Of course, key questions still remain. Did Gibson correctly use the theology he intended to use? Because it is possible that he did not, in spite of his intentions. Is the theology he used the correct theology for the Christian faith? This would certainly explain why there is disagreement among members of different Christian denominations about the value of the movie. And is the Christian faith correct? If one believes it is not, then Gibson’s film can have little religious value. But these are not the questions I set out to explore here, and their answers will have to wait for another occasion.
For us, the important moral of the story is that Gibson’s film makes sense as an interpretation of Scriptures only within a certain theological point of view, and that much of the polemic it has prompted is the result of looking at it from other theological perspectives. The same can be said about most other controversial interpretations of the Scriptures. In this, the examination of The Passion has also served to illustrate and clarify a philosophical issue that goes beyond the understanding and merits of the film.
SOURCES
Jorge J.E. Gracia. 2001. How Can We Know What God Means? The Interpretation of Revelation. New York: Palgrave.
———. 2003. Old Wine in New Skins: The Role of Tradition in Communication, Knowledge, and Group Identity. Marquette University Sixty-Seventh Aquinas Lecture. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press.
Philip A. Cunningham. n.d. Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: A Challenge to Catholic Teaching. http://www.bc.edu/research/cjl/metaelements/texts/reviews/gibson_cunningham.htm
Kevin Vanhoozer, et al., eds. 2004. Dictionary of Theological Interpretation of Scripture. Grand Rapids: Eardman’s. In press.
Nicholas Wolterstorff. 1995. Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. What factors are important in determining the value of The Passion of the Christ?
2. What were the challenges that Gibson faced in making a film of Christ’s passion based on the Gospels’ accounts?
3. How does theology determine the various ways of interpreting Scriptures?
4. What difficulties does any film interpretation of a text face? Are there special problems when the text is regarded as God’s word?
5. Can disagreements on the interpretation of the Bible be resolved? If so, on what basis?
13
The Women Who Loved Jesus: Suffering and the Traditional Feminine Role
CYNTHIA FREELAND
The Passion of the Christ offers striking versions of Jesus’s mother Mary and his follower Mary Magdalene (played by Maia Morgenstern and Monica Bellucci, respectively). Both actresses, with their remarkably beautiful faces, are called on to portray deep reserves of love, strength, anguish, and pity. In the movie, Jesus’s (Jim Caviezel’s) suffering is so extreme that it becomes implausible and unreal—and after all, the film does want to show that he is more than human. By comparison, the suffering of the two women who love him is terribly human. Their sorrow actively echoes current TV and newspaper images of grieving mothers and wives of soldiers killed in wars or political and religious struggles.
Huddled together and restricted to a passive role as observers, the two Marys in this film each endure a passion of their own. They function like the chorus of a classical Greek tragedy. As they observe key actions from a distance, their emotions cue the audience’s response. The two women’s sustained grief and endurance evoke great empathy. In this chapter I want to reflect upon Gibson’s portrait of the two key women in Christ’s life. My ultimate aim is to bring to the film a perspective on the general meaning of physical suffering, considering also the traditional women’s roles of care, love, and support for those who suffer.
The Movie’s Other Women
There are other female roles in the film. Satan is played by a woman, Rosalinda Celentano, perhaps hinting at associations among women, sin, and evil. Such connections (sometimes said to be grounded in the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis) are common in Christianity. But I don’t think we need to construe the film this way. Satan is troubling here because of being sexually ambiguous, not female. He/she has a deep husky voice and a body mostly obscured by heavy robes, though we once glimpse a hideous shaved head. This ambiguity might indicate that gender roles should be kept clearly separate. On the other hand, it is theologically appropriate, since angels—even fallen angels—are necessarily asexual. Art history is replete with depictions of angels as androgynous or even feminine-looking humans.
