Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Get thee behind me, Mel...



In trying to encapsulate my thoughts on Passion of the Christ, the work of three very talented people immediately came to mind.



The first two are Tony Hendra and Sean Kelly, who summarized Gibson's fetish in a fake hymn from their book Not the Bible:



O bloody bloody Jesus, I love your blood so red,

I love the bloody corpuscles streaming from your head;

O bloody bloody Jesus, I love thy crimson tide,

I love the bloody Roman spear that got stuck in your side;

O rare and bloody Jesus, I love thy hands that bled,

I love the nails that pierced them, O Jesus, red and dead;

I'd love to drink the blood O Lord, that drips from off thy feet,

And wash my hands and brush my teeth; O Lord would that be sweet!

O bloody bloody Jesus, I love thy blood so red;

I loved you when you were alive, but I love you better dead!




The other is cartoonist and local genius Lynda Barry, who back in 1986 drew Marlys trying to save a failed home-ec project (Tangy Breakfast Squares) with presentation: "You watch. No one give anything less than a B-minus to the shape of the cross." This, to me, sums up the "Christian" reaction to TPotC, as well as most contemporary Christian pop culture offerings: support X because it shares a viewpoint, not because it's any damn good.



And The Passion isn't. I suppose it's "powerful," in the same sort of way a kick in the groin is powerful. But there's just nothing to recommend. I suppose if there's a saving grace, it's that the Passion-going audience might now stop being wusses about subtitles long enough to check out Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew, a film with some actual spirituality in it, if not behind it.

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