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.