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Is Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ anti-Semitic and unnecessarily violent?
What they said ...
'Unrelentingly anti-Semitic, excessively grotesque and overly narrow in its scope, Mel Gibson's controversial film is full of all the wrong sorts of passion'
Mac VerStandig, The Badger Herald
'Gibson's film is not anti-Semitic, but reflects a range of behaviour on the part of its Jewish characters, on balance favourably'
Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun Times
The issue at a glance
Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ was released in both the United States and Australia on Ash Wednesday, February 25, 2004.
The film gives every indication of being a major box office success. It had opening day takings of $637,424 at 145 screens around Australia, including 40 in Victoria.
The film's distributor, Icon, was hoping for at least $500,000. The Passion of the Christ entered the top 100 day-one releases ahead of Titanic's $630,000 and Bridget Jones's Diary's $600,000
Given its material (it deals with the last 12 hours of Christ's life - his torture and crucifixion) and the fact that it is subtitled (its actors speak in Latin, Hebrew or Aramaic) this success is remarkable.
Some have claimed that one of the reasons for this success is the criticism the film has attracted, especially within the United States, where almost 12 months before its release, it was accused of being both unnecessarily violent and anti-Semetic. Such publicity is said to have encouraged the general public to see the film in a spirit of curiosity while Christians have come to see it in a spirit of devotion and defiance.
Background
Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism can be defined as hostility directed at Jews solely because they are Jews. It expresses itself as dislike or hatred for Jews and prejudice against Jews or Jewish beliefs and customs. Anti-Semitism can include actions or policies reflecting these dislikes or hatred, ranging from social discrimination to physical persecution. The most notorious instance of anti-Semitism is that of the Nazis in World War II who ultimately practised genocide against the Jews of Europe, killing six million Jewish men, women and children.
Background to the controversy surrounding Gibson's film
The early controversy surrounding the film was based on a small number of comments Gibson had made about it, especially his claim it would be historically accurate. It was also based on a magazine article by Christopher Nixon published in the New York Times on March 9 2003. The article dealt with a church the actor is building in Agoura Hills, California. It also quotes Gibson's father, who claims the Holocaust is exaggerated.
Mel Gibson, is a member of the traditionalist Catholic movement, which operates outside the Roman Catholic Church and embraces a 16th-century form of the religion that celebrates Tridentine (Latin) Mass and denies the legitimacy of all popes and church reforms since the start of the second Vatican Council, 1962-65. The article claimed that Gibson's conservative religious views made it likely his film would promote anti-Semitism.
As Gibson was editing his film an American rabbi, Yehiel Poupko, received anonymously a stolen copy of several pages from an early draft script. This was distributed widely. The film was criticised by organisations such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre. The New York Times continued to publish articles critical of it, including a number of pieces by Frank Rich.
Gibson then gave a number of interviews, including one to The New Yorker, where he very bluntly criticised those who had opposed his film, including Frank Rich. He suggested, among other things, that he would like to have Rich's 'intestines on a stick'.
The major studios, including 20th Century Fox, which has first refusal on all Gibson's movies, decided not to distribute The Passion of the Christ. Gibson, who had invested $25-31 million dollars of his own money in the production of the film, turned to an independent distributor, Newmarket Films. Newmarket enlisted the support of hundreds of Christian organisations and arranged more than 2000 bookings.
Internet information
On May 10 2003, The Age published an analysis of the background to the controversy over the film. The analysis was written by Bettijane Levine and is titled, 'Critics jittery over Mel's passion'. It was originally published in The Los Angeles Times.
It can be found at http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/09/1052280438798.html
On January 16 2004 Frank Rich of the New York Times published one of a number of articles highly critical of Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. The full text of this article can be found at http://www.iht.com/articles/125340.html
Another Frank Rich piece published on March 5 2004 criticising Gibson and his film can be found at http://www.iht.com/articles/508958.html
On August 6 2003 Times Watch, a media analysis group critical of the New York Times, published one of a number of pieces critical of Frank Rich's treatment of Gibson's film.
This article can be found at http://www.timeswatch.org/articles/2003/0806.asp
Times Watch published a similar piece on March 8. It can be found at http://www.timeswatch.org/articles/2004/0308.asp
These articles make very interesting reading. They suggest, among other things, that Frank Rich has criticised Gibson on the basis of inaccurate quotes attributed to him.
