The Passion And The Propaganda. Mel Gibson And The Passion Of The Christ

Mel Gibson’s third directorial outing, The Passion Of The Christ, caused something of a stir even before the cameras started rolling. When Gibson announced he was using his own money to make a film about the last twelve hours of Jesus Christ in Aramaic and Latin (and he intended the film to be shown without subtitles), he was greeted with howls of derision from America’s movie industry. It was widely reported that Gibson had invested $25 million of his own money on this project, so it was suggested that this was a massive personal gamble. I would suggest that as he was paid $25 million for starring in The Patriot, the gamble wasn’t quite that large. I wouldn’t like to estimate Gibson’s personal fortune, but doubt losing $25 million is unlikely to leave Mel in dire financial straits.

It is also worth considering that 60% of the American population claim to attend church regularly – that’s roughly 174 million - a substantial target audience in the US alone. It could be said this wasn’t so much a gamble as a rather astute business venture. It certainly paid off: at the time of writing, The Passion has been on release for 54 days, has made $360 million in the US alone and $460 worldwide. It is currently the eighth best selling movie of all time in the US, sandwiched between The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers and Jurassic Park. As with any Hollywood movie, there is a lucrative merchandise tie-in, with mugs, jewellery, key-rings, Bible cases and framed stills from the film (some of which cost as much as $112.50).

In February 2003, The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a global anti-Semitism watchdog and campaign group, learned about Gibson’s intention to film The Passion, and were naturally concerned: Passion plays have historically flamed anti-Semitism. In medieval Europe, Passion plays were staged in the run up to Easter (similarly, Gibson’s own Passion play was released on Ash Wednesday) and would often depict the Jews as colluding with demons to kill Jesus. Unsurprisingly, this lead to increased attacks on Jews during the Easter period. In March 2003, Abraham Foxman, the National Director of the ADL, wrote on open letter to Gibson (to which Gibson neglected to reply):

Passion plays have an infamous history of leading to hatred, violence and even death of Jews. Given your talent and celebrity, how you depict the death of Jesus will have widespread influence on people's ideas, attitudes and behavior towards Jews today.

The Catholic Church has confronted its tradition of teaching of contempt for Jews and its charge of deicide levelled against the Jewish people and unequivocally repudiated both.¹

Foxman refers to The Second Vatican Council, which in the 1960s made a handful of changes to bring it out of the middle ages. In 1965, Pope Paul VI declared in Nostra Aetate that ‘What happened in His Passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today … Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God’²

Gibson has often publicly expressed his hostility to Vatican II, blaming it for dwindling numbers at Mass and increased paedophilia amongst the clergy, as if that only began in the ‘sixties'³. Last March in an interview with the New York Times, Mel’s father, Hutton Gibson, went one step further in his condemnation of Vatican II by claiming that it was ‘a Masonic plot backed by the Jews’. He went on to comment that the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust had been exaggerated: ‘Go and ask an undertaker or the guy who operates the crematorium what it takes to get rid of a dead body, takes one liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, six million? … Anyway, there were more [Jews] after the war than before’. He also expressed the view that the Holocaust was manufactured as part of an arrangement between Hitler and ''financiers'' to move Jews out of Germany. ‘[Hitler had] this deal where he was supposed to make it rough on them so they would all get out and migrate to Israel because they needed people there to fight the Arabs.’ In another radio interview he said that Jewish museums were a ‘gimmick’ to collect money.⁴