ckerr4
09-21-2003, 09:10 AM
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/21/arts/21RICH.html?th
The New York Times
The Greatest Story Ever Sold by Frank Rich
Then Gibson expressed his feelings about Rich. "I want to kill him," he said. "I want his intestines on a stick. . . . I want to kill his dog." — The New Yorker, Sept. 15
PETA members may be relieved to learn that I do not have a dog.
As for the rest of Mel Gibson's threats, context is all: the guy is a movie star. Movie stars expect to get their own way. They are surrounded by sycophants, many of them on the payroll. Should a discouraging word somehow prick the bubble of fabulousness in which they travel, even big-screen he-men can turn into crybabies. Mr. Gibson's tirade sounded less like a fatwa from the Ayatollah Khomeini than a tantrum from Sinatra in his cups.
My capital crime was to write a column on this page last month reporting that Mr. Gibson was promoting his coming film about the crucifixion, "The Passion," by baiting Jews. As indeed he has. In January, the star had gone on "The O'Reilly Factor" to counter Jewish criticism of his cinematic account of Jesus's final hours — a provocative opening volley given that no critic of any faith had yet said anything about his movie (and wouldn't for another three months). Clearly he was looking for a brawl, and he hasn't let up since. In the New Yorker profile, Mr. Gibson says that "modern secular Judaism wants to blame the Holocaust on the Catholic Church," a charge that Abraham H. Foxman, of the Anti-Defamation League, labels "classic anti-Semitism." Mr. Gibson also says that he trimmed a scene from "The Passion" involving the Jewish high priest Caiaphas because if he didn't do so "they'd be coming after me at my house, they'd come to kill me."
Who is this bloodthirsty "they" threatening to martyr our fearless hero? Could it be the same mob that killed Jesus? Funny, but as far as I can determine, the only death threat that's been made in conjunction with "The Passion" is Mr. Gibson's against me. The New Yorker did, though, uncover one ominous threat against the star: "He's heard that someone from one of his hangouts, the Grand Havana Room, a Beverly Hills smoking club, said that he'd spit on him if he ever came in again." Heard from whom? What is the identity of that mysterious "someone"? What do they smoke at that "smoking club"? Has the Grand Havana Room been infiltrated by Madonna's Kabbalah study group? I join a worried nation in praying for Mr. Gibson's safety.
His over-the-top ramblings are, of course, conceived in part to sell his product. "Inadvertently, all the problems and the conflicts and stuff — this is some of the best marketing and publicity I have ever seen," Mr. Gibson told The New Yorker. That's true — with the possible exception of the word "inadvertently" — and I realize that I've been skillfully roped into his remarkably successful p.r. juggernaut. But I'm glad to play my cameo role — and unlike Bill O'Reilly, who sold the film rights to one of his books to Mr. Gibson's production company, I am not being paid by him to do so.
What makes the unfolding saga of "The Passion" hard to ignore is not so much Mr. Gibson's playacting fisticuffs but the extent to which his combative marketing taps into larger angers. The "Passion" fracas is happening not in a vacuum but in an increasingly divided America fighting a war that many on both sides see as a religious struggle. While Mr. Gibson may have thought he was making a biblical statement, his partisans are turning him into an ideological cause.
The lines are drawn on seethepassion.com, the most elaborate Web site devoted to championing Mr. Gibson. There we're told that the debate over "The Passion" has "become a focal point for the Culture War which will determine the future of our country and the world." When this site criticizes The Times, it changes the family name of the paper's publisher from Sulzberger to "Schultzberger." (It was no doubt inadvertent that Mr. O'Reilly, in a similar slip last week, referred to the author of a New Republic critique of Mr. Gibson, the Boston University theologian Paula Fredrikson, as "Fredrickstein.") This animus is not lost on critics of "The Passion." As the A.D.L.'s Rabbi Eugene Korn has said of Mr. Gibson to The Jewish Week, "He's playing off the conservative Christians against the liberal Christians, and the Jews against the Christian community in general."
To what end? For the film's supporters, the battle is of a piece with the same blue state-red state cultural chasm as the conflicts over the Ten Commandments in an Alabama courthouse, the growing legitimization of homosexuality (Mr. Gibson has had his innings with gays in the past) and the leadership of a president who wraps public policy in religiosity and called the war against terrorism a "crusade" until his handlers intervened. So what if "modern secular" Jews — whoever they are — are maligned by Mr. Gibson or his movie? It's in the service of a larger calling. After all, Tom DeLay and evangelical Christians can look after the Jews' interests in Israel, at least until Armageddon rolls around and, as millennialist theology would have it, the Jews on hand either convert or die.
Intentionally or not, the contentious rollout of "The Passion" has resembled a political, rather than a spiritual, campaign, from its start on "The O'Reilly Factor." Since the star belongs to a fringe church that disowns Vatican II and is not recognized by the Los Angeles Roman Catholic archdiocese, his roads do not lead to Rome so much as Washington. It was there that he screened a rough cut of the movie to conservative columnists likely to give it raves — as they did.
