Posted on 04/11/2004 1:41:56 PM PDT by Mark
'Passion' is triumph after all -- for us all By Chris Weinkopf
With the arrival of Easter, "The Passion" is now behind us, and in its place, the resurrection, the redemption -- the triumph.
Six weeks after first hitting the big screen, Mel Gibson's epic film about the suffering and death of Jesus, like the story that inspired it, is having a profound social impact, although not at all like the one its critics warned us about.
In Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., a man who held up a bank three years ago and made off with $25,000 turned himself in to police after seeing the movie. When detectives asked what spurred his confession, he cited "The Passion" -- then encouraged them to go see it, too.
In Arizona, a man confessed to six burglaries, claiming that the guilt induced by Gibson's film had compelled him to come clean.
More dramatic yet, there's the case of Dan Leach in Richmond, Texas. By his own admission, Leach literally got away with murder. He killed his 19-year-old pregnant girlfriend, then made it look like a suicide, successfully fooling investigators. He probably never would have faced justice except that he saw "The Passion," which drove him to turn himself in.
And most notable of all is the story of Johnny Olsen, a Norwegian neo-Nazi who twice bombed a youth group's Oslo headquarters during the 1990s. Olsen, too, experienced a conversion while watching "The Passion," prompting him to own up to his crimes. According to news reports, when he entered the courtroom for his detention hearing, he announced, "Jesus lives" and, "I distance myself from my past and neo-Nazism."
The stories of redemption and countless testimonials from the film's viewers make clear that the critics who savaged "The Passion," both before and after its release, had it all wrong -- and that should please no one more than the critics themselves.
The film's detractors had said the graphic violence in "The Passion" was desensitizing, but audiences, witnessing the horror of their own sins, had their sensitivities heightened. Leach, for example, says he got the know-how about how to fake his girlfriend's suicide by watching his favorite TV show, "CSI" -- proof that not all media violence is created equal. If the blood in "CSI" hardened Leach's heart, the blood in "The Passion" changed it.
Critics also predicted that the film would incite an outbreak of anti-Semitism. Instead, it sparked an outbreak of contrition, even in the case of a neo-Nazi like Olsen, precisely the sort of person it was supposed to inflame.
According to a nationwide poll from the Institute for Jewish & Community Research, 83 percent of respondents said the film had no impact on the extent to which they feel contemporary Jews are to blame for the killing of Christ -- and a sizable portion said it's made them less likely to hold Jews collectively responsible.
The critics -- reviewers, pundits and social activists -- saw a very different movie than did the millions of ordinary viewers who have made "The Passion" a blockbuster. The critics thought it would provoke anger, when, in reality, it's led to greater faith and atonement.
The story is admittedly different elsewhere. "The Passion" has recently been released internationally, and, already, it's a hit in the Middle East among radical Muslim clerics, who cite it as yet one more reason to hate Jews.
That sad albeit predictable response may give some sense of vindication to those who accused Gibson and his script of anti-Semitism. But there's something telling about radical Islamists who take delight in a movie that unambiguously professes the divinity of Christ -- which they reject -- and focuses on his crucifixion, which the Quran says never happened.
The mad clerics seem to believe both that Jesus was never crucified and that the Jews crucified him. Such are the intellectual back flips of the bigoted mind.
In a region where state-sponsored schools pump out anti-Jewish bile and imams accuse Jews of all sorts of outlandish atrocities, this is hardly surprising. Radical Islamic Jew-haters, like bigots everywhere, project their biases onto everything around them. Of course, they can find justification for their prejudice in "The Passion" -- they could find it in a turnip.
But among the open-minded, the effect of "The Passion" has been markedly different. Churches report greater attendance, while police report not a single hate crime associated with the film. After six weeks, it would seem not only that the critics owe Gibson an apology, but that the state of American interfaith relations is far healthier than they had feared.
That's good news for everyone.
For the most part, it's been devout Christians -- Evangelicals and Catholics in particular -- who have flocked to see this movie. And rather than leaving the film feeling angry or vengeful toward Jews, as many did after watching anti-Semitic passion plays throughout European history, the movie's viewers have left with a deeper sense of their own culpability for Christ's suffering.
Christians' benign reaction to "The Passion" should bring relief to its critics. Apparently American Christianity is not the hotbed of anti-Semitism that many believed it to be, and ours is a society in which no one need fear each other's open expressions of faith.
For most viewers, watching the horrors through which Christ suffered wasn't an enraging experience, but a transformative one. This is nothing new.
