Mel Gibson's Passion and Philosophy
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I would not describe Gibson’s film as morbid or a case of modern realism depicting people as bug-like! But I do think that the more positive, Fransiscan affirmation of the holiness of life is edged out of the picture.
Tragedy and Comedy: Gibson and Tolkien
To fill out the point I have been making about seeing the passion in light of the whole of Christ’s life, consider a comparison between two contemporary cinematic portraits of resurrection. It will seem strange to compare J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings with The Passion of the Christ, but both works involve life and death struggle, and the overcoming of deadly violence. In Tolkien’s work, the wizard Gandalf engages in dramatic combat with a beast and either dies or undergoes an extraordinary purgation before he is dramatically restored or re-born with immense good power.
Gibson’s portrayal of Jesus’s resurrection is brief, dramatic, and elegant, but I cannot imagine Gibson’s Jesus laughing after the event. And I suspect this is because both Jesus and we are literally exhausted by the horrors of the passion. The film couldn’t depict Christ laughing after the resurrection because the whole center of gravity of the movie is on the mock trial and the cruel breaking of an innocent person.
With Tolkien’s Gandalf, however, we might come closer to the Biblical portrait. First a word on the Bible, and then on Gandalf. The New Testament, of course, describes the agony and humiliation of the cross. But, after the resurrection, Jesus joins some people at a dinner party (Luke 24); there is even what might be described as a beach picnic with the resurrected Jesus (John 21). I can’t help but think of this Jesus laughing, and I suspect Tolkien (who was, like Gibson, a practicing Catholic) modeled Gandalf on the Christ.
There is a wonderful portrayal in the book, The Return of the King, and in the movie version as well, of Gandalf laughing with Frodo and Sam after evil has been defeated. In the book, here is the crucial passage:
‘A great Shadow has departed,’ said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laugher, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. (Tolkien 1973, p. 283)
Here is the philosophical substance of this chapter: As a personalist I am uneasy when the value of a person becomes obscured or subordinated to the good of some specific event or action. The Passion of the Christ is a powerful, spell-binding portrayal of Christ’s last hours with brilliant merits. Meditation on the passion has a rightful place within Christian theology, and it can serve to crystalize or consummate an appreciation of Jesus’s value as a person. Nonetheless, some caution is needed, for one may be so overcome by the ferocity and skin-lascerating horror of the suffering that one losses sight of the whole of Christ’s life. The danger is that the appreciation of Christ as a healer and teacher of nonviolence will be eclipsed by the dread engendered by watching an innocent person who is loving and forgiving as he is made the object of horrifying, unrelieved violence.
SOURCES
Gustaf Aulen. 1940. Christus Victor. Translated by A.G. Hebert. London: SPCK.
Edgar Sheffeld Brightman. 1958. Person and Reality. Edited by Peter Bertocci. New York: Ronald Press.
T.O. Buford and H.H. Oliver. 2002. Personalism Revisited. New York: Rodopi.
Jonathan Glover. 2000. Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press.
A.C. Knudson. 1949. The Philosophy of Personalism. Boston: Boston University Press.
J. Macmurray. 1961. Persons in Relation. London: Faber.
Emmanuel Mounier. 1952. Personalism. New York: Grove Press.
Max Scheler. 1976. Resentiment. Edited by L.A. Coser, translated by W. Holdheim. New York: Schocken.
Peter Spader. 2002. Scheler’s Ethical Personalism. New York: Fordham University Press.
Charles Taliaferro. 1988. A Narnian Theory of the Atonement. Scottish Journal of Theology 41 (1988), pp. 75–92.
J.R.R. Tolkien. 1973. The Return of the King. New York: Ballantine.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Personalist philosophers like Edgar Sheffeld Brightman claim that persons have intrinsic value or value for their own sakes and not for the sake of some other value such as happiness, reason or the satisfaction of desires. Do you think persons are valuable for their own sake? What are the implications of believing that persons have value for their own sake?
