Comments on The Passion of the Christ, Part II.

I have previously posted my initial response to Mel Gibson's The Passion. In the midst of much discussion of the movie at Union Theological Seminary, I have come to articulate my significant concerns about the movie in response to a particularly disturbing post on a Union email list. What follows is a more robust critique of the movie's flaws. Perhaps my words below show just how much Union has allowed me to refine my own voice for justice that I began to find during SummerLinks summer after my first year at UChicago.

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From long experience, the only email-list discussions I usually enter are those that pertain to planning when to meet, and even then I am wary.

Now, however, I cannot remain silent.

I wish I could sympathize with those who were moved by the film, but I must protest. As a queer of color and of faith - equally as a Christian concerned with justice - maybe I could have been moved by Gibson's Passion like may have been. EXCEPT that the movie was racist, sexist, colonialist, and anti-queer, aside from its inducements towards (if not blatant representations of) anti-Semitism. Beyond this, of course, is the fact that Jesus' death is almost entirely de-contextualized from either life or resurrection; what little context is given supports the film's oppressive ideologies. And unfortunately, many viewers do not seek to RESIST these faults, but rather to view the film on its most superficial level. To the degree that opinions such as these are not interrogated by folks here at Union [and elsewhere], then our community [and society] itself buys into the film's multiple oppressions.

While I delineate my significant lines of critique below, my BOTTOM LINE is this: Mel Gibson's Passion is a dangerous basis for continued Christian oppression. It seeks to perpetuate the violence done on women, queers, people of color, Jews, and many other groups in the name of Jesus. More fundamentally, the film uncritically viewed betrays any hope for an interpretation of Jesus' death that liberates the Bible from historical complexes of oppression. ULTIMATELY, the film through this lens removes any chance that Jesus - in life, death, and life beyond death - can be a meaningful basis for justice-driven life-praxis.

AN ANTI-SALVATION FILM.
Many reviews (in concord with a vast tradition) have celebrated the film's idea of taking on all suffering because that's the "cross we must bear" because Jesus suffered so much. Frankly, I don't want a Jesus who was MERELY a victim who suffered - I don't NEED Jesus' suffering to get me through my own. What I NEED is the hope that points to a reality BEYOND suffering, a sense that there is a way of life and a life beyond death that make suffering NOT the final answer. I WANT A REDEEMER, NOT A FELLOW SUFFERING-ADDICT!

Markedly absent in the film is the ABSOLUTE UNNECESSITY of the violence and an ABSOLUTE INDIGNATION against structures that perpetrate such violence. THE POINT is not to feel better about suffering so that you can go on suffering: the point is to know that the causes of suffering are structures of sin - and that RESISTANCE to these structures is the way of God in this world.

A RACIST FILM.
The "good" Jews (ie, Mary the Mother and Mary Magdalene) are as obviously European as the "sympathetic" Nordic-like Romans, while the "bad" Jews (priests and crowds) are protrayed to follow the crudest stereotypes of Semitic peoples. To crown this whitewashing, Jesus is played by a solidly European James Caviezel. Given these choices of actors, Jesus' death visually appears primarily as the interruption of the "normal," "reasonable" (Latin) relations between white bodies by the "exotic," "corrupting" (Aramaic) influence of the non-white bodies.

A SEXIST FILM.
To put it simply: agency is contained within male bodies, in addition to white bodies. Women's roles are primarily to observe, support, or else helplessly follow. The most poignant actions by women are those of serving men: Mary wiping up Jesus' blood, Veronica (presumably) wiping Jesus' face.

"But that's what the Gospels themselves contain," one hears the defense. That, however, is neither a nuanced biblical interpretation NOR an adequate biblical application. The question of how the Gospels treat relations between men and women is PRECISELY the point of reading the Bible in the light of gender. And insofar as the Gospels DO reflect the patriarchy of THEIR historical contexts, it is responsible biblical praxis to challenge the Gospels so that they don't read their patriarchy onto OUR context.

A COLONIALIST FILM.
Gibson does not even attempt to relate Jesus' death to the complex relationship of occupying Rome and occupied Judea/Galilee. Instead, Jesus and Pilate, the refined Latin speakers, must simply play their parts under the manipulative whims of the "savage natives."

Moreover, in Roman times, the cross was a universal sign of punishment and the power of empire. Gibson (and Cave), however, turn the cross into a unique experience of Jesus. This has the effect of removing the heavily political, anti-imperial meanings of Jesus' (life and) death. Rome is not the perpetrator and empire is not the problem: the Romans merely got tragically mixed up in the internal problem of the Jews. Sounds like an interpretation worth 30 pieces of argentum.

As Brigitte Kahl asks her classes pointedly: how does the film serve to reinforce present-day US ideologies of justifiable empire in the guise of a "war against terror" and the proliferation of "peace and democracy"?

AN ANTI-QUEER FILM.
The film is obssessed with the most literal understanding of Jesus' death (and resurrection, in one tiny cameo). The presentation of Jesus' bodily torture - drawn out beyond all standards of artistic necessity or license - serves to reinforce the exclusive focus on Jesus' death as a body being violated.

The problem with this is that the film assigns no moral value to the violation of the body, and combined with the length of time portraying the violence, actually celebrates the violation of the body for its own sake. The violence wasn't SUPPOSED to happen - Pilate only wanted Jesus' beaten enough to give a good show. The Roman floggers, however, gave free rein to their most sadistic impulses, making Jesus into simply an object for rage.

How is this anti-queer? To the film's aforementioned patriarchy, this representation of violence justifies ideas of sexuality that are (1) exploitative and (2) turn the body into a site for violence rather than a source of deep being. Being queer, if it means anything in Christian theological terms, means resurrecting the body from various assaults in the name of God - it means proclaiming the truth that God comes to this world in a body, and in our bodies. The queer theological witness means celebrating all that bodies offer as revelations of - and resources to reach - the fullness of God's being. Everything in the film that (1) demeans and degrades the body, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY (2) celebrates such degradation, runs counter to everything queers should fight to remain in the Church for in the first place.

Jesus death ought never be portrayed in such a way that glorifies, necessitates, justifies, or excuses the violation of the body. Yes, Jesus died an agonizing death. But portraying his death ought always point to the fact that degradation of the human person - in body, mind, or spirit - was not in God's will for Jesus and is never in God's will for human beings.