No sense avoiding the inevitable question: Is The Passion anti-Semitic?

Okay, I admit, I'm going to try to avoid the inevitable, by asking this question: Can a piece of art be said to "be" anti-Semitic? Put it this way: If a film portrayed "Christ killers" and no one were there to watch it, would it make a slur? Of course, in the case of The Passion, far more than no one watched it, leaving us to wrestle with the question of whether or not the intersection of art and audience creates anti-Semitism, which is what we really want to know.

The question is not easily answered, as it necessarily involves not just the content and context of the film, but the content and context of the audience-which itself raises the further question of how much, if any, responsibility a filmmaker has to be cognizant of the social repercussions of his or her art. Clearly, there are works which appear to be "more" bigoted in some fashion—Birth of a Nation, for example, which was banned from many cities, and was just recently removed from a theater's program due to protests. But even such an obvious example operates within a context: the cartoonish villainy of the black would-be rapist encapsulates a very specific white fear: that black men are violent predators of white women. It is in this manner that, in another time and place (though not to that time and place) Shakespeare's Shylock is so particularly offensive: he is the model of an avaricious Jew craving the blood of a Christian. A money-grubbing black man, by comparison, would not speak so directly to shared cultural stereotypes. For an audience lacking the proper lexicon, the effect is diminished, if not altogether eliminated.

Which brings us back 'round to The Passion, a particularly sticky wicket. Because there are so many people who believe that The Bible (in this case Christian but true also for many in Judaism with the Torah) is the literal word of God, that everything in the Gospels is both True and true, an entire branch of argument—the fallaciousness of the material—is effectively neutered. You can't tell a believer that The Bible is wrong. So when in Matthew the (loaded word coming up) mob of Jews cries: "His blood be upon us and our children," it is a nonstarter to make the historical critical analysis that the writers of the Gospels were politically motivated to diminish the responsibility of the Romans (who were, after all, still in charge) and heighten that of the Pharisees (who, at this point, amounted to a rival sect): to a believer, this is what happened. (Just to be clear, I know that this line was not in the film—at least it wasn't subtitled in the version I saw; it's just the starkest example of a troublesome line that has to be reconciled with the orthodox.)

But is what happens in the Gospels what happens in The Passion? To some extent, yes. Much of what is portrayed by Gibson can be found in one Gospel or another. But, and this is a big but, not all of it. There are two dramatic examples of this: the Satan-like figure slithering around in the movie—its (although played by a woman, the character is deliberately androgynous) presence has more cinematic than theological effect; and the expanded role of Pilate's wife, who goes so far as to help Jesus' mother and Mary Magdalene (not his wife—sorry, DaVinci Code fans) clean his blood after the scourging. Here Gibson builds greater context around the role of the Roman leadership, who are largely portrayed as reluctant crucifiers. By this extratextual material, Gibson invites the criticism that he is massaging the text to lessen the burden on the Romans and, by dint of not doing the same for them, piling it on to the Jews.

Defenders of the film often cite the cruelty of the Roman soldiers in their flagellation of Jesus, and the actions of a few Jewish dissidents who criticize the actions of the Pharisees or other tormentors. But the portrayal of leadership matters greatly, as anyone observing the global opinion of Americans understands: the Roman leadership uniformly defends Jesus; the Jewish leadership uniformly condemns him (there is a good reason for this, of course: Jewish law rejects the notion of an intermediary between Jews and God; Jesus' claim is, indeed, blasphemous, and, indeed, a greater crime than murder). And while the Roman soldiers do seem positively gleeful in their afflicting, their glee seems unrelated to the status of their prisoner; they use his claims of divinity as inspiration, not motivation.

Further, even though a historical critical approach may be ineffective in assessing the source material, it is useful for gauging audience response, and the meaning of it. Historically, and undeniably, passion plays have been used in Christian communities to stir up anti-Jewish sentiment—pogroms were a common aftermath. This is the milieu for many Jews' understanding of Christian attitudes toward them: not an event from 2,000 years ago, but from (if not actually, close enough to it) yesterday. And whereas the Romans have expiated their sins against Christ (it is, after all, the Roman Catholic Church), the Jews (the stubborn bastards) have not.

It's encouraging that so many fans and supporters of The Passion are certain that it isn't bigotry, even to the point of hurling invective at those who claim it is. It wasn't so long ago that blatant anti-Semitism would have been greeted with indifference or even approval. The audience context has changed, and that alone is encouraging. But it isn't enough. There needs to be a greater awareness among Christians—by far the majority in this country and in the West—of just why a film like The Passion stirs such fears—justified or not—in the Jewish community. It was only in 1965 with the publication of Second Vatican Council (in the Declaration "Nostra Aetate") that the Church officially vacated the charge of deicide against the Jewish people. Is 40 years enough to seal the chasm created in 2,000 years of pogroms and charges of "Christ killers"? An optimist may hope so, but it's hard to blame the Jewish community for their skepticism. In any event, is it the responsibility of the victims of violent bigotry to test the strength of the repair?

Gibson, it is clear, takes no consideration of any of this. His cherry-picking of the Gospels and manipulation of the sources is designed to cast the Jews as villains, with the Romans as their henchman—Satan is merely an onlooker. He's entitled, of course, and on a purely cinematic level it makes no difference. As a social artifact one can hope that its lasting impact is as a religious Titanic—a niche film that was more a tribute to marketing than to the higher purposes of art—than as a reprise of Birth of a Nation, reopening old wounds not fully healed; it is again encouraging that the former seems more to be the case.

For the record, my rating reflects more than just a disdain for the film's retrograde theology, though I grant that my cinematic observations may not be seen as unbiased. Nevertheless, even aside from that, it is, at best, a perfectly ordinary portrayal of the last hours of Jesus, only with considerably more violence. The violence itself is not a problem, but the lack of philosophical context diminishes its impact. Without it, two hours (well, more like 90 minutes after the repetive slow motion is taken into account) of thrashings becomes mostly an exercise in endurance. Satan is effective in a horror film kind of way, but results more in distancing the film, the opposite of what the use of contemporaneous language (one of the best aspects of the movie) seems intended to do. Gibson's triumph is not that he created the most stirring account of the passion of the Christ, but that a perfect storm of controversy and marketing savvy made it irrelevant whether he had or not.

Interesting note: I went to look up a word in my dictionary as I was writing this, and it fell upon a page where the top listing was "son of God." The one-word definition: "Christ."

:sweats: