Mel Gibson’s Christ Porno

Last night, while most of us slept, the most cleverly marketed movie in recent history opened on thousands of screens across America. Before a single megaplex presented Mel Gibson’s “Passion of Christ,” the film inspired more editorializing, hand wringing, righteous anger, righteous pride, and cocktail party theorizing than every other work of creative fiction composed in the prior year combined.

By that measure, it’s a spectacular success.

We greatly admire the film’s director, the former star of “Air America” and “Lethal Weapon 3.” He had the courage of his convictions to self-finance a film that no one in their right mind would make. He also found a way to make people pay attention to a historical viewpoint most commonly held by AM radio cranks and paranoid-schizophrenic taxi drivers.

Mel Gibson used his fame in the service of something he strongly believes in. Celebrities regularly redeem their faux credibility at the service windows of American credulity. They testify before Congress and make public appearances on behalf of their causes, all the while pretending their good looks and charisma has somehow imbued them with vast knowledge of subjects other than hair care. (And most people pay attention to their political pronouncements, because, well, that’s what we do with celebrities: pay attention.) Alec Baldwin fights for the rights of circus animals. Mel Gibson’s pet cause happens to be doctrinaire Catholicism and the requisite Jew-bashing that goes with it.

Luckily for Mel — or perhaps he knew this all along — there is an enormous built-in audience for films depicting the torture of a Middle Eastern Jew. They’re called evangelical Christians. (And in case any of them missed the free advertisements ringing down from the pulpit of their church, two weeks ago at the Daytona 500 Bobby Labonte’s NASCAR Chevy had an ad for the movie painted on its hood. “We’ve got to get the word out,” his team explained. Had Labonte perished in a fiery crash, there’s no telling how many tickets this movie would have sold.)

Like most orthodox religious people (and this includes crazy Muslims, Jews, and Hindus) Christians don’t take too kindly to being reminded that the “actual event” upon which their faith is based is probably a made-up story, that this mythic narrative probably has been revised over the centuries to suit the purposes of institutional power, and that the current telling of this myth is definitely not a literal rendering of the past. It may seem obvious to rational folks that our universe wasn’t created in seven days and that the rock in space we inhabit has been around a wee bit longer than 10,000 years — but don’t remind a devout Christian of this unless you’re prepared to listen to a lengthy recitation of Scripture, which, you know, explains everything. Even the parts it contradicts.

Most intelligent people who read source materials other than The Greatest Story Ever Told, are vaguely aware that the events depicted in Gibson’s movie are highly fictionalized and based largely on the lunatic ranting of a delusional nun named Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), whose lascivious portrait of dirty Jews came to her in ecstatic “visions.” Her version of Jesus Christ’s death was the one adopted by the progenitors of the Oberammergau Passion play, the German pageant of violence which was greatly admired by Adolf Hitler, who appreciated how Pilate stood out “like a firm, clean rock in the middle of the whole muck and mire of Jewry.” Though the Vatican, that defender of fairness and justice throughout the ages, rewrote the Church’s position on scheming Jews in 1965, saying that the Hebrews could no longer be depicted as Christ killers and damned for perpetuity, the nice people at Oberammergau only eliminated the “blood curse” (“His blood upon us and upon our children” — reported by the Apostle Matthew) in the year 2000.

Mel Gibson’s movie had the blood curse, lost it, and after a special papal screening, has it again. “It happened,” Gibson explained in an interview. “It was said.”

According to Mark, Luke, and John it wasn’t. But no matter. This is a movie, after all.

The problem is, most Christians do not view this cinematic depiction of Christ’s final 12 hours as a stylized fiction. They view it as, well, Gospel. Gibson’s movie is a classic case of preaching to the converted, giving the people what they want. In this instance, what Christians seem to want most is excruciating violence, unflinching representations of torture, unfathomable cruelty. Pornographers make movies about girls getting sodomized by seven guys, all of whom ejaculate on the girls’ faces, not because they’re an accurate depiction of heterosexual sex. They make these movies because there’s an audience that wants to consume these images.

Christianity is a religion whose signal event is gruesome torture. Many Christians wear the crucifix, a symbol of torture, around their necks. The spires of their churches broadcast omnipresent reminders of torture. They would not have a religion if a fellow named Jesus wasn’t tortured a couple of thousand years ago. Mel Gibson has cannily tapped into the Christian fetish for torture, just as pornographers tap into a myriad of fetishes, banal and peculiar. He himself clearly has a thing for torture and violence. We can think of at least two movies of his — “Braveheart” and “The Patriot” — that depict the foulest acts of physical cruelty, and which glamorize martyrdom as shamelessly as Islamic Jihad. As we’re discovering with “Passion,” when you dress up your torture fetish in the robes of religious piety, you not only legitimize your porno, you awaken the buying power of millions of people like you.

We don’t think this movie event will unleash a dormant urge among Christians to obliterate the Jews. (Barbra Streisand and Steve Speilberg will stand up before Congress and call for protective legislation before that can happen.) We do think, however, that it will help demarcate the battle lines between libertarian thinkers and the dangerous meddlers of the Christian right, who won’t be content, it seems, until everyone is as miserable with life on earth as they. (Historical irony: On the day Mel’s film opens, our President calls for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. So much for “love thy fellow man.”) We predict the MPAA will continue to hand out XXX ratings to movies showing penises entering vaginas, but they’ll enthusiastically welcome children with a parent to watch an R-rated film in which unspeakable violence is visited upon an innocent man.

More than a few Jewish friends of ourse have informed us (and anyone else who will listen) that not only will they not see this movie, they’ll never watch another Mel Gibson movie again. “Why should I support an anti-Semite?” they wonder. We’re not convinced being a deluded fool makes someone an anti-Semite. Errol Morris, the greatest filmmaker of our day, illustrated this idea in his “Mr. Death.” We, however, will not be viewing “Passion.” And not because we don’t want to further enrich a nutty actor with a Holocaust-denying father.

We prefer pornography of the naked lady kind.