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Thursday, February 19, 2004
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THE DOLOROUS PASSION OF MEL GIBSON
or
"THANKS, DAD!"
Mel Gibson has a problem. He's losing his mind. Gibson, famous and wealthy beyond the imagination of ordinary mortals, had a crisis of failth. Apparently, fame, money and power often have this effect on shallow, pretty people, given how often you hear about it. Mel reports that he was contemplating suicide, so horrible was his plush existence.
So Mel did what many people do, he looked into his soul and found the path to his spiritual salvation. And, as often happens in spiritual ressurections, this involved pissing off the Jews. As Mel Gibson isn't what one would call an intellectual powerhouse, he followed his path the only way he knew how - a $25 million feature film about the "passion", or execution of Jesus.
Whenever big-time goyim go near this story, Jewish people get very nervous. You see, the Jews have been defamed as "Christ-killers" for some 2,000 years now. This is the basis of European anti-Semitism, which lead to such atrocities as the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust. The Catholic Church didn't drop the canard of collective Jewish guilt for the passion until Vactican II, in 1962. And Mel Gibson is so rabidly Catholic that he reportedly views Vatican II as heresy.So much for papal infallability, I guess. Needless to say, you'd be a little touchy about movies involving the murder of the baby Jesus, too. Particularly if you knew that your team didn't do it, the friggin' Itallians did.
I have yet to see "The Passion of the Christ", but as the film has the potential of creating a media freakshow, of - pardon the pun - biblical proportions, I have followed the controversy following it. The script, when it leaked, raised some eyebrows. Then Gibson held showings of the uncompleted film. More eyebrows were raised and Jewish groups grew increasingly concerned. All one need do watch several Mel Gibson films to learn how he resolves conflicts with those he has disagreements with. Or you can see "the Simpsons" episode where Mel and Homer remake "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." Again, you'd be concerned, too.
Then stories about the film's true inspiration arose in the media . It is alleged that some scenes from the film are not to be found in the New Testament and most likely come from Anne Catherine Emmerich's book "The Dolorous Passion Of Our Lord Jesus Christ", which Gibson admits reading. The book's divergences from the Bible in some places were due to "visions" Emmerich experienced through her, probably psychotic, life. The book also carries some discriptions of Jews that can only be described as less than endearing. So people's anti-Semetism radar kicked up a notch into overdrive.
Of course, at this point, Gibson's father rides to the rescue.
Turns out Dad didn't help a whole lot.
Among the assertions that Hutton Gibson made in an interview Monday on New York radio:
-"They're after one world religion and one world government,That's why they've attacked the Catholic Church so strongly, to ultimately take control over it by their doctrine."
- On the Holocaust, the elder Mr. Gibson said "They claimed that there were 6.2 million in Poland before the war, and they claimed after the war there were 200,000 - therefore he must have killed 6 million of them. They simply got up and left! They were all over the Bronx and Brooklyn and Sydney, Australia, and Los Angeles."
-Understanding the importance of following a thought through to it's logical conclusion, Hutton went on. "It's all -- maybe not all fiction -- but most of it is. Do you know what it takes to get rid of a dead body? To cremate it? It takes a litre of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, six million of them? They (the Germans) did not have the gas to do it. That's why they lost the war."
-When asked to explain his anti-Semetism, Gibson replied "Is the Jew still actively anti-Christian? He is, for by being a Jew, he is anti-everyone else."
-Showing that he was far too creative to just hate Jews collectively, Hutton aired his views on Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan. "Greenspan tells us what to do. Someone should take him out and hang him."
I should also note that Mr. Gibson, Sr. was being interviewed by the largest Jewish broadcaster in the United States.
Even before Hutton Gibson's insane ranting on Monday, Gibson the younger was asked about his father by Diane Sawyer. "He's my father. Gotta leave it alone Diane. Gotta leave it alone." While Mel didn't repudiate previous remarks his father made, he rather sweetly conceded that the Holocaust did, in fact, occur.
In closing, we now have a film made by a zealot, based on questionable sources, by a director and producer whose father is a vicious Holocaust denier. Could this story get better? I have every confidence that it will.
While I don't have any immediate plans to see the film, I will watch it on television. I'm kind of hoping there's a scene where Jesus puts a gun to his head and Danny Glover talks him out of pulling the trigger before saying, "I'm too old for this shit."
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