More response to the issue about Mel Gibson’s flick, from my buddy Elayne. No word on whether she plans to watch Club Dread this weekend.
First, I am still stunned that Signs did not shut down all serious discussion of Mel Gibson, period. But since I was mistaken about that, I think we now must admit it: there are several “constant variables” in the world and one is that Mel Gibson is a wack-job. A full-on nutter, by the looks of it. The Catholic sect that his father runs is populated by a Holocaust-denying bunch of evangelicals and, as Christopher Hitchens points out, in the aforementioned film he plays an ex-minister who “recovers his faith after seeing little green men.” He releases this new and, from what I can gather, searingly sadistic exercise on ASH WEDNESDAY. The pretension of that alone gives one pause. So I am coming out as oppossed to Mel Gibson, and on principle.
The film itself: Who cares if the film is anti-Semitic? That isn’t the point, really. The point is that the conception of the film most certainly is. And, again with a nod to Mr. Razor [Hitchens], it appears anti-Christian as well. If you go around bemoaning the crucifixion, what kind of God-damned Christian are you? I am not Christian. If I died and woke to find myself in Heaven, I would puke. But it seems just ever-so-fundamental that the crucifixion is the central necessity for the continuation of that religion itself. So this is puzzling. I have a list of things to do this week… get my hair cut, give my friend Kelly a call, go shopping. Watch Christ die, in real time, is not on that list. Whose list is it on? People who still rewind their 9-11 videos for hours on end. People who go to the web looking for photos of the jumpers from that day–still. It is simply (?) an investment in “the horror” of man, of our never-quite-graspable attraction, no, drooling lust, for the bloodfeast. I don’t knock it, but I think that is behind it, at least in part. And so the “lacerating detail” of Gibson’s film is in an ideological cuddle with the alarming propaganda behind the entire project.
And people want Christianity to win out. They don’t like the fact that a significant sector of the world’s population believes they will get to fuck a bunch of virgins if they die a martyr. That freaks us out, and it should. But folks prefer to identify with the predictable o drama of hanging on a cross (cuz you have nails in your hands) so you can save mankind from the trouble that apple let fly. So The Passion is tapping into that, but only because of Gibson. The other films on Christ have mostly faded from view, and Scorsese’s film is only ever watched anymore so people can laugh at Harvey Keitel’s accent. It is Gibson’s persona that is selling the film. Whether or not he is well-suited to inaugurate this new dawn of aestheticized, vengeful, ignorant, and scared Hollywood worship is not a question Joe Six-Pack is probably asking himself. He is probably just glad it wasn’t Danny Glover.
I dunno. Maybe Hitch put it best when he said “If the Jewish leadership had any guts, it would turn on all those who taunt it with ‘Christ-killing’ and say, ‘Yeah, all right, since you keep mentioning it, we did you a favor. Judas too. Where would your faith be without us?’ This would have the effect, however, of giving away the open secret that religion is man-made. For some reason, we are assumed to need protection from such a revelation.”
When what we really need is to be protected from Mel Gibson. And ourselves.