On February 24 2004 AO Smith, film critic for The New York Times, published an unfavourable review of the film. This review can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/25/movies/25SCOT.html?ex=1109221200&en=941d14122dd5df00&ei=5083&partner=Rotten%20Tomatoes
On February 27 2004 Mac VerStandig wrote a carefully argued review for The Badger Herald making unfavourable comments about Gibson's recently released film. This can be found at http://www.badgerherald.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/02/27/403e8f061d8f1
On September 15 2003 Peter Boyer published an extensive piece in The New Yorker called 'The Jesus War: Mel Gibson's Obsession'. The article gives an enormous amount of background on the production of Gibson's film and the development of the controversy surrounding it.
It can be found at http://www.wcnet.org/~bgcc/gibson.htm
Prominent film critic, Roger Ebert, had a review of Gibson's film published in the Chicago Sun-Times on February 24, 2004. The review is supportive of film and while acknowledging its violence generally recommends it and defends it against charges of anti-Semitism.
This review can be found at http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/cst-ftr-passion24.html
Another prominent American film critic, James Berardinelli, has also written a review published on February 24, 2004, that is also favourable in its view of the film. The review defends the film against charges of being excessively violent and promoting anti-Semitism.
This review can be found at http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/p/passion_christ.html
ZENIT is an international news agency aiming to provide objective coverage of events, documents and issues emanating from or concerning the Catholic Church.
On December 8 2003 ZENIT published an Exclusive Interview With Father Di Noia of the Doctrinal Congregation. Father Di Noia carefully defends Gibson's film.
The full text of the i9nterview can be found at http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=45863
Arguments opposing The Passion of the Christ
1. The amount of detail and screen time used in depicting the sufferings of Christ is excessive.
Some four fifths of the film is made up of a detailed depiction of the torture and death of Christ. Many of those who condemn the film claim that this emphasis is too great and that the detail in which these events are shown is unnecessary. James Rich writing in The New York Times has forcefully put this view.
Rich writes, 'With its laborious build-up to its orgasmic spurtings of blood and other bodily fluids, the film is constructed like nothing so much as a porn movie, replete with slo-mo climaxes and pounding music. Of all the "Passion" critics, no one has nailed its artistic vision more precisely than the journalist Christopher Hitchens, who called it a homoerotic "exercise in lurid sadomasochism" for those who "like seeing handsome young men stripped and flayed alive over a long period of time."'
Philippa Hawker reviewing the film for The Age on February 26 2004 has stated, 'The body and blood of Christ. That's the central theme of Mel Gibson's film on the last 12 hours of the life of Jesus: the tortured, humiliated, whipped, scourged and crucified body, spat on, battered, bruised, pierced and covered with blood ... [The film is] ... constructed as a spectacle of pain ... He is punched and spat on, then whipped with switches. When he rises to his feet, after this beating, a soldier orders his men to get out the cat-o'-nine-tails. After this, his back is covered in welts and bleeding profusely: then the soldiers turn him over and start again on the front of his body.
Humiliations continue to be heaped on him. He falls, he rises, he falls again. The driving of the nails into his hands and feet is shown in close-up: his body shudders with the impact of the blows, blood constantly spurts, drips and flows from him.'
Hawker's conclusion about the impact of this depiction is that 'The sustained, insistent violence, over more than two hours, becomes distancing and repetitive, with moments of excess that border on absurdity.'
2. Other aspects of Christ's life, including his resurrection, receive very little attention
It has been claimed that in focusing on the twelve hours leading up to Christ's death The Passion of the Christ ignores much that is of value and importance in his life. Mac VerStandig writing for the Badger Herald has made this point. VerStandig writes, 'The movie concerns itself only with the final 12 hours of Jesus' life, depicting Judas' betrayal in the opening moments of the picture and wasting little time before commencing to depict the bloodying of Jesus.
Therein lies one of the movie's principal flaws: Gibson selects such a narrow time frame that he is ultimately unable to balance the atrocities committed against the protagonist with any meaningful inclusion of his teachings. The film does offer a handful of flashbacks, but they are too few and too short to offer any sort of relief from the film's main objective - apparently the overly graphic portrayal of Jesus' suffering.'
