There have been two main lines of criticism of Mel Gibson's "The Passon of the Christ".
The first line is that of "antisemitism" whose meta-narrative origin is ethnic and nationalistic.
The second line of criticism is an unconfort with the level of, and significance of violence as a message of the film. This is interpreted as "sado-masochism" when viewed from a sexual meta-narrative.
However neither of these perpectives is accurate when viewed within the artistic or theological ethos (metanarrative) of the Christion tradition nor does it comprehend the centrality of the "Passion" within Christianity (Lent, Easter, The Stations of the Cross, the Eucharist, the Mass (service), repentance, faith,...).
Perhaps the best introduction to this topic for those who wish to see the movie with a comprehension of the symbolism and meaning of what is being portrayed is a short pasage form Albert Schweizer, that I have reproduced below.
Schweizer was a musican, a medical doctor, a philosopher, a theologian, a teacher and a missionary. The passage should be read knowing that Albert Schweizer was a physician in a remote mission at the beginning of the 20th cen. and speaks of the subject NOT from an theoretical but a very practical and personal perspective.
It directly speaks of the core of the symbolism of Christian art as well as its practice.
Pain, suffering and death have always been the Great Teachers and Shapers of individual, families and communities.
Sacrifice is the one thing that enables ordinary people to transform pain, suffering and death into a positive and heroic achievement.
All parents understand the role of sacrifice as central in their role as parents, and all children naturally have faith in that sacrifice of their parents.
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The Fellowship of Those Who Bear the Mark of Pain.
by Albert Schweizer - from "On the Edge of the Primmeval Forest" (pp 173 f.) - 1931
The Fellowship of those who bear the Mark of Pain. Who are the members of this fellowship? Those who have learned by experience what physical pain and bodily anguish mean, belong together all the world over; they are united by a secret bond. One and all they know the horrors of suffering to which man can be exposed, and one and all they know the longing to be free from pain. He who has been delivered from pain must not think he is now free again, and at liberty to take life up just as it was before, entirely forgetful of the past. He is now a "man whose eyes are open" with regard to pain and anguish, and he must help to overcome those two enemies (so far as human power can control them) and to bring to others the de�liverance which he has himself enjoyed. The man who, with a doctor's help, has been pulled through a severe illness, must aid in providing a helper such as he had him�self, for those who otherwise could not have one. He who has been saved by an operation from death or torturing pain, must do his part to make it possible for the kindly anaesthetic and the helpful knife to begin their work, where death and torturing pain still rule unhindered. The mother who owes it to medical aid that her child still belongs to her, and not to the cold earth, must help, so that the poor mother who has never seen a doctor may be spared what she has been spared. Where a man's death agony might have been terrible, but could fortunately be made tolerable by a doctor's skill, those who stood around his deathbed must help, that others, too, may enjoy that same consola�tion when they lose their dear ones. Such is the Fellowship of those who bear the Mark of Pain.
Albert Schweizer --------------------
Ted Lechman Utica, New York
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