Two other women with small but important roles in the movie are Claudia, Pilate’s wife; and Veronica, who brings Jesus a cup of water and offers her headscarf to wipe his bloody face. Each woman stands out as an example of sympathy, insight, and courage. Claudia warns Pilate against killing this Jewish subject because “he is a holy man”; she obviously disapproves of her husband’s actions, and brings linens to Mary to use in cleansing Jesus’s blood from the paving stones. Similarly, Veronica bravely steps through a line of brutish Roman guards to assist Jesus after he falls while bearing his cross. She too manifests deep sympathy and compassion. But there is no Biblical evidence for either of these portrayals. Belief in Veronica and her veil grew up only in medieval times, when it became codified as one of the Stations of the Cross. Similarly, the Biblical evidence for Claudia’s kindness is scant. Gibson thus uses poetic license to foster a fictitious, stereotyped association between women and moral virtues like generosity, empathy, and spiritual strength. The scene with Veronica isolates her explicitly from the soldiers’ male rudeness, depicting her in slow motion and haloed with bright light. Her scenes employ both a different pace and a distinct sound track from the main action. Accompanying her, we hear peaceful recorder or flute music, while the regular-speed scenes highlight the harsh jeers of the crowd and guards.
In fact, all of the “good” women in Gibson’s movie are young and attractive. (Mary herself scarcely looks old enough to be the mother of Jesus; Morgenstern is forty-two to Caviezel’s thirty-six.) The non-speaking roles of women in the film are confined to toothless “old hags” shown en masse as part of the angry Jewish rabble clamoring for crucifixion. The film thus offers a message about how women are “supposed to” look and behave: as uplifting, lovely moral exemplars and supporters for men.
Virgin or Whore? Women’s Double Bind
Evidence is that Jesus’s own attitudes to women were not so conventional or stereotypical. He was highly unusual in his time for accepting women as followers. He must have scandalized Jewish mores by accepting financial support from women and even traveling around with them in a culture where proper women were expected to travel only with male relatives. Reputable Biblical scholars like Elaine Pagels of Princeton and Karen King of Harvard have argued that Jesus took Mary Magdalene seriously as a leader among his apostles. Scripture too provides some support for this view; it was Mary Magdalene who went to Jesus’s tomb (Mark 16:1; Matthew 29:8–10) and, according to John at least (John 20), was first to encounter him there, risen. He commanded her to spread the good news of his resurrection to the other disciples, making her in effect the first to preach his resurrection. Gibson allows viewers only a quick peek at the risen Christ at the end of his film, and so the film leaves no such significant role for Mary Magdalene, who is instead linked to Jesus’s mother as another faithful female supporter.
Art history is clearly a source for Gibson’s choice of actresses here, a selection which reflects a traditional Catholic dualism between types the two women represent. Morgenstern’s strict, sober beauty makes her the perfect devoted, selfless, virginal mother. In a key scene where she witnesses her son’s scourging, Mary’s face stays steady as we witness one great tear sliding down her cheek. She looks like a Northern Renaissance Madonna from the sixteenth century. Monica Bellucci, on the other hand, fits the traditional conception of the Magdalene as a repentant sinner—a former prostitute, now redeemed by her faith in Jesus. Bellucci is
well known for roles associated with voluptuous sensuality and eroticism, such as the whorish Persephone in the Matrix sequels (2003), or Malèna, the object of an adolescent boy’s lustful desire in Malèna (2002). Her casting by Gibson seems no accident.
But feminist thinkers have been very critical of the traditional contrast between Mary and Mary Magdalene as two polar opposite types of femininity, the Virgin and the Whore. Mary is seen as typifying the reassuring, non-sexual (good) mother, while Mary Magdalene is the tempting (bad) sex object (even if now reformed). Women may still become trapped in a double bind of remaining selfless, asexual, and pure, but rejected as old maids; or exploring the erotic, risking labels like “nymphomaniacs” and “sinners.”
