By now, we’ve settled into an old familiar routine.
Non-religious, specifically non-Christian, critics rail against Mel
Gibson’s self-financed The Passion of the Christ and
accuse it of anti-Semitism. The New Yorker reviewer called
it “a sickening death trip, a grimly unilluminating procession of
treachery, beatings, blood and agony,” which will give warrant to
the old saw that “it was the ancient Jews who were principally
responsible for killing Jesus.” For good measure, he concluded:
“another dose of death-haunted religious fanaticism is the last
thing we need.”
Gibson & Co. forgo the visceral reaction (“what d’you mean
‘we’ paleface?”) for a rational one, but the facts do not count as
an absolute defense when the charge is racial animus. Abe Foxman of
the Anti-Defamation League isn’t going to care that the line in
which some members of the rabble accept collective responsibility
for the death of Jesus of Nazareth (the passages in the synoptic
Gospels which draw charges of blatant anti-Semitism) was removed
from the subtitles, or that Gibson publicly disavows Jew hatred, or
that this is a work of art, for God’s sake. Gibson practices a
schismatic “pre-Vatican II Catholicism,” and he’s made a movie
about the death of Christ, so it must be anti-Semitic, QED.
But while the experts battle it out for grievance brownie points
and fret endlessly about the vulgar “literalism” of this passion
play, us poor unenlightened religious types have been busy buying
out screenings in record numbers. Local, mostly Protestant
congregations have purchased so many tickets that this
independently distributed film will open on at least 2,800 screens
(the number could baloon further — 4,000 prints have been made to
help satisfy demand). Many fundamentalist children and teens are
about to see their first R-rated movie, and they’re bringing
friends.
Protestants and Catholics make no bones about the fact that they
plan to use The Passion as a tool for proselytizing.
Tracts, of course, are flying off the presses. As of Tuesday, the
booklet A Guide to the Passion: 100 Questions About The Passion
of the Christ, published by the Catholic Ascension Press, had sold over 200,000 copies in two
weeks. Mark Shea, one of the authors, informed me that this makes
it “the fastest-selling Catholic book in history.” (Asked about the
Bible, he made a distinction between “fastest-selling” and
“best-selling.”)
The anti-Semitism canard is easily dispatched. Audiences of
Zionist evangelical theatergoers aren’t going to walk out of
The Passion shaken and decide to embark on pogroms, or
demand that Jews be placed out beyond the pale, or shout
“Christkillers!” when they see the Orthodox with their skullcaps.
It’s been almost comical reading numerous accounts of the
controversy by secular journalists, who are at great pains to
explain to readers that when the Bible says that “the Jews” killed
Jesus, it doesn’t mean, y’know, all the Jews. At which most
churchgoing Christians will smile and nod, because they’re too
polite to roll their eyes or openly mock the nice men and women
who, apparently, haven’t ever seen a “My boss is a Jewish
carpenter” bumper sticker.
In truth, The Passion shows the divide between this
country’s elites and commoners more starkly than anything I’ve seen
in my lifetime. There is a real demographic difference between
those who form the U.S.’s cognitive elite and everybody else. The
elites, including journalists, tend overwhelmingly to be secular —
non-churchgoers with little previous experience with organized
religion. The rabble, on the other hand, consistently score at the
top or near the top in every index of religious observance. In
matters religious, the two literally do not speak the same
language. If most journalists didn’t focus on the anti-Semitism
angle, they wouldn’t know what else to say.
Which is a shame because they appear to be missing out on a
genuine cultural phenomenon. Shea describes the excitement and the
furor surrounding The Passion’s release as a “rather
remarkable moment in American culture” — this critic’s nomination
for understatement of the year.
