Atavistic wrote:I don't know, from my experience, a true drunk can go from being lovey-dovey one minute, to putting a brick through a window the next. I think alcohol affects an alcoholic differently than a mere social drinker. Granted, the alcohol lowers inhibitions and might bring out the person's true feelings, but there is a point at which the alcoholic enters a blackout and becomes a completely different person. I don't even know how to describe this state of mind, perhaps savage.
I think one usually just does stupid things like take their clothes off at a party. If you've got abs and are well-endowed, you'd just get applause.
Atavistic, you are entitled to think that what Mel said wasn't so bad, but other people are also entitled to think that what he said was very bad. And they are also entitled to feel that it reflects something about his character, and some in Hollywood might choose to avoid him based on that. Some movie goers might choose to pass on his films because of that.
For a long time people have suspected Gibson was anti-Semitic, for reasons already mentioned in this thread. What came out of his mouth last week ended any doubt about it. Alcohol loosened his tongue, it did not put such ideas in his head.
He did not just come out with a remark that was "politically incorrect" or even an ethnic/racial slur that was merely derogatory or offensive. What he said reflected some belief in the most pernicious stereotypes/myths/conspiracy theories regarding Jews and the power they wield in the world or want to wield. To say that the ("F---ing") Jews have been responsible for all the wars implies that Jews are power hungry and/or dangerous. And, to carry this line of thinking one step further in terms of it's implications, dangerous people should be stopped or eliminated. This is virulent anti-Semitism. It's not just "offensive", it's horrifying. I'm not sure that Gibson even fully appreciates how horrifying his comments were, or where such thinking can lead. But, somewhere in his head, these ideas were rattling around, and the tequila didn't put them there.
Particularly for an alcoholic, a blood alcohol level of .12 is not exactly raving drunk. He wasn't completely out of control of what he was doing or saying that night.
He also wasn't in a social situation where he might have been discussing politics, religion, history, world events, etc., where, in the heat of discussion, and the dis-inhibition of alcohol, such a buried bigoted thought might pop out. The comments might have at least have been appropriate to the context if that were the case.
But the man was being arrested, for heaven's sake. Where did his preoccupation with the Jews come from at that moment?
Was he so pissed at the arresting officer, who he may have perceived to be Jewish, that his disdain and paranoia regarding all Jews just couldn't be contained? Did he feel this Jewish cop was about to destroy his career with the arrest, perhaps just as "the Jews" were always making trouble, or starting wars, or exercising their power? And what did Mel do then? He threatened to "destroy" the cop. Hasn't that been the age-old solution to dealing with the "Jewish problem"--destroy them?
Obviously this is my interpretation of what he said and why he might have said it. But I think one has to understand something about anti-Semitism, and the paranoia that underlies it, to fully appreciate how awful his comments were. And these kind of ideas don't just suddenly pop into someone's mind, nor are they the result of being intoxicated. And it doesn't mean that Mel, when fully sober, isn't nice and polite to Jews or even buddy-buddy. But it does mean that deep down he has contempt for Jews, and probably mistrust of them as well. And when that Jew had the gall to arrest him, and threaten his livelihood, the truth of how he feels popped out of his mouth.
I'm not going to avoid his movies, based on this, because I can't remember the last time I really enjoyed one of his movies (it might have been "Maverick"). I find his acting lacking, his direction overly violent and bloody, his films overly gimmicky, often maudlin, and not dramatically satisfying, and they often fail to even keep me awake. So, his career won't suffer because of me. People who do like his films, and aren't troubled by supporting an anti-Semite, should do as they see fit.
1.2 for his age is a bad impairment -- the photos of him in the bar show him laughably loaded. You can't miss it. We don't know what test he took or how long from Malibu to the county sheriff's station it took. He could have been a 1.5 or more upon the arrest. The police are suspected of favoritism and may have let him sit there in the station for quite a while before taking a test. We don't know what test -- blood, urine or breath. We may never know any of these things because it will be buried if he pleads no contest.
There is a record of Mel's grievances of the Hollywood producers and was miffed when they would give him no money for "Passion." He went into hock himself and made out like a bandit with all the church goers flocking (
) to see Jesus beat, whipped, tenderized, bludgeoned, to the state of a bloody (and painfully obvious) body suit.
Firefly, I can respect that. My view though is that as long as he's not acting on these anti-semitic feelings, it's simply a personal problem that he needs to deal with himself. I don't care what anyone says, everybody has some sort of bias. I've found myself cursing Muslims at certain times, but this is somewhat of an involuntary reaction. I think Mel probably has some sub-conscious animosity towards Jews for whatever reason(possibly just by osmosis) but I think he outwardly realizes that these feelings are wrong.
But, Atavistic, some people did feel he was acting on those anti-Semitic feelings by how he chose to depict the Jews in his film, "The Passion of The Christ". That's what all the controversy was about surrounding that film.
