I don't plan to see Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, and here's why. It has nothing to do with the film's potential for fueling anti-Semitism, although I certainly do not take that lightly. Were I Jewish, it might be my main reason—that and a lack of interest in another religion's central narrative.
But I was born a Christian, like Gibson a Catholic, and like Gibson I am just old enough—we're nearly the same age, in fact—to remember the pre-Vatican II doctrine hammered into my pious little head. To be sure, I do not specifically remember nuns blaming Jews for Jesus' death—maybe our cohort was a little young for that—only the imperative that we "save" the Jews, and everyone else outside the Church, who could not share Catholics' glorious reception into Heaven. It was not far removed from the "Left Behind" orthodoxy to which so many other Christians cling.
History, though, is rife with repression feeding on that bitter recrimination—inquisitions, pogroms and exterminations, all wickedly ignorant of Christ's call to love, His renunciation of revenge and the crisp irony that He, too, was a Jew. With this history, I can appreciate why some Jews are anxious about the revived indictment of "blood on their hands." I cannot imagine the movie sparking fresh violence, however. People will not storm from theaters, as from the church-square passion play, and chase Jews through the city gates. Fervid Christians today, especially the (Will Not Be) "Left Behind," see Jews playing a role in their larger drama in which Israel dresses the stage for the end of days. In that denouement, of course, the Jews are simply, well, left behind.
No, my reasons are twofold. First, I find the machinations of Gibson and his camp, in manufacturing attention for the film, troublesome. It seems they've refigured the old dictum about bad publicity, finding it not equally valuable but more so. The unfolding of the film appears to have been conceived to generate the very controversy its adherents deplore. Gibson's claque could hardly have been unaware that their carefully orchestrated series of screenings would arouse suspicion. This commedia dell'arte warm-up might have caused more enmity between Christians and Jews—some, at least—than the film ever will.
That the story of Christ's Passion should require a buzz campaign is offensive. What would Jesus do, indeed? Ring up the Pope for a blurb? "It is as it was! Four-and-a-half halos!" No wonder the Vatican found itself stung and distanced itself from the report of the Pope's endorsement. As another old stagehand once observed, "With devotion's visage/ And pious action we do sugar o'er/ The devil himself."
But I'm willing to grant Gibson benefit of the doubt, that he sincerely set out to tell the story that anchors his faith, a project that could have been among the noblest of Hollywood's many vanity productions, and things got away from him. Craving the entrails of a critic, as Gibson affirmed himself with regard to The New York Times' Frank Rich, seems less than Christian, but surely he was joking, and I'd like to think God allows that. In any event, this brings me to my second reason for not viewing the film.
Growing up Catholic like Gibson, I absorbed the Passion through the somber liturgy of the Stations of the Cross and the grim service of Good Friday. Part of my long odyssey away from the church has involved a search for a way to grasp the mysteries of divinity without the vivid engagement of ritual. In no way do I mean to suggest that those who have not done this are wrong or misguided; my family are Catholics, and I respect them for it. But whenever I sense a tug back to the fold, it is because I miss the witness but rather its dramatic trappings.
And so I don't want to watch this essential story enacted with all the gory glory contemporary filmmaking can bring to it. I think it's a story more for the heart and the soul than for the eyes and the ears. After all, Christ admonished Thomas, "Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have learned to believe."
Beginning this week, Chuck Twardy's Culture Club column will alternate with Richard Abowitz' All that Glitters column in this space. Chuck will continue to review art in the A&E section.