The few Jews invited to "Passion" screenings by Mr. Gibson tend to be political conservatives. One is Michael Medved, who is fond of describing himself in his published "Passion" encomiums as a "former synagogue president" — betting that most of his readers will not know that this is a secular rank falling somewhere between co-op board president and aspiring Y.M.H.A. camp counselor. When non-right-wing Jews asked to see the film, we were turned away — thus allowing Mr. Gibson's defenders, in a perfect orchestration of Catch-22, to say we were attacking or trying to censor a film we "haven't seen." This has been a constant theme in the bouquet of anti-Semitic mail I've received since my previous column about "The Passion."
I never called the movie anti-Semitic or called for its suppression. I did say that if early reports by Catholic and Jewish theologians alike were accurate in stating that "The Passion" revived the deicide charge against Jews, it could have a tinderbox effect abroad. The authorities I cited based their criticisms on a draft of the movie's screenplay. (The most forceful critic of the movie has been Sister Mary Boys, of the Union Theological Seminary in New York.) I have since sought out some of those who have seen the movie itself, in the same cut praised by Mr. Gibson's claque this summer. They are united in believing, as one of them puts it, that "it's not a close call — the film clearly presents the Jews as the primary instigators of the crucifixion."
Mr. Gibson would argue that he is only being true to tradition, opting for scriptural literalism over loosey-goosey modern revisionism. But by his own account, he has based his movie on at least one revisionist source, a 19th-century stigmatic nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich, notable for her grotesque caricatures of Jews. To the extent that there can be any agreement about the facts of a story on which even the four Gospels don't agree, his movie is destined to be inaccurate. People magazine reports he didn't even get the depiction of the crucifixion itself or the language right ("The Passion" is in Latin, Aramaic and Hebrew, not the Greek believed to have been the lingua franca of its characters). Like any filmmaker, Mr. Gibson has selectively chosen his sources to convey his own point of view.
If the film does malign Jews, should it be suppressed? No. Mr. Gibson has the right to release whatever movie he wants, and he undoubtedly will, whether he finds a studio to back him or rents theaters himself. The ultimate irony may be that Jews will help him do so; so far the only studio to pass on the movie is Fox, owned by a conservative non-Jew, Rupert Murdoch. But Mr. Gibson, forever crying censorship when there hasn't been any, does not understand that the First Amendment is a two-way street. "He has his free speech," Mr. Foxman says. "I guess he can't tolerate yours and mine."
The New York Times
The Greatest Story Ever Sold by Frank Rich
Then Gibson expressed his feelings about Rich. "I want to kill him," he said. "I want his intestines on a stick. . . . I want to kill his dog." — The New Yorker, Sept. 15
PETA members may be relieved to learn that I do not have a dog.
As for the rest of Mel Gibson's threats, context is all: the guy is a movie star. Movie stars expect to get their own way. They are surrounded by sycophants, many of them on the payroll. Should a discouraging word somehow prick the bubble of fabulousness in which they travel, even big-screen he-men can turn into crybabies. Mr. Gibson's tirade sounded less like a fatwa from the Ayatollah Khomeini than a tantrum from Sinatra in his cups.
My capital crime was to write a column on this page last month reporting that Mr. Gibson was promoting his coming film about the crucifixion, "The Passion," by baiting Jews. As indeed he has. In January, the star had gone on "The O'Reilly Factor" to counter Jewish criticism of his cinematic account of Jesus's final hours — a provocative opening volley given that no critic of any faith had yet said anything about his movie (and wouldn't for another three months). Clearly he was looking for a brawl, and he hasn't let up since. In the New Yorker profile, Mr. Gibson says that "modern secular Judaism wants to blame the Holocaust on the Catholic Church," a charge that Abraham H. Foxman, of the Anti-Defamation League, labels "classic anti-Semitism." Mr. Gibson also says that he trimmed a scene from "The Passion" involving the Jewish high priest Caiaphas because if he didn't do so "they'd be coming after me at my house, they'd come to kill me."
Who is this bloodthirsty "they" threatening to martyr our fearless hero? Could it be the same mob that killed Jesus? Funny, but as far as I can determine, the only death threat that's been made in conjunction with "The Passion" is Mr. Gibson's against me. The New Yorker did, though, uncover one ominous threat against the star: "He's heard that someone from one of his hangouts, the Grand Havana Room, a Beverly Hills smoking club, said that he'd spit on him if he ever came in again." Heard from whom? What is the identity of that mysterious "someone"? What do they smoke at that "smoking club"? Has the Grand Havana Room been infiltrated by Madonna's Kabbalah study group? I join a worried nation in praying for Mr. Gibson's safety.
