Urban Rubble
29th February 2004, 20:15
Yeh it was bloody. But umm. Not much else.
I call it a gigantic suckfest.
Its like, it didn't mean anything. He didn't show that this guy was going through all this for your sins. It only showed that he went through all that because he was a [political agitator that pissed off the two greatest governmental bodies in the region. So if Gibson was trying to get some great spiritual point across he failed miserably. Plus it was genrally layed out in a not good movie fashion. Damn you gibson! You and you're less than par movie. I think they made the controvesy to sell tickets cause thye knew it was such a gigantic piece of trash.
Oh well.
Jesus was such a great communist with lots of awesome ideas. Too bad his fanclub sucks so hard.
YA ! GREAT POST ! That's exactly what I was thinking through the whole movie.
I was actually excited to see this movie, I thought it would be cool. It wasn't. It was one of the shittiest movies ever, and this comes from a guy who thinks Jesus is pretty damn cool.
For one, it had no plot, no storyline, nothing to clue you in to what the fuck was going on. Imagine you were someone who had never heard the story of Jesus, you would be clueless through this whole movie. It had no backstory or anything, just 2 hours worth of one mans exectution.
Also, they drug those scenes on. Particularly the whipping scene. What was that ? A half hour ? And then the part of nailing him to the cross, did we really need a close up on both nails ?
Also, the part where Lucifer had his baby was horribl cheesy. I got the metaphor they were going for, that Lucifer was caring for his baby while God wasn't caring for Jesus. I got it, it was still stupid. That cheesy ass grin they gave the baby was just so stupid.
Also, the part where the crow pecked that theive's eye out on the cross. So stupid.
Much of it seemed to be fairly based on the gospels. I heard some people argue that it was anti-semitic, yet I think much of that actually comes from the Gospels.
I know, that's what I was thinking. It seems pretty stupid to think that just because a group of Jews wanted him dead and were huge dicks about it that all Jews were like that. If I make a movie showing a group of black guys wanting to kill a white man, does that mean all black men want to kill a white man ? So stupid. It's just liberal whiny bullshit.
Finally there was this earthquake the moment Jesus died. I suppose that was just for effect, but I don't remember seeing it.
I think the bible says that the skies darkened and thunder and all that stuff. I'm not sure if it mentions an earthquake. I think it might have, but only a small one. They really overdid it with that temple breaking in half.
I will have to say however that the Romans seemed overly sympathetic to Jesus, Pilot seemed as if he was going to have a fucking conversion experience just because Jesus said, "What is Truth?" I do know that Jesus forgave one of the theives for his sins after he said Jesus wasn't deserving of punishment like himself. That I've read in the gospels.
I think that's why some people said it was anti semitic, because Pilot seemed all caring and those damned Jews just wanted him dead. They forget that that is what the bible basically says.
I did like the part where he said the thieve got to go to heaven with him. That was nice.
Seems more likely that Pilot, and whoever that Roman woman was with him... wouldn't have cared as much for Jesus' death in reality than was shown in the movie. Seemed as if they were trying to show the Romans as "good Christians."
I think they were just trying to show the power of Jesus. How he could make even the most powerful think about what he was saying. I don't think they were trying to portray the Romans as anything other than what the bible said about them.
Anyway, crappy movie. I think if they were to make a movie about Jesus's life from when he was born until he died it would be an awesome movie that I would pay to go see.
Skeptic
14th May 2004, 08:18
Hello comrades and everyone in the group: Here is a brillant article about Mel the kook's snuff film vomit, concerning the Fascist roots of this brand of Catholicism which is under the authority of the Opus Dei movement. Matthew Fox's writing is a political knockout! Enjoy:
--Skeptic
>
> Mel Gibson's Passion and Fascism's Piety of Pain
>
> By Matthew Fox
>
> Many years ago, after finishing doctoral studies in Paris, I spent a
> semester at the University of Munster in Germany. While there I lived in
> a Dominican convent which housed about six other Dominicans, one of whom
> was old and very strange and never appeared during the day time at meals
> or for any other reason. He seemed only to go out at night. One day I
> was asked to go in his room to fetch a book and I was amazed to see the
> books on his bookshelf (including Mein Kampf). I was especially amazed
> by a "holy card" on his prie dieu (a place where one kneels to pray).
> This "holy card" was the most gory I had ever seen, with Jesus depicted
> as thoroughly bloodied, beaten, abused and victimized. I later learned
> that this Dominican priest with the gory holy card was a self-appointed
> "chaplain to the Nazi's of Munster". The year was 1970.
