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March 07, 2004
See how these Christians...
...whatever.
Canadian Christian writer catches hell for not liking TPOTC very much
In the past week I've been called "sick," I've been told to keep my "big fat mouth shut." I've been told I write "garbage," I've been called various anti-Semitic names. I've been abused, insulted, threatened.Why?
Because I dared to say that while I love Jesus, I didn't like Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ.
I gave my reasons last week and, believe me, there are plenty more. It's all been an eye-opener for me.
Over the years, my blocked e-mail list has grown quite long, as various bigots write to scream insults because I'm a Christian. I've lost jobs and been blacklisted from certain media. I've had my life put in danger, and even had police intervention on one occasion. All part of the price for standing up for truth.
Yet, I have to be honest. The last week has shaken me. Of course I'm not scared, I'm just so profoundly and enormously disappointed. Even disillusioned. Years of work defending Christians. Then one column disliking a movie and I'm a monster who deserves to be spat upon.
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» Passion and the Pardon-Me Paragraph from Dust in the Light
A pattern is beginning to form whereby, in relation to The Passion of the Christ, a person with whom I generally disagree about the movie capture's my sympathy, only insert something, while looking for an example, that raises my eyebrows.... [Read More]
Tracked on Mar 8, 2004 5:48:42 PM
Comments
Don't worry Amy, even the apostles used to scrap among themselves.
Posted by: Steve at Mar 7, 2004 1:55:10 PM
Amy, maybe you can address this. (And this isn't to minimize the problem with what people wrote this man.) But I have to assume that the majority of email that any columnist receives in response to a column is negative because most people don't bother to take the time to send feedback unless they are mad about something. So, as much as I can sympathize with his plight, I would expect a certain amount of detachment from feedback, knowing full well it is going to be a skewed viewpoint.
Posted by: JACK at Mar 7, 2004 3:18:35 PM
Two things.
First: Mr Coren writes opinions for a living. He's an editorialist. He gets to pontificate. A thick skin is one of the job requirements.
Second: Okay, I admit that I was starting to feel a little bit sorry for the guy...until I read this sentence:
"I've often had these concerns about the American South, with its enormous number of SUPPOSED believers." [emphasis mine]
Here's the problem:
TPOTC fans question the authenticity of Mr Coren's Christian commitment, and we're told that that's just plain wrong. BUT: Mr Coren questions the authenticity of the Christian commitment of millions of American southerners, and that (apparently) is just okay.
Am I missing something here?
Posted by: ottanbrus at Mar 7, 2004 3:39:25 PM
I'm not surprised by the hateful reactions by some fanatical Christians to critics of the movie. It is sad to see that this movie brought out the worst in conservative Christian activist and anti-Christian activist circles, though I think conservative Christians - on the whole - were less ill-behaved than their enemies.
I saw "Passion" last night. Here are some thoughts, for what its worth. Overall it is an excellent and effective movie, though it is not the masterpiece that its fans and marketers claim it to be. I think the movie would have been a masterpiece but for many artistic choices that Gibson made which were puzzling and detracted from the overall excellence of the movie. For instance, the resurrection scene (which is by definition difficult to portray adequately) was both a failure on its own terms and detracted from subject of the movie which was, after all, a meditation on the Passion. The movie would have been far better had it ended with that extraordinarily haunting pieta at the end.
This movie will date itself quickly due in large part from some of the demonic aspects of the movie which are either too cliche-ridden for words, too heavyhanded or both. I'm thinking of Satan and her creepy baby, the use of flies, the crow that pecked the eyes of the bad thief, etc. On the other hand, the scenes with Satan in the Agony in the Garden, and Satan lurking in the midst of the Sanhedrin during the scourging were very effective.