James Rich writing in The New York Times has similarly claimed, '"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.'
A similar point has been made less vividly by Rabbi Raymond Apple, writing in The Herald Sun on February 29 22004. Apple has stated, 'The unremitting, unrelenting resort to graphic, bloody violence obscures any positive message ... it overdoses the suffering and offers very little in the way of redemption.'
3. The responsibility of Jewish leaders for Christ's death is accentuated in the film.
Katha Pollitt, writing for The Nation in a piece published on March 11 2004 claims, 'Gibson adds considerably to the Gospels in ways that emphasize Jewish villainy. The Gospels contain no scene in which the Jewish guards who arrest Jesus whip him with chains, throw him over a bridge and dangle him over the water, choking, for fun; or in which Caiaphas and his most Fagin-resembling sidekick show up to watch Christ's scourging by the Romans ... And why does he show an earthquake splitting the temple interior as Christ expires (in the Bible, a curtain is torn), if not to justify as God's vengeance the historical destruction of the temple by the Romans a few decades later and all the sufferings of the Jewish people since?'
Philippa Hawker reviewing the film for The Age on February 26 2004 has stated, 'The Jewish religious leaders ... are depicted as resolute, virtually to a man. Determined to punish and eliminate Jesus, the priests drive the process to the very end, impassively watching the beatings, riding to the scene of the crucifixion, staying to watch: Caiaphas even gets a taunt in. There are brief protests from a couple of council members that the first examination of Jesus is a sham, before they are ejected ... It's possible to imagine that the crude, unsubtle presentation of the Jewish figures in the film, coupled with the protracted representation of the torments of Christ, might bolster anti-Semitism.'
Mac VerStandig writing for the Badger Herald has also made this point. VerStandig writes, 'It is the totality of this violence that, in part, lends the film its horrifically anti-Semitic message. Not only does Gibson care to place the blame almost exclusively on the Jews, but by depicting the torture in such fantastical detail, he also fosters a growing hatred toward those who would dare subject a man to such brutality.'
In a letter published in The Age on March 4 2004, Zvi Civins notes that the Jews who persecuted Christ are clearly identified as the Jews who remained faithful to Judaism and thus, by extension, those who are faithful to that religion today. He writes, 'Let's be honest: the Jews who rejected Jesus, who taunted him, and who urged Pilate to condemn him, are presented unsympathetically. They clearly represent those who did, in fact, hold fast to Judaism ... to graphically accentuate the differences between these Jews and those who accepted Christ has the potential to rekindle or encourage anti-Semitism.'
4. Most Jewish characters in the film are presented in a physically unattractive, stereotypical manner.
Katha Pollitt, writing for The Nation in a piece published on March 11 2004 catalogued the supposedly unattractive physical stereotyping of the Jewish villains in Gibson's film.
Pollitt writes, 'Physically, they are anti-Semitic cartoons: The priests have big noses and gnarly faces, lumpish bodies, yellow teeth; Herod Antipas and his court are a bizarre collection of oily-haired, epicene perverts.
The "good Jews" look like Italian movie stars (Magdalene actually is an Italian movie star, the lovely Monica Bellucci); Mary, who would have been around 50 and appeared 70, could pass for a ripe 35.
These visual characterizations follow not just the Oberammergau Passion Play that Hitler found so touching but a long tradition of Christian New Testament iconography in which the villains look Semitic and the heroes, although equally Jewish, look Northern European.'
5. Pontius Pilate is presented more sympathetically and his role in Christ's death appears less blameworthy
It has been claimed that the negative role in Christ's torture and death supposedly played by many of the Jewish characters is heightened by a sympathetic treatment of the role played by prominent Romans, especially Pontius Pilate.
Robbie Whelan in a review of Gibson's film published in the Johns Hopkins newsletter has claimed, 'When Jesus is sent to be judged at Herod's court, Gibson inserts a scene showing Pilate talking to his wife, the governor struggling with the decision of whether or not to condemn the Son of Man. The dialogue further emphasizes Pilate's ambivalence and desire to be merciful ...