2. Arguably, suffering can lead to the shattering of one’s personal identity. Can certain forms of pleasure or happiness have a similar impact?
3. This essay stresses how the life-affirming nature of the resurrecton plays an important role in redemption. Do you agree or disagree?
4. When someone does a heroic act—perhaps saving an innocent person who is threatened—we take pleasure in, and admire the act. In what ways, however, might this involve taking pleasure that there was a threat to begin with?
5. How important do you find Scheler’s distinction between positive and negative moral motivation? Compare a physician who went into medicine because she hated illness with one who loved health and wholeness. What would the advantages or disadvantages be in a police officer who was drawn to law enforcement because she hated violence rather than loving peace and justice?
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Gibson’s Sublime Passion: In Defense of the Violence
WILLIAM IRWIN
The Passion has spurred much controversy and debate, but nearly everyone agrees that the film is difficult to watch. The violence, the blood, the gore make it too painful for most people.
Why do we willingly watch works of art that bring pain with pleasure? Aesthetics, the branch of philosophy concerned with the study of art, helps us answer this question, which has concerned philosophers since Aristotle (384–322 B.C.). To address this question and justify Gibson’s depiction of violence let’s consider The Passion in terms of three important categories: beauty, tragedy, and the sublime.
The Beautiful and the Moral
Whatever beauty is, no one could rightfully call Mel Gibson’s film beautiful. Nor could anyone deny that Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà is beautiful. Admittedly, the subject matters of the sculpture and film are different, but there is a Pietà allusion in The Passion, as we see the bloody Jesus in the arms of a weary Mary at the foot of the cross.
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) aside, most philosophers recognize that beauty is contextual, that knowing about the artwork and its subject matter bears on how we evaluate it. Michelangelo’s Pietà is sad, delicate, and displays a cherry-blossom beauty, but it does not inspire thought and moral reflection. In fact the beauty of the Pietà distracts us from its subject matter. We do not feel moved to reflection on the suffering of Jesus and Mary. Rather we behold a sight unlike anything we have seen before, and we marvel at the artistic accomplishment.
When the beautiful connects us to the moral it tends to do so mistakenly, getting it wrong or getting it right only by accident. Still a common and psychologically persuasive notion, the ancient Greek kalos-kagathon, the beautiful-good, implies that the beautiful is morally good and the morally good is beautiful. But experience tells us that the beautiful is generally appreciated for itself, and when it begins to steer us toward moral judgment we need to be careful. As a beautiful face can distract us from a person’s moral substance or lack thereof, so can a beautiful artwork. Knowing the subject of the artwork may heighten our appreciation for the artwork’s beauty, but its beauty is unlikely to heighten our appreciation for its subject. Viewing the Pietà we are far less inspired to devotion than we are awed at the artistic accomplishment.
The Choice of Violence
Could The Passion have been beautiful? Quentin Tarantino has been wrongly acclaimed for the “exquisite and elegant violence” in films such as Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction. While the choreographed, sword-wielding violence of Kill Bill is spectacular, it is not beautiful and it conveys no moral truth. T
he crass violence of Pulp Fiction conveys moral truth, that redemption is possible, but lacks beauty. Gibson’s choice to show the violence to tell the story of the passion precludes it being beautiful, especially if it is to succeed in directing us to moral truth. Contra Keats, truth is not beauty, nor beauty truth. Quid est veritas? It sometimes ain’t pretty.
“It’s too violent, too much blood and gore. I couldn’t stand to watch it.” So goes one common complaint about Gibson’s film. For many Christians, The Passion fails to highlight the parts of Jesus’s ministry that they believe are most important, his message of love and peace. The film could have been different. The violence and suffering was a choice of emphasis, not a necessity.