With respect to that last scene, no wonder the ADL was rankled, even though history has justly judged Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin of the time rather poorly. Whether one sees this movie as anti-semitic or not is, I think, based on whether one believes that the highly negative portrayal of Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin was meant to serve as a proxy for the Jewish religion or of Jews as a collective whole either at the time or throughout history. I don't believe that was Gibson's intent and I certainly don't buy the conveniently non-disprovable argument that "The Passion" contributes to an "increasing climate of hostility" against Jews. If one leaves out the portrayal of Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin, the anti-semitism claims are reduced to complete rubbish.
Unlike some critics, I think the extreme brutality of the scourging was entirely appropriate for Gibson's artistic vision. Unfortuantely, the meditiation went on a little too long and I began to find the scene a little tedious towards the end.
On the other hand, after seeing this movie, I am convinced that it is sheer delusion for some Christians to believe that this movie would result in an evangelization bonanza. I was moved in places, but I was not reduced to the abject sorrow or conversion that some others supposedly were. None were so reduced as I came out of the theatre.
Posted by: Patrick Rothwell at Mar 7, 2004 3:54:29 PM
It is unfortunate that some mis-inspired people felt the need to insult Mr. Coran, but there was a wimpy, whiny tone to his column that I found equally unattractive.
A response to Mr. Rothwell's review, since he is always intelligent and thought-provoking in his postings.
No work of religious art is required to affect everyone the same way, since we all have different religious temperaments, psychologies, and histories. So it is foolish to claim that this movie will invariably move Christians to greater piety, much less convert to the Faith everybody who is not Christian. But it is not "sheer delusion" to claim that both these things can happen, because in fact they have.
What was remarkable to me is that Gibson was able to present in such a pure form a tradition of piety that he is really not old enough to remember himself as the norm. People forget this. He was born in 1956, and so can have only the dimmest memory of the pre-Conciliar Church. One would have expected that his formation in the first generation of radical traditionalists, by the kind of father he had, would somehow have deformed his reception of classic Counter-reformation piety. But it didn't. Every 'heavyhanded' and 'cliche-ridden' element in the film can be paralleled somewhere in Mannerist and Baroque art; the characterization of each person in the sacred drama is to be found somewhere in the classic spiritual literature. I can't say why Evangelicals have been so taken with the movie, but it is easy to say why I was: it is an exact cinematic representation of the Jesus I was taught about as a boy and have believed in ever since. I wouldn't underestimate the power of suddenly bringing a man in his fifties back to that original religious place.
So I don't think the film will become dated; on the contrary, I think it has the potential to become our visually obsessed culture's equivalent of 'The Imitation of Christ'.
Posted by: David Kubiak at Mar 7, 2004 4:37:57 PM
The movie broke 200K total gross in less than two weeks out. Pity the poor citics! What I suspect they really are miffed about is that, as the attendance figures show, very few people are paying any attention to them in regard to this movie.
Posted by: Donald R. McClarey at Mar 7, 2004 5:07:02 PM
I raised an eyebrow when I read the bit about the American South. I agree with many of the posts on this particular subject. As for Mel Gibson having "only the dimmest memory of the pre-Conciliar Church", I thought the SSPX was in communion with Rome up to 1988. Also, Mel Gibson would have been 12 or 13 before the Pauline/Novus Ordo Mass was installed. Of course then his father did all he could to avoid it.
Posted by: Tim at Mar 7, 2004 5:07:33 PM
My son posts on slate, Moviecitynews and other film sites. He's seen a wave of hateful comments at those places exactly as the Canadian describes. THE PASSION has friends who aren't as nice as posters here.
Posted by: Sandra Miesel at Mar 7, 2004 5:07:52 PM
Is there a link to the Canadian's original piece for which he was so excoriated? I do understand what he is going through. When I was a in the fifth grade in a Catholic school I was once corrected by a classmate who expected me to chime in with raves about a sweet pea crown on a statue of Mary in May. All I could say was something like "yeah, it's ok" Her response was a schocked "You don't love the Blessed Mother." I am now 66, have always been a faithful Catholic, attend daily Mass since now in retirement, do Eucharistic ministry to the sick, etc, etc. but I have never forgotten that remark. I was instantly and forever turned off from popular piety. Great for some, but not for me. Can the popular piety folk say the same to folk like the Canadian writer and to those of us likewise wired?