>
>
> As I sat and watched Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," with its
> unrelenting emphasis on blood and gore I had a déjà vu experience as I
> vividly recalled this Dominican priest and his particular form of piety.
> Gibson set out his intentions for his film in an interview: "I want to
> push you over the edge, push you right over the edge, so you can stay
> there and hang out with and get to a higher plane... through the pain."
> Piety as pain, pain as piety. This movie opens a door on fascist piety
> which is pain-driven.
>
>
> The piety of fascism is inevitably a piety of pain and suffering (thus
> the complete fascination with redemption and total refusal to entertain
> grace and original blessing) and it manifests itself in full bloody form
> in this movie. Gibson is allegedly a member of Opus Dei, a secretive
> Catholic sect of wealthy men whose spirituality is deeply fascistic. Its
> founder, a Spanish priest named Escriva, whom the Pope rushed into
> canonization two years ago in record time, was a card carrying fascist
> who actually praised Adolph Hitler and who was also deeply sexist. Two
> of his Opus Dei members served on Franco's cabinet. The present pope has
> taken this religious order under his wing (his own press secretary is a
> member of Opus Dei) and has appointed many Opus Dei bishops and
> cardinals (especially in Latin America after decimating the liberation
> theology and base communities there). They have constructed an $81
> million edifice in Manhattan and are ensconced in the financial capitals
> of Europe, especially in Frankfurt, which is replacing Switzerland as
> the financial capital of Europe.
>
>
> One Peruvian I met told about growing up in an Opus Dei household and
> how his father forbade him to be alone at any time with his mother and
> sisters. Thus as a boy he lived on the streets and never went home
> before 8pm, when his father would most likely be home from work. (Boys
> could not be alone in the house with females of any age--so much for
> sexual common sense.) In addition, the family prayed the rosary on their
> knees on upturned bottle caps and were expected to bleed. Piety of pain
> indeed. Not, alas, the pain of the world--the suffering of others that
> can be relieved by acts of compassion--but self-inflicted pain.
>
>
> In many ways the film is a monument to sadomasochism. By emphasizing the
> worst eighteen hours of Jesus' life and leaving most of his teachings
> out of the movie, Gibson makes Jesus a victim rather than a martyr while
> removing Jesus' passion for justice and substituting the term "passion"
> to mean passive victim.
>
>
> Our culture is deeply engaged in sadomasochism--understood here as the
> haves lording over the have-nots. How so? Let's take contemporary
> capitalism and the world distribution of wealth and power as an example:
> In the 1960s, the overall income of the richest 20 percent of the
> world's population was thirty times that of the poorest 20 percent.
> Today, it is 224 times larger! In the 1960s, the richest 20 percent held
> 70 percent of the world's revenues; in 1999 it was 85 percent. Today the
> income of the richest 225 people in the world is equal to the income of
> 3 billion poor people. The income of the three richest people in the
> world is equal to the collective national incomes of the poorest
> forty-nine countries! It would take no more than 5 per cent of the
> overall annual sales of arms in the world to feed all the starving
> children, to protect them from dying of preventable diseases, and to
> make basic education accessible to all.
>
>
> Yet Gibson's Jesus shows none of the passion for justice that served as
> a corrective to the sadomasochistic tendencies of his own culture and
> times, and barely opens the door to issues of soul and society that
> could serve as correctives to our culture and times. Where is the
> compassion, human dignity, and love that lie at the very heart of
> Christ's teachings? You don't cure sadomasochism with more sadomasochism
> and by legitimizing it with religious sentiment.
>
>
> Gibson's rejection of Vatican II (which, among other things, apologized
> for the church's long and sorry history of blaming Jesus' death on the
> Jews and its primary role in fueling anti-Semitism over the centuries),
> gives one a sense of where his piety lies. I lived for one year,
> unknowingly, in Paris with a family that was "integriste" or extreme
> right wing Catholics who like Gibson would only attend Mass in Latin and
> who like Gibson rejected Vatican II. They said that "Vatican II was a
> Jewish and Freemason conspiracy." Thoroughly anti-Semite, they denied
> that Jesus was Jewish.
