Posted on 02/10/2005 7:02:09 AM PST by malakhi
This week's nominations for the film industry's Oscars for the best movies of the year 2004 provided a sigh of relief to some, as it stoked the conspiracy theories harbored by others.
Nearly a year after Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" launched 1,000 commentaries, the 77th Academy Awards ceremony closes the parenthesis on this remarkable cultural phenomenon.
As much as critics blasted it -- while others condemned it for incitement of anti-Semitism -- "The Passion" turned into the surprise blockbuster of the year. As such, its popularity was widely considered a slap in the face to the liberal media/culture establishment.
So while some feared that an Oscar for Gibson or the film would revive the controversy, the unsurprising refusal of the same Hollywood elite that despised the film to honor it will cause the argument to be revisited anyway.
Let us waste no more ink debating the merits of this thoroughly bad film. But I am still interested in the way this story pushes buttons and illustrates the way some Jews look at the world.
Case in point is the way two people have hung on to the controversy and done their best to keep it alive.
They are the Anti-Defamation League's national director, Abe Foxman, and Rabbi Daniel Lapin, a Seattle-based talk-radio host and the head of a small conservative group called Toward Tradition.
Foxman led the charge against the film and its seeming reaffirmation of the myth that placed the responsibility for the death of the Christian messiah on the Jews. He also took the lion's share of blame from those who believed that Gibson used critics to hype a small film into a mega-hit.
Foxman's still smarting from that charge.
He responded in a recent Jerusalem Post opinion piece that restated his reasons for protest and his fears that those who see it in the future will be exposed to "the film's vile notions of Jews."
Blame it on Barbra
On the other end of the spectrum is Lapin, a marginal figure among Jews but someone who enjoys some notoriety among evangelicals who flocked to see the movie. At the time that most other Jews were following Foxman's lead, Lapin was part of Gibson's cheering section.
But rather than merely gloat about Foxman's discomfort, Lapin is attempting to use the "Passion" anniversary to refloat one of his own ideas. He doesn't think the real cause for anti-Semitism lies in the age-old canards that Foxman and others have sought to debunk. For the South African-born rabbi, the cause of hatred for the Jews can be found in the behavior of actors Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand.
What has this famous Jewish duo done?
The answer is that they made a movie that the right-wing rabbi considered far worse than Gibson's.
For Lapin, the Streisand-Hoffman appearance in the regrettable "Meet the Fockers" wasn't merely an exercise in bad taste. For him, it was a defamation of American Jewry.
In the film -- the sequel to the extremely popular "Meet the Parents" -- Streisand and Hoffman portray the oversexed and eccentric Jewish parents of a character played by actor Ben Stiller, a dorky Jewish male nurse who's marrying a gentile goddess. The conceit of the piece lies in a visit by the girl's uptight parents to Miami, home of their Jewish hippy in-laws. Comic complications ensue, some of which deal with the stereotyped connections of the Jewish couple to Judaism.
But rather than dismiss this as cinematic nonsense, Lapin, in a piece widely distributed by his organization, considers it a prime example of how Jews are destroying American morals.
"You'd have to be a recent immigrant from Outer Mongolia not to know of the role that people with Jewish names play in the coarsening of our culture," fulminates Lapin. "Almost every American knows this. It is just that most gentiles are too polite to mention it."
Was Hitler right?
Acknowledging that any ordinary reader would be shocked at such a statement, Lapin remains undaunted, and goes even further with a quote from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. Lapin observes that "that evil megalomaniac roused his nation" not through use of the deicide myth, but by noting the Jewish influence in German cultural life.
"It does not excuse Hitler or his Nazi thugs for us to acknowledge that this maniacal, master propagandist focused on a reality that resonated with the educated, and cultured Germans of his day," writes Lapin.
In other words, according to Lapin, avant-garde Jewish artists "linked Jews and deviant sexuality" in the German imagination, and so set the stage for the Shoah. He sees American Jews as similarly responsible for our country's "cultural decline" -- something that "angers more Americans than the crucifixion."
