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21 Gibson’s Passion Yvonne Kozlovsky-Golan Many critics claim that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is a violent movie, whose main theme is not Christ’s vision of Christianity, but Gibson’s vision of violence for its own sake. 1 A careful viewing reinforces this impression and identifies aesthetic, contextual and format-related flaws in the film. Yet this is not all; as we examine the movie and its context more closely we find subversive elements that reflect not merely a violent vision of pure sadism, but narrative and methodological contradictions that blatantly disregard the text of the Gospel according to Matthew and its historical connections and religious messages . The subversive current in the film defies both the Gospel according to Matthew as accepted by most Catholics since Vatican II and the belief of Protestant Evangelists who see the King James Bible as the sole interpretation of the scriptures. The most important and conspicuous subversion appears in the sly criticisms that Gibson—the film actor and director America has embraced— expresses against American culture, the importance it assigns to law and order, and the sources of its faith and ideas. The narrative and subjective aspect of the film most familiar to—and, some claim, most beloved of—the American viewer is the court and its legal proceedings. 2 In earlier research I have claimed that the American motionpicture industry’s most outspoken and useful narrative has always been that of law and order, a narrative that has spawned innumerable films dealing with courts, laws, prisons, crime 3 —and lynching, which, although contrary to the legal system, somehow presents the American spirit of the time and place. In The Passion Gibson has cleverly used situations very familiar to American viewers as a result of their average four and a half hours a day of televisionwatching . During those hours Americans presumably see not just a screen but a reflection of their culture. In The Passion, as in his previous movies, Braveheart (1995) and The Pa- 22 YVONNE KOZLOVSKY-GOLAN triot (2000), Gibson consciously caters to the American viewer’s tastes. In these films we recognize a few familiar scenes from beloved old movies by such creators as Billy Wilder and Steven Bochco. Three main scenes in The Passion contain the juridical substance of the movie and encompass some of the elements mentioned above. One is Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin; the second is the Sanhedrin’s delivery of Jesus to Pilate as a traitor to be dealt with; and the third and decisive scene is the verdict and the transfer of blame for the crucifixion from the Romans to the Jews: “His blood be on us and on our children.” American cinema’s normative conception of the American legal system tends to show in its emphasis on that system’s orderly conduct and efficiency. No matter what the plot, the mistake is always the individual’s, and justice is explicitly embodied by the All-American system. This is evident in the contrast Gibson builds into the scene of Christ appearing before the Sanhedrin. In it Christ, a symbol of virtue and honesty, stands against the anachronistic Jewish Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin, as Gibson sees it, is the primitive relic of an unorganized , obscure, mob-driven system. This Jewish body, although historically a council of seventy, is portrayed here as small but noisy and emotional, swaying with the mood of the proceedings, in stark contrast to Christ’s calm, stoic peace. This is the Jewish law system according to Gibson: A system in which Jewish racial motivation contrasts with the composed demeanor of the Euro-American Christ figure and his post-modern association with the Hellenistic commonwealth . Gibson’s trial scene inevitably evokes anti-Semitic claims about the Jewish thirst for blood, the sacrifice of human innocents for religious rituals, and especially the creation of conflict and controversy in order to glorify Judaism and discredit any objector as “sick.” While early on, following a scene that supposedly represents an internal quarrel in the Jewish community, the educated viewer may accept Christ’s Jewish origins, imagining that he may actually belong to the noisy, grotesque group blabbering about his deeds, the next scene undercuts this impression by creating a dichotic division between the protagonists: The Jews are ridiculous, dressed in Muslim burkas (unsurprisingly similar to those seen in televised broadcasts from Afghanistan), while we civilized Westerners are dressed in Roman hautecouture and bare-limbed, just like Christ standing in the midst...

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