AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Passion and Postmodernism

Q: What do these two topics have in common?

A: I started this morning’s Adult Ed class at Christ Church by describing the way Matthew’s Gospel presents the passion narrative. I cited a few distinctively Matthean passages: the parables of the Two Sons, of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, of the Sheep and Goats; the sum of 30 silver pieces for Jduas’s turning Jesus in, and of Judas’s subsequent suicide; the guards at the tomb; of course, the blood curse. I also cited the chapter-long denunciation of the Pharisees (Mark and Luke share some of this material, scattered through their narratives, but Matthew has more and concentrates it in a long, scorching monologue in the run-up to the hearings and crucifixion).

As I was saying this, it occurred to me that Gibson hadn’t included any of that material in The Passion. In fact, I couldn’t recall his depicting any of the numerous controversies with Judean leaders in the gospels (a couple appear as topics of conflict when Caiaphas and his colleagues charge Jesus, and then the High Priest refers to some of these by title when accusing Jesus before Pilate). On the whole (and as far as I recall), Gibson’s Jesus has nothing bad to say about Judaism as a way of life, or its leaders as teachers and spiritual guides. That’s remarkable, given the source material Gibson had to work with and the plot line he took up.

That, then, inspired me to think of The Passion a different way around. If Mel Gibson were a confirmed anti-Semite who wanted to make a film that would engender hatred of Jews around the world, how well would we say that he did? I cited a number of problems with the film yesterday, and I stand by those criticisms; at a number of turns, Gibson’s directorial vision (informed by his interest in the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich) shapes the visual and narrative force of the passion in ways that foreground Judaic responsibility for Christ’s suffering. That’s bad, and pernicious, and Gibson ought to have had the wisdom to temper his production so as to preserve its strengths while eschewing these unnecessary, inflammatory flourishes. I’m not as comfortable with the film as my estimable overseas colleague Mark Goodacre, who finds that the complaint of anti-Judaism “has been at best greatly overstated.” Mark’s a fine, subtle reader and an expert on Jesus films, but I part company with him here; I think that the scholarly response to The Passion has rightly found serious problems with the significance of the ways Gibson represents Jews and Judaism.

But — how many opportunities to scapegoat and slander Jewish leaders did Gibson bypass? The Gospels offer truckloads of anecdotes and incidents that he could have imported to the end of making Pharisees and priests look even worse, and he brought none of that material into the film. Although Caiaphas had bad teeth (I noticed that right away, in contrast to Jesus’ pearly white choppers) and Annas looked like a stereotyped Shylock, I didn’t perceive any of the physiognomic problems that Frank Rich saw (subscription link) in the whole ensemble of actors portraying Jews (he seems especially provoked by their noses: “The only Jew with a pretty nose in this Judea is Jesus,” he says, but I think Peter’s was kinda sweet, and the Marys had nice noses — but then, I’m not a nose man). In short, if Gibson wanted to make a propaganda piece directed against Jews, he produced a remarkably restrained provocation.

If we can see that Gibson didn’t produce nearly as horrific a depiction of Judaism and its leaders as he might readily have done, we may have a reason to attend to his defensive self-exculpatory polemics. His response to charges of the anti-Judaic tenor of The Passion have gone over the top (as seems characteristic of Gibson, of his most prominent film roles and of his directorial gestures), but his frenzy of self-justification may derive from a fervent conviction that he deliberately tried to make the movie without some obvious anti-Judaic elements that he saw and avoided. (He hasn’t said so, as far as I know, but that wouldn’t make nearly as good press copy as his death threats against Frank Rich and his dog).

