Strata Lucida

Fascism in Jesus's name

I had been trying to ignore The Passion of the Christ. Just ignore it, and it will go away. But I've read very disturbing critiques of it from all across the ideological spectrum, and I think the film is much more dangerous than a piece of "mere" anti-Semitic agitprop. I think it's a transmitter of fascist values, and an incitement to Christians to adopt the violence toward their enemies which the Romans showed to theirs.

My favorite review comes from Leon Wieseltier in The New Republic, who writes:

I do not see how a belief in Jesus strengthens the case for such a film. Quite the contrary. Belief, a theory of meaning, a philosophical convenience, is rarely far away from cruelty. Torture has always been attended by explanations that vindicate it, and justify it, and even hallow it. These explanations, which are really extenuations, have been articulated in religious and in secular terms. Their purpose is to redescribe an act of inhumanity so that it no longer offends, so that it comes to seem necessary, so that it edifies. My victim of torture is your martyr.

David Neiwert's long piece is also very informative, and is full of Neiwert's trademark heavily researched antifascist readings:

The anti-Semitism seems incidental to the larger worldview at play here. And what becomes clear is that Gibson's Catholicism is not merely conservative -- it is positively medieval. In that context, the anti-Semitism is a noxious and fairly constant presence, but it is only a product of its larger thrust, which is a religious politic of domination, the rule by guilt and fear. ... It is clearly intended to shock, and shock, and shock viewers again. In this regard, it has more than a passing resemblance to the programs of humiliation and dislocation that are the hallmark of religious cults.

And Christopher "Snitch" Hitchens, not someone I agree with much of late, has this to say:

The culture of blackshirt and brownshirt pseudomasculinity, as has often been pointed out, depended on some keen shared interests. Among them were massively repressed homoerotic fantasies, a camp interest in military uniforms, an obsession with flogging and a hatred of silky and effeminate Jews.

Even Bill "The Law of Causality is Immaterial" Safire is deeply troubled, but he doesn't say "blackshirt".

As an aside, I have to quibble with Wieseltier's assertion that "This is the greatest story ever told as Dario Argento might have told it." That's an untenable slur on Argento, whose use of violence is always strictly stylized, artificial, and never occupies much screen time. Besides, Argento uses violence to question and parody the conventions of horror films, and to play around with his own subconscious icky dreams -- never to promote violence, or glory in it.

It's very troubling that this movie can be released in America with a plain old 'R' rating, when something like Bertolucci's The Dreamers, saddled with an NC-17, can't even get distribution outside of art houses in big cities. What does that say about our culture?

Wieseltier again:

The Passion of The Christ is an unwitting incitement to secularism, because it leaves you desperate to escape its standpoint, to find another way of regarding the horror that you have just observed.

I couldn't agree more.

Posted by Chris at March 1, 2004 01:17 PM