There are other examples, as well. The Roman centurions who are not involved in the beating of Jesus almost all show compassion for the Virgin or for the Son himself, with pained looks and close-up shots on their tortured eyes. As Christ is being flogged, Satan moves about among the Jewish priests who are watching. Pilate's wife offers towels to Mary and Mary Magdalene so that they can clean up Jesus' blood.
Gibson also adds non-Gospel lines to the story, including an exchange between Pilate and the Jewish High Priest, in which Pilate asks if he should crucify their king, to which the Jew responds, "We have no king but Caesar!"'
Professor Robert Manne has made similar points in a comment published in The Age on March 8 2004. Manne has written, 'in the Gibson film the political interpretation of the death is about as straightforwardly hostile to the Jews and as exculpatory of the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate, as any interpretation of the story has ever been. Caiaphus and the other Jewish priests are brutal and arrogant, utterly determined that Jesus, the blasphemer, be put to death. Nor do they have difficulty in convincing the large Jewish crowds, who appear before Pilate, to demand the blood of Christ.
Gibson's Pontius Pilate is astonished by this Jewish vindictiveness. He does almost all within his power to save Jesus from the death the Jews demand. In this version he is not so much weak and vacillating as a faithful servant of his "truth", political realism. If in the end he succumbs to the Jews, it is because of the plausible threat of rebellion the high priests are able to conjure up.
As both Catholic and Jewish scholars have pointed out, Gibson has chosen from differing versions of the Passion that appear in the gospels and from later non-biblical versions, those elements that are most hostile to the Jews and most sympathetic to Pontius Pilate.'
6. The film appears to grow out of a particular anti-Semitic Christian tradition
It has been claimed that Mel Gibson's film is a modern passion play. Passion plays were medieval dramatic presentations of the suffering and death of Christ that frequently demonised Jewish characters and thus provoked hostility toward Jewish people.
The director of interfaith affairs at the Anti-Defamation League in New York, Rabbi Eugene Korn, has claimed, 'Historically, "passion" plays have been very dangerous productions in terms of Christian attitudes toward Jews. Many dramatic presentations of the passion contained anti-Semitic elements ... that led to the charge of deicide (killing of a god) and [the supposed] responsibility of Jews for the Crucifixion. Not only Jews who lived then, but Jews for all time.'
There are those who claim that the Gospel writers in describing the circumstances surrounding Christ's suffering and death effectively provided the seedbed for much subsequent anti-Semitism.
Professor Robert Manne, in an opinion piece published in The Age on March 8 2004, writes, '[Gibson's] film fits uncomfortably easily within the anti-Semitic tradition of the medieval passion plays.
This is no minor matter. There have been in European history many reasons for the perpetuation of an often murderous anti-Semitism. Yet nothing plays a more central part than the story about the Jews as the stubborn rejecters of Jesus' redemptive message and as the killers of Christ.'
Professor Manne then notes the role that this tradition played in legitimising the genocidal anti-Semitism of the Nazis. He further observes that since World War II the Catholic Church has deliberately renounced these attitudes.
Professor Manne writes, 'It was only after the Holocaust that the Catholic Church repudiated this tradition definitively. In 1965, at the Second Vatican Council, the age-old curse on the Jews as the murderers of God was lifted. In 1998 the church accepted the indirect role that its traditions had played in fertilising the soil in which racial anti-Semitism and the Nazi genocide had taken root.'
Critics of the film are concerned that whether deliberately or not it may reinvigorate a tradition of anti-Semitism among Christians.
7. Mel Gibson's father supports revisionist views about the Holocaust and his son has not dissociated himself from these views.
It has been suggested that the anti-Semitism supposedly present in The Passion of the Christ may have been influenced by the attitudes of Mel Gibson's father, Hutton Gibson.
In an opinion piece published in The Age on March 2004, Gerard Henderson wrote, '[Gibson's] American father is a Holocaust denier and seems to have been influenced by the minority movement in the American church led by the late Father Coughlin. And the son will not renounce his father on this issue.
As Mel Gibson recently told interviewer Diane Sawyer, who raised Hutton Gibson's view that the Nazis' murder of the European Jews was mostly "fiction": "He's my father; gotta leave it alone, Diane." This was a radically inadequate response.'
