The extreme violence of this film initially led me to believe that its thesis was simple. I imagined Gibson thumbing through an art history book or merely calling to mind popular imagery of a clean, angelic Jesus hanging from his cross and thinking, he would've been a lot more bloody. He then spent millions of dollars and subjected his audience to a couple of hours showing why a bloody Jesus was more realistic. But once the impact of the grotesque wore off, the sense I was left with was that the horror of the film was neither an effort at realism nor historical accuracy. Instead, The Passion of the Christ delivers a message that echoes that of the Bush administration, asserting the necessity of submission to authority and labeling doubt, particularly doubt of the ruling class, as evil.

     An emphasis on the physical is an important part of this authoritarian ethos. The film, like the Bush administration, avoids any possibility of intellectual dialogue by trumping it with violence or a focus on the physical. As Bush stated when presented with an education package aimed at winning the war on terror through offering an ideological alternative to Islamic fundamentalism, “I don’t do nuance.”¹ Any resistance to this purely military stance is classified, with religious implications, as doubt. The film is equally lacking in nuance, and equally critical of doubt.

     Consider the only two instances of Jesus’ doubt in the film. The first, represented not-so-subtly by a snake crawling toward his leg, takes place before he was arrested by the Pharisees. Doubt, we are led to believe, is an external, physical entity, like terrorism, to be dealt with forcefully. In this scene, Jesus stomps on the head of the snake without hesitation, crushing it with a surround-sound crunch. The second instance of doubt in the film is Jesus’ “why hast thou forsaken me” during his final moments on the cross. This human cry, a subject of artistic and scholarly examination for centuries, is uttered quickly and without thought, as if a reluctant concession by the filmmakers to its appearance in all four gospels. A much more engaging take on the story, Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, practically treats doubt as the subject of the film. In this version, the character of Jesus develops his convictions gradually, through constant questioning. The Passion’s writers, Gibson and Fitzgerald, instead choose to dismiss doubt outright and examine Jesus’ ability to take a beating.

     The crowning moment of the movie’s heavy-handed delivery occurs during the crucifixion, when one of the two thieves being crucified with Jesus taunts him. The thief’s punishment comes quickly and violently when a crow descends on his head and proceeds to pluck out his eye. The point is that all those who doubt the film’s message will suffer a miserable and physically excruciating fate, an assertion that echoes the rhetoric of the Bush administration. Doubt the existence of WMD’s? Just wait for the mushroom cloud. Like the administration, the film stresses a distinct and literal division between good and (the axis of) evil. Gibson offers a gang of demonic children chasing Judas out into the desert as another example of the threat of punishment for all those who fall on the wrong side of the divide. This insistence on obvious divisions characterizes a worldview that not only excludes all non-Christians, but plays into the history of anti-Semitic interpretation.

     Still, the most disturbing element in The Passion of the Christ is its portrayal of the general populace, and by extension, us, the film’s audience, as an irredeemably cruel and irrationally bloodthirsty mob. By contrast, the Roman authorities - particularly the only character dynamic enough to be a protagonist, Pontius Pilate - are calm, sensible, and forgiving. There is likewise no effort to illuminate the position occupied by the Pharisees or describe why Jesus posed such a threat to them. The suggestion is that if the will of the people had just been overruled by the benevolent authority of the Romans, Jesus would have lived. The most ridiculous instance of this is in the film’s depiction of the release of the prisoner Barabbas. He is paraded out as a madman, scarred and wild-eyed, giggling, spitting and wagging his tongue. Pilate is plainly horrified at the public’s perverse insistence that he release Barabbas and crucify Jesus. This scenario again exhibits the film’s kinship to the Bush administration. Both the film and the administration view the public, through its majority consensus, as falling on the wrong side of the good-evil divide. This belief is what allows the Bush team to so easily brush aside the largest organized protest in history as just another emergence of doubt. Through the character of Pilate, The Passion of the Christ echoes this basic mistrust of human nature and the belief in authoritarian rule as a means of controlling it.

