Mel Gibson's The Passion, sparking concern from the ADL.

Tartarin,

I agree with you wholeheartedly about the unliberated American woman. There are some amongst us who do not agree, however, I'll not name any names, but rather let him speak for himself.

Agreed Setanta. Absolutely. I wonder what it would take to drag GW and his crew up to the top of some far away mountain, leave them a few tablets of stone and a chisel, but not include directions to find their way back to the rest of us? Ohhhhh, what a pleasant fantasy. Coersion of the very best variety.

So much of American public life is invasive and unethical that he hardly stands out! He strikes me as tiresome, self-absorbed. And I'm always shocked at certain kinds of films, be they about Jesus or top guns or whatever, which cost money which might have made several dozen independent films of quality.

Lola, Mel Gibson addressing religion makes no more sense than the Pope addressing disco music.

I'm not sure i agree with that LW--the Pope, despite the infirmities of age, can walk and chew gum at the same time. He speaks several languages and is well educated. Even if he knew nothing of disco music, he could read up on the subject at need.

As for Mr. Gibson, père or fils, ah well . . . there, but for the grace of dog . . . .

I dunno. The tabloid at the checkout today (that's where I get most of my news) headlined that the Pope has disappeared, got confused, wandered off. Of course they had a photo, so we can assume that the tabloid people are wandering too... Just to prove I can be discerning about the quality of the news I get!!

Can't get that image out of my head of the Pope dancing to "Can't Stop the Music." Well, after all, they didn't cover every profession.

I find it odd that, amidst so many films and media entertainments enhancing or otherwise presenting such a variety of divergent ethical and social norms and values, one film about the origins of Christianity should generate such a furor. Who is threatened by what?

I think many of us are "threatened" by sheer tackiness and over-reaching, George, no matter who's doing it! Mel is kind of a past master...

Are you suggesting that this film is significantly more "tacky" or involves more overreach than many others?

Are you suggesting that this film is significantly more "tacky" or involves more overreach than many others? Have you seen it?

Don't intend to, George. Do you? (I'm not a fan of Hollywood movies.)

If one really believe that Gibson's extrapolations on history in "Braveheart" (where he used the opportunity to purposefully flash us his butt) won't carry over to this film, the clips I've seen so far don't support that. I'm not sure he is sure of what the intent is, being it is in an ancient, virtually unused language (except for what has crept into legal terminology) and not sub-titled. Is he representing it as an opera without singing? Interestingly enough, Gibson wans to preserve that ancient language in his own chapel even though his heritage has nothing to do with the Romans.

george

Nice to see you. I don't know that very many of us prioritize our complaints and discussions, normally just engaging in issues as they arise in conversation according to our interests. This particular discussion you've walked in on has ranged over a fair bit of territory, flitting hither and thither rather the way I myself did last sunday hosting a lively summer party while wearing a pink boa and celebrating the gay pride parade passing beneath my deck. The most recent thithering here arose from the suggestion that the Catholic church, where it might insist that its moral authority in the community remains intact, perhaps asks overmuch of us - the hypocracy issue.

Tartarin

The example you gave just a bit earlier (of your friend) was a very brave one. Once again, I am greatly refreshed by the independence of mind which both you and Lola demonstrate on these questions along with many others.

Set

You've done quite a masterful job of drawing out a historical analysis, but there is much I disagree with. I'll leave aside the paucity of written history for the pre-christian european community, and I'll leave your arguments regarding classical greek culture for another time. I'll note only that if my options were either walking through the agora chatting with Solon, or getting shitfaced and mud-wrestling with Bruno or Olga in some dank teutonic forest, I'd pick the former.

But boy, am I unhappy with your stipulation of what 'social contract' means, and the consequences yielded from that for this discussion... Your clear suggestion is that social agreements made by Americans post-Constitution are unprecedented and of a unique quality which makes adherence to them more morally necessary or legitimate than previous or other cases. I think that romantic, and deeply false. But again, I have to leave right now. I'll add to this later.

I'm not going to launch into a disagreement about Plato and The Real Sparta and least of all about the sanctity of post 1776 social contract in America but can't wait to read Blatham's response!