>
>
> Gibson tells us that people who object to his movie are actually
> objecting to the Gospels, but in fact the movie owes much more to the
> medieval practice of the Stations of the Cross which is a practice of
> meditating on Jesus' trial, his carrying of the cross to his crucifixion
> and a nineteenth century nun's visions named Anne Catherine Emmerich
> than it does to the Gospels. It is in the Stations of the Cross practice
> that we are told Jesus fell three times; that Veronica wiped his face
> with a veil; etc.--all scenes graphically depicted in the film. Mixing
> all of the gospels into one narrative, as Gibson does, is artistic
> license but it is not history. The gospels themselves lack historicity,
> as in their muddling of the Pharisees and Sadducees, and their bias
> against Judaism stems from the fact that they were written after the
> fall of the Temple, long after Jesus' death. They also let Pontius
> Pilate off the hook (which this movie does in spades).
>
>
> Religious imagery is not a private matter; it is a profoundly public
> matter. Medieval mystic Meister Eckhart said that "all the names we give
> to God come from an understanding of ourselves." If we apply this
> insight to this film, we learn that the images Gibson gives to Christ
> reveal much about himself. As one viewer said, they reveal a tough
> childhood supposedly when his father must have taken him to the woodshed
> with a belt and a whipping. The point being that the God represented in
> this film is not a God whom I would want to worship in any form
> whatsoever or whom I could recommend others worship.
>
>
> It is no wonder, then, that this film is being seen by so many Christian
> groups whose piety is built more on fear than it is on love and hope,
> more on sin than on blessing, more on victimization than on liberation.
> It provides a logical haven for fall/redemption religious world views.
> No wonder Gibson leaves out so much of the message of Jesus: It is not
> compatible with fascism which is about control and not justice, about
> power-over, not power-with (compassion).
>
>
> It is one of the signs of our times that new generations born since the
> defeat of fascism in World War II (and the attempt to throw off fascism
> in the Catholic Church in the Second Vatican Council), know very little
> about fascism. I recently met a twenty-six year old college graduate who
> did not know what fascism was. It is a scandal that our Congress
> appropriates millions of dollars to build monuments to the heroes of
> World War II but apparently very little to educate youth (or itself?)
> about the lessons to be learned from the purpose of that war: To defeat
> fascism.
>
>
> Susan Sontag has defined fascism as "institutionalized violence." I
> would define it as authoritarianism, an authoritarianism that swamps all
> else--conscience, community, human rights, justice--and that in the
> process legitimizes violence. Fascism is a philosophy of disempowerment
> based on fear, power over (sadism), power under (masochism), victimhood,
> and scapegoating. Fascism seems to need religion and even religious
> piety to wrap around itself and render feelings of pious sentiment and
> self-righteousness. Its God is the God of Authoritarianism. (Cardinal
> Ratzinger, the present pope's right hand man and current inquisitor
> general, is a devote of authoritarianism. It is in this context that the
> late theologian Dorothy Soelle wrote of a new "Christofascism" coming to
> the fore in our day.
>
>
> Recently a political scientist, Dr. Lawrence Britt, wrote an article
> naming fourteen characteristics of fascism. He based his study on an
> examination of the regimes of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto and
> Pinochet. (For the record, we need to remind ourselves that four of
> these men were Roman Catholics never excommunicated by their church--all
> except Suharto.) A summary of Britt's points follow.
>
>
> 1. Powerful and continuing nationalism employing constant use of
> patriotic slogans, symbols, songs, flags.
> 2. Disdain for the recognition of human rights because security needs
> outweigh human rights which can be ignored.
> 3. Using enemies as scapegoats for a unifying cause.
> 4. Supremacy of the military.
> 5. Rampant sexism including more rigid gender roles and anti-gay
> legislation.
> 6. Controlled mass media.
> 7. Obsession with national security driven by a politics of fear.
> 8. Religion and Government are intertwined especially in rhetoric
> employed by its leaders.
> 9. Corporate power is protected--industrial and business aristocracies
> put government leaders into power and keep them there creating a
> mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
> 10. Labor power, which represents one of the few threats to fascism, is
> suppressed.
> 11. Disdain for intellectuals and the arts and hostility to higher
> education along with censorship of arts or refusal to support the arts.
> 12. Obsession with crime and punishment.
> 13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.
> 14. Fraudulent Elections.
>
>
> One does not have to be a paranoid to see these elements alive and well
> in the USA in 2004. To encourage this through pious film-making
> underscores the danger. Perhaps we can thank Mel Gibson for opening up
> possibilities to discuss fascism once again including its strange mix of
> politics and very strange religious notions. One wonders who will be the
> beneficiary of Mr. Gibson's billion dollar profit on the crucifixion of
> Jesus? Will it lead to more Opus Dei bishops in North America? More
> mixing of right-wing politics and right-wing religion and right-wing
> media? Stay tuned.
