Michael Miner unwittingly threw down the gauntlet in his March 5 [Hot Type] column on Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. A writer in the New York Times had identified “a battle between secular humanists and true believers” over the movie. Mr. Miner comments that “only occasionally is there the ardor of faith answering faith” in the debate. He’s correct, and it’s a shame, because there is a solid secular-humanist case to be made in defense of this film.
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Like Mr. Miner, I have chosen not to see this film. I can watch space aliens pop out of people, Freddy Krueger dice Lolita/os and Orcs catapult decapitated heads over castle walls and never think twice. The stylized violence of Leone or Woo doesn’t disturb me. Graphic depictions of man’s inhumanity to man does. In the past I have encountered films with such depictions because I had been told they were important works and I should see them. Schindler’s List, Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, Star 80, The Killing Fields, The Deer Hunter, What’s Love Got to Do With It are all very good films that left me haunted with images I wished I hadn’t seen long after the film was over. In the eye, a second; in the mind, a lifetime. I no longer feel compelled to stuff disturbing images into my tenuously balanced little psyche for the sake of either art or spiritual growth, thank you very much.
The Passion could be read as metaphor for our lives when facing death. “The Christ,” the god/man, chooses to live through the pain and humiliation. He does not run away. The repetitive lash mirrors repetitive doses of toxic chemo or HIV drugs that cause open sores in your mouth and burning in your hands and feet. “The Christ” is stripped before a jeering crowd, not unlike an elderly person who has become incontinent. A nail tearing into a palm as graphic representation of reaching the point when you realize that there will be no more remissions, that you are inescapably experiencing your death.
N. Magnolia