Mary the Mother and “Feminine” Ethics
Let’s look more into this dichotomous characterization of the two women who loved Jesus. Of course, Mary, the pure mother, manifests many very admirable traits. Who wants to banish good qualities like love, kindness, empathy, and selflessness from our lives? Most ethical theories and religious traditions value such qualities. However, certain moral qualities may not be beneficial or fair to those who are expected to manifest them, if not everyone in the society is equally asked to develop them. Some writers, like psychologist Carol C. Gilligan, have championed ethical outlooks that they describe as “feminine.” Gilligan challenged Lawrence Kohlberg’s studies of moral development, which concluded that males tend to apply a more rule-bound, universal conception of ethics than females, who think more relationally and contextually. Kohlberg regarded the “male” viewpoint as superior since it exemplified the moral standards of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) as stated in his famous categorical imperative. Gilligan asked whether we should really infer that female outlooks on solving moral dilemmas are inferior to males’, given that there are significant alternatives to Kant’s ethics. Some of these, like Aristotelianism and moral virtue theories, are also contextual and relational—more “female.” Gilligan’s conclusion was not to favor either approach, but to argue that both are valuable. They have complementary strengths, and people of each sex should be encouraged to develop along both sorts of moral dimensions.
The thought that there may be specifically female approaches to ethics has been further elaborated by philosophers Nel Noddings in her theory of “maternal thinking” and Sara Ruddick in her account of the “ethics of care.” Their approaches, like Gilligan’s, are controversial. On the one hand, these theories strive both to describe and validate traditionally female attitudes and behavior, emphasizing that they are not just a matter of instinct or emotions but very reflective and complex. Maternal behavior, for instance, requires constant attention to the needs of the developing child with respect for its growing autonomy and future adulthood. Children must be taught and not disciplined like puppies. Again, Ruddick’s outlook treasures the sort of selflessness valued by many different religious and ethical traditions. Caring activities, even if they appear rudimentary, such as a nurse emptying a bedpan or a mother feeding a child, require and reflect thought, training, and experience. How can sick patients be both cared for and encouraged to take on challenges? What is a healthy diet for a child at various ages, and how can a parent get a reluctant child to eat the proper diet?
On the other hand, these approaches to ethics are not universally endorsed by feminists. Some maintain that to emphasize supposedly “female” approaches may serve both to validate and perpetuate our current system of gender roles. In this system, women are often exploited, as when they are underpaid in many traditional caring professions like teaching and nursing. They may fail to develop self-respect or to seek authority in a broader social and political context. Women who focus too much on caring for others may fail to take proper care of themselves, and even fail at their own aims. Critics also argue that to promote caring could sustain a problematic gender distinction between men who often “care about” and women who “care for.” “Caring about” tends to be higher status, since it means that a person’s concerns extend beyond home and family to broader arenas such as government, politics, institutions, and principles. Ruddick insists that an ethics of care ought to apply to people of both genders: surely both types of caring are valuable and desirable goals for everyone. Gilligan’s view is similar; she does not endorse women’s approaches to ethics over those of men, but feels both approaches should be valued.
What do the controversies in feminist ethics tell us about The Passion and its women? In this movie Mary is defined by her role as loving mother from the moment when we first see her waking up, frightened about her son. Gibson employs flashbacks in key scenes to link Mary’s current role in comforting Jesus with her maternal caring for him as a child and young man. In an especially moving sequence, Jesus falls in agony from his wounds, and Mary, who has run through crowded streets desperately seeking to get near him, reaches him to offer comfort. This sequence is cross-cut with flashbacks of her running desperately to assist the child Jesus when she anticipates and watches him falling amid hard rocks. In both scenes she assures him, “I am here.” This is what we all want (and in fortunate cases, remember) from our own mothers.
But Ruddick emphasizes that mothering is not simply natural and instinctual in human females. It is emotional but also requires reasoning and thought. A mother’s love is “attentive,” an intellectual capacity reflecting knowledge and respect for the individual one loves. The mother must explore and insist on her own values while remaining open to the development of her child into an adult who may adopt alternative values and beliefs. Mary has obviously needed to reflect on how to bring up her son, what to teach him, and how to guide him as he enters into his adult role in life, a very specific role as the Messiah. But the film shows none of this.
