Mel Gibson in his own words

[FishForLunch]

Mel Gibson was asked what he felt about potential backlash against his movie, "The Passion of the Christ." He responded

"I don't know where it's going to fall. And quite frankly... you want to hear something? I don't give a flying fuck."

[MavKikiNYC]

More of Mel's words:

Of one US film critic who linked Gibson's father's (undoubtedly offensive) remarks on the Holocaust with The Passion's alleged anti-semitism, the director said: "I want to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick... I want to kill his dog."

With skin as thin as his intellect.

[MavKikiNYC]

Mel Gisbon in Safire's words:

Not Peace, but a Sword
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Published: March 1, 2004

WASHINGTON — The word "passion" is rooted in the Latin for "suffer." Mel Gibson's movie about the torture and agony of the final hours of Jesus is the bloodiest, most brutal example of sustained sadism ever presented on the screen.

Because the director's wallowing in gore finds an excuse in a religious purpose — to show how horribly Jesus suffered for humanity's sins — the bar against film violence has been radically lowered. Movie mayhem, long resisted by parents, has found its loophole; others in Hollywood will now find ways to top Gibson's blockbuster, to cater to voyeurs of violence and thereby to make bloodshed banal.

What are the dramatic purposes of this depiction of cruelty and pain? First, shock; the audience I sat in gasped at the first tearing of flesh. Next, pity at the sight of prolonged suffering. And finally, outrage: who was responsible for this cruel humiliation? What villain deserves to be punished?

Not Pontius Pilate, the Roman in charge; he and his kindly wife are sympathetic characters. Nor is King Herod shown to be at fault.

The villains at whom the audience's outrage is directed are the actors playing bloodthirsty rabbis and their rabid Jewish followers. This is the essence of the medieval "passion play," preserved in pre-Hitler Germany at Oberammergau, a source of the hatred of all Jews as "Christ killers."

Much of the hatred is based on a line in the Gospel of St. Matthew, after the Roman governor washes his hands of responsibility for ordering the death of Jesus, when the crowd cries, "His blood be on us, and on our children."

Though unreported in the Gospels of Mark, Luke or John, that line in Matthew — embraced with furious glee by anti-Semites through the ages — is right there in the New Testament. Gibson and his screenwriter didn't make it up, nor did they misrepresent the apostle's account of the Roman governor's queasiness at the injustice.

But biblical times are not these times. This inflammatory line in Matthew — and the millenniums of persecution, scapegoating and ultimately mass murder that flowed partly from its malign repetition — was finally addressed by the Catholic Church in the decades after the defeat of Naziism.

In 1965's historic Second Vatican Council, during the papacy of Paul VI, the church decided that while some Jewish leaders and their followers had pressed for the death of Jesus, "still, what happened in his passion cannot be charged against all Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today."

That was a sea change in the doctrinal interpretation of the Gospels, and the beginning of major interfaith progress.

However, a group of Catholics rejects that and other holdings of Vatican II. Mr. Gibson is reportedly aligned with that reactionary clique. (So is his father, an outspoken Holocaust-denier, but the son warns interviewers not to go there. I agree; the latest generation should not be held responsible for the sins of the fathers.)

In the skillful publicity run-up to the release of the movie, Gibson's agents said he agreed to remove that ancient self-curse from the screenplay. It's not in the subtitles I saw the other night, though it may still be in the Aramaic audio, in which case it will surely be translated in the versions overseas.

And there's the rub. At a moment when a wave of anti-Semitic violence is sweeping Europe and the Middle East, is religion well served by updating the Jew-baiting passion plays of Oberammergau on DVD? Is art served by presenting the ancient divisiveness in blood-streaming media to the widest audiences in the history of drama?

Matthew in 10:34 quotes Jesus uncharacteristically telling his apostles: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." You don't see that on Christmas cards and it's not in this film, but those words can be reinterpreted — read today to mean that inner peace comes only after moral struggle.

The richness of Scripture is in its openness to interpretation answering humanity's current spiritual needs. That's where Gibson's medieval version of the suffering of Jesus, reveling in savagery to provoke outrage and cast blame, fails Christian and Jew today.

[mercury_rev]

Originally posted by: FishForLunch
Mel Gibson was asked what he felt about potential backlash against his movie, "The Passion of the Christ." He responded

"I don't know where it's going to fall. And quite frankly... you want to hear something? I don't give a flying fuck."

If it's true Gibson actually said this (and his colorful comment about Frank Rich), perhaps he should consult Matthew Chapter 15 where Jesus says: "Listen and understand; what enters into the mouth does not defile a person, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a person."

[Caliente]

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" - Romans 3:23

[Dooby]

Originally posted by: MavKikiNYC
More of Mel's words:

With skin as thin as his intellect.

Gibson admitted to making the comment on 20/20 with Diane Sawyer. He made the comment to his publicist after his publicist called him very upset after getting off the phone with the "US film critic". The "US film critic" in question had just told Gibson's publicist that he was a "holocaust denyer defender". Gibson said he was attempting to sound jokingly like Sonny from the Godfather and make his publicist feel better.

That is what he said. Take it for what it is worth.

[MavKikiNYC]

So who was quoting him and how was it made public?

[sike]

Originally posted by: MavKikiNYC
So who was quoting him and how was it made public?

a question that needs answering...

[Usually Lurkin]

Not Peace, but a Sword
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

The only "jew-bainting" is Safire's rabid ignorance of the fact that Jesus himself was a jew, that his own friends are portrayed as betrayers, that Pilate was portrayed as a weakling more interested in his own skin than in truth, that Herod was more interested in wine than his own people, and that the Jewish people were not portrayed in the movie as a monotonic stereotype to be belittled for an inibility to voice an opinion (as they are in Safire's article) but as a group of people with diverse opinions and experience with the Christ, some arguing against his crucifixion, as well as some for. Safire also ignores the fact that the violence in the movie was perpetrated by the Romans, and that Jesus (the hero of the movie and the example for Christian viewers) asked for them all to be forgiven.

[sike]

Originally posted by: Usually Lurkin

The only "jew-bainting" is Safire's rabid ignorance of the fact that Jesus himself was a jew, that his own friends are portrayed as betrayers, that Pilate was portrayed as a weakling more interested in his own skin than in truth, that Herod was more interested in wine than his own people, and that the Jewish people were not portrayed in the movie as a monotonic stereotype to be belittled for an inibility to voice an opinion (as they are in Safire's article) but as a group of people with diverse opinions and experience with the Christ, some arguing against his crucifixion, as well as some for. Safire also ignores the fact that the violence in the movie was perpetrated by the Romans, and that Jesus (the hero of the movie and the example for Christian viewers) asked for them all to be forgiven.

point well made and taken...