Posted on 02/29/2004 9:12:37 PM PST by churchillbuff
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: March 1, 2004
Columnist Page: William Safire
WASHINGTON — ...Mel Gibson's movie about the torture and agony of the final hours of Jesus is the bloodiest, most brutal example of sustained sadism ever presented on the screen.
...[snip] — the bar against film violence has been radically lowered. Movie mayhem, long resisted by parents, has found its loophole; others in Hollywood will now find ways to top Gibson's blockbuster, to cater to voyeurs of violence and thereby to make bloodshed banal.
What are the dramatic purposes of this depiction of cruelty and pain? First, shock; the audience I sat in gasped at the first tearing of flesh. Next, pity at the sight of prolonged suffering. And finally, outrage: who was responsible for this cruel humiliation? What villain deserves to be punished?
Not Pontius Pilate, the Roman in charge; he and his kindly wife are sympathetic characters. Nor is King Herod shown to be at fault.
The villains at whom the audience's outrage is directed are the actors playing bloodthirsty rabbis and their rabid Jewish followers. This is the essence of the medieval "passion play," preserved in pre-Hitler Germany at Oberammergau, a source of the hatred of all Jews as "Christ killers."
Much of the hatred is based on a line in the Gospel of St. Matthew, after the Roman governor washes his hands of responsibility for ordering the death of Jesus, when the crowd cries, "His blood be on us, and on our children."
Though unreported in the Gospels of Mark, Luke or John, that line in Matthew — embraced with furious glee by anti-Semites through the ages — is right there in the New Testament. Gibson and his screenwriter didn't make it up, nor did they misrepresent the apostle's account of the Roman governor's queasiness at the injustice.
But biblical times are not these times. This inflammatory line in Matthew — and the millenniums of persecution, scapegoating and ultimately mass murder that flowed partly from its malign repetition — was finally addressed by the Catholic Church in the decades after the defeat of Naziism.
In 1965's historic Second Vatican Council, during the papacy of Paul VI, the church decided that while some Jewish leaders and their followers had pressed for the death of Jesus, "still, what happened in his passion cannot be charged against all Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today."
That was a sea change in the doctrinal interpretation of the Gospels, and the beginning of major interfaith progress.
However, a group of Catholics rejects that and other holdings of Vatican II. Mr. Gibson is reportedly aligned with that reactionary clique. (So is his father, an outspoken Holocaust-denier, but the son warns interviewers not to go there. I agree; the latest generation should not be held responsible for the sins of the fathers.)
In the skillful publicity run-up to the release of the movie, Gibson's agents said he agreed to remove that ancient self-curse from the screenplay. It's not in the subtitles I saw the other night, though it may still be in the Aramaic audio, in which case it will surely be translated in the versions overseas.
And there's the rub. At a moment when a wave of anti-Semitic violence is sweeping Europe and the Middle East, is religion well served by updating the Jew-baiting passion plays of Oberammergau on DVD? Is art served by presenting the ancient divisiveness in blood-streaming media to the widest audiences in the history of drama?
Matthew in 10:34 quotes Jesus uncharacteristically telling his apostles: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." You don't see that on Christmas cards and it's not in this film, but those words can be reinterpreted — read today to mean that inner peace comes only after moral struggle.
The richness of Scripture is in its openness to interpretation answering humanity's current spiritual needs. That's where Gibson's medieval version of the suffering of Jesus, reveling in savagery to provoke outrage and cast blame, fails Christian and Jew today.
Let's put the Bible into the PC shredder pronto!
That's a horribly misleading statement, and Safire is too smart not to recognize that. Vatican II addressed a great many issues, and disagreement with Vatican II does not necessarily mean disagreement with the specific conclusion that all jews should not be blamed for the death of Jesus. In any case, Gibson has expressly stated his view that jews in particular should not be blamed for the death of Jesus, and that all people, of all backgrounds, share that blame. For Safire to imply that Gibson believes otherwise is a knwing misrepresentation.
I don't have a strong religious faith of any kind, but these unfair attacks on Gibson are really bogus.
Current spiritual needs? What's current? Human nature hasn't changed one bit in 2000 years.
Now we have Living Scripture??????
One wonders if Wild Bill is a 'Living Constitution" guy as well.....RMFE...
Human nature hasn't changed one bit in 2000 years.
And Not in the last 218 either.Except for the Worse...maybe
I am sick of this slander too.
most Jews also ascribe knowledge of what Vatican2 provided, to all catholics. i had this very discussion with a Jewish friend and coworker last week. he was aghast when i said i rejected Vat2 and was a preVat2 Catholic. he thought i meant that i rejected the reconciliation with the Jews. though i consider myself fairly well informed, i had no idea that Vat2 was considered the seminal moment in Jewish-Catholic rapproachment. i doubt many catholics do. Yet, he assumed that i had that knowledge because i went to Catholic school and my children do as well. he was surprised to learn that those things aren't TAUGHT in Catholic schools, because Judaism is wrought with rules and law and regulations, he thought Catholicism was taught the same way. we have both benefited from our discussions.
Your right. This isn't about moral struggle.
This is warning HIS potential followers that if they follow HIM they will be at odds with their friends and relatives who will still cling to traditional Jewish views and would reject Jesus as the Messiah. - Tom
Perhaps "understandable" would have been a more accurate choice of word.
Perhaps he should be crucified. From what I hear, it's not a bloodless activity.
It always amazes me that these elitist-pinheads and/or Hollyweird wackos think nothing of bashing ANY film with a conservative or religious or moral theme but they attack anyone who does the same to flicks like Natural Born Killer or Texas Chainsaw Massacre or any of the other sadistic/pornographic/anti U.S. films that're produced en masse in that hell-hole we call Hollywood.
But, and my fingers are crossed, I think the tide's turning. What with the gay-lesbian activists breaking the law with impunity, with judicial activists making laws instead of interpreting them, and with the "professional" politicians from both parties only paying lip service to the silent majority's complaints . . . I think the Silent Majority has finally decided to be silent no more.
The internet is the Great Equalizer. The New Yawk Slimes, ABCCBSNBSCNN, and all the other liberal newspapers, TV networks, and magazines can no longer lie with impunity.
The simple fact is millions of people saw this movie, and not one single incident of violence against Jews was reported. The reality is Christians are not like Jews, they were ordered to LOVE YOUR ENEMIES! They walk out of the movie with a sense of sadness of how much suffering Jesus has endured to save us ALL. The Roman, or the Jew who caused him that pain are not related to me or to you, or to any Jew or Italian who is alive today, certainly, we cannot punish people after two thousand years! If my great great grand father was a Jew, do I hate myself now? If I am married to a Jew, do I go and kill my wife? The hysteria, and paranoia of some Jews is very stupid.
That's sick. I bet/hope it was an act and not sexual. It's clearly a case of the exception proving the point.
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