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Richard L. Cravatts resides in Massachusetts and writes frequently on law, politics, housing, and real estate development.
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By Richard L. Cravatts
February 26, 2004
When film director Leni Riefenstahl was asked, in a revealing 1994 documentary about her long and controversial career, whether she was concerned what use would be given to her cinematic work for the Third Reich, she answered somewhat disingenuously that in her most recognized and troubling work, "Triumph of the Will," "work and peace are the only messages." Ms. Riefensthal seems to have separated the creation of her art - an activity for which she displayed unquestionable talent - from its message, and left the horrible and lethal consequences of that creation to the vagaries of history.
Now comes Mel Gibson, whose latest directorial project, "The Passion of The Christ," was formally released yesterday (Ash Wednesday) and has already brought on itself a storm of controversy, along with accusations that the film, in its present form, will incite old hatreds and revivify anti-Jewish feelings worldwide.
One of the key issues of debate is how the movie perpetuates the notion that the Jewish people had an active and instrumental role in the execution of Jesus, that they displayed particularly venomous behavior toward Christ, and that the Romans, who were the historical powerbrokers of that epoch, were manipulated by the Jews to carry out the crucifixion-all of which, it is feared, reaffirms the 'blood libel' curse on the Jewish people for rejecting Christianity's savior.
This cinematic approach by Mr. Gibson has been troubling to some biblical scholars, theologians, the Anti-Defamation League, and others-Christian and non-Christian alike - who thought that the old story defined by the medieval passion plays had finally been abandoned, particularly since the Catholic Church's officially declared in 1965 that perpetual condemnation of Jews for complicity in Jesus' death should cease.
Mr. Gibson has repeatedly asserted that his intention is to create a film to "inspire" all rather than indict any particular group, and that the narrative of "The Passion of The Christ" follows the Gospel accounts precisely; critics are concerned, however, that even if he thinks he is true to the biblical account of the last hours of Jesus' life, Mr. Gibson's source books - the Gospels themselves - may be morally and factually flawed. In Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews, for instance, James Carroll for one called for a new mindset "that enables Christians to read the foundational texts not as divine..., but as invented... That God's word is 'inspired' does not mean that it is free of self-contradiction or tragic consequences."
All religions accept their core theological document as unquestionable, inviolable, and sacred. But just as the holy word of one faith may seem to give divine authority to attack or negate the core beliefs of another, clearly other religions cannot ignore that message, no matter how holy the source may be to its intended audience. Mr. Gibson may feel that in using the strict texts of the Gospels as his source he is creating a type of religious documentary, and that he therefore has no artistic inclination to modify elements of the narrative. But, in fact, he is not making a documentary; he is making a commercial movie - one which is being heavily influenced with old misreadings of Christian history and faith, and one that becomes a piece of propaganda when it contains his own specific religious views and not those widely held by biblical scholars, theologians, and even the traditional Catholic Church.
His own protestations aside, Mr. Gibson also took some liberties in his source materials: for instance, scholars were troubled by his use of some non-Biblical sources in constructing the artistic tone of the film, the wildly-detailed writings of an 18th century German nun, St. Anne Catherine Emmerich, who described, among other visions, a Jewish woman who confessed that Jews strangled Christian children and used their blood for rituals (one of anti-Judaism's longest myths), and Mary of Agreda, another recognized mystic who herself had proclaimed that all Jews shared in the responsibility for Christ's death.
Mr. Gibson, too, has rejected the reforms of the Vatican Council, and belongs to a traditionalist sect of Catholicism. His inspiration for the film is drawn, in his mind, directly from the God and the Bible - and for him this justifies anything he puts into his movie, even those characterizations and events that have led to charges of seeming anti-Semitic intent.
According to theologian John Dominic Crossan, author of the engaging Who Killed Jesus? Exposing the Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Gospel Story of the Death of Jesus, this approach is inherently flawed, since, in his view, "divine inspiration necessarily comes through a human heart and a mortal mind, through personal prejudice and communal interpretation, through fear, dislike, and hate as well as through faith, hope, and charity." However, he warns, "it can also come as inspired propaganda, and inspiration does not make it any less propaganda."
That the Gospels as originally written, decades after Jesus' death, were designed specifically as 'inspired propaganda' is accepted by most scholars as a given. Their purpose was to solidify the Christian movement and secure the spiritual story from which it sprang, but they did so by positioning themselves and their new faith as distinct from Judaism, which is how Judaism became, in Carroll's view, Christianity's negative other. This is precisely the tone that Mr. Gibson uses in rendering the final twelve hours of Jesus' life, a confrontation of faiths and a tension between theologies which Carroll suggests could not have even been part of the dynamic of the time.
"The role of 'the Jews' as villains in the climactic act of the Passion narrative," Carroll suggests, "puts Jesus in ontological conflict with his own people-a conflict ... of which he would have known nothing." But in "The Passion" Mr. Gibson has rendered the distinctions quite vividly between the Jewish followers of Jesus and the others, the Jews who rejected him as their messiah.
According to Rabbi Marvin Heir, dean of the Yeshiva of Los Angeles and director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who recently previewed the film, Gibson's cinematic rendering of Jews defies the Vatican's own guidelines for depicting Jews in Passion dramas. "The film makes the Jews look as bad as possible," Heir felt. "The Jews are not only contrasted badly against the new Jews, the Christians, but against the Roman hierarchy which, with the exception of the four whippers of Christ, appear as pleasing, thoughtful and sensitive."
Writing more recently, after having seen the movie, James Carroll reiterated Heir's view, saying that "going well beyond anything in the Gospels, Gibson's film emphasizes Roman virtue and Jewish venality... The centerpiece of the film is a long sequence constructed around the flogging of Jesus... Long after the filmgoer has had enough, even the Romans stop. And here is the anti-Semitic use to which this grotesque scene is put: Then Jesus is returned to the crowd of "the Jews," and then, as if they are indifferent to what the filmgoer has just been physically revolted by, "the Jews" demand the crucifixion of Jesus... The scene, with the Jewish crowd overriding tender-hearted Pilate, is the most lethal in the Scriptures, but in Gibson's twist, 'The Jews' are made to seem more evil than ever."
That kind of filmmaking may make for good propaganda, but it is exactly the type of end product that has critics concerned. Mr. Gibson, of course, comes from a film history in which morally-challenged, cartoon-like villains are eventually subdued, arrested, or killed by the noble, always-suffering, and righteous characters Gibson has played (such as his role of Sergeant Martin Riggs in the "Lethal Weapon" series). But in dealing with the story of Jesus, and revivifying the intensely troubling relationship between emerging Christianity and first century Judaism, Gibson is dealing with much more delicate, and potentially incendiary, emotions. And, his own claims for wanting to make an inspirational movie aside, one has to wonder why his film has taken this form.
Crossan felt that the passion narrative should not only be modified, its very use and exploitation should well be questioned: "In light of later Christian anti-Judaism and eventually of genocidal anti-Semitism," he wrote, "it is no longer possible in retrospect to think of that passion fiction as relatively benign propaganda. However explicable its origins, defensible its invectives, and understandable its motives among Christians fighting for survival, its repetition has now become the longest lie, and, for our own integrity, we Christians must at last name it as such."
For that reason, voices have been rising, even in advance of the formal release of Mr. Gibson's film. No one would presume to tell Mr. Gibson how to approach his faith, or to censor his cinematic inquiry into a spiritual turning point for hundreds of millions of the world's people. He may sincerely wish to inspire all who view his movie, but Mr. Gibson should be aware that the tragic and sometimes lethal effects of propaganda can finally eclipse the power of even well-intentioned art.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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