Saturday, February 28, 2004
(10:22 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
That One Movie about Jesus
Andrew Sullivan has some interesting remarks about The Passion of the Christ (via Matthew Yglesias):
The center-piece of the movie is an absolutely disgusting and despicable piece of sadism that has no real basis in any of the Gospels. It shows a man being flayed alive - slowly, methodically and with increasing savagery. We first of all witness the use of sticks, then whips, then multiple whips with barbed glass or metal. We see flesh being torn out of a man's body. Just so that we can appreciate the pain, we see the whip first tear chunks out of a wooden table. Then we see pieces of human skin flying through the air. We see Jesus come back for more. We see blood spattering on the torturers' faces. We see muscled thugs exhausted from shredding every inch of this man's body. And then they turn him over and do it all again. It goes on for ever. And then we see his mother wiping up masses and masses of blood. It is an absolutely unforgivable, vile, disgusting scene. No human being could sruvive it. Yet for Gibson, it is the h'ors d'oeuvre for his porn movie. The whole movie is some kind of sick combination of the theology of Opus Dei and the film-making of Quentin Tarantino.
The fetishism of the cross is quite simply a medieval attitude, one which Opus Dei, with its ridiculous focus on mortification of the flesh, carries forward into the present day. Although this movie is supposed to be a highly accurate, "by the book" portrayal of events, in point of fact it's nothing more than an extremely graphic passion play, with all the traditional elements and exaggerations that brings with it -- it's as though every day were Good Friday. Moving along:
There is nothing in the Gospels that indicates this level of extreme, endless savagery and there is no theological reason for it. It doesn't even evoke emotion in the audience. It is designed to prompt the crudest human pity and emotional blackmail - which it obviously does. But then it seems to me designed to evoke a sick kind of fascination. Of over two hours, about half the movie is simple wordless sadism on a level and with a relentlessness that I have never witnessed in a movie before. And you have to ask yourself: why? The suffering of Christ is bad and gruesome enough without exaggerating it to this insane degree. Theologically, the point is not that Jesus suffered more than any human being ever has on a physical level. It is that his suffering was profound and voluntary and the culmination of a life and a teaching that Gibson essentially omits. One more example. Toward the end, unsatisfied with showing a man flayed alive, nailed gruesomely to a cross, one eye shut from being smashed in, blood covering his entire body, Gibson has a large crow perch on the neighboring cross and peck another man's eyes out. Why? Because the porn needed yet another money shot.
The fixation on suffering explains precisely why this movie has become such an idol for so many Christians (if you don't believe me, just say something critical about it to a known conservative Christian -- they'll act as though you opened your Bible to the gospels and started pissing in it). Modern, mainstream Christians have nothing but emotional blackmail to keep people in the church. The continued survival of the church depends on people being more and more guilt-tripped by the cross and "what Jesus did for me," since the modern church can very seldom offer a positive program for what an abundant life means in practice, aside from a certain kind of neurotic emotionalism.
Authentic community? No, we don't do that. Calling the powers to task? No, we don't do that. Providing a space where people can ask questions about topics that don't involve making or spending money? No, we don't do that. But look at what Jesus did for you! Look at how much he suffered -- for you! Don't you owe it to him to live for him? Don't you owe it to him to join this club that was founded on his precious blood? It doesn't make any fucking sense. In the substitutionary theory of the atonement, the cross has nothing to do with anything -- it has nothing to do with the life of Christ, because of course Jesus was fully supportive of the government and only sought minor reforms in religious structures. It has nothing to do with the teaching of Christ, which is turned into some kind of "common sense" morality whose radical edge is blunted at every turn (the "eye of the needle" is a relatively narrow gate, so that it's just a little bit tougher for a rich man to get in). It's nothing but a quid pro quo set up by a sadistic God to satisfy his rage and bloodlust.
And people criticize the modern church for using fear to sell its message: well, how else are you supposed to sell a message like this? I'd say that we should give the church credit for at least being honest enough to use fear to sell its message.
UPDATE: By "the church," of course, I mean parts of the church I don't like -- mainly the conservative parts. Perhaps by assuming that conservative Christians represent "the mainstream," I am simply contributing to the problem. There are a lot of ways in which the church as a whole is attempting to respond to the concrete needs of the day, but The Passion and the surrounding hype do not, in my opinion, seem to be among those attempts.
