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This Thanksgiving, we here at 366 Weird Movies are thankful that we were able to recover content lost in the Great Crash of 2010, even if we do have to re-enter much of it by hand. We’re also thankful to have Alfred Eaker writing for us: love him or hate him, he provokes the audience and incites debate. We’ll mix those two things we’re grateful for with today’s posting: a recovered article (originally published on October 7) from Alfred, which provoked a typical love/hate reaction from the readers.
I tend to avoid writing about films I don’t like, partially because I realize that, regardless of my objective efforts, a certain amount of subjectivity is going to seep its way in. Too, often one may not be in total sync with the filmmaker’s vision.
With that said, I am breaking my standard rule here because Mel Gibson’s 2004 “Lethal Jesus” seems an even more vivid symbol today of what exactly is wrong with the direction “spirituality in film” has taken, what is wrong with certain popular contemporary views of what Christianity means, and what is wrong in the current state of film as an art form.
Oh, and I do get this film’s vision, all too well. Hell, I saw it first in a Jack T. Chick fundamentalist comic tract from the 1970′s which depicted the Passion with a suffering Christ who looked like Hamburger Helper as hooked nosed Jews screamed for his death. The same company produced numerous blatantly antisemitic tracts, including one in which a Rabbi was fried in the fires of hell by a faceless God, sitting on a large white throne. I saw it next in a protestant passion play that I was forced to sit through in which a muscle bound Jesus got involved in a barroom type brawl (in his descent to Hell) with demons who looked suspiciously like caricatured Jews, dressed in black with false noses. Gibson’s Passion of the Christ is a 21st century promotion for the medieval lynch mob.
The Passion of the Christ is not only blatantly anti-Semitic, it is also the most blatantly anti-Christian film ever made. Two-dimensional thinkers will point to films like Bunuel‘s Milky Way (1969), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), The Rapture (1991), Dogma (1999) or Religulous (2008), as anti-Christian. Yet, all of these edify the spiritual Christian movement. Continue reading THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST (2004): MEL’S LETHAL JESUS AND THE MOST REPREHENSIBLE ANTI-CHRISTIAN FILM EVER MADE