Fri, 19 Sep 2003

This is a test of bloxsom categories.


posted at: 05:49 | path: /Stupid | permanent link to this entry

The cinematic crimes of Mel Gibson.
It's time to get this rant out of my head. I'm not sure when or if Gibson's new film The Passion will be played in theaters in the US. No actual showings are indicated in the fan website. There's plenty of bloviation on the web on the questions of whether the movie, or Mel Gibson, or both, are antisemitic. My call is for neither, but that doesn't mean Gibson should have made this movie, nor that he should be free of suspicion. There are two reasons to criticize Gibson for making this movie and claiming he is not using it to advance his own hate.

In the Middle Ages, the Church used morality plays and passion plays to teach its doctrine to a largely illiterate laity. The practice has declined in our day since the laity can read the Bible for itself and is less in need of this form of instruction. And it can also visit the video store. But there was also another problem with passion plays. Their re-enactments of the crucifiction would rile up the audience, which would then riot and attack whatever luckless Jews happened by. In this century, Catholic doctrine emphatically does not blame The Jews for the crucifiction, and the Catholic Church is fervently opposed to anything that might cause it to be associated with an act of violence. The Catholic Church does not want Passion plays to feed anyone's hate, and so it has published Criteria for the Evaluation of Dramatizations of the Passion. At least some folks are saying that these criteria have not been followed. But another reason to be suspicious about Gibson is that he has, in the past, made movies to cater to an undeniable pet hate of his. The dude has a bee in his bonnet when it comes to the English, and it's because of the whole Henry VIII thing.

Consider the following synopsis of Braveheart: a young Scot returns from a grand tour of Europe, including pilgrimage to Rome, to his Scottish hometown, to discover that the Scots are straining under the English and are preparing to rebel. On his first day back he witnesses as a young Scottish woman is carried away by soldiers, to be raped by a skanky English nobleman because of the law of prima nocta. On her wedding day. In full view of her impotently furious newlywed husband and the entire wedding party. Does the young Scot decide to join the rebels? Nah. She isn't his girl. But he does make changes to his own wedding plans and has it done in secret. But that fails, and an English soldier molests his new wife, she resists, and is killed for it, and now our young Scot is angry.

So soon he gets some of his fellow Scots, gives a speech, the gist of which is "I didn't care then, but now they killed my girl, and I want to kick ass, and I know a thing or too about how that can be done. So, how about it?" And the Scots say "cool. How about you be our leader?" Butt kicking ensues. Our young Scot dies. Butt kicking resumes. Fade to black. Roll credits. Vile. Braveheart is a completely and utterly vile movie. And then, Gibson does it again in The Patriot. Read the link. It's what I'm paraphrasing in my description of Braveheart. And the Brothers Judd echo the same issues.