But Gibson did not choose to tell the story of Jesus’s entire ministry with special emphasis on his passion. He chose to tell the story of the passion. So how should he have told that story? It is, after all, a “cruci-fiction.” Aware that ‘cross’ and ‘crucifixion’ connote torture in Latin, what should we expect? Torture at the hands of Roman soldiers was far worse than what counts as torture at the hands of wayward American soldiers. So ecce homo, behold the man, through the sheer horror of his flogging, scourged as he is, bathed in a bouquet of blood, crowned with thorns, and made to carry his cross to the place of execution. This is the “bloody Christ” of The Passion not the “buddy Christ” of Dogma.
Some complain and conjecture that the actual scourging and flogging could not have been as severe as Gibson portrays them. Perhaps. But Scripture says that Simon of Cyrene carried the cross, so we can safely assume the scourging was sufficient to leave Jesus unable to carry it. And undoubtedly the inner agony and humiliation of the actual crucifixion were far worse than anything that film images can convey. In any case, to witness in person the bloody scourging would have been far worse than merely watching it on screen, even if the screen version surpassed the reality.
A director’s choices of emphasis and perspective inevitably displease some. You can’t make everybody happy and you shouldn’t even try. For example, Holocaust films no matter how finely done find critics. Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List portrays the utter inhumanity of the concentration camps, but some complain it makes a hero of Oscar Schindler. Perhaps he was a hero, but does his heroism deserve such attention? Shouldn’t Spielberg have focused attention elsewhere? Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful is a story of boundless hope, a triumph of the spirit, a testament to resilience, but it was criticized as “Holocaust lite.” Yes, Benigni and Spielberg could have made different choices, could have made different films. But the films they made are gifts to be appreciated for what they are, not to be rejected for what they could have been.
Viewers who reject The Passion for Gibson’s choice of emphasis include in large numbers those who imagine Jesus as much like Barney the Dinosaur singing, “I love you / you love me / let’s be friends / in Galilee.” They choose to focus on the message of love, passing the passion, going directly to the resurrection. Of course this is not a fair description of all people who reject The Passion, and that is one way to tell the story. But it is not the way Gibson chose. If Jesus did not suffer for our sins and rise from the dead, then he was simply a philosopher. But Christianity holds that he was much more. Gibson’s choice to graphically portray the violence of The Passion makes the film difficult to watch, and this is just the point.
What? A Tragedy?
Plato (428–348 B.C.) spoke against Greek tragedies and Homeric epics, finding they gave false depictions of the gods and aroused fear and pity, emotions one should avoid. Plato was right: violence can inflame “the passions.” As a boy, I came out of Rocky III throwing punches in the air, looking to take on all comers in the parking lot. As a man, I came out of Troy feeling like Achilles, wanting to slay my enemies. Curiously, though, the violence of The Passion has no effect of that kind. It is not the “guns, lots of guns” and Kung Fu fighting of The Matrix. It does not incite one to violence. If anything, it leaves one numb. Plato was quick to banish the tragic poets from his ideal Republic. We should not be so quick to pan The Passion.
As Aristotle asked of the Greek tragedies of his day, so we may ask of The Passion: Why would anyone want to watch such suffering anyway? Aristotle agreed with Plato that these works of art aroused fear and pity, but, unlike Plato, Aristotle found this beneficial. Watching the tragedies produces a catharsis, a cleansing of these feelings and emotions. In fact, this cathartic effect is part of Aristotle’s classic definition of tragedy in the Poetics.
Tragedy, then, is a representation of an action which is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude—in language which is garnished in various forms in its different parts in the mode of dramatic enactment, not narrative—and through the arousal of pity and fear effecting the katharsis of such emotions. (1449b, 24–29)
So is The Passion a tragedy? Not in any sense that Aristotle would recognize, not in the way Antigone and Oedipus Rex are tragedies, not in the way Hamlet and King Lear are tragedies, not at all. Consider more of what Aristotle has to say. On the proper subject matter for tragedy, he says “the poet’s task is to speak not of events which have occurred, but of the kind of events which could occur, and are possible by the standards of probability or necessity” (1451a 38–40).
