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killing critics

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laurencer
Feb 18 2004
04:30 am

“I wanted to kill him. I want his intestines on a stick. I want to kill his dog.”

—Mel Gibson, responding to a critical film review of “The Passion” by New York Times columnist Frank Rich

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vanlee
Mar 01 2004
08:17 am

I read the article calling this film “pornography” after I saw the PASSION..

Here’s a quote from the article dan linked to (above).

" So where Gibson first goes wrong in The Passion of the Christ (and he later goes badly wrong in all sorts of ham-fisted ways) is in starting with an unquestioned belief that his tragic hero is divine…."

Context seems to suggest that Gibson should show the divinity dramatically. This might be an actual, valid dramatic point.

However, the author of the article also ***implies*** that only an idiot (i.e. that nasty word “fundamentalist” applied to the catholic Mel) would even believe in the divinity of Christ.

The article’s author is, perhaps, on somewhat more solid ground when he actually reverts to a dramatic critique & leaves off mere name calling. (But at least he didn’t call Gibson a “Nazi”.)

Actually, to me the article is mislabeled. But pornography catches so many more eyes than a mere critique of the script!!!

The article deals more with how to present the Easter events in what the author claims (perhaps rightly in some cases) to be a better dramatic form than what Gibson uses..

This film does assume general background knowledge of Jesus. Peter and Judas’s stories flash by rather fast, for instance.

The term “pornography”
(sorta like the term today “terrorist” or “nazi” or “extremist”) is misused to describe The PASSION which (as I saw it the eve of Feb. 25) is ***not*** pornography,
…unless words can be loosely redefined whenever we wish to use an emotionally loaded, “flashy” word
****to attract attention**** and readers to his article..

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grant
Mar 02 2004
07:03 am

I was responding to this article in my review for the current Catapult issue. If Gibson really was focusing on the violence for the sake of the pleasure of violence, the film definitely could and should be considered pornographic. But that is clearly not what he’s doing. Go see it.