Instead, Mary is one-dimensional, just as shown in tradition and in many paintings. She is simply and naturally a mother: stereotypically selfless, patient, beautiful, and loving. Some scenes use a shot/reverse shot structure and highlight her psychic communion with her son as they exchange lengthy deep gazes. These scenes suggest that mother and son share an intense psychic communion. When Jesus is raised on the cross, Mary Magdalene can’t bear the sight and covers her head, but Mary gazes steadily into her son’s one good eye (the other is swollen shut from blows). Indeed, in some interactions the mother and son appear almost like lovers. In the flashback scene that shows her preparing dinner while her handsome, strong young son works on his carpentry, Jesus’s human father, Joseph, is notably absent. Mary tells her son to wash his hands before eating. When he responds by playfully splashing water on her, she giggles like a teenager. Viewers raised in a Protestant tradition may find this and other scenes unsettling (as I did), since they reflect a fascination with Mary’s perpetual youth, beauty, and intimacy with her son that is more typical of Catholic Christianity.
Is Christian Ethics “Feminine”?
A deeper question suggested by considering the ethics of care is whether Christian ethics is itself “feminine.” Christianity’s moral outlook sounds much like the ethics of care approach. Christians are told to care for the meek, sick, and poor, even to love their neighbors as themselves. Jesus himself showed concern for people who were maimed or sick, healing the blind and freeing possessed people from devils. He paid no attention to their social class and even preached the virtue of Samaritans. He helped feed the hungry and provided wine for a wedding feast. His followers were admonished not to employ violence but to “turn the other cheek.” In the movie, Jesus chastises Peter for cutting the ear off a guard’s slave at his arrest, denouncing those who live by the sword.
Jesus was a revolutionary teacher within his cultural context, since he rejected traditional Jewish notions of justice as vengeance (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth). In this regard, he resembles Socrates (469–399 B.C.), who similarly rejected traditional Greek codes of conduct four centuries before him. Christianity thus advocates many typically “female” behaviors of caring, love, passivity, and compassion. It’s hard to
judge, however, whether any particular view of Christian ethics is advocated by The Passion of the Christ, since the scope of the film is deliberately narrow. We see little of Jesus’s active ministry. So we do not learn here of his revolutionary moral message or of how to put it into action.
Mary Magdalene: Scripture, Fiction, and History
I want now to turn to the character of Mary Magdalene. As I mentioned earlier, Bellucci fits this role well because of being a famous contemporary sex symbol. Gibson accepts the legend about Magdalene’s former life as a prostitute or fallen woman. This is shown by his inclusion of a flashback where she is rescued from death by stoning. Cringing, she is saved when the handsome and upright Jesus draws a line in the sand against her accusers, then literally raises her up from the dirt.
Actually this scene has no Biblical support. Mary Magdalene is described only as a woman from whom Jesus had driven seven demons (Luke 8:1–3). But over centuries the western Catholic Church merged several distinct Marys and a nameless fallen woman so that Mary Magdalene acquired this persona. In fact, the current Catholic Church (the one Gibson’s sect does not accept) acknowledged that the blending of Marys was not historically or scripturally correct in 1989, when it officially separated Mary Magdalene from the others. And the Eastern Orthodox Church never accepted any such association at all.
Another piece of lore about Mary of Magdala is that she escaped in a boat after Jesus’s crucifixion and traveled to France with Lazarus. There she preached the gospel on her own before retiring to a cave where she lived out her life as a hermit, clad only by her luxuriant hair. In paintings by Renaissance artists like Titian and Botticelli, she is shown nude, her voluptuous sinner’s body barely concealed by beautiful hair. As such, she very much resembles their paintings of Venus, the Roman goddess of love! True to this history, Gibson’s movie sometimes shows Bellucci (but never Morgenstern) with her head uncovered, as gleaming long tresses flow around her exquisite face.
Mel Gibson's Passion and Philosophy Page 18