>
>
> In the multi million dollar campaign to get churches to support this
> movie, a four-color flyer was sent to most churches in the country that
> boasted the following headline: "Dying was Jesus' Reason For Living." It
> is difficult to imagine a slogan more contradictory to the facts of
> Jesus' life or his teaching or indeed of that of the Christ who in
> John's gospel says: "I have come that you may have life and have it in
> abundance." Mel Gibson ought to read the great spiritual genius Ernest
> Holmes who writes: "The will of God is never toward suffering. Man must
> constantly reaffirm his belief in the Infinite Goodness if he expects to
> exclude the idea of evil from his thought....God's Will is always toward
> Life and more Life...the life within you is God". Holmes got Jesus'
> message right. But the slogan Gibson invokes, "Dying was Jesus' reason
> for living," sick as it is, tells the true story about this film and the
> piety behind it. What we have here is a clear case of religion as
> necrophilia. From this movie we learn that necrophilia (love of death)
> is more important than biophilia (love of life).
>
>
> Here lies the ultimate scare of the movie and its success. It speaks to
> and elicits from people in our culture a desire to wallow in necrophilia
> at the expense of biophilia. (I do not recall an ounce of biophilia much
> less humor in the movie.) I am reminded of the wise warning from Erich
> Fromm in his brilliant study on evil, An Anatomy of Human
> Destructiveness. He writes: "Necrophilia grows when biophilia is
> stunted." And this is how evil is unleashed in the world. (Remember that
> the opposite of evil is not good; it is the Sacred.)
>
>
> Russian Orthodox philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev warned about a "decadent
> humility" that "keeps humanity in a condition of repression and
> oppression, chaining its creative power." And Rabbi Abraham Heschel
> reminded us that prophets do not become such from a life of asceticism
> but from passion for life. Clearly, a movie like this kills creativity
> and the prophetic spirit in its appeal to pain and gore.
>
>
> The question of "who killed Jesus?" is a silly question in the sense
> that it was done 2000 years ago. NO ONE alive today killed Jesus. How
> could we? We were not there. We are fully capable of killing the Christ,
> however, that is the God-self (or Buddha nature) in all beings. We do
> this when we destroy rainforests, render species extinct, starve the
> children, refuse health care to the people, allow starvation and unjust
> distribution of the earth's resources--in short when we ignore the
> teachings of Isaiah and Jesus and others about the need for justice and
> compassionate works. What a shame that Mel Gibson, with all his
> potential access to decent theologians and today's contemporary
> scholarship about the healthy Jewish roots of the historical Jesus,
> chose to make a film based on false history, contradicting Gospels,
> anti-Semitic overtones, fascist piety and necrophilia. Hopefully,
> prophetic forces of biophilia will resist.
>
>
> © 2004
Skeptic adds about Christian Fascism and the big push behind the Movie:
Everybody is talking about Mel Gibson's passion about the mythical Jesus.
But what about the suffering and executions and "passion" of untold millions and tens of millions over the past 20 centuries carried out in the name of Jesus?
What about the slaughters that Christians carried out against each other in violent, decades-long disputes over Biblical trivia? What about the so-called Crusades, in which Christians from Europe invaded the Middle East almost a dozen times in the Middle Ages--again in the name of Christianity--and repeatedly slaughtered hundreds of thousands. What about the millions of Jews killed by Christians, including not just during the Holocaust--which Mel Gibson minimizes if not outright denies--but well before then, throughout Europe? What about the slave trade, in which tens of millions of African people were ripped from their homes and sold into bondage--and which include the murder of over one third of those slaves on the ships that dragged them from Africa to America, and during which the priests and preachers quoted chapter and verse justifying this horrendous crime and literally sprinkled holy water on the slave ships as they left port? What about the lives of untold millions of women, doomed to rape and subjugation, to bearing unwanted children or dying in childbirth after having been forced to bear 10, 12 or even more children--all because "The Bible wills it?"
And what about the ways in which the cross was used to justify the murder of millions of Native American Indians? And if you think this is ancient history, what about Guatemala--where the born again Christian general Rios Montt took power in the early 1980s and murdered tens of thousands of Guatemalan Indians--with his army razing Indian villages to the ground and killing small children and infants before raping their mothers--all, once again, sanctified and blessed on national TV, no less by the born again fascist Pat Robertson--in the name of Christianity? Yes, the same Pat Robertson that Mel Gibson worked with to promote The Passion!