OK, I’ve covered The Passion; what about postmodernism? One of my favorite works by Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend, describes a circumstance wherein two discourses of justice propose cases for divergent resolutions to a conflict — and there’s no way to judge between the two discourses without adopting premises that themselves determine the outcome of the judgment. (For a simplistic version of this phenomenon, imagine Ashcroft v. Eldred as “intellectual property rights” versus “right to an intellectual commons” where each side has a demonstrable historic and philosophical justification and there’s no ground on which to adjudicate the case without adopting the terminology and premises of one of the parties to the dispute). Gibson v. Fredriksen might exemplify such a differend. Gibson’s case articulates his intentional unwillingness to incorporate into the film such material as Jesus’ explicit denunciation of the Pharisees, his loutish, sadistic Roman torturers, his depiction of Pilate as a weak character, and his willingness to accommodate some of the advisory committee’s concerns. Fredriksen’s case would include the numerous instances in which Gibson ordained behavior that would plausibly encourage the beliefs of people predisposed to find Jews responsible for the crucifixion. Her side would note that Gibson resisted any modification of his original vision of the film and attacked his critics, which explains why they read his apologias for the work with appropriate hermeneutical skepticism.

Whose side would be right? On what basis would one formulate that judgment?

I remain persuaded that Gibson’s Passion warrants the criticisms that Fredriksen (and here Prof. Fredriksen functions as a metonym for her colleagues in careful, public criticism of the movie) advances — but on what basis should I expect that Gibson see his work from Fredriksen’s critical position more than Fredriksen sees it from his? I will continue to warn students and readers that The Passion perpetuates and (by its powerful manipulation of the film medium) even heightens misleading impressions about the Judeans and their leaders. I insist that it’s not right to minimize the dangerous undercurrents of the movie. Gibson has directed a commercial powerhouse whose effects risk inciting hate-filled viewers to actions that Gibson would no doubt repudiate and condemn.

Postmodernism, in other words, helps me to recognize that my unambiguous sense that something is wrong in Gibson’s production values doesn’t exhaust the set of true claims about The Passion, and one of those true claims may well be the claim that Gibson was deliberately trying to tone down the possibly anti-Judaic tone of his source materials. His “intention,” however, doesn’t insulate him from the criticism that his film nonetheless represents first-century Judaism in a hostile light. It’s more complicated than that.

Postmodern Paul de Man wrote some brilliant works on blindness and insight, on literary interpretation, on ambiguity and the resolution of ambiguity, on ways that social convention interposes itself between text and interpretation, between critic and reader, between reader and reader and critic and critic. He wrote some callow columns of Nazi propaganda, and he drove from his academic haven somebody whom I deeply admire (who is up to something promising and great, God bless him). I don’t know what he intended by any of that — but working out academic politics on the backs of students is wrong, and servile propagandizing for genocidal tyrants is wrong, and composing nuanced treatises on language, interpretation, literature, and subtlety is good. I don’t exculpate de Man for his contemptible acts, nor do I stop reading his work for the insight it teaches.

Getting back round to Gibson and The Passion, I can judge the man and the work only by deliberately distancing myself from the complexities that each exemplifies. This is why I’m not buying weither simple condemnations of the work’s anti-Judaism, or soothing exculpations of Gibson’s intent. But I may not simply refrain from judging, either; that would be unjust. From de Man and Lyotard and Foucault and Derrida, I learn that the differend of judgment indwells all efforts to escape judgment or subjectivity, that our inescapable partiality does not justify partisanship, that when Pilate asks “Quid veritas est?” we owe an answer, the truest answer we can give, insufficient and corrigible though it be before the highest, truest judge. Gibson’s Passion bears the taint of an insensitivity he evidently can’t see, quite possibly blinded by a sincere certainty that he outflanked his partiality. To paraphrase the words that Gibson’s publicity machine attributed to the Bishop of Rome, “It is as it is”; The Passion of the Christ demonstrates a scarifyingly vivid grasp of certain aspects of the gospel, a dangerous blindness to others, and a grievous lack of the humility by which those who profess allegiance to the Anointed One need to rely on one another to help us address the (cross)beams in our eyes before we set out to operate on others.

Posted by AKMA at March 7, 2004 03:13 PM | TrackBack