GIBSON'S 'PASSION OF CHRIST' IGNITES FIRESTORM OF CONTROVERSY
Don't Blast Director for Biblical Accuracy, Reverence

By Corey Friedman

Paint a sacrilegious portrait of the Virgin Mary spattered with elephant dung, as artist Chris Ofili did in 1996, and the world applauds your unique vision and fresh perspective. Direct a Biblically faithful film on the death of Jesus, as Mel Gibson did this year, and you will be branded a bloodthirsty, anti-Semitic bigot.
I see something inherently wrong with this picture, and I’m not referring to the one that premiered on the silver screen late last month.
Since Gibson's private motion picture company finished production of The Passion of The Christ and studio execs and focus groups previewed the 127-minute crucifixion chronicle, Gibson has been lambasted in the press for producing a gratuitiously gory movie that incites anti-Semitism and could encourage hate crimes against Jews.
An Associated Press review tapped Gibson as “fetishistic in his depiction of the pain Jesus suffered in the last 12 hours of his life” and called The Passion “frightening…for the relentlessness of its brutality.”
Anyone who saw the movie—as I did on Feb. 25 at New Bern’s Southgate Cinema 6—won’t easily forget the stomach-turning sight of a man being flayed within an inch of his life, blood draining from his body even as it hardens and cakes upon his skin. It makes an indelible impression. It also makes us uncomfortable and causes us to squirm in our seats.
But isn't that grotesque trauma the whole theme of The Passion?
The Bible is explicit in its account of Jesus' immense suffering. Naturally, a film faithful to this account would contain more bloodshed than beauty. Critics froth and rage at Gibson for this bloodbath as if it were a product of his imagination. It’s not.
While theologians and laypersons have debated Jesus' messiahship—whether or not he was the Son of God—for centuries, it is almost universally acknowledged that a man named Jesus of Nazareth really existed and was really crucified. To somehow mute the carnage of crucifixion, to water down the gruesome reality of a Roman flogging would be doing a grave disservice to both history and religion.
In a baleful rant the day following the film’s release, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called the closing scenes “a spaghetti crucifixion,” conjuring an inappropriate gastronomical image that is both disgusting and demeaning.
Seeming extremely coy and catty when opining on weighty matters is no new trick for Dowd, who Pulitzer Prize-winning Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial page editor once branded “a fashion columnist out of her depth.” Her obvious disdain for Gibson and his art almost seems a façade for a deep-seated antagonism toward the Christian faith, which has manifested itself in much of her blithe, self-important blather.
In her column, Dowd implies that Gibson purposefully vilified the Jews and cautioned that his film might cause a spike in hate crimes.
Sorry to be politically incorrect, but the Jewish leaders who comprised the Sanhedrin, a religious senate of sorts, did in fact hand Jesus over to the Romans, demanding his immediate execution.
There, I said it. The Jews and Romans killed Jesus of Nazareth. But we've known this for 2,000 years; it’s only recently that stating the obvious has become taboo.
Denying this would be ignoring historical fact, and failing to portray it on the big screen would represent a dangerous attempt to sterilize history. People didn’t fear an anti-German backlash after the release of Schindler’s List, neither should they expect modern Jews to face discrimination for the centuries-old actions of a minority of Jewish clerics.
Two truths emerge from this controversy: crucifixion is unspeakably brutal, and the Jews did play a prominent role in Jesus' execution. If either of these things upset you, sorry. But don't blame Mel Gibson.
He didn't write the script.