The Passion purports to tell the story of events that no matter how wildly improbable did occur. Aristotle argues that certain plot types are inappropriate for tragedy. Most importantly for our purposes, “good men should not be shown passing from prosperity to affliction, for this is neither fearful nor pitiful but repulsive” (1452b 34–35). And “repulsive” is precisely how some viewers find The Passion. Certainly it is not cleansing, cathartic. Describing the proper type of main character for tragedy, Aristotle notes that “such a man is one who is not pre-eminent in virtue and justice, and one who falls into affliction not because of evil and wickedness, but because of a certain fallibility (hamartia)” (1453a 7–9). Tragedies end in death due to the fallibility of the main character. Certainly a flawless Christ cannot take such a fall.
Sublimity in the Divine
So if we don’t benefit from a tragic catharsis, why do we watch The Passion? Why do some of us actually enjoy it? Simply watching it is easy enough to explain. The film is a pop cultural phenomenon, a “must see.” Explaining why some of us actually enjoyed the film is tougher. Perhaps the experience is sublime? But what is “the sublime”? Peter Schjedahl claims that the sublime is a “hopelessly jumbled philosophical notion that has had more than two centuries to start meaning something cogent and hasn’t succeeded yet” (quoted in Danto 2003, p. 148). Although he overstates the case, Schjedahl appropriately highlights the confusion and chaos surrounding the idea of the sublime. Nonetheless I’d like to suggest that we can use the sublime and The Passion to make sense of one another.
In discussing the sublime Edmund Burke (1729–1797) points us to accounts of divine encounter in Scripture.
But the scripture alone can supply ideas answerable to the majesty of this subject. In the scripture, wherever God is represented as appearing or speaking, everything terrible in nature is called up to heighten the awe and solemnity of the divine presence. The psalms, and the prophetical books, are crowded with instances of this kind. The earth shook, (says the psalmist), the heavens also dropped at the presence of the Lord. (Burke 1998, p. 112)
The sublime, like God, is fearful but we are not afraid of it. So what is the sublime? While early modern views on the sublime associated it with awe-inspiring, terrifying natural objects such as jagged cliffs shrouded in mist, more recent views have applied the sublime to art, helping to answer Aristotle’s perennial question: Why would we voluntarily look at art that produces unpleasant emotions? Well, why would an eighty-year old man jump out of an airplane? Why would a fourteen-year old girl ride the roller coaster repeatedly? Because a thrill, a heightened sense of life, is concomitant with the fear.
Musing on movies, and revising the theories of Kant and Burke, Cynthia Freela
nd finds four features in the sublime. First, it involves conflict between feelings of pain and pleasure, what Burke called “rapturous terror.” Second, something about the sublime object is “great” and astonishing, what Longinus (around A.D. 213–272) called the “bold and grand”–the sublime object is vast, powerful, and overwhelming. Third, the sublime “evokes ineffable and painful feelings through which a transformation occurs into pleasure and cognition.” And fourth, the sublime prompts moral reflection (Freeland 1999, pp. 66–69).
While all four of Freeland’s features are presented as necessary for an experience of the sublime, not every example of the cinematic sublime is an entire film. Scenes and parts of movies can be sublime. And commonly one or more of the features can be found without the others, in which case the film or scene does not produce an experience of the sublime.
The first feature, the conflict or commingling of pain and pleasure distinguishes the sublime from the beautiful. According to Kant, there is restful contemplation in the beautiful whereas there is “mental movement” or even a “vibration” in the sublime (Freeland 1999, p. 70). The experience of beauty is an escape from reality, whereas the experience of the sublime is a heightened, if contrived, confrontation with it. The Silence of the Lambs, like most horror movies, elicits a conflict of pain and pleasure though not an experience of the sublime. The Passion produces emotional conflict throughout. As Jesus is brutally beaten we want to cover our eyes, to be shielded from the pain, yet we take pleasure in knowing that the final victory will be his. Nonbelievers can also have this experience as long as they know the story from Scripture.