I find it amusing that the Google ad on this page cries, “Addicted to Online Porn?”
I didn’t. I think he was fighting a lost cause if he was trying to make the Passion make any sense. But he could have still made an uplifting and emotional movie – even somthing with conversioanry potential – if he had chosen to focus on the best aspects of the Christian story (i.e. the teachings and compassion of Jesus) instead of what I believe are the most unappealing, least inspired, least convincing and least instructive part of the story which is the nonsensical fixation on and mystification of his murder.
Gee, Homoerotica, Christ, Mel Gibson – any bets on how long it takes for this to get to the pit?
Diongenes, I understand your criticism of the movie. But there is a very real current in Christian theology - especially Catholicism - that asserts that the events of Jesus’ death and resurrection are, in fact, more important than what he said and taught during his ministry. Sometimes this is said to mean that without the passion and resurrection, he would have been just another moral/religious teacher. I have also heard it claimed that Christianity would be no less true if we preserved none of Jesus’ sayings and only had the accounts of his birth, death and resurrection.
I’m not defending this school of thought or the movie itself; I’m just saying it’s a perfectly defensible approach to take for a conservative Catholic director to take. He (and others throughout church history) just disagree with you about the relative importance of Jesus’ teachings versus the passion story. Obviously you can disagree; but then the movie wasn’t made for you.
Well, but that’d be true in any example of storytelling related to the Bible.
If you don’t believe that the Bible is logically coherent, then that criticism must most likely apply to any story about the Bible writen by those who believe.
Do you have a Mel Gibson specific criticism, or is it just a criticism against any Christian storytelling that doesn’t focus on the parts of the story that you, as a non-believer, feel are the most important?
(FWIW, I am an athiest)
If you wanted some genuine homo-erotic Christain porn, then you might start with Derek Jarman’s semenal Sebastiane :dubious:
Fine, just tell us why it’s “homoerotic.”
Some commentators (Andrew Sullivan comes to mind) called the Passion “pornographic” because it focused so obsessively on Jesus’ flesh, like a porn movie would. Nothing about what he said or did mattered; all that mattered were the physical tortures inflicted on his flesh–just like a person in a porn movie is a sex object, and nothing but their flesh matters.
As for calling it “homoerotic” instead of just “pornographic”, I suppose the argument would be that it’s guys whipping a guy. If the floggers had been women, I suppose it would be straight S&M.
Heh. Now it’s offering an “onion blossom maker.” Possibly the one implement neglected by the Romans in the movie.
Perhaps Gibson was in part responding to the argument that God Himself dying for a couple days, with full knowledge that he’ll come back and live forever, wasn’t much of a sacrifice. So the torture and suffering had to be extreme.
I never got a homoerotic vibe off it, though I did laugh at Diogenes the Cynic’s first comment. 
I think criticizing the film for focusing on the torture and execution of Jesus kind of misses the point. Isn’t the film based on the Catholic tradition of The Stations of the Cross, being essentially the telling of the story of the torture and crucifixion of Jesus? The film wasn’t trying to tell the story of the life of Jesus; its entire purpose was to focus on a couple of specific days in the story of his life. Criticizing the film for not delving into Jesus’ ministry career is like criticizing The Longest Day for not telling the story of Pearl Harbor, or criticizing Die Hard for not showing us John McClain’s childhood. That’s not the story it was trying to tell. Jesus’ teachings may be interesting, enlightening, and provoking, but the Passion of the Christ wasn’t trying to be any of those things, its purpose was to make Christians feel guilty.
Oh, come on, I’m not the only one responsible for that hijack!
Christ imagery has had an S&M/semi-erotic component to it for centuries. Just look at a crucifix; that’s not the image of a carpenter, that’s a waif in extreme S&M bondage. I recall reading that in fact the first crucifixes had a much more muscular Jesus, and he only achieved the waif look over time.
I don’t think it was just homoerotic; I think it was in a genre that might be called Christosadomasochism. Like the Left Behind series, it’s all about the cruelty. There has always been a segment of the Christian community that drools over cruelty and suffering; the torments of the damned, nasty things happening to saints, that sort of thing.