Gibson influences people through the films he makes, and not just through the comments he makes when he's being arrested. The films have far more potential power to influence a great many more people ( in ways a viewer of those films might not really be fully aware of). And, within a film depicting a particularly violent, gory, and brutal treatment of Christ, the possibility of fomenting anti-Semitic sentiment, of a dangerous type, was a very real fear in the minds of many people. Whether one feels that those fears were justified is a different matter, but Gibson was down-right indifferent and insensitive to the possibility.
That the modern Catholic church has tried to diminish anti-Semitism is not something that sits well with Gibson's father. Hutton Gibson is a Sedevacantist (a form of Traditionalist Catholicism), although his ideas are rejected by many in the Traditionalist Catholic community. He believes that the Second Vatican Council introduced heretical doctrines into the Catholic Church, and he believes that every Pope elected since Pope John XXIII, including Pope John Paul II (whom he referred to as "Garrulous Karolus the Koran Kisser"), have been illegitimate anti-popes. He has also stated that the Second Vatican Council was the result of a secret anti-Catholic plot orchestrated by both Masons and Jews, and he believes that Jewish conspiracies have infiltrated the Catholic church with the intention of overthrowing the Church in order to achieve world domination with their one religion.
This craziness goes beyond animosity toward Jews. It's plain paranoid and delusional. But Gibson will not publicly criticize his father.
Maybe Gibson absorbed more of his old man's ideas and attitudes than he is willing to admit to himself. Perhaps what happened to him last week will be a wake-up call--both in terms of his drinking and his beliefs.
I sincerely hope he does open his mind and really search his soul. I think he could actually wind up doing a lot of good in terms of enlightening others, if he can first enlighten himself. People can see the light. People can change. The day he publicly disagrees with his father's thinking, and the type of distrust and hatred that it represents and breeds, I might really believe that's happened.
I really agree with that, firefly, and I rather over-reacted to the news because of a bias against Mr. Gibson based on what has been in the Hollywood grapevine for years. David Geffin has no use for him at all (his homophobia is also circulated around Hollywood circles). He didn't even try Dreamworks for money for "Lashin' of the Christ." Spielberg would also smell him coming into the studio front door.
Let's see:
Mel Gibson takes the role of a sixty-year old Ennis Del Mar in the sequel to "Brokeback Mountain," "Dripback Fountain." He is still a closeted gay and has bladder problems. He only gets it off looking at gay porn sites on the Internet and whacking off by wrapping Jack's yellowed shirt around it. The only reason Mel took the role is he was hard up for cash since he ran out of his "Passion" money on stupid movies like "Moses Goes Hawaiian," all in Hebrew with Hawaiian subtitles.
Honestly, I never understood the anti-semitic allegations against "The Passion." I saw the film and it was virtually a reenactment of the New Testament. The Gospels clearly describe how the Jewish priests delivered Jesus up to be executed. If you believe that the Gospels are untrue, or were altered for whatever reason, that cannot be blamed on Gibson. He was simply portraying it as it is in the Bible.
As far as his father goes, from what I gather, he doesn't deny the Holocaust, he just says that it has been exaggerated for political purposes. This might seem like splitting hairs, but there is a difference. And yes I think that his conspiracy theories are delusional, but they seem to be similar to many leftists who claim that the American and Israeli governments were really behind 9/11. I can't count how many times I've heard leftist fanatics spout conspiracy theories about Israel, the Mossad, etc. I never hear any outrage over this. Also, I don't agree with his father, but it is his father. It's asking a lot of somebody to publicly denounce his father.
Atavistic:
Then you don't understand a lot. A picture is worth a thousand words and Gibson extrapolated heavily on what is actually written in the Gospel of St. Matthew who was a Jew who collected the taxes for the Romans. He made Pontius Pilate a more sympathetic character. The wife cleaning up the blood scene is not in the Bible. There are many more transgressions but the shot of the Jewish priests, dark and forboding in the one scene is not something one can just imagine from scriptures. It is there and if you are in denial, it's not much different than the denial involved in alcoholism. Sorry, that's my opinion.
If you think the Jewish community and the Jews in the executive hierarchy of Hollywood filmmaking have over-reacted, that's your business. I do not think so and I hope the continue to withhold providing Gibson with any production funds for his crackpot ideas, especially any more religious slasher flicks.
This debate on that film has been fully covered in these forums and the consensus was the film is not good. Here is A. O. Scott's review for the New York Times, and I agree with most of what he wrote:
Link to A. O. Scott Review of "The Passion of the Christ"
Maybe more to do with Opus Dei, but the nefarious one depicted in "The Da Vince Code?" I have even less trust in what the Mel Gibson, the fundamentalist baloney reflects a dangerous state of delusion. If the Catholic church finally accepted woman as Priests and the gay populations of the world, Mel Gibson would probably have a stroke. What an unmitigated Hollywood phony he has turned into.
