Dubious ‘Passion’
By: Aaron Pinsker
noraa@hotmail.com
“The Passion of the Christ” is an intense and rather brutal
account of the last 12 hours of Christ’s life. I was not sure what
to expect going into this movie, I knew it was going to be bloody
and violent but with all the talk about it, all the rave reviews
from Christian leaders, I expected to come out of it with some
insight into what made Jesus such a wonderful man, and why he is
believed by so many to be the Son of God. Instead, I came out of
the movie confused and dismayed. Confused by what exactly director
Mel Gibson was trying to get across in this movie and dismayed by
not only the shear brutality of the images but also by the
polarization it created between Jesus, his followers and everyone
else.
My confusion stemmed mostly from trying to figure out what kind
of movie Gibson was attempting to make. Was it his goal to create a
movie that would only have an impact on those who believe in Jesus
or was it his goal to create something that would impact any person
who saw the images on the screen? If it was the former, I suspect
the movie will succeed tremendously – as watching any person you
love being beaten to death will have a profound impact on you.
However, if it is the latter, the movie completely missed the mark
and degenerated into nothing more than a bloody and gruesome romp
of the torture and eventual death of a man.
As a non-Christian, I feel this movie did not affect me in the
way Gibson intended it. From my understanding, Gibson was trying to
portray what Christ went through to die for all of our sins and to
use this to show why he was such a great man. I felt Gibson chose
to go for the shock value over any real substance. I sat through an
hour and a half of the most violent images I have ever seen on a
movie screen and did not come out feeling at all touched or moved.
Instead of focusing on what made Jesus such an incredible man and
what ultimately proved him to be the Christ (according to Biblical
texts), the movie focused on the blood and gore. But can I really
fault a movie in not doing what I think it should have done? No, I
can’t. If this was Gibson’s intent, to simply go for the shock over
the substance, then it seems that I can’t fault the movie. I can
simply be confused and question the motives of the filmmaker.
I am not, however, confused with one very disturbing aspect of
“The Passion,” a theme that ran throughout the movie of “us” versus
“them” – Jesus and his followers against the world. There have been
endless talks of the possible anti-Semitic nature of this movie,
and while it is there, what bothers me more than this, is that the
movie isn’t just anti-Semitic – it is anti-non-believers. While the
Jewish High Priests are shown as bloodthirsty mongrels, the Romans
Legions are shown as sadistic. After a screening of the film at the
Willow Creek Church in Illinois, Mel Gibson spoke to the crowd and
said, “The opponents of Jesus are dupes of Satan.” Perhaps Mel
Gibson did have a point he was trying to get across, not that Jesus
was a great man, but that there is a dichotomy in this world
between those who believe versus those who don’t, good versus evil.
I fear then, not just that this movie has created a false
separation between Christianity and the rest of the world, but that
its message has the potential to set back inter-religious dialogue
by many years, and will foster not the love and acceptance taught
by Jesus, but will foster hatred. My fear is what will happen when
religious extremists see this movie, and use it as just one more
excuse for hating not only Jews, but all non-believers.
Aaron is a senior studying space engineering. Aaron, along with
opinion editor, Christopher J. Ortiz, are members of Alpha Tau
Omega Fraternity.
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