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Aquarian
Weekly 2/25/04
REALITY CHECK
A DEBATE OF "PASSION"
PART I
Film Art,
Anti-Semitism and Gospel Lore
 Editor's
Note: The following is part one of a two-part series on the
social impact of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of The Christ", the
charges of anti-Semitism therein, and its New Testament sources,
while the second segment will concentrate on the film after the
author attends a screening this week.
Once
again, Jesus of Nazareth, the peasant artisan from ancient Palestine
turned social and spiritual radical, turned miraculous healer,
turned martyred rebel, and finally turned religious icon gets
dragged from the altar and into the news with the release of "The
Passion of the Christ", a Mel Gibson-produced-directed epic. The
film is getting free publicity because of its alleged "controversial"
depiction of the arrest, trial and subsequent murder of the impoverished
first-century Jewish radical cum messiah. Controversial because
of what some deem its subliminal, others its overt anti-Semitic
stance. But how much of it is warranted?
To
merely make art about religious subject matter is to seduce controversy.
This is fact. From DaVinci to Scorsese, the list is long, and
the results similar: furor.
Having
released my own "controversial" book, "Trailing
Jesus" (Published 11/02) I understand all too well the
impossibility of escaping belief systems based on cultural traditions,
familial binds and unyielding devotion. This is true of any faith
in any era, and for some this is good. But just as true is espousing
one true faith in a world of several - in this case three mega-popular
monotheistic faiths - managing to propagate an ignominious history
of bating, bashing and violence between them.
I
may have humbly sparked much of my own engaging discussion under
the radar this past year, but Gibson, super-celebrity, comes to
the party with some baggage.
Gibson,
an Oscar-winning filmmaker in his own right, is a self-proclaimed
Traditionalist Catholic, an ultra-conservative sect of a multi-billion
dollar industry that harkens its tenets back to the Middle Ages.
His asides about being moved by God to produce what he deems is
the definitive artistic expression of The Passion of Christ not
withstanding, Gibson's vociferously opinionated father has gained
him a mound of negative publicity. Hutton Gibson is an oft-quoted
lunatic bigot with virulent stances on everything from Holocaust
denial to Pope smearing.
This
explosive combination of religious fanaticism and noisy prejudice
has caused raucous mouthpieces for the Jewish Anti-Defamation
League to charge the explicit violence in Gibson's film - the
protagonist being beaten to a bloody pulp and executed replete
with cheering on by the predominantly Jewish populace of the period
and orchestrated by its leadership - to be a form of rampant Jew-bashing
during a time ripe with anti-Semitic rumblings in Eastern Europe
and the whole of the vastly radical Islamic world.
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I
dare you to try and figure a convicted soul whose core philosophy
is "love your enemy", gets murdered by those enemies, ends
up being worshipped by the descendents of said enemies,
and come out without controversy.
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On
the surface it looks like more religious kooks using preconceptions
to attack the work, not unlike the tumult over 1988 Martin Scorsese
mediocre film version of Nikos Kazantzakis' brilliant novel, "The
Last Temptation of Christ", wherein the fictitious depiction of
Jesus is seen making babies with Mary Magdalene. Back then Christian
protestors were having fits over the irreverence given to their
Lord, wherein now they laud what many critics have described as
"gruesome" scenes of the Christ's suffering and crucifixion. (Even
the Pope has checked in with a thumb's up). But the subtext of
the ADL's argument is well founded, because in a way Gibson had
no choice in creating an anti-Semitic depiction of this story
no matter what his belief or background.
For
almost 2000 years, at least roughly 1700 years since the Roman
Empire gave Christianity its stamp of approval, the hazily constructed
events leading up to and surrounding the death of Jesus of Nazareth
has given the perpetuators of genocide a nicely formed excuse:
The Jews, leadership and populace, killed Jesus. The Romans were
in charge and could have done something if not so utterly duped
by those evils plotters, but dropped the ball. Until the last
half-century or so this nonsense was not officially denounced
by major sects of Christianity, and in some circles exists today
- leading to some of the most heinous crimes rendered by humankind
But,
again, how much of it origins ring true?
