I haven't yet seen The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's blood-splattered interpretation/interpolation of the Gospels, but from the reviews I've read so far I doubt that I ever will. When I had first heard about the film, I must admit that I was very excited - a no-nonsense retelling of the betrayal, trial, and execution of Jesus, with dialogue in the original Aramaic and Latin, no less (why not Greek, though? Considering that Judea and the entire Near East had been thoroughly Hellenized over the three centuries before the Romans came, I would imagine that you'd be much more likely to hear Greek than Latin or even Aramaic on a daily basis, especially in the cities. Of course Mel - a conservative, pre-Vatican 2 Catholic - would want to have the Latin in there, even if it shouldn't be, but as it turns out this is the least of the movie's problems). What I guess I wasn't expecting was what the blogosphere has dubbed the Jesus Chainsaw Massacre, a kind of postmodern Passion play that is viscerally overpowering but virtually devoid of intellectual or spiritual substance, with some gratuitous Jew-baiting thrown in for good measure. "It's like the last ten minutes of Braveheart, only longer. And with Jesus!" Bravo, Mel.
That children are being taken to this movie in order to provide them with some kind of devotional experience - witness the 1400 parochial students from Long Island who lugged wooden crosses through the streets before seeing the film on Ash Wednesday - makes me hopping mad. It's a movie, folks, not a Holy Sacrament. If you want to have a direct experience of the Gospels, why not try reading the freaking Gospels? Don't pretend that a Hollywood blockbuster is an acceptable substitute for the owner's manual of your religion just because it's soaking in buckets of Jesus' (fake) blood and you're too lazy to read. Christianity at its best is literate and scholarly, unafraid to question even its most basic points of dogma in the search for a truth that is lasting and transcendent; at its worst, however, it is an undigested bolus of received superstition, authoritarian fiats, and logical contradictions that brooks no quarter for freethinkers or alternate points of view. The reactionary zeal that fuels The Passion and the conservatives it was made for comes straight from the black heart of that latter camp of Christ's so-called followers, the ones who would turn our nation into a theocratic state in order to save us from our wickedness. They're the ones who've decided to frame the post-9/11 world as a war of "Good" versus "Evil", as if gearing up for a final showdown with Antichrist himself at the Battle of Armageddon.
Maybe they're right - maybe it is time for a showdown. Only I would define "Good" as being freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of choice, freedom of religion, freedom from any form of physical or mental tyranny as embodied by the Taliban-like movements of intolerance that now dominate the discourse of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. "Good" are the mayors of San Francisco and New Palz, New York who have affirmed that civil rights - including the right to celebrate one's love in the public eye - are a more sacred institution than what fear and hate-mongering ideologues imagine marriage to be. "Good" is the struggle against barbarism, whether it appears in the mountainoius badlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan, or the lonely plains of Laramie, Wyoming. "Good" is the idea that justice is not merely the interest of the stronger, as that old Greek Thrasymachus averred, even if in fact it actually is (especially if it is, I say!). This is a "Good" that is worth fighting for. This is the "Good" I always imagined my country to be the embodiment of, until it was hijacked by fear and hatred three years ago. But you can't stay afraid forever, and in the long run love is much stronger a force in this world than hate.
Even Jesus knew that - the real one, not Braveheart.
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