This morning my parish priest mentioned that he had seen the film Saturday evening. He spoke of it as deeply moving but expressed doubt that its effect on most viewers would outlast three weeks and that only behavior, behavior, behavior, not tears and emotional reaction, matters.
Posted by: caroline at Mar 7, 2004 6:00:24 PM
Did any one really think this film was going to be an ecumenical bonanza? I mean I don't see a lotta non catholics at Stations of the Cross or Eucharistic Adoration, or even Mass for that matter. Can something be popularly devotional, and that just be a good thing?
Posted by: al at Mar 7, 2004 6:08:27 PM
My son posts on slate, Moviecitynews and other film sites. He's seen a wave of hateful comments at those places exactly as the Canadian describes. THE PASSION has friends who aren't as nice as posters here.
Sandra, if there is a definition for bad posting behavior it si the film site fanboy. I would be pretty unwilling to judge "Christians" or even just "fans" of the movie, by the posting behavior of the folks who participate on those sites. THE PASSION isn't the only film on those sites that has "friends" who aren't as nice as posters here.
Posted by: JACK at Mar 7, 2004 6:15:13 PM
And also: If someone just doesn't like Mel's aesthetic (the music, the editing. . . ) that's one thing: De gustibus non disputandam.
But if its the violence, or the focus on the Passion or the "lack of context" or the fact that it wasn't the Sermon on the Mount, and nothing but the Sermon on the Mount--this is more a problem with Christianity. Christianity is about the sacrifice--which is the catalyst for our response, and not the beauty of Christs words and witness, which we would ultimately be incapable of following without the sacrifice.
Posted by: al at Mar 7, 2004 7:02:16 PM
The name calling is very regrettable.... especially as it gives critics of the movie something to focus on instead of having to evaluate what the $200,000,000 box office in ten days means.
As it is, the name calling is on both sides. For the last year or so, the folks at Icon Productions have been called everything from clueless and ignorant of the Scriptures to neo-Nazis creating "a pogrom in celluloid" (NPR). I, myself, as a writer have never gotten as hateful emails as I have in connection with my positive statements about this film. One frenzied theologian type told me that I should consider myself partially culpable if anyone beat up a Jew after seeing this film. He signed it, "In Christ".
What's horrific for the goose is equally horrific for the gander.
Posted by: Barb N at Mar 7, 2004 7:19:13 PM
My son specifically remarked on Edelstein of moviecitynews--who had defended Gibson against Frank Rich--being attacked by fans of THE PASSION, complete with anti-semitic insinuations. Oh my son gives as good as he gets--he has a sharper tongue than mine.
Posted by: Sandra Miesel at Mar 7, 2004 7:52:27 PM
In answer to Caroline, above, it doesn't look like direct links to archives are available for Mr. Coren's original piece. His politics expressed in the current column continue the flavor of his theology. I captured some of the piece in two posts. Essentially, he thought the film "so, well, so anti-humanity," lacking in "majesty and pathos." These paragraphs, particularly, caught my eye, and seem from the same file as his Southern Christians comment:
This is some pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic blood cult. It is populated with medieval-type caricatures, screaming out of context, laughing at suffering. ...
The flashbacks seem, with one touching exception depicting Jesus as a child, to be mere attempts to push Catholic eucharistic theology onto the audience.
It's a shame that folks were too heated in their reactions, but I can see where they were coming from. My own reaction wasn't so much to his review of the movie, but the particular view of Christianity that he seems palpably to represent.
Posted by: Justin Katz at Mar 7, 2004 8:03:43 PM
But if its the violence, or the focus on the Passion or the "lack of context" or the fact that it wasn't the Sermon on the Mount, and nothing but the Sermon on the Mount--this is more a problem with Christianity
I have to disagree that objections to the violence in this movie represent "more of a problem with Christianity." There's a point beyond which violence gets in the way of its own message. Surely even those who did not find it self-defeating in this case agree that it is possible to show too much or do too much, or simply to do it badly. In this case, your threshhold wasn't reached. Mine was. This says very little about having a problem with Christianity, but rather about having a problem with a movie some guy made.
