The Passion Of The Christ was the blunt-force weapon evangelicals were looking for

[Muda69]

https://www.avclub.com/the-passion-of-the-christ-was-the-blunt-force-weapon-ev-1832999651

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It was the first R-rated movie I was allowed to see in theaters, which was a big deal to me at the time,” Blake, now a marketing and PR professional in Chicago, says of The Passion Of The Christ. Blake was 12 and, as a budding horror fan, felt he could handle the violence everyone was talking about. Besides, like so many kids in the U.S., he’d grown up with the image of a cross-strung Christ, the likes of which hangs in Christian churches across the country. He adds, “My mom was typically the gatekeeper of what I could or could not see, but she seemed to have determined, sight unseen, that The Passion Of The Christ was acceptable.”

She wasn’t the only one. Mel Gibson’s box office-breaking riff on Christ’s crucifixion raked in more than $600 million worldwide (nearly $800 million in today’s money), and, 15 years later, remains the U.S.’s highest-grossing R-rated film of all time. The pre-release buzz over the film’s vicious, pervasive violence deterred few, and kids were shepherded onto school buses and church vans for group screenings. “I also remember her making a comment to me or my brother, something about how seeing it might do me or my brother ‘some good,’” Blake continues. “She seemed to be setting the expectation that this would be a life-changing or faith-affirming experience for one or both of us.”

But he left the theater disturbed. “I don’t flinch often, but The Passion made me flinch.” He remembers two things very clearly: the “brutal violence” and “a momentary personal commitment to start paying attention in church and be a more engaged Christian.” Mission accomplished. At its core, Gibson’s film had one goal: To raise the stakes of modern Christianity by depicting its savior’s sacrifice in the most disturbing way possible.

Blake’s reaction was common amongst a number of the people The A.V. Clubinterviewed for this article. After tweeting out a call for anyone who felt they viewed The Passion Of The Christ at too young an age, we spoke to more than a dozen people who saw the film between the ages of 10 and 15. Some weren’t allowed to cover their eyes. Some sobbed. One puked in her seat. For nearly all of them, it was framed as an event by their parents, their pastors, their teachers, none of whom seemed to care that it spilled more gore than a Troma flick. It was mandatory viewing, and, furthermore, it demanded a reaction. At many screenings, enthusiastic youth pastors filed to the front of the theater as the credits still rolled. There, they encouraged those moved by the graphic violence on screen to commit (or recommit) their lives to Christ. Disoriented preteens, overwhelmed, shuffled forward, heads bowed, splayed hands and spoken tongues descending upon them.

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And it’s here that we can see why The Passion was weaponized as it was on the evangelical youth. It was a blunt instrument, a dizzying punch to the temple. It seems an odd tool in light of its ponderousness and gore, but evangelicals have never shied away from disturbing images so long as it suits their message. Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s 2006 documentary Jesus Camp films a bunch of eight-year olds sobbing over fetus replicas at a communal church camp, and the 2001 documentary, Hell House, which documents a Christian-themed haunted house filled with drug addicts, school shooters, and victims of botched abortions, finds its pious cast reveling in the blood and trauma of the behaviors it deems sinful. (One teen shrieks with joy after discovering she gets to play the “abortion girl.”) HBO’s 2008 documentary Hard As Nails follows a bellowing evangelist who forces kids to re-enact Christ’s crucifixion—when he’s not asking them to hit him with a steel chair.

That aggression works. David, who’s now an English instructor and PhD candidate at the University of Washington, detailed for me the numbing effect of passion plays, which he’d been subjected to long before Gibson’s movie. He says:

I distinctly remember being shown an earlier film of Jesus being killed at youth camp when I was 11 or 12. I think it was part of a worship service, so there was a lot of emotional music in the mix, too, and all the kids were crying. And I think a lot of us were thinking, “Wow, that guy went through this brutal stuff for me?” It was just so devastating to see someone nailed to a piece of wood and left to bleed out and die—especially when you’re told over and over that this is not fiction. This is real. And then, of course, comes the kicker: We’re told, “Yes, and your sin is the reason that Jesus had to go through this, but he’ll forgive you if you give your life to him.” We’ve just watched the guy bleed out and die, our church leaders are telling us that it’s our fault, and we believe them and of course we feel terrible. At the end of all that, what else is there to do? You commit your life to the guy.

The problem, as nearly everyone I spoke to discussed, is that faith like this is deeply unsustainable. That’s what David learned. Blake, too. Hanawalt, as well, says that the kind of fervor prompted by pieces like The Passion don’t make for an enriching faith. “I couldn’t care less about the fervor and passion that we feel in the moment, or any commitment somebody would say in a moment,” he says, “because I often find the focus on the intensity of your faith—especially at a young and easily manipulated age—almost to be a directly inverse relationship to becoming a mature person where faith actually becomes a long-lasting and edifying part of your life.”

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Also sounds like borderline child abuse to me.

 

[gonzoron]

50 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

https://www.avclub.com/the-passion-of-the-christ-was-the-blunt-force-weapon-ev-1832999651

Also sounds like borderline child abuse to me.

 

I tried to watch it once. It was Hell. Bored the crap out of me.