     The support for the film’s authoritarian stance has been heavily publicized. The creators, promoters and admirers of the movie have all shouted about how Historically Accurate it is, part of a larger claim to represent the definitive story of the life of Christ, and by extension the definitive Christian message. But literal interpretation of Scripture is not the same as historical accuracy and the film’s claims to realism are deliberately misleading. The Gospels themselves do not appear anywhere until 170 – 180 C.E.,² more than a lifetime after Jesus was killed. There also is a strong likelihood that parts of the Bible, for example the roles of Mary Magdelene and Judas, have been manipulated over the years for political purposes.³ But the film dismisses all of the historical research and relies exclusively on the Gospels, presenting an intentionally focused message. As The Passion's screenwriter Benedict Fitzgerald states, “The true Catholic church is an apostolic, not an ecumenical, church. We depend on the eyewitnesses and Holy Ghost for everything we believe.”⁴ Contrary to its claims, the film is not a historical exercise but an act of faith.

     The Passion of the Christ belongs to a long tradition of using Christianity as a tool for gaining and maintaining power. It now lends itself to an extremist based campaign of propaganda that wields religion as a political tool. The present-day leadership of the Republican Party first came to power by marketing a privileged elitist and corporate insider with a questionable history as a man of the people and a good Christian.⁵ They also deliberately use Christian rhetoric to gain favor from the public, as with Bush’s crusading good vs. evil speeches, his attacks on gay marriage, or his “visionary” campaign ads. But the administration’s invocation of Christian principles is nothing more than a hollow political device.

     The Bible stories portray someone trying to promote individual responsibility and awareness. They clearly describe how Jesus despised deception and had a heaping disdain for authority, especially in the hands of those who advertised a connection to or understanding with God. In the Bible, Jesus worked to bring out the fundamental goodness of human nature, and encourage people to be doubtful and suspicious of those who deny or suppress it. The messages of The Passion of the Christ and the Bush administration are directly opposed to this. They focus on the horrible in humanity, and assert a need to bring about order through submission of personal will to authoritarian rule. They insistently remind us that there are powerful external forces beyond our control - the devil, terrorists, doubt, human nature - that we will be protected from if we surrender to their authority. This is not only anti-Christian (shame on you Mel Gibson and Benedict Fitzgerald) but anti-democratic (shame on you George Bush and crew).

     Throughout the summer and fall, the same millions of Americans who renewed their faith because of The Passion's portrayal of Christ will, consciously or not, recognize the same message coming from their television sets in the form of campaign advertising from Bush and Cheney. Of course, all of my criticism would be dismissed by both the filmmakers and the politicians as nay saying and doubt. Gibson and Bush are from the same mold in this regard, they easily dismiss those who oppose them without consideration, because doubt, both have openly claimed, is a tool of the devil. By demonizing doubt they are attempting to strip citizens of the only tool we have to evaluate the messages they are constantly bombarding us with.



Footnotes:

1. George Packer, “A Democratic World,” The New Yorker, February 16 & 23, 2004, pg. 108.

2. See Charles Waite, History of the Christian Religion to the Year Two Hundred; Walter Richard Cassels, Supernatural Religion.

3. See Rev. Robert Taylor, The Diegesis; Randel Helms, Gospel Fictions ; Albert Churchward, The Origin and Evolution of Religion ; Joseph Wheless, Forgery in Christianity; http://www.magdalene.org/books_recommended.htm; Hyam Maccoby, Judas Iscariot and the Myth of Jewish Evil; Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew.

4. From an interview conducted by the Star Bulletin: http://www.starbulletin.com/2004/02/22/features/story3.html.

5. That Bush‘s Christian credentials are lacking is a topic for another essay. But, suffice to say here, upon reading the Gospels, I was struck by a curiously strong resemblance between his leadership practices and those of the Pharisees. In addition to his attachment to wealth, killing more than a few neighbors in the name of justice (with God implied), and posturing for the favor of men, the campaign ads where Bush feigns compassion for all Americans and claims prophetically that he has “a very clear vision of where (he wants) to take this country” beg the following warning: Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly they are ravening wolves. (Matthew 7:15)