For more than two millennia -- well before Mel Gibson, well before mass media -- meditating on Christ's sacrifice has radically changed lives for the better. Seeing the pain, the cruelty, the persecution of goodness, makes the eventual victory, the Resurrection, all the more glorious.
Mocked, ridiculed and condemned, only to triumph in the end, "The Passion of the Christ" has experienced a small Easter of its own.
Chris Weinkopf is the Daily News' editorial page editor. Write to him by e-mail at chris.weinkopf@dailynews.com .
Hollywood-- critics now silent?
That's because the "critics, pundits, and social activists" are worthless narcissists. Seems the only people to take a bad message from the movie are bad themselves.
That there was no anti-Semitic reaction was entirely predictable, though. When the Pope travels to a city, even though hundreds of thousands travel to see him, the crime rates drop drastically. These are the same kind of people who made this film a hit, and any objective person would have been able to predict that no violence would come from this movie.
This is not your run of the mill blood and guts film, glorifying violence. This is a very deep film. One that transforms us from within. I pray that these family members and friends of mine will eventually experience it, but they were indeed not ready. I respect that - I also find it strangely comforting that they do view this film and the content as something serious, not just a "flick".
I was thinking that this would be the case. This movie will have a profound effect on many people when the DVD is released. Compared to a theater, renting or buying a movie is a much more private, personal experience. In the theaters, Mel is still largely preaching to the choir, but the DVD will reach the prodigal sons.
Almost all the critiques of this film were thinly (sometimes REALLY thinly) veiled attacks against Christians and Christianity, rather than the film itself. And Christians have displayed far better character than their attackers.
Now that's enlightening.
Hollyweird's usual response to complaints about film and TV tripe is, " It's only a movie. If you don't like it, turn it off (or don't go)."
Hollyweirdos expect us to believe that hour after hour, day after day, of vioent and sexually explicit films, TV, and music have no effect whatsoever on our culture.
Yet, a 15 sec TV commercial is expected to make hundreds of millions of Americans run out and buy billions of dollars worth of soup, deodorant, cars, and coca-cola.
They can't have it both ways.
I am sick and tired of having to clean up the cultural messes of these secular slobs. They've littered our culture with their secular garbage for far too long.
America has learned to its grief that morally neutral l secular nostrums result in the sordidness of serial school killings, disturbed one-parent kids, and crime waves of titanic proportions. Schools teaching the destructive, morally neutral secular NEA--PP'hood agenda brings on sexual license, ever younger teen and pre-teen pregnancies, throw-away babies, abortion on demand including infanticide, the lawless homosexual takeover.......and so on and so forth, ad infinitum, add nauseaum.
Gibson has totally silenced the H'wood bigwigs and so-called friends who trashed him during production.
The Passion shows clearly that a major event was taking place that has influenced the world and impacted the lives of billions of people around the globe for centuries.
However, Jews, even the learned priests of the temple totally missed the significance of Christ's presence among them, and the import of His suffering and death on the cross. Christians have to be sensitive to the fact that Jews do not like to be reminded of this.
In the last analysis, labeling The Passion anti-Semitic was intended to stigmatize the film in a futile effort to make it fail.
Excellent point.
No one will soon forget secularists looking down with haughty condescension on millions of Mr and Mrs Middle-Class Believers lined up at theatres to see The Passion.
Secularists made a huge mistake by sending out the shock troops to bash The Passion.
The first foray had ADL Abe claim The Passion was anti-Semitic. That didn't work. NYT's Frank Rich attacked next----said is was fascistic. Then his NYT colleague Maureen Dowd said it was crass. That didn't work. Andy Rooney trashed it on CBS and SNL evilly caricatured it on NBC. That didn't work either.
Newsweek's Evan Thomas told Imus it was a snuff film. Even so-called conservative Krauthammer bashed it, and Hitchens---in his usual drunken stupor--said it was homo-erotic. Secularists stooped to the lowest levels of condescension to bash Mel, the film, and believers. Nothing worked.
And that set the stage for their losing battle in the culture wars. Secularists polarized the culture into two distinct, opposing camps........elite secularists and masses upon masses of believers.
The Christian beliefs that secularists have demeaned and trivialized for so long have been legitimized with the primeval power of this magnificent film
Mocked, ridiculed and condemned, only to triumph in the end, "The Passion of the Christ" has experienced a small Easter of its own.
BTW: It returned to the top spot at the box office this week.
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