One could make similar points about the other issues you raise. Me, I say we haven't exactly had a surfeit of movies on the Passion, so I have no objection to Mel's decision there. But if someone disagreed with that view, I'd have to hear a lot more before concluding that he "had a problem with Christianity."
Posted by: Christopher Rake at Mar 7, 2004 8:11:28 PM
Honest debate over the merits of this movie is all fine and good, but the Christian Community has been beaten up and vilified over this movie. Christians who enjoy this movie are accused of being sadists, anti-Semitic and mean spirited. I guess this is the Lord's way of helping us to identify with his Passion.
Posted by: John W. at Mar 7, 2004 9:31:32 PM
I read a lot of Canadian press. It's just a masochistic habit I've picked up. Very few of these guys will ever miss an opportunity to slam the US. Anyone who criticizes Southern Christianity has never met a true Southern Baptist or Pentecostal (I'm not talking about the snake charmers). No one has more faith in the power of God. These are the people who will put in your crop, tend it, and harvest it for you if you are ill or injured. If you have a death in the family, they will clean your house, mind your children and feed you for weeks. It is their Christian Duty. They take it very seriously. I don't know any Southern Catholics, so I can't comment on them. The "South" has definitely made some mistakes. I mean, there was that Civil War, segregation, etc. People and nations, including Canada, make costly and sometimes horrendous mistakes. We learn, we evolve. As far as Mr. Coren's opinion of TPOTC is concerned, he surely is Protestant. Most of my Protestant friends say they wish the movie included more of the "good things that Christ did." I have been unable to explain to the them the mean of the term "The Passion."
Posted by: Sammie at Mar 7, 2004 10:34:07 PM
I saw the passion with a group of about 150 people at a private screening. The group included Rabbis, ministers of various Christian denominations and Muslims. We had a discussion following the movie facilitated by a group leader. We all agreed that the film was extremely brutal and well made. The discussion that followed focused on the message and did it get across? We had members of the ADL, Jewish Federation and American Jewish Committee present. In the discussion that followed you could tell who were the more religious members of the group in their comments. The more religious were moved by humanities horrible treatment to one another and saw that in the suffering of Christ, no matter what their religious affiliation. One of the rabbis wives asked me after the discussion if I found it to be a spiritual experience. I answered that I found it to be a very emotional experience but not a spiritual experience. It was too graphic in my opinion. If I had not had a powerful conversiion experience earlier in my life involving the passion of Christ, I might have felt differently. I would not recommend the movie to youth or the weak of heart, it is too brutal. One thought that kept going through my head as I watched the movie was what a waste of something that could have been a very powerful tool of telling the story of Jesus Christ. I understand Mel Gibson's reasoning on why he felt it necessary to tell the story as he did. Yet, where I live more than 50% of the people are unchurched and have no religious affiliation. What a wasted opportunity as evidenced in the flash backs to not deny the passion but tell the whole story so that more people would come to know Jesus Christ.
Posted by: Fr Brian flanagan at Mar 7, 2004 11:48:05 PM
As Mr McClarey and Ms Nicolosi point out above, The Movie has made $200 MIL in ten days. Now I would never want to say that we should measure The Movie's "spiritual value" in dollars and cents, but I have a hunch that the film's amazing financial success is significant for reasons we may not be talking about. Why are so many people turning out to see this film? Why are so many people seeing this film twice, and even three times? Yes, we can love the film or hate it. We can dissect it endlessly. We can complain about what it is and solemnly declare what it should have been. But I wonder...what's with all those numbers, all those zeros after the two? Can we chalk it all up to curiosity, hype, marketing, controversy? Is that all it is? Or is there something else going on here--something extra, something more subtle, something more...well, mysterious?