Let's
step back for a moment and massage the parameters of the volatile
climate that inexorably follows the legacy of this Jesus of Nazareth
wherever it has tread for the past two thousand years.
Here's
what we know of what modern Biblical scholars are willing to accept
as history from the Jesus story:
A
peasant artisan (most likely a mason) named Yeshua or Yeshu (Hebrew
moniker meaning salvation) from the rebelliously volatile region
of the Galilee in the Roman province of Judea gained the fanatical
allegiance of mostly vagabonds, miscreants and the terminally
infirmed with a mystical healing power and an engaging philosophy
that grew to dangerous numbers around the thirtieth year of the
first century. He was by all accounts a Jew, and knew well his
culture's customs and beliefs. During the Passover holiday of
that spring, he stomped into the crowded corridors of King Herod's
Holy Temple in the hub of ancient Jerusalem, challenged the religious
political order, pronounced himself some sort of omniscient authority
and wrecked the place. Religious leaders at the time, the Sanhedrin,
a corrupted and fractured congress of Jewish cultural affairs,
and the Roman power-base, Pontius Pilate, the murderous prefect
of Judea felt this behavior inexcusable in the wildly incendiary
ambiance of a culture celebrating its independence from Egyptian
slavery while under the oppressive yoke of a ruling empire.
As
a result, Jesus of Nazareth was crucified - a popular mode of
execution the bloodthirsty Romans borrowed from the equally insidious
Assyrians - by order of the state. The fact is the Jewish culture
of antiquity had no evidence of using crucifixion as a means of
any kind of punishment. They were partial to stoning.
So
Jesus is dead, and thirty years pass with much rumor and innuendo
- both glowingly positive and horribly pejorative - between warring
Jewish faiths: one that believed somehow that the slain Jesus
of Nazareth was the promised Messiah of scripture, and the other
that wished to wait a little longer for something more tangible.
In other words, sans a couple of gentiles and Samaritans, the
whole philosophical battle was between Jews: those who didn't
deem Jesus the Anointed One or Christ, and those who did.
Later
in the century and beyond, four sources of the life, teachings,
doings and death of Jesus of Nazareth emerged as pillars of what
was then the burgeoning Christian faith. Dubbed gospels from the
Greek (the language in which they were written) meaning "good
news", they were sonnets, frameworks, and commentary directed
toward ancient communities about the meaning of religious oppression
and political ruin. Mark (read some forty years after the death
of Jesus), Matthew and Luke (read some fifty or sixty years later)
and John (over a century later) are in essence arguments between
ancient Jewish sects about the priority of the Christ. But when
added to the Bible, fused with the global power structure of Rome
and worshipped as the immutable Word of God they are something
else.
Here Jesus Christ becomes the sacrificial lamb of the world, borrowed
from the ancient practice of sacrificing innocent farm animals
as an elixir to societal and familial sin. His cause is just,
his death and purported resurrection seals the deal. Those who
come aboard gain the fruits of the sacrifice. The rest are doomed.
The
irony of Gibson's ambitious undertaking and the IDL's protest
is laughable in its wake, and its time someone copped to it. If
Jesus of Nazareth were alive today he would likely march into
the Vatican scream and yell, trash the place and, speaking for
the source of the universe, call the Pope a fraud. He wouldn't
be executed for that today, but I'm sure the penalty, cheered
on by Catholics, would not be pleasant.
Because
you see it's difficult pinning this story down neatly, and impossible
to encapsulate 2000 years of insanity and misrepresentation in
1,300 words or a two-hour film. But simply, having based an organized
religious system on a man who despised the whole idea is nuts,
dangerous and downright confusing to us, and will be for some
time to come.
Hey,
I dare you to try and figure a convicted soul whose core philosophy
is "love your enemy", gets murdered by those enemies, ends up
being worshipped by the descendents of said enemies, and come
out without controversy.
NEXT
WEEK: FRAMING THE GIBSON FILM IN THIS MESS
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