{"id":1396,"date":"2004-02-26T23:42:02","date_gmt":"2004-02-27T03:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/02\/26\/passion-like-every-other-site-on-th"},"modified":"2004-02-26T23:42:02","modified_gmt":"2004-02-27T03:42:02","slug":"passion-like-every-other-site-on-the-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/02\/26\/passion-like-every-other-site-on-the-web\/","title":{"rendered":"Passion, like every other site on the web"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I don’t have tons of time to blog tonight, even though I had a couple
\nof interesting conversations today (one somewhat strage one with a
\nstudent) that I do want to write about.<\/p>\n

But I noted what Andrew Sullivan said on his blog on the Gibson film<\/a>.  Here follows an excerpt:<\/p>\n

[The film] brings this simple but
\nawe-inspiring story to life in a way very difficult to approximate in
\nthe written or spoken word…. <\/span>The Gospels do end in extraordinary drama,
\npathos, plot, agony. Portraying them vividly may, we can hope, bring
\nsome people to read the Gospels and even to explore further what the
\nredemptive message of Jesus really is.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, the movie was to me deeply
\ndisturbing. In a word, it is pornography. By pornography, I mean the
\nreduction of all human thought and feeling and personhood to mere
\nflesh. The center-piece of the movie is an absolutely disgusting and
\ndespicable piece of sadism that has no real basis in any of the
\nGospels. It shows a man being flayed alive – slowly, methodically and
\nwith increasing savagery…. <\/span>Yet for Gibson, it is the h’ors d’oeuvre<\/i>
\nfor his porn movie. The whole movie is some kind of sick combination of
\nthe theology of Opus Dei and the film-making of Quentin Tarantino.
\nThere is nothing in the Gospels that indicates this level of extreme,
\nendless savagery and there is no theological reason for it. It doesn’t
\neven evoke emotion in the audience. It is designed to prompt the
\ncrudest human pity and emotional blackmail – which it obviously does.
\nBut then it seems to me designed to evoke a sick kind of fascination.
\nOf over two hours, about half the movie is simple wordless sadism on a
\nlevel and with a relentlessness that I have never witnessed in a movie
\nbefore. And you have to ask yourself: why? The suffering of Christ is
\nbad and gruesome enough without exaggerating it to this insane degree.
\nTheologically, the point is not that Jesus suffered more than any human
\nbeing ever has on a physical level. It is that his suffering was
\nprofound and voluntary and the culmination of a life and a teaching
\nthat Gibson essentially omits. One more example. Toward the end,
\nunsatisfied with showing a man flayed alive, nailed gruesomely to a
\ncross, one eye shut from being smashed in, blood covering his entire
\nbody, Gibson has a large crow perch on the neighboring cross and peck
\nanother man’s eyes out. Why? Because the porn needed yet another money
\nshot.<\/span><\/p>\n

…The central message of Jesus – of love and
\ncompassion and forgiveness – is reduced to sound-bites. Occasionally,
\nsuch as when the message of the sermon on the mount is juxtaposed with
\nthe crucifixion, the effect is almost profound – because there has been
\nan actual connection between who Jesus was and what happened to him.
\nBut this is the exception to the rule. Watching the movie, you can see
\nhow a truly powerful rendition could have been made – by tripling the
\nflashbacks and context, by providing a biography of Jesus, by showing
\nus why he endured what he endured. Instead, all that context, all that
\nmeaning, has been removed for endless sickening gratuitous violence. <\/span>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And here’s an explanation for all of this, courtesy of the Times<\/a>:
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nAs an actor and successful director, from “Mad Max”<\/a> (1979) through “Lethal Weapon”<\/a> (1987) and its sequels to the Oscar-winning “Braveheart”<\/a>
\n(1995), Mr. Gibson has long been a Hollywood pet. But he has also been
\nknown as a prankster and a self-confessed abuser of various substances.
\nMany in the relentlessly secular movie industry see his recent
\nreligious conversion — he practices a traditionalist version of Roman
\nCatholicism — as another form of addiction.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sorry that we’re just doin’ quotes tonight.  More Nate-substance soon.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t have tons of time to blog tonight, even though I had a couple of interesting conversations today (one somewhat strage one with a student) that I do want to write about. But I noted what Andrew Sullivan said on his blog on the Gibson film.  Here follows an excerpt: [The film] brings this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ontheweb"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-mw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}