 In a column published on March 2 in
The Washington Post, Richard Cohen describes the movie as "tawdry, cartoonish, badly acted, anti-Semitic…" and, particularly in regard to the
violence, as "fascistic." To justify this claim he appeals to the "culture
of violence" that permeated the regimes of Hitler and to a lesser extent
Mussolini. This culture "inured" the Germans to violence so that they were
no longer "disturbed" by it as Cohen was not disturbed, but "bored" by
Gibson's depiction. Cohen writes that he felt more like a "surgeon must in
an operating theater" or "as the torturer feels when another 'job' is
brought before him." In a piece entitled "What Mel Missed," Frederica Mathewes-Green argues that although Gibson's graphic portrayal of Christ's
passion may be historically accurate, it is a decided deviation from the
method chosen by the Evangelists themselves who were quite sparing in
describing Jesus' suffering and death. She writes, "The evangelists did not
linger over his suffering in order to stir our empathy." She continues, "If
Mel Gibson had allotted his time the way the evangelists do…. The scourging
and crucifixion would have passed in a flash."
I find these comments all quite fascinating. With the exception of
Mathewes-Green, all the other authors seem to take their own personal
sensibilities as the objective gauge for what is an acceptable level of
violence or not. She, at least, makes a bona fide appeal to the Gospel
presentations of the same material. It seems to me that the mere fact of an
"R" rating does not offer much help. After all, there are different kinds of
violence presented in movies. Can one legitimately identify the realism of
"Saving Private Ryan" with the sensational violence of "Terminator 1, 2,
or3?" I don't think so. Even the reviewers at the United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops, no zealous apostles of this film by any stretch of the
imagination, write "As depicted, the violence, while explicit and extreme,
does not seem an end in itself."
But still, is it too much? It seems to me that the only way in which the
judgment could be rendered that the movie is too violent, is if it were not
a realistic and honest depiction of what took place. In other words, did
Gibson make this up, or is this the way it happened? If it happened this
way, then regardless of one's tastes, sensibilities, or sensitivities, the
movie is not too violent. By way of comparison, was the movie Amistad too
violent in portraying as it did the horrors of the Middle Passage, including
the willful drowning of captured Africans? Are documentaries that chronicle
the civil rights movements of the sixties too violent when showing images of
the dead and disfigured body of Emmett Till, or fire hoses turned on
marchers and police dogs attacking Black protesters? Was the movie Roots too
violent in its own day for vividly and graphically showing slaves being
whipped?
The historical realities in each of these cases justifies the use of
graphic imagery. Many studies have been done on Roman crucifixions. They
were horrific. Gibson did not invent this. He dramatized it. Those, like
Sullivan, who classify this depiction as pornographic-reduced to flesh, as
he says-perhaps are revealing something about their own understanding, or
lack thereof, of the intimate and integral relationship between body and
soul. There is a decided emotional, intellectual, and spiritual dimension to
Christ's sufferings, in addition to the physical; and Gibson's portrayal
captures that brilliantly. One not only engages the physicality of Christ's
sufferings, but one engages the whole man Jesus who is suffering in
obedience to his Father and out of love for me.
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