His over-the-top ramblings are, of course, conceived in part to sell his product. "Inadvertently, all the problems and the conflicts and stuff — this is some of the best marketing and publicity I have ever seen," Mr. Gibson told The New Yorker. That's true — with the possible exception of the word "inadvertently" — and I realize that I've been skillfully roped into his remarkably successful p.r. juggernaut. But I'm glad to play my cameo role — and unlike Bill O'Reilly, who sold the film rights to one of his books to Mr. Gibson's production company, I am not being paid by him to do so.
What makes the unfolding saga of "The Passion" hard to ignore is not so much Mr. Gibson's playacting fisticuffs but the extent to which his combative marketing taps into larger angers. The "Passion" fracas is happening not in a vacuum but in an increasingly divided America fighting a war that many on both sides see as a religious struggle. While Mr. Gibson may have thought he was making a biblical statement, his partisans are turning him into an ideological cause.
The lines are drawn on seethepassion.com, the most elaborate Web site devoted to championing Mr. Gibson. There we're told that the debate over "The Passion" has "become a focal point for the Culture War which will determine the future of our country and the world." When this site criticizes The Times, it changes the family name of the paper's publisher from Sulzberger to "Schultzberger." (It was no doubt inadvertent that Mr. O'Reilly, in a similar slip last week, referred to the author of a New Republic critique of Mr. Gibson, the Boston University theologian Paula Fredrikson, as "Fredrickstein.") This animus is not lost on critics of "The Passion." As the A.D.L.'s Rabbi Eugene Korn has said of Mr. Gibson to The Jewish Week, "He's playing off the conservative Christians against the liberal Christians, and the Jews against the Christian community in general."
To what end? For the film's supporters, the battle is of a piece with the same blue state-red state cultural chasm as the conflicts over the Ten Commandments in an Alabama courthouse, the growing legitimization of homosexuality (Mr. Gibson has had his innings with gays in the past) and the leadership of a president who wraps public policy in religiosity and called the war against terrorism a "crusade" until his handlers intervened. So what if "modern secular" Jews — whoever they are — are maligned by Mr. Gibson or his movie? It's in the service of a larger calling. After all, Tom DeLay and evangelical Christians can look after the Jews' interests in Israel, at least until Armageddon rolls around and, as millennialist theology would have it, the Jews on hand either convert or die.
Intentionally or not, the contentious rollout of "The Passion" has resembled a political, rather than a spiritual, campaign, from its start on "The O'Reilly Factor." Since the star belongs to a fringe church that disowns Vatican II and is not recognized by the Los Angeles Roman Catholic archdiocese, his roads do not lead to Rome so much as Washington. It was there that he screened a rough cut of the movie to conservative columnists likely to give it raves — as they did.
The few Jews invited to "Passion" screenings by Mr. Gibson tend to be political conservatives. One is Michael Medved, who is fond of describing himself in his published "Passion" encomiums as a "former synagogue president" — betting that most of his readers will not know that this is a secular rank falling somewhere between co-op board president and aspiring Y.M.H.A. camp counselor. When non-right-wing Jews asked to see the film, we were turned away — thus allowing Mr. Gibson's defenders, in a perfect orchestration of Catch-22, to say we were attacking or trying to censor a film we "haven't seen." This has been a constant theme in the bouquet of anti-Semitic mail I've received since my previous column about "The Passion."
I never called the movie anti-Semitic or called for its suppression. I did say that if early reports by Catholic and Jewish theologians alike were accurate in stating that "The Passion" revived the deicide charge against Jews, it could have a tinderbox effect abroad. The authorities I cited based their criticisms on a draft of the movie's screenplay. (The most forceful critic of the movie has been Sister Mary Boys, of the Union Theological Seminary in New York.) I have since sought out some of those who have seen the movie itself, in the same cut praised by Mr. Gibson's claque this summer. They are united in believing, as one of them puts it, that "it's not a close call — the film clearly presents the Jews as the primary instigators of the crucifixion."
Mr. Gibson would argue that he is only being true to tradition, opting for scriptural literalism over loosey-goosey modern revisionism. But by his own account, he has based his movie on at least one revisionist source, a 19th-century stigmatic nun, Anne Catherine Emmerich, notable for her grotesque caricatures of Jews. To the extent that there can be any agreement about the facts of a story on which even the four Gospels don't agree, his movie is destined to be inaccurate. People magazine reports he didn't even get the depiction of the crucifixion itself or the language right ("The Passion" is in Latin, Aramaic and Hebrew, not the Greek believed to have been the lingua franca of its characters). Like any filmmaker, Mr. Gibson has selectively chosen his sources to convey his own point of view.
If the film does malign Jews, should it be suppressed? No. Mr. Gibson has the right to release whatever movie he wants, and he undoubtedly will, whether he finds a studio to back him or rents theaters himself. The ultimate irony may be that Jews will help him do so; so far the only studio to pass on the movie is Fox, owned by a conservative non-Jew, Rupert Murdoch. But Mr. Gibson, forever crying censorship when there hasn't been any, does not understand that the First Amendment is a two-way street. "He has his free speech," Mr. Foxman says. "I guess he can't tolerate yours and mine."