We raise the issue of evangelization, and some Christian folks have decided that The Movie isn't a proper tool for evangelization after all. Well, maybe they're right. I mean, there are no "altar calls" while the final credits are rolling. And no character in The Movie ever asks us to accept Jesus as our "personal Lord and Savior". The movie contains no evangelical "hook". It never asks the all-important question. And so some folks criticize the film because in their view it seems to do little more than evoke strong emotions in many of the folks who watch it. Those with an analytical bent are quick to point out that emotions and conversions are two different things. And, of course, they are right. But don't the gospels teach us that conversions are sometimes the fruit of seeds that were planted long before? Is it even conceivable, then, that The Movie might be planting some of those seeds in some of the hearts of some of the millions of folks who are watching it? Well, that's not something we can measure with two-weeks worth of box office stats. But it just may be that the Sower is hard at work out there and that we know nothing about it.
Some folks insist that God has a sense of humor, and this time around I wouldn't mind if the joke was on you, me, and the whole bloomin' world. Wouldn't that be something?
Posted by: ottanbrus at Mar 8, 2004 1:33:01 AM
I have to stop talking about this movie, but one last thought. Whatever power the film has comes, I believe, from the fact that Mel Gibson didn't make it for an audience -- which is not to say he didn't use all his considerable savvy and star power to promote it, but that I don't think that was ever the point.
The key is something he said early on: "Understanding what He went through, even on a human level, made me feel not only compassion, but also a debt: I want to repay Him for the enormity of his sacrifice." Gibson reads the psalm in his missal at every old rite Mass before the priest drinks the Precious Blood: "Quid retribuam Domino pro omnibus quae retribuit mihi?" He is a film-maker, so what he wants to give back is a movie, and his supernatural motivation in making it is shines through in every frame. In that respect it is unlike any movie I have ever experienced. It is about how much Christ loves the human race, but it is also about how much Mel Gibson loves Christ. Serving Mass every day kneeling on the ground, his brown scapular flapping in the wind while he was directing, carrying his relic of Blessed Katherine with him. One of the glories of the Church is that its biggest sinners sometimes turn out to be its most impressive saints -- and if they happen to make a couple of hundred million dollars in the process God love them.
'Haec fatus, tacui.'
Posted by: David Kubiak at Mar 8, 2004 2:01:44 AM
>>>"The flashbacks seem, with one touching exception depicting Jesus as a child, to be mere attempts to push Catholic eucharistic theology onto the audience."
Heaven forbid!
A Catholic doing some Evangelizing? What is this world coming to.
Posted by: Jason at Mar 8, 2004 6:35:29 AM
Have you ever seen some Christians, usually Protestant fundamentalists, at some protest of homosexuality? "Burn in hell, fag" is a good example of signs they will hold up.
There's always going to be kooky Christians with uncharitable opinions and the inability to make fine distinctions. They don't represent Christians as a whole, and I don't think these letter writers do either.
Posted by: Jason at Mar 8, 2004 6:39:00 AM
To many people, the idea that self-sacrifice and suffering is a necessary consequence of love is incomprehensible and unacceptable, and this affects their views of the film.
Posted by: TomM at Mar 8, 2004 8:41:07 AM
Donald R. McClarey wrote:
"Pity the poor citics! What I
suspect they really are miffed
about is that, as the attendance
figures show, very few people
are paying any attention to them
in regard to this movie."
Whether we agree or disagree with them, I don't think we should "pity the poor critics" (although I know it was it meant in jest.) Critics know very well that more often than not their opinions run against the taste of the masses. They have no illusions about this. Very few of the movies that critics think are truly great ever become blockbusters. Three recent examples of films righfully hailed by critics, but not by the masses: Lost in Translation, Station Agent, In America.
The same can be said about book reviewers. There is usually a great disparity between the books that critics love and books that become bestsellers. Great literature does not often translate into great commercial success.
Posted by: Phil at Mar 8, 2004 8:50:52 AM
