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Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ
is provoking religious slights -- on Christians.
Diane Sawyer's Primetime
interview with Gibson dripped with an insulting condescension toward
Christianity, a condescension liberals would regard as bigoted were it
aimed at Judaism or Islam.
Sawyer, brows furrowed, looking
almost in a state of physical pain, felt free to question Gibson's
faith with a surely-you-can't-believe-that? air. As Gibson spoke about
such things as his belief in the Devil and the Holy Spirit, Sawyer's
face registered a wincing incredulity. She looked like a horrified
anthropologist who had just stumbled upon some grotesque religious sect.
After
Gibson said of Jesus Christ's crucifixion -- "He was beaten for our
iniquities. He was wounded for our transgressions. And by his wounds we
are healed. That's the point of the film. It's not about pointing the
fingers, it's not about playing the blame game. It's about faith, hope,
love and forgiveness. It's the reality for me. I believe that. I have
to " -- Sawyer asked, "Have to?" In other words: Come on, Mr. Gibson,
you don't have to take your faith quite so seriously.
Talk
show hosts usually coo over the convictions of artists and believers.
Not so with Gibson. His convictions are so in need of correction that
Sawyer, suddenly an art monitor, demanded to know why he didn't make a
different movie. "You could have made a life of Jesus," a nice and
fuzzy movie without the crucifixion, Sawyer told Gibson.(The
fatuousness of Sawyer reached its bottom when she referred to the movie
as an "anti-date movie.") And why didn't he add a postscript denouncing
anti-Semitism to his movie? Sawyer wanted to know.
It would be
hard to imagine Sawyer behaving like such a busybody with any other
director. She suggested to Gibson that he was "playing with fire." Do
other directors get reminders from her on their responsibility to make
movies that produce only comity and unanimity?
The left loves
"art that challenges," and treats turmoil in the wake of art as a mark
of its value and truth, but not if it is based on the Bible. Then it is
viewed as a dangerous obscenity, a matter of "playing with fire."
Gibson
correctly pointed out to Sawyer that those who object to his movie are
really objecting to the New Testament. "Read the Gospels," he told her.
But Sawyer doesn't want to read the Gospels unless they are rewritten
according to liberal sensitivities. The Bible, she reminded Gibson, has
been deconstructed. (Though it is never explained why the
deconstructionists deconstruct the Sanhedrin's role in Christ's
crucifixion while not extending that same deconstructionist generosity
to Pontius Pilate.) Why take it all so literally? she in effect asked
him. She really caught him out when she established that the
blood-be-on-our-children line from the Gospels was still in the film in
"Aramaic." Apparently unless the Bible is bowdlerized, it is not safe
material for movies.
When not asking belittling questions --
"What does the evil side want?" "Do you believe God wrote this film?"
"You have the nonstop ticket [to heaven]?" -- Sawyer was hiding behind
phrases like "some critics say," "historians say."
Sawyer
found a "former priest" to criticize the movie. He was disappointed
that the movie didn't anticipate the moviegoing needs of Martians.
"Let's say I'm a Martian, I'm just watching this film. All the time I
keep saying to myself, what's anyone got against this guy?" the former
priest said. Gibson's response to this criticism was to say basically
that he didn't make the movie for Martians. The "former priest" didn't
care for the focus on "brutality." (Christianity without the
crucifixion appeals to liberal Catholic priests, current and ex. Hence
they have been trying to take crucifixes out of Catholic classrooms and
churches for years.)
Sawyer also asked Gibson about a 19th
century nun whose work on the crucifixion -- a "some say lurid" account
of the crucifixion -- supposedly informed his film. "Lurid," "playing
with fire" -- this is Hollywood's stock in trade. For such a seasoned
Hollywoodized journalist, Sawyer is easily shocked.
"I think
it is one of the things that worries and concerns some of the critics"
-- meaning her -- "that this is presented as truth," she said to
Gibson, casually implying that the Gospels are made up. Sawyer was so
determined to make sure that Gibson didn't disparage anyone else's
faith she felt entitled to disparage his.
George Neumayr is managing editor of The
American Spectator.
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