Arguments supporting The Passion of the Christ
1. The film focuses on the violent treatment Christ received because its purpose is to make real his sufferings
Those who support the amount of violence in the film and the manner in which it is presented stress that these things are crucial to the film's purpose.
The highly regarded Chicago Sun-Times film critic, Roger Ebert has noted, 'The movie is 126 minutes long, and I would guess that at least 100 of those minutes, maybe more, are concerned specifically and graphically with the details of the torture and death of Jesus. This is the most violent film I have ever seen.'
Ebert then goes on to justify this focus and treatment in terms of the film's purpose. He writes, 'I prefer to evaluate a film on the basis of what it intends to do... It is clear that Mel Gibson wanted to make graphic and inescapable the price that Jesus paid (as Christians believe) when he died for our sins.'
Reverend Fraser Pearce has made a similar point in a comment published in The Herald Sun on February 27 2004. Pearce acknowledges, 'The Passion is not entertainment. It has scenes of graphic brutality that do not excite, but repel and disgust.'
Pearce then goes on to stress the power of the film that he believes is related to its violence and the purpose for which it is used. Pearce claims, '... the movie is gripping. It is gripping because Jesus' sacrificial death has the power to capture our souls.'
Michael Novak, an American theologian and philosopher, has made this point in greater detail. Novak writes, 'I have never sat in the presence of a religious film with anything like the power of The Passion ... For the first time, I felt really inside Christ's suffering, enduring with him, or more exactly enduring like those who loved him ... I now knew, as never before, the duration of his excruciating pain. Unlike a painting, cinema gives us the pain-filled passage of time.'
2. The film does not seek to promote stereotypes of its characters.
It has been claimed that Gibson's declared aim was to make his film realistic and that to this end he has cast a variety of physical types. In response to claims that all major positive roles, whether for Jewish or Roman characters, were played by Caucasians and the negative Jewish roles by Semites, Gibson has noted that his cast and crew are comprised of an international group from Romania, Algeria, Tunisia, Bulgaria and Israel, as well as Italy, the United States and other countries. Particular stress has been placed on the fact that Maia Morgenstern, a 41-year-old Jewish actor from Romania (who, it has been noted, is herself the daughter of a Holocaust survivor) plays Mary.
It has also been noted that Gibson has attempted to give a realistic edge to all his principals and that he has deliberately aimed not to visually sanitise either the heroes or the villains of his story. The film has been contrasted with early treatments of the life of Christ that have shown Christ and the disciples as middle class contemporary Caucasians.
Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert has stated, 'This is not a Passion like any other ever filmed. Perhaps that is the best reason for it. I grew up on those pious Hollywood biblical epics of the 1950s, which looked like holy cards brought to life. I remember my grin when Time magazine noted that Jeffrey Hunter, starring as Christ in "King of Kings" (1961), had shaved his armpits. (Not Hunter's fault; the film's Crucifixion scene had to be re-shot because preview audiences objected to Jesus' hairy chest.)
If it does nothing else, Gibson's film will break the tradition of turning Jesus and his disciples into neat, clean, well-barbered middle-class businessmen. They were poor men in a poor land.'
Spencer Warren, writing for The Spencer Institute, has defended the film against accusations that it promotes negative, ethnically based stereotypes. He has written, 'Although [some] critics have complained that the high priests look like Jewish stereotypes, Mary (played by a Jewish actress) and the disciples do not appear different from them ethnically; I see them as villains, but not stereotypes.'
3. The film demonstrates that there was a general responsibility for Christ's death
It has been claimed that the film proposes a collective responsibility for the death of Christ. Mel Gibson himself, when asked whom he believed was responsible has claimed that he saw himself as responsible, meaning by this that he believed his sins had contributed to Christ's death. It has been suggested that it was for this reason that his is the hand that in the film holds one of the nails which is driven into Christ's palms.
Father Di Noia of the Doctrinal Congregation has claimed, 'Looking at The Passion strictly from a dramatic point of view, what happens in the film is that each of the main characters contributes in some way to Jesus' fate: Judas betrays him; the Sanhedrin accuses him; the disciples abandon him; Peter denies knowing him; Herod toys with him; Pilate allows him to be condemned; the crowd mocks him; the Roman soldiers scourge, brutalize and finally crucify him; and the devil, somehow, is behind the whole action.
