, John 19:8-16. It is made explicit here that by the end of the trial, Pilate was trying to release Jesus. Furthermore, Gibson in no way absolves Pilate of guilt. His speech to Claudia about the uprisings culminates in the line “This is my truth.” this, of course, is a reference to his questioning of Jesus “what is Truth,” and implicitly to the Johannine dictum of Christ “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Gibson shows that Pilate’s worldly concerns, his pragmatic “truth” are fundmentally at odds with the eternal “truth” of God.
Still, Pilate is not the most guilty. He is second to Judas: John 19:11 “The one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin.”
Three examples in the movie are the cries of the crowd to let Christ’s blood “be on our heads and those of our children,” which is found only in Matthew (and is cunningly unsubtitled in the movie, though it is there),
i never understood this objection: the phrase “his blood be on us and on our children” is not primarily one of Jewish guilt. entire church congregations throughout the world recite this line in passion plays as a statement of communal guilt. likewise, the blood that we call on us is simultaneously that which Christians claim as the blood of the Lamb by which the angel of Death passes over us. it is theologically important that the entire crowd say this line, lest atonement is for the Pharisees alone.
Right now, The Passion is the biggest movie in the Arab states. Many, after seeing the movie, have compared the suffering of Jesus under the Jews to the suffering of the Palestinians under the Jews (!), and have said that, even though Islamic theology does not hold that Jesus was crucified, if he had been it would have been at the hands of the Jews.
Jesus’ story has been misinterpreted similarly throughout history. certainly, Christ, in his divinity, knew what would be made of his story by future generations, and it deeply saddened him. perhaps it tempted him to throw in the towel on the whole thing. to make this movie at this time is an act of faith, that even in this postmodern day, the story of the Passion has relevance to our world too important to be forgotten.
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