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American Oberammergau
Feb. 24th, 2004 11:25 amI won't be seeing "The Passion of the Christ." Not because I don't identify with Christianity anymore.
Because this is a movie that people are going to see for two reasons: rubbernecking and obligatory guilt. While I'm not immune to the former, I refuse to pay 8 bucks to Mel Gibson to watch his snuff film that reportedly contains little to nothing of Jesus' actual message. My guilt trips are all expenses paid, thank you.
Am I Christian? No. Do I believe Jesus existed? Yes. He was a cool guy. He had some good ideas. It's shitty that he was executed, and in such a brutal and sanguinary manner. It's just as unfortunate that Dismas, Gestas, and countless others went through the same ordeal, to whatever extent. Fucking Romans. We all know it was the ROMANS who drove the nails, right? Not Mel! He's taken that rabbling crowd with their "Release Barabbas" schtick and given them precedence, and turned Pontius Pilate into a lame duck.
Mel Gibson is a creep. Really. I liked his past movies. Braveheart is the shit. He's a good actor. But the man has this preoccupation with graphic dismemberment and entrails. His creative eye is floundering in an abattoir. I wouldn't doubt that he scourges himself. Is this what Jesus would want? Jesus suffered. Yes. But he did that so we wouldn't have to. Why does Gibson want us all to live vicariously through that again? The money? The perverse satisfaction? This is a man who thinks his own wife, who has borne his seven children, is going to hell because she is Episcopalian (gee, why'd he marry her in the first place?). This is a man whose father is an Anti-Semite and Holocaust revisionist and is vocal about it even today, and that influence shows. "There is no salvation outside the church," he preaches, but meanwhile his own doctrines have rejected the second Vatican council as heretical, and his father is some demi-cult leader. Mel built his own chapel where a pre-Vatican II mass is held in the vernacular.
I think I'll send the price of my movie tickets to the Anti-Defamation League. I have a terrible feeling that they're going to need it.
Because this is a movie that people are going to see for two reasons: rubbernecking and obligatory guilt. While I'm not immune to the former, I refuse to pay 8 bucks to Mel Gibson to watch his snuff film that reportedly contains little to nothing of Jesus' actual message. My guilt trips are all expenses paid, thank you.
Am I Christian? No. Do I believe Jesus existed? Yes. He was a cool guy. He had some good ideas. It's shitty that he was executed, and in such a brutal and sanguinary manner. It's just as unfortunate that Dismas, Gestas, and countless others went through the same ordeal, to whatever extent. Fucking Romans. We all know it was the ROMANS who drove the nails, right? Not Mel! He's taken that rabbling crowd with their "Release Barabbas" schtick and given them precedence, and turned Pontius Pilate into a lame duck.
Mel Gibson is a creep. Really. I liked his past movies. Braveheart is the shit. He's a good actor. But the man has this preoccupation with graphic dismemberment and entrails. His creative eye is floundering in an abattoir. I wouldn't doubt that he scourges himself. Is this what Jesus would want? Jesus suffered. Yes. But he did that so we wouldn't have to. Why does Gibson want us all to live vicariously through that again? The money? The perverse satisfaction? This is a man who thinks his own wife, who has borne his seven children, is going to hell because she is Episcopalian (gee, why'd he marry her in the first place?). This is a man whose father is an Anti-Semite and Holocaust revisionist and is vocal about it even today, and that influence shows. "There is no salvation outside the church," he preaches, but meanwhile his own doctrines have rejected the second Vatican council as heretical, and his father is some demi-cult leader. Mel built his own chapel where a pre-Vatican II mass is held in the vernacular.
I think I'll send the price of my movie tickets to the Anti-Defamation League. I have a terrible feeling that they're going to need it.