Yes, what about THIS passion and suffering--murderous oppression, down throughout the centuries, aided and abetted and in some case directly caused by Christianity?
Mel Gibson's Agenda
The Passion is said to be the most violent Jesus movie ever in fact, Mel Gibson has gone out of his way to emphasize this. In an interview with the Christian Pax TV network, he emphasized that "I want to push you over the edge, push you right over the edge, so you stay there and hang out with, and get to a higher plane to something, through the pain." [Quoted in Feb 20 New York Times]
Mel's "higher plane" is nothing but the plane where people's emotions overwhelm their reason and they are prepared to kill and die in the name of Jesus. The military music that is said to accompany what the movie portrays as the resurrection of Jesus makes this even clearer. That "higher plane" has historically been used to carry through the kinds of murderous oppression discussed above.
Mel Gibson's agenda fits right in with that of the Christian Fascists who've been promoting this movie like crazy: creationism, outlawing abortion and generally subjugating women, persecution of gay people, etc. And it dovetail in important ways with the would-be Messiah now occupying the White House, who has also talked about a "crusade" and routinely claims that "god" supports his wars, repressive laws, and vicious economic policies. This makes The Passion all the more dangerous--in what are very dangerous and deadly times.
Not only is the Bible not literally true--not only is it a book full of what can charitably be described as a hodge-podge of remarkably violent legends, tall tales and tribal history, interspersed with a little lyric poetry, a lot of revenge-filled fantastical rants and some origin myths--but these were all told and then set down in writing to reinforce first, a patriarchal desert agricultural society several thousand years ago, then a slave empire in Rome, and then an oppressive feudal society in Europe. Now this same ancient stuff is being adapted to reinforce the capitalist oppression of today, in a 25 million dollar, cleverly promoted Hollywood film. WE DON'T NEED THIS!
As Che Lives readers can tell I am very passionate about this topic.
Mel's Passion: Brutal Snuff Film Vomit
'Monty Python's: Life of Brian' Now there's a movie about the farsical mythological ficticious character Jesus I can get behind. I thought you might like Morford's take on this movie on Mel Gibson sick, wacko $10 communal vomitorium. . .Skeptic
How To Gag On 'The Passion'
Nine fun-filled ways Mel Gibson's brutal snuff film makes a mockery of true
belief. Clip n' save!
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, April 16, 2004
©2004 SF Gate
URL:
sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/04/16/notes041604.DTL
Perhaps you, like so many across the planet, are more than a bit baffled by
the runaway success of "The Passion of the Christ."
Perhaps you, furthermore, are more than slightly disturbed that millions
have flocked to this bizarre ultraviolent blood-drenched revisionist flick
and that so many actually believe its story to be absolutely true, and that
it just surpassed "The Return of the King" in total box office and is the
No. 8 most successful film of all time and it was No. 1 again across
BushCo's flyover states during Easter weekend and has sold 650,000 books and
125,000 creepy pewter nail necklaces and you find it all just incredibly
warped and disheartening and what the hell is the world coming to.
You are not alone.
I have seen the movie. I have endured the spectacle so you don't have to.
Here, then, are some counterthoughts. Nine random points of spiritual
contention and pointy perspective check, a small pile of juicy karmic stones
to toss at the next utterly depressing screening of 'The Passion' and
perhaps at Mel Gibson's very sad and deeply tormented ego.
Why? Because he deserves it. Why? Because this is not a movie. It is a sad
phenomenon. It is a gross spiritual emetic. It is, clearly, a cry for help.
1) It lasted more than a full half hour, the central beating scene, wherein
a squad of monosyllabic demon Romans chain Jesus to a stone and feverishly
flay him to oozing pulp on one side, then casually flip him over like a veal
cutlet and thrash the other side until he is nothing but a puddle of
dripping stage blood and flappy flesh and cavernous moans.
You catch glimpses of this revolting cartoonishness through barely parted
fingers and you think, goddammit, there goes half an hour of my vital life
force that I will require much sex and vodka and Buddhism to recover. And
you realize, with a sort of perfect and holy divine clarity, that Mel Gibson
is utterly, thoroughly insane.
2) You are not stupid. You have read The Da Vinci Code. You know damn well
that the truth about Mary Magdalene -- along with all juicy goodness of the
divine feminine in general -- has been beaten out of Christianity like joy
is beaten out of American teenagers.
And you know that if Mary Magdalene looked the slightest bit like Monica
Bellucci, who plays her in this film, well, Jesus would've been preaching a
lot more of the gospel of oh my freaking God look at those lips. Instead,
Mel focuses on nothing but endless pained female expressions and Satan as a
sallow woman with wicked cheekbones. Touching.
