What's he on about now?

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   Thursday, March 18, 2004

LET'S ANSWER TOM

My co-worker Tom interrupted yet another "Passion of the Christ" discussion at the store yesterday with an exasperated, "Why does everybody care so much about this Jesus movie?" He's right in that the movie geeks within and without Sunrise records do tend to go on about this film (just like Stephen King, by the way, who's written an interesting take on it in this week's Entertainment Weekly). Before I go any further, I must say that the fine folks at Killing the Buddha have written what I believe is the definite account of the whole debate.

But as for my own contribution, I suggested to Tom that the real reason everyone is so, well, impassioned over this movie is because it functions as a lightning rod for our charged cultural atmosphere, if you will, and all that electricity comes from defensiveness. People are literally afraid of what this movie may do. There's quite simply a large but generally (thankfully) quiet group of Christians who believe that the Jewish people are solely responsible for the killing of Christ. (Why are Italians always let off the hook? The Romans did all the dirty work...) Mel Gibson is rumoured to be one of those believers and he has poured a lot of money into making a movie that's got Jews very, very nervous.

Meanwhile, many Christians in the southern U.S. are often found going on about their own oppression at the hands of a secular society and "the liberal media". They're flocking to the big Jesus movie because they're thrilled to see their faith finally represented in the multiplexes (and this makes a certain sense to me as a gay man -- I've paid good money to see some dreadful movies in my time simply because they had a lone gay character in them).

So you've got nervous Jews and nervous Christians watching the box-office totals with nervousness. Personally, I thought the movie tried for glory and left out the 'L' but I'm pleased to see it make money, because a) the film's smarter and better for you than, say, "Bad Boys II" and b) we would never have heard the end of the blaming if the thing had flopped.

Look at it this way: "Passion of the Christ" is making a fortune and ranks at 145 on the list of highest-grossing movies, three spaces below "American Pie 2." Meanwhile, "Schindler's List" ranks much higher at 105 on that list, while coming in at number 3 on the list of Greatest Jewish movies (latkes on me, everybody!).

The stately "Kundun" is sadly nowhere on that top-grossing list but the humanism-spouting mutants of "X2" come in at (wow) number 59 so, as neither a Christian or a Jew, I'll just watch the fuss over "The Passion of the Christ" with no nervousness at all.

Labels: religion