Atavistic, you seem somewhat baffled by why people were concerned about anti-Semitism in "The Passion", and you are quite willing to accept "The Gospel According To Gibson" in all details. But others, in light of Mr Gibson's recent, clearly anti-Semitic, remarks, are already suggesting we take another look at the film:
Quote:
Re-evaluate 'The Passion,' in light of Gibson's rant
By FRANCIS ENGLER and MARK ENGLER
SPECIAL TO THE REGISTER
August 3, 2006
Last week, a long-running debate about Mel Gibson gained new fuel with an alcohol-induced anti-Semitic rant recorded by Los Angeles county sheriff's deputies. The actor and director spouted expletive-laced lines such as "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." Notwithstanding Gibson's later attempts at apology and his purportedly heartfelt insistence that he is "not an anti-Semite," his previous week's tirade evinced a profound and hostile anti-Semitism.
If Gibson were just a movie star, this statement would be a gossip item published next to Tom Cruise's embarrassing stab at psychiatry. But Gibson is more than a movie star. After his movie "The Passion of the Christ" became the biggest religious blockbuster of all time, Gibson advanced as a major international religious figure. He has been embraced by a wide array of Christian leaders, from Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, to Paul Crough Jr. of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, who broadcast that, "Every Christian MUST go see this movie and hold Mr. Gibson up in prayer."
Like Gibson, we are Catholics. Raised in Des Moines, we come from a large Midwestern Catholic family. Our father was a diocesan priest and our mother was a Franciscan nun who left their positions in the clergy to get married and have children. Two of our uncles are priests. Our younger brother now runs a religious center for the working poor.
When the controversy around "The Passion of the Christ" began almost three years ago, we were alarmed by the Anti-Defamation League's warning that the film "portray[ed] Jews as blood-thirsty, sadistic, and money-hungry enemies of Jesus." Other critics charged that Gibson's father had made statements denying the Holocaust and that Mel Gibson himself had made disturbing off-the-cuff remarks. But, at the time, a wide-ranging group of people defended Gibson.
Beyond evangelical Christians, mainstream Catholic groups like the Knights of Columbus came to Gibson's aid. The group's president, William Donahue, called on his national convention to defend Gibson and "The Passion." Even Jewish film critic Michael Medved decried the "crucifying" of Gibson, decrying "the reckless maneuvering of real-life Jewish leaders whose arrogance and short-sightedness has led them into a tragic, needless, no-win public-relations war."
Now we have to face the truth. Many religious scholars have expressed concern that the movie tells the story of the final hours of Jesus' life in a way that focuses the blame for his death on Jews instead of the Roman authorities. Others say that the movie fills in many details about the events of Jesus' death in ways that reflect anti-Semitic medieval Catholic folklore rather than biblical scholarship. During the release of the movie, there was a real question about whether the decisions that Gibson made in making the film were mere expressions of personal spirituality or whether they reflected a latent hostility toward Judaism. Now that Gibson had broadcast such hostility to the world, the Christian community needs to rethink its embrace of "The Passion" as a tool for evangelism.
Once can find an instructive parallel between the controversy surrounding Gibson and his landmark film and D.W. Griffith's 1915 Civil War epic, "The Birth of a Nation," the first blockbuster in American cinema. Griffith's film also caused a national uproar when it was released. Groups like the newly formed NAACP decried the negative portrayal of African Americans in the film and the positive historical light in which it cast the Ku Klux Klan, but their call for the removal of objectionable scenes in the film met with little success.
Like Gibson, Griffith objected vehemently to accusations that he or his film were bigoted, and he was largely supported by both the film community and the viewing public. The problem is that "Birth of a Nation" is an obviously racist movie, and film historians today cringe at the thought that America ever embraced it.
Let's hope that, with Gibson's anti-Semitism now on overt display, it will not take decades for us to come to similar re-evaluation of "The Passion."
www.desmoinesregister.com
Now that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, shouldn't people view the film again, keeping Mr. Gibson's recent remarks in mind?
Opus dei, no, no, not again.
domani...
Is there any real reason to get these tapes released for public consumption? What value could there be in that?
That's all very well and good, but I've seen the movie several times, and I just don't see it. Sure, the Jewish priests are portrayed as vengeful, but so are the Romans. The Romans by the way, are the ones who actually carry out all the brutal violence. I don't understand, the priests are the ones who wanted him executed. Should he have portrayed them as nice and friendly priests? Maybe they should have been more cheerful while they requested that a man be crucified? What about the Jew that helped Jesus carry the cross? He was shown as very sympathetic. I can't remember if that was in the Gospels or not, but he certainly didn't have to show that. You have to remember, this was 2000 years ago and the world was a much different place. Brutality was just a part of life, that goes for Jews, gentiles, whatever. I don't see how he was singling out the Jews as being more brutal.
It might be because the Jews pushed for the execution, and brought all the pressure they could muster to bear to get it done--in the Bible and the film (so I'm told).
Biblically and in the movie, Pilate is almost loathe to acquiese.