3) You wail, you scream, you nearly call an ambulance when you burn your
finger on the stove while making popcorn. You know for a fact that no human
body, no matter how divinely inspired, could ever withstand so much gleeful
ultraviolent comical blood-drenched flesh rending as poor ol' Jesus does in
the Jerusalem Chainsaw Massacre and not instantly pass out and/or
immediately demand three quadruple Martinis and a fistful of holy Vicodin. I
mean, please.
4) There were children. Small children, most of them under 10, in the
theater where I endured this spiritual mess, their grim parents apparently
believing Mel's R-rated bloodbath would offer up some sort of constructive
lesson, something deep and divine and unforgettable.
And then the whips rended and the blood gushed and the sadomasochism
amplified to a fever pitch and the families all sat there, stone faced and
lost, apparently convincing themselves they were seeing something glorious
and profound, as the hapless kids stared down a future full of bloody Jesus
nightmares and psychotherapy until many years and many prescription meds
later when they finally realize, damn but that movie messed me up.
Remember "Jaws"? Remember how that flick traumatized the entire Boomer
generation back in '75? Same thing. "Just when you thought it was safe to go
back into the church ... WHIPWHIPTHRASHARRRGGGH."
5) Oh right. The nails-through-the-hands thing. Like that's important to
fetishize so explicitly, Mel. You sure you couldn't get the camera a little
closer? Maybe more blood splattered directly on the camera lens as the
mallet slammed down? Maybe you could've jammed one of those tiny medical
cameras inside the bloody hole itself and really hit your point home, so to
speak? Mel, I'd like to introduce you to my close personal friend,
perspective. Here, have a pamphlet.
One tiny anthropological point: You cannot drive a nail through the human
hand and hang a body from it and not have it tear away like some sort of
disgusting hamburger. Did you think of that, Mel? I bet you did. I bet you
wished with all your might you could've filmed Jesus' body being torn from
the nails and falling to the ground in gruesome slo-mo. Man, how much more
fake blood and pig guts you could've poured over poor James Caviezel! Whee!
Two words, Mel: Zoloft. Now.
6) Many argue that, despite the truckloads of blood and unchecked violence,
Gibson's heart was surely in the right place and his objective was pure. But
let's just say it right here and now: bull. You could feel Mel's fetish for
torture veritably oozing off the screen like visual razor blades. There was
no loving intent in this film. There is no tender message. There is no deep
desire to move and inspire and uplift.
There was only, I believe, copious gobs of curiously sad intent to decimate
any notions of gentle divine intimate open-hearted mystical love and
forgiveness you may have once believed Jesus was all about, and replace them
with one very disturbed and sadomasochistic B-grade actor's very disturbed
and sadomasochistic vision of old-school Catholic brutality and
anti-Semitism and blood-soaked guilt. In a nutshell.
7) The answer is, if I recall, about eight. The question is: How many times
can you watch Mel's whipped, blended, frapped, pureed Jesus, his body rife
with so many oozing crimson gouges it looks like some decimated animal you
ran over with your car, twice, with snow tires -- how many times can you
watch Jesus fall to the hard gravel ground with a long, low moan in terrible
blood-drenched slow motion without, finally, stifling a laugh?
8) This is not Christianity. This is not a message anyone needs. This is the
exact opposite of spiritual progress or insight or gentle divine heat and if
Jesus came back right this minute and was made to sit through this film, he
would sigh gently, shake his short, shaggy hair (long hair was forbidden by
Jewish law -- wrong again, Mel), and, you know, hold a nice seminar or
something.
You think this is how I want to be remembered? This is what he'd say, calmly
and lovingly and more than a little sad. You really think this was my
message? You believe this is what I want the world to focus on, two hours of
deranged apocryphal torture and close-up butchering? Is really where
humanity is still stuck, in bloodlust and shallow emotional manipulation and
cheesy movie tie-ins and $17 popcorn? And then Jesus' gaze, it would slowly
drift away as radiant images of Monica Bellucci floated before his sparkling
eyes.
9) And, finally, Jesus, he would absolutely agree with the following: If you
must see this movie just to see what the fuss is all about, do what I did:
Sneak into it after seeing some other, wildly superior film -- like, say,
"Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" -- so as not to contribute one dime
to the Mel Gibson Fund for the Spiritually Hysterical.
Rest assured, Jesus would've wanted it that way.
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