Of all the main characters in the story, perhaps only Mary is really blameless. Gibson's film captures this feature of the Passion narratives very well. No one person or group of persons acting independently of the others is to blame: They all are.'
4. There are many attractive and sympathetically presented Jewish characters in the film.
In a review published in the Chicago Sun-Timeson February 4 2004, Roger Ebert states, ' ... Gibson's film is not anti-Semitic, but reflects a range of behaviour on the part of its Jewish characters, on balance favourably. The Jews who seem to desire Jesus' death are in the priesthood, and have political as well as theological reasons for acting; like today's Catholic bishops who were slow to condemn abusive priests, Protestant TV preachers who confuse religion with politics, or Muslim clerics who are silent on terrorism, they have an investment in their positions and authority. The other Jews seen in the film are viewed positively; Simon helps Jesus to carry the cross, Veronica brings a cloth to wipe his face, Jews in the crowd cry out against his torture.'
Another well regarded American film critic, James Berardinelli, has stated, 'Although the high priest Caiaphas is depicted as a villainous individual, determined to bring about Jesus' death, he is not shown in any way to represent the entire nation of Jews. In fact, Caiaphas has plenty of competition for the role of villain - the Roman centurions who beat and brutalize Jesus are presented in an even grimmer light.'
Similarly, Frank Devine, in an opinion piece published in The Australian on March 5 2004 claims, 'The [Jewish] high priest Caiaphas is depicted as villainous, a cruel, power-seeking political schemer. But a considerable number of dissenters in the Jewish leadership are shown being brutally silenced by Caiaphas's claque.
As others have pointed out, all the good people in the picture are Jews. In a telling scene, a Roman soldier uses "Jew!" as an insult against the noble Simon of Cyrene, who helps Jesus carry his cross and tries to protect him from the clubs and whips of the soldiers.'
It has also been noted that Gibson removed at least one element from the film that may have made it appear anti-Semitic. In the Gospel according to Matthew, Caiaphas is claimed to have said, 'His blood be on us, and on our children.'
This passage is one of the sources of the notion of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Christ. Gibson shot the scene, but with Caiaphas alone calling the curse down. On the advice of his editor, Gibson later removed the scene.
5. The film is largely based on the four Gospels
Gibson has been defended against charges that he has produced a film to serve his personal prejudices by many of the film's supporters who praise it for its faithful adherence to the Gospel.
The American film critic, James Berardinelli, has stated, 'Most of the film's text is taken from the four gospels (supplemented by the visions of two nuns - the 17th century Mary of Agreda and the 18th century Anne Catherine Emmerich) ... Because information about the so-called "historical Jesus" is so incomplete, it's impossible to argue for or against The Passion of the Christ's factual veracity.'
American theologian and philosopher Michael Novak has made a similar point. After seeing Gibson's film, Novak wrote, 'When I reached home after the theatre, I got out my New Testament, and read again each of the four accounts in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Gibson had not been able to record everything, and he had had to make choices among the accounts. He had had to imagine for himself how best to choose standpoints so as most intimately and powerfully to bring witnesses such as ourselves into the action. I was surprised by how faithful to text after text the film I had just seen had been.'
6. Many of the film's most vocal critics have not seen it
It has been claimed that many of those most critical of the film began to complain about its emphases while it was still being edited and well before a final version was available for distribution. Some of these critics based their concern on a stolen version of the screenplay.
The New York Times has been particularly criticised for complaining about aspects of the film twelve months before its final release and while it was still being edited.
The Australian's commentator Frank Devine has claimed, 'The worldwide controversy about the movie ... began with an article on March 9 [2003, some 12 months before the film's cinema release] in the Times's Sunday magazine. It clawed at Gibson personally and claimed his picture depicted Jews as Christ killers, and would stir up new waves of anti-Semitism. When the Times piece appeared, not even Gibson knew what would be in the movie, whose editing had scarcely begun.'
One of the most extensive critics of Gibson's film has been a commentator for The New York Times, Frank Rich. Rich began writing critically about the film months before he had actually seen it.