Lapin is right that some Jews on the left have been all too quick to wrongly stigmatize Christian conservatives as anti-Semites when, in fact, many are ardent supporters of Israel.
He's also right when he condemns the decline of public morality. But who but an anti-Semite or a Jew who hates liberals more than he despises Jew-haters would place the blame for this solely on the Jews?
Blaming liberals for anti-Semitism is as vile as blaming it on Jewish actors.
When Lapin claims that actors who spoof Jewish secularism are practicing anti-Semitism while at the same time rationalizing those who would single out "the Jews" as the destroyers of American decency, the rabbi has crossed the boundary from irresponsible commentary to fomenting hatred of his own people.
Out of all the loopy things that have been said and written about Gibson's film, Lapin's article qualifies as the low point of the discussion. In his zeal to condemn his foes, the talking rabbi has proven that self-hatred isn't a virus that can be solely linked to the Jewish left.
Say what you will about Foxman's dogged attempt to justify his role as Gibson's unwitting foil in last year's cultural follies. But Daniel Lapin represents an example of how "The Passion" helped motivate a cultural conservative to turn on his own people. Viewed in that context, it turns out to be a far scarier movie than anyone may have dreamed.
LOL
It’s well know that Republicans are often portrayed as intolerant bigots. Frequently on FR posters accuse the left of the same sin, and wonder why minorities don’t “get it”. Cynicom’s attempt to erase anti-semitism and the Holocaust from the sphere of acceptable discussion on a conservative forum, and to demean selected posters, mostly Jewish but I’m sure that’s a coincidence, serves as a fine example to any lurkers that bigotry exists on both ends of the spectrum.
Hey, cynicom, here’s two new ones for you.
Yad Vashem to honor unlikely Italian hero [Giovanni Palatucci ]
As much as critics blasted it -- while others condemned it for incitement of anti-Semitism -- "The Passion" turned into the surprise blockbuster of the year.
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The only surprise in Britain was that Gibson did not blame us for killing Jesus. He seemingly blames us and distorts history in all his other films.
Another victim of Mel Gibson...pretty soon, we'll have enough for a parade. [Rolls eyes.]
Well he managed to reinvent and make up all new facts in Bravheart and the Patriot. He is a known Brit-hater. Luckily he had facts to base the Passion on.
I agree with you totally.The old joke of Norman Podhoretz that " they live like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans" is less and less true (gracias a Dios).
How Mel Gibson helped to turn us into Nazis
http://www.jonathanforeman.com/movies/patriot_guardian.html
"Braveheart"
Mel Gibson's deadly boring film, not to mention his commentary, mangles history and his fellow actors -- all for the sake of a good fight.
http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/dvd/2001/01/05/braveheart/
Distorting historical facts for personal vendettas is plain wrong. I can see why Jews were worried about this film with his track record.
We're kinda proud of the people who fought for our independence, by the way.)
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And that has what to do with historical innaccuracies in films that Gibson makes?
So, The Patriot was a documentary? [Hits self in head.]
You're quoting from salon.com to me?
Yeah - look at all the bad things that happened to Brits after he made The Patriot.
You're a laugh a minute! Literally!
I never stated that The Patriot was a documentary. I said that it was a Brit-hating piece of garbage. No one in Britain holds him in esteem.
Apparently telling me that it was not a documentary (not that I ever said it was) makes me wrong.
Go figure.
I can see why Jews were worried about this film with his track record.
Yeah - look at all the bad things that happened to Brits after he made The Patriot.
You're a laugh a minute! Literally!
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The Brits were not worried about what would happen to them. we were worried that Gibson lied and distorted historical fact.
Your arguements are slanted and bizarre.
Well, if you don't think it was intended to be a documentary, you should probably quit whining about historical inaccuracies.
"It's simple, really." - Nigel Tufnel
ROTFLMAO
Well, if you don't think it was intended to be a documentary, you should probably quit whining about historical inaccuracies.
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Right. So if someone makes a movie about America being a bunch of Nazi's then you would not be miffed.
I am sorry my "whining" offends you so. Coming from a country under constant attack in the media I would have thought you would have known better. I am sorry you do not.
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