Blogwatch: Rebecca Lesses on The Passion

On Mystical Politics, Rebecca Lesses offers her thoughts on The Passion of the Christ (linked by Jim Davila on Paleojudaica). Rebecca Lesses found it "a powerful film -- but in a very disturbed and violent way". She writes:

The camera lingered lovingly on every injury that Jesus suffered. I think that this film would have a seriously negative impact upon children who viewed it -- personally, I think it should have gotten an NC-17 rating for violence.

On the second point, as I have commented before, this is not a film that children ought to see. I don't entirely understand the American rating system, but in the UK The Passion of the Christ is an 18 so no one under the age of 18 will be allowed in. On the previous point, I disagree. I did not think that the camera dwelt lovingly on Jesus' injuries and this is one of the reasons I find the pornography charge made by Lesses as well as other reviewers to be misplaced. The camera frequently turns away with the Marys, with the viewer, and does not allow us to see the worst. Like the Marys, we are constantly looking yet not wanting to look. Sometimes we catch the full horror and flinch; sometimes we do not. I think what I would like to hear from those who are using the term pornography in this context is how they are defining it because I find it singularly inappropriate.

Rebecca Lesses also writes:

The priests are dressed up in ridiculous regalia that to my eye did not resemble what Exodus describes as priestly garb (it is described in this week's Torah portion, Tezaveh). The camera lingers on their bearded faces, many with the stereotypical Jewish hooked nose.

I disagree with this too. Because of the pre-publicity about the alleged anti-Semitism, I was conscious of the potential problem of the representation of Jews in the film and one of the things I looked for were choice of actors and what their appearances might be intended to evoke. But I did not see anything that led me to believe that certain actors had been chosen to evoke classic racial stereotypes. And if one really must descend to the business of talking about shapes of noses, Peter -- for example -- does not look different from the priests.

The difficulty about any such discussion is that it can be in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps I am missing things that others are noticing. I think one of the only ways around this problem is to ask the question whether Jewish actors are used to play the Jewish priests and non-Jewish actors to play those sympathetic to Jesus. This, in my opinion, is one of the scandals about Jesus Christ Superstar -- it is clear that many of the priests are played by Jewish actors whereas few if any other parts in the film are played by Jewish actors. Now, in The Passion of the Christ the only actor I know to be Jewish is Maia Morgenstern who plays Mary the mother of Jesus (see blog entry on), the most sympathetic character in the entire film. Likewise, as I have previously pointed out, one of the other most sympathetic characters in the film is Simon of Cyrene, the only person in the entire film characterised with the single word "Jew".