What I will draw on is personal experience and what I see as self-congratulatory absence of growth and exploration in those who say "we've got it right and we'd better stick to it." So I will mention New England town meetings as examples of growth and change. I came out of that culture and, frustrating as these meetings often are, they're not bad examples of people developing and learning to accept change.

There are good reasons why the people of the Plains States and the West have been slower to change: life continues to be harder (weather, soil, sparser population) in those areas and so the battered community clings to the steadiness of doing things the way one's grandfather did them and sticking pretty much to his beliefs, evolving into a society in which the social choices are narrower. As we know, it's a society which is dying out, as a result.

All of this fascinates me personally right now because I've moved to a county which can equally be described as Western and Mid-Western and which (contrarily) has grown with the times in all the right ways. They've had the blessing of rich soil (mostly) and plenty of water (usually). They've surely made a few mistakes but they've developed a way of life which has enormous respect for the past and a strong embrace of the present and future. I still haven't figured it out how they've managed to do so much so right, but one element stands out: a passion for education.

The story is (possibly apocryphal but mostly true): the band of German settlers, after a long trek up from the Gulf Coast in the 1830's arrived here on a Friday evening and by Monday they'd built their first building -- a schoolhouse. Education (local public and private) plays a huge role in the community, K-12 and college and a branch of a community college. The county's main town, population 7,000, has just lured a university to set up a campus here, raising funds for the land and physical plant.

There's got to be a connection between the ability to adjust to new realities and good education. So education isn't just about factual knowledge, valuable though that is, it's about learning to be part of a process which constantly renews and develops a society. Education teaches you to learn and deal with new ideas as they come along. Education teaches one to be very wary and to understand that so much of history is not only written by the victorious (often barbarians) but is bowdlerized by governments and parents and school boards and adjusted and made to fit our view of ourselves having carefully blanked out anything which might disturb our self-regard.

The result is obvious: Whatever happened before ME is bound to have been less civilized than ME and to have known less than ME? It's one of life's sad fallacies! On the shoulders of giants, we should be thinking, but no, we see ourselves as the giants...

Our gradual narrowing of the meanings and practices of sexuality and its codification and above all our horrendous self-consciousness about it (way outdoing the Victorians) is one of the sadder symptoms of what continues to be, at base, a puritanical society... still.

Yes, I have noted that this thread has wandered a bit. No problem, it is the thing of those who contribute.

With respect to the film, however, I am bemused to see such a strong reaction to a film I suspect none of us has yet seen. Given the many chalenges to social mores of all sorts in films and other media, I find it odd that this one that evidently purports to dramatize events surrounding the birth of Christianily, should excite such attention. One could almost conclude that it offends some new form of orthodoxy, one that is almost religious in its sensitivity and intolerance.

It's the depiction of Christ represented as a piece of tenderized minute steak (still was looking for Hannibal to show up and finish him off). One doesn't have to see the entire film, just the clips to conclude it's over-the-top. Also, "Braveheart" was over-the-top in its distortions but it made for good action drama but not very good history. Wallace, the central figure, was way over-blown as far as his importance in that part of British history. Anyway, I don't believe the same technique applies -- if one reads the entire thread, there's much said about Gibson's religious background and the interview at the beginning of the thread is fundamentalism in its most distorted form. What this all has to do with NAMBLA is the desire of some members to make a lot of hay over one statement that was obvious from the beginning. Some want to purposefully misinterpret in order to be controversial.

So it is Mel Gibson who is "over the top", evidently because of his distorted fundamentalism. I had the impression he was a Catholic, and not an Evangelical. However, I could well be wrong.

Braveheart took plenty of license with historical fact to be sure - the relationship with the crown prince's wife most prominently. However the film did depict both his (transient) military success and his inability to do anything with it politically - perhaps the defining element of the Wallace story. That much was true, as was the mannerof his execution. It would hardly be fair to suggest that in its departures from historical fact Braveheart lowered the prevailing standard for Hollywood's treatment of historical events.

Again, I find the intensity of the concern here a bit odd.

Can't speak for the others, but I'm tired of crap. And religion. And narrowmindedness. And Hollywood movies!!

Tartarin,

You certainly appear to have strong opinions and are very quick to criticize ideas and actions you don't like. Is your form of narrowmindedness any less offensive than that of those you criticize?

Or are you just sick of ideas you don't like?