Passion of the Bloodlust

Lent has begun.

A year ago, Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" emerged as must see (and cringe) pop culture. I just saw it recently, and I understand why it appeals to so many conservative Christians (Catholic and Protestant.)

The film draws from the gut. One learns nothing of Christianity from it, the rock principles upon which Peter built the church. Gibson was determination to create a two-hour universe steeped in hardcore reality, so that the phrase we hear each week (in the Catholic church, at least,) "He suffered, died and was buried" will have some meaning and be more than just a rote utterance.

And boy, did Christ suffer!

In fact, a man who suffers as much as Christ does in this movie could never carry a wooden cross let alone be nailed to it without going into cardiac failure. The prolonged butchery is as unrealistic as the adverturous escapes of James Bond or Indiana Jones. The only thing missing is the director's cut scene in which, at the last minute, Christ whirls the cross around, caving in the skulls of the centurions, hopping on a steed, socking Pilate in the puss, and nodding at the guards to "book 'em."

Gibson goes overboard -- lustfully, cinematically -- so much so that it undermines his own mission to depict a realistic crucifixion. There is an S&M glee to the filmmaking: the lurid monster movie ghouls; the giddy delight from the salivating, rotten-tooth Roman torturers make them seem like porn-flicker bikers; the Jews who egg on the torturers like sicko Norman Bateses than the bewildered, cowardice lynch mob that they probably were. Gibson took too much delight in depicting the torturers' joy in flogging, rather than their derangement. That is, rather than depict some sicko floggers ardently at work, he gave us the close-up shots that make the centurions the objects of our passions. We become more amazed at their sadistic glee, that they could scourge a fellow human being, panting and laughing, and that turns the movie into a snuff film rather than an illumination of Christ's suffering.

I understand how it might appeal to that part of the religious right, who thrive (both spiritually and financially) on accusation and condemnation, who don't give a rat's ass about the destruction they cause today because to them it's always about the melodramatic fulfillment of prophecy and revelations in global holy wars, not to mention keeping tax-paying homos from paying even more taxes if they ever got the right to file jointly.

If it's religion they want, give them instead Mahalia Jackson, performing with the Duke Ellington Orchestra in the Duke's original suite "Black, Beige and Brown", a concert at Carnegie Hall in 1943 to uplift and benefit the Russian War relief fund, to help in the fight against the crushing invasion by Nazi Germany. Imagine, in an era of segregation, a negro orchestra encouraging a godless country to keep up the fight against Hitler, with Mahalia Jackson's spirited, woeful voice singing about slaves who seek strength, and who cherish their Sunday day of rest so that they can replenish their spirit to keep on:

Lord dear Lord of love, God almighty, God up above,

Please look down and see my people through.

He'll give peace and comfort

To every troubled mind.

Come Sunday home

Come Sunday. That's the day.

Often we'll feel weary, but He knows our every care.

Go to Him in secret he will heed your every prayer.

I'm intrigued by the lyric "go to him in secret." That is humility and privacy and not the showbiz sadomachism that pumps people up and flames their base enthusiasm for warfare rather than a truly complicated mission of behaving benevolently.

I've also felt that the truly religious are the ones who focus on the sins of omission -- the things we don't do that we should. This requires a life that includes that Sunday day of rest, to contemplate, and to make the number one priority the plank in our own eyes rather than the speck of cinder in our neighbor's.

We Need Donnie Brasco

News Item:
NEW YORK - Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) officials received 52 warnings prior to Sept. 11, 2001, from their own security experts about potential al-Qaida attacks, including some that mentioned airline hijackings or suicide attacks, The New York Times reported.

I've always believed that the Bush administration response to the September 11, 2001 sabatoge attacks by Al Quaeda terrorists was manipulated -- just as someone would make a fraudulent damage claim on an insurance policy by stating that damage done prior to a hurricane was actually caused by the hurricane.

By that I mean, the Bush administration took advantage of America's overreaction to the Al Quaeda terrorist actions and, like the Congress that staples pork onto a bill, lumped their own long-simmering lust to attack Iraq onto the "terrorism agenda."

America would be in better hands with a Democratic president -- Al Gore or John Kerry would do just fine -- had they been in command to address the breach of security by Al Quaeda members and the infiltration of their nests into America. What occurred was not an act of war between nations. It was a most horrid act of sublime, evil vandalism. John Kerry was right when he said the proper way to weaken the Al Quaeda terrorism network was through criminal investigation. That, of course, did not sit well with the population that loves things to blow up. Not long after American troops really began getting bogged down in Iraq, I overheard a guy at a department store say, "We should just nuke 'em and pull out." I wanted to correct him and say, "We'd better pull out first, then nuke 'em." Anyway, the idea that we can go in anywhere and achieve a victory, whatever that means, and get out, reveals a characteristic of the American culture, the idea that we can use our brute force to coerce a victory, leave, and everything will be fine. Ann Coulter, in a rage after the 9/11 attacks -- but then again, when isn't she in a rage?-- spat out this lovely foreign policy: We should invade [someone], convert them to Christianity, and get out.

What Kerry, most Democrats, and truth be told, behind closed doors, most Republicans in Congress know is that this isn't a "war" on terrorism. So many people have written that "terrorism" is a methodology, not an ideology, and that declaring a war on "terrorism" is akin to declaring a war on switchblades or a war on suckerpunches or a war on date rape or a war on kicking below the belt. But it is quite handy for the Bush administration to use that "war on terror" because nobody knows what it is. He lumps everything into that word, terror, like insurgency and tyranny, and they are not the same. But it serves the purpose to keep perpetually dizzy a poorly-informed population. Had George W. Bush announced a War to Destroy Al Quaeda, he'd have passed my English class for having a more precise and provable thesis statement.

On September 11, 2001 by Saudi Arabians who skirted sloppy airport security and put into action the long-planned, diabolical scheme to hijack planes and ram them into choice landmark buildings. They did this by going to flight school and using box cutters to frighten airplane passengers. (By the way, do you think ever again passengers in flight will ever be so calm if someone takes over a plane. Other than the jet that crashed in Pennsylvania, passengers in the other three planes assumed this would be a hijacking and a hostage taking. Never again will anyone ever assume that.) The Al Quaeda operatives on this day did not invade America. They hustled past security. Our goal on that day should have been to create our own long-planned, diabolical scheme to infiltrate them and destroy them from within so that the destruction would be permanent. Afghanistan's stupidity in openly hosting Al Quaeda camps made it easy to target those terrorist farms. But it also misled many Americans into thinking that Afghanistan was the nation that attacked us. They harbored the criminals but didn't do the deed. It also led us into thinking that large scale military operations is the answer to the challenge -- that challenge again being to weaken or dismantle Al Qaeda and it's ilk. Big D-Day and Iwo Jima types of invasions are in our national vocabulary and that's the show biz preferred by the simpleton Bush administration.

What we really needed was sophisticated espionage and tough infiltration, which I'm sure would have been implemented by a Democratic president who had no personal agenda to bait and switch, turning the enemy into a toothless dictator named Saddam Hussein whose most horrible crimes were 15 years in the past and posed no threat to us. While we needed Donnie Brasco, George W. Bush was impersonating the bowlegged John Wayne, whose clinking holsters down the middle of Dodge City is now easy pickings for the snipers who don't mind playing dirty from the bell towers.