Not that anyone asked, but my take on the film goes something like this:
It is the story of “The Passion of the Christ” not the life of the Christ, not the teachings of the Christ, but “The Passion.” In fact, it is the Title of the film, and is a long standing subject of particular interest–especially in the Catholic Church.
Why did Gibson portray things the way he did? Probably has a lot to do with his religious beliefs and particular dogma. However, I have never read the phrase “Surely he hath borne our stripes and carried our iniquities” in the same way since seeing the movie. When the Apostles and other Christians ran around in the 1st century saying, he was flogged, tortured and crucified by the Romans, I’m pretty sure that the images they had weren’t the highly sanitized images we’ve seen in movies and depicted on stain glass windows and beautific Christian art with the look of peaceful holiness full on Christ’s face.
I’m pretty sure what they imagined was closer to what Gibson put on film. It was perceived as brutal, painful, messy, and horrific. In Gibson’s case, he has had an obsession with not sanitizing violence, so that people don’t romanticize it (look at “The Patriot” and “Braveheart” with that idea in mind). This film, as a continuation of the hero overcoming extreme victimization, can close the circle on Gibson’s take on the whole matter. Why are the scenes in “Braveheart” and “The Patriot” so graphic and horrible? – well they’re informed by Gibson’s image of his ultimate heroes sacrifice and the importance of it.
It all makes sense, in a rather bloody, messy way, from Gibson’s point of view that the heroic suffering must be above normal suffering, that violence is bloody, and terrible, and that death is not pretty under any circumstances.
The Passion of the Christ simply tells an integral part of the Christ story in a way it has not been percieved in nearly 2000 years. It’s importance may be a bit out of proportion, but it brings it back with a clarity it has lacked since public floggings, hangings, and crucifictions have been mostly done away with.
By the way, FWIW homoerotic is as Homoerotic does. If you’re not exuallyl charged by healthy, half-naked men being beaten then you won’t find it erotic, and if you’re also not male, you’ll never find it homoerotic. It was merely used as a phrase to drive people away from a film that the reviewers disliked. If they had used the phrase in relation to Clerks II, it likely would have increased its box office, becuase so few Christians beat a path to that film’s door. I’m pretty sure the misinformed mention of necrobeastiality, only helped CII at the box office. In fact, if they could have worked the phrase necrobeastiality into their description of TPOTC, I’m pretty sure they would have.
If the film fails to speak to you theologically, then, let it go. Within church tradition–and especially within the context of orthodox, fundemental, Catholocism, the film speaks volumes, and is part of a long tradition embraced by the church.
Really, turning this into a philosophical/religious argument makes no sense, especially if you aren’t a Christian. I can see two Christian’s with different understandings of the value of The Passion (and consequentally, TPOTC film) arguing over it. But I really don’t understand what an atheist is doing in the coversation at all. That’s like a Christian discussing the failure of “No Exit” to address the Christian perspective of the afterlife, isn’t it?
That should read, “If you’re not sexually charged by. . .”
I doubt they had TPOTC in mind either; one criticism of the film was that the torment of Jesus was highly exaggerated, and that no one could survive that much punishment long enough to be crucified.
Because it’s an example of something I find disgusting about Christianity.
I admit I haven’t seen POTC. But, how was Jesus’ torture special considering how fond the Romans were of crucifiction? The canon has JC being crucified between two thieves. IIRC Pilate is also surprised to hear that Jesus has died so early. That’s not a sign he endured massive torture.
I didn’t like the movie much, but…
just look at Jim Caviezel! That’s enough to get any gay man’s motor running!
(Maybe less so in TPOTC, where he looks like raw hamburger, but even so…)
The whole notion that any “sacrifice” would be necessary at all for an omnimax God is a problem all by itself, regardless of the level of sacrifice.
I disagree. I can’t say POTC was homoerotic because I haven’t seen it. I can say that many pictures of the martyrdom of St Sebastian are completely about gay sex. That I’m not gay does not make me blind to the obvious.
This is exactly my criticism of the film. It came off just absurd to me - he would have died ten times before he even got to the hill in the first place.