Assuming you haven’t been stranded on a desert island in recent weeks, you’ve probably heard about the latest Mel Gibson meltdowns. The tapes of Gibson screaming obscenities, threats, and just generally being completely freaking out of control – a bizarre mashup of animalistic barks and gutteral tirade that just gets worse, the longer it goes on. And the media has been abuzz over the end of the Gibson career, while some folks out there are asking what the big deal is.
They point out that Alec Baldwin was caught on tape a few years ago, screaming at his 11-year old daughter that she was a “thoughtless pig”, and Hollywood forgave him. Why is Gibson’s situation different? Or is it just because Gibson is aligned with conservative Christiandom, while Baldwin once famously declared that he would move to France if Bush got reelected? Is this just lefty Hollywood bias at work?
Columnist Frank Rich over at the New York Times recently said it very well:
Does anyone remember 2004? It seems a civilization ago. That less-than-vintage year was in retrospect the nadir of the American war over “values.” The kickoff fracas was Janet Jackson’s breast-baring “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl, which prompted a new crackdown against televised “indecency” by the Federal Communications Commission. By December Fox News and its allies were fomenting hysteria about a supposed war on Christmas, with Newt Gingrich warning of a nefarious secular plot “to abolish the word Christmas” altogether and Jerry Falwell attacking Mayor Michael Bloomberg for using the euphemism “holiday tree” at the annual tree-lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center. In between these discrete culture wars came a presidential election in which the Bush-Rove machine tried to whip up evangelical turnout by sowing panic over gay marriage.
It was into that tinderbox of America 2004 that Gibson tossed his self-financed and self-directed movie about the crucifixion, “The Passion of the Christ.”
Mel Gibson is a right-wing, misogynistic, racist, antisemitic alcoholic. That is not a personal opinion. That is documented fact, attested to by both recording and witness testimony time and time again. Unlike Baldwin, Gibson’s recent tirades can’t possibly be taken as an isolated incident, but instead an escalating pattern of violent, crazy nutball.
For me, though, it boils down to “The Passion”.
In 2004, still living in Central Florida then, I took an afternoon off and caught “Passion” about a week after it was released. I wanted to see what the big deal was, but more than that, I wanted to see who was actually turning out for it. Were they curious onlookers like myself, or something different? I got there early and waited in line, standing behind a fat woman with her three very young, under-eight-years-old children. The kids had a portable DVD player so that they could watch one movie (an American Pie-ish flick, if I recall) while waiting to watch this one. She wasn’t the only parent there with little kids. By this point, anyone who had heard anything about “Passion” knew that it was a bloody, violent film. And yet, parents with small children.
I took a back row center seat and the theater gradually filled. Finally the lights dimmed, the previews rolled and the feature started. Several rows up, I could see the fat woman taking away the DVD player and turning it off.
The next two hours were the bloodiest, goriest, most violent scenes I’ve ever seen committed to film. And I’ve seen some pretty awful horror flicks, folks. And oh my dear God – this isn’t antisemitic? Are you kidding me? Throughout the entire film, dirty hook-nosed and angry Jews scream to have a blue-eyed, European Jesus put to an unbearably violent and gory death by civilized, reluctant Romans. The Jew-hating was not subtle. To pretend it wasn’t there required great acrobatic feats of sociopathic dishonesty.
However, what was happening onscreen wasn’t nearly as disturbing as what was happening in the theater. People crying. People raising their hands in the air, in the Pentecostal form of holy praise. Every time James Caviezel’s portrayed Christ got thrashed anew with whips tipped with hooks, flesh flayed away in bloody strips while the dirty Jews cheered on, this group was obviously deeply moved into new throes of ecstatic fervor.
Leaving the theater, I heard many conversations among these creatures in human clothing that I’d just spent two hours with in this bizarre archsadistic church opera. Not one commented on the violence, the blood, the gore, or even the appropriateness of bringing your five year old to watch it. These people instead talked about how it reaffirmed their faith, made them feel closer to Christ themselves. Religious affirmation via masochism, sadism and hatred for Jews.
These same folks had been screaming for three years that Americans shouldn’t trust any Muslims – should probably round them up and put them in camps and stuff – because a certain subset of those Muslims believe that their faith is best affirmed through violence to the unbeliever.
You may argue that “Passion” only captured the spirit of the times. And maybe that is so. But at some point, anyone of faith has to honestly appraise for themselves where their faith is rooted. Why they believe. And if your faith happens to be rooted in a violent, gory narrative orchestrated by the great Jewish conspiracy, then whatever – that’s your problem. But don’t be surprised when the rest of us regard you as a fundamental enemy of civilization.
Which brings me back to Mel Gibson. In that weird, negatively charged political campaign season of 2004, I worked in the Orange County, Florida election office and saw the crowds, lawyers, picketers and anger firsthand. After 2000, the Democrats were all paranoid that the Bush Gang was going to steal their votes. The Republicans were literally outraged that we were having an election at all and not simply coronating George Bush as the new Christ-given American king. (No, I’m not exaggerating. This is what was happening in Florida in 2004.) In all this, Gibson was held up by the Christian Right as a prophet, the voice of God Himself, striking a blow against evil Hollywood for the forces of the new holy Crusade.
But alas. He’s only an aging, angry alcoholic with strong violent, antisemitic tendencies, as the continuing story of Mel Gibson is increasingly making very clear. He represents and promotes a form of Christianity that has, in the past, directly led to the miseries, tortures and deaths of millions upon millions of people. And that’s why it matters: because for many, many people, it mattered just fine when the violence in question happened to swing in their favor.
Or at least, that’s why it matters to me. And why, unless you’d prefer those people to be in charge of things, why it should matter to you. Those creatures sitting in the dark theater, in ecstatic throes of bloody passion.. they’re still out there. They’re your neighbors. And only a few short years ago, Mel Gibson was their prophet.
So listen to the tapes. After sitting through that movie, this should be child’s play. Just don’t actually take the kids.