The anti-New York Times media analysis site, Times Watch, made the following observation when Rich finally saw the film. 'At long last, Frank Rich sees "The Passion of Christ," a movie on which he has expended thousands of words over the last several months - all of them harshly critical.'
Times Watch has also criticised a number of New York Times columnists for misquoting Gibson and then lambasting his supposed opinions based on these misquotes.
7. His father's views are not relevant to an appreciation of Mel Gibson's film
The Australian's commentator Frank Devine has claimed of The New York Times, 'the article attempted to portray Gibson as a religious maniac, capable of anything, largely by reference to the radical, fundamentalist beliefs and eccentric public remarks of his father, Hutton Gibson.' Devine's clear implication is that Gibson's work needs to be judged on its merits, not on the basis of his father's beliefs.
Further, Mel Gibson has claimed that his father is not a holocaust denier. He has stated, 'I don't want to be dissing my father. He never denied the Holocaust; he just said there were fewer than 6 million [Jews killed]. I don't want them having me dissing my father. I mean, he's my father."
Mel Gibson has also stated, 'Do I believe that there were concentration camps where defenceless and innocent Jews died cruelly under the Nazi regime? Of course I do; absolutely ... It was an atrocity of monumental proportion.'
Further implications
The controversy surrounding Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ suggests the extent of the influence, especially in the United States, of two historically opposed religions, Christianity and Judaism.
Despite Vatican II and apparently sincere ecumenical gestures toward other denominations, it would appear that the Catholic tradition has long promoted a essentially prejudiced view of Jews and to the extent that this view can be derived from the Gospels it will effect most dramatic presentations claiming to be largely based upon them.
Mel Gibson takes as his justification the fact that much of his material was drawn from the Gospels and therefore has to be seen as legitimate.
Gibson's critics would argue that the New Testament is itself substantially anti-Semitic and that this is likely to influence any creative endeavour based on it. Thus, it is claimed, Gibson's film is likely to promote ant-Semitism, whatever Gibson's intentions.
On the question of the violent manner in which Christ's suffering and death have been presented it has been suggested that only believing Christians are likely to find the message embedded in Christ's life sufficiently compelling for it to overcome the numbing effect of the protracted violence.
Sources
The Age
26/2/04 page 1 news item by Barney Zwartz, 'Not all share passion for depiction of Christ's final hours'
27/2/04 page 5 news item by Suzanne Carbone, 'Passion play inspires the converted as Gibson turns a crown of thorns to a critical garland'
1/3/04 page 8 news item by Kim Willsher, 'French block The Passion of the Christ'
1/3/04 page 10 cartoon by Petty
1/3/04 page 10 letter from Judith Rona, 'What is the message behind The Passion?'
1/3/04 page 10 letter from Trevor hay, 'Realism, romanticism and The Passion of The Christ'
1/3/04 page 10 letter from Susan Kelly, 'Feeding bigotry'
1/3/04 page 10 letter from Reverend Mark Durie, 'Jews v Jews'
2/3/04 page 13 comment by Gerard Henderson, 'Mel Gibson's dangerous guilt trip'
4/3/04 page 14 letter from Zvi Civins, 'Why The Passion worries me as a Jew'
4/3/04 page 14 letter from Patrick O'Reilly, 'Missing the point'
The Australian
19/2/04 page 7 news item by Sophie Morris, 'Senior Jews fear anti-Semitism with a Passion'
24/2/04 page 3 news item by Sophie Tedmanson, 'See the movie, then buy the nail'
25/2/04 page 13 comment by Michael Novak, 'Pain, power, passion'
26/2/04 page 14 comment by Evan Williams, 'Gibson the braveheart'
The Herald Sun
18/2/04 page 18 comment by Joseph Wakim, 'Offended? We know how you feel'
26/2/04 page 24 news item by Michael McKenna, 'Gibson film divides US'
27/2/04 page 79 comment by Paul Gray, 'Mel's biblical con'
27/2/04 page 79 comments, 'What three religious leaders say about it'
29/2/04 page 80 cartoon by Knight
29/2/04 page 81 comments by Mark Coleridge and Raymond Apple, 'Gibson's raw Passion and the two sides of a story'