Other Things Worthy of Your Time
Ignorance and Shame E-mail
2/29/04
To: Jami Bernard of the New York Daily News
I haven't read the assortment of e-mails you described receiving after your poor review of The Passion of the Christ, of course, but I still feel somewhat annoyed by the ignorance of people I wish I could relate to and even defend. And when I say your 'poor' review, I'm referring to the one-star rating you gave it, evidently, and not the quality of the review itself--I haven't actually read it yet, since I've never concerned myself with movie reviews, and the review itself had nothing to do with my reason for e-mailing you anyway.
As you eluded to in your commentary, and as I could probably guess is the case for any fairly renowned critic, you're going to get your share of ignorant people voicing their disagreement in the form of hate mail, but, this time, you'd hope the sort of people representing themselves could do a little bit better job...since they're not just representing themselves.
I don't read movie, book, or music reviews because I feel much more inclined to making up my own decisions on such things, but when I do go over somebody's else's rant or rave about something, and disagree, I really don't have any urge to insult someone, especially in terms of countenance or personal position, when the only case I should be making, in any form, is in regards to their opinion.
As I've said twice in this e-mail already, that's ignorant, and that's sadly becoming a word I've been using a lot lately.
It doesn't matter if you're referring to a movie that couldn't even hope to fully and fittingly portray the event and its true, powerful meaning--as it should be--or you're referring to that meaning itself, the Passion of the Christ is just that: passion. It's a man and a religion (--and if you believe in the religion and the man--a man who's so much more) built on a foundation of peace and goodwill (solid examples of butchered meanings and ideals by a decade of pot-smokers). The Passion itself is an unmatchable love shown through unmatchable torture and hardship. It was about one man who died for everybody else, prospectively making everything else, ever after, good and right, and simple as that.
But even Gibson doesn't want to follow those simple rules, saying anyone that's not Roman Catholic's gonna burn in hell. Ignorant. K Mel, maybe you had good intentions making this movie, but you're no messiah.
Here's the problem I run into now. I'd love to go into preaching meaning and truth and blah blah blah, but that's what happens: it turns into 'blah blah blah', because the respect for the subject matter is diminishing. Because the people who should be coming off as respectable because of it, are the ones destroying it.
And that's a shame, because if all these Christians looking down on everybody, blindly ridiculing a harmless movie critic, while donning their white hoods or whatever the hell they're doing, and instead out doing what a Christian is supposed to, maybe the preaching I'd love to be doing wouldn't be looked at as such a joke of an effort. It's a downward spiral.
Half a century later--two thousand years later--we're still burning our crosses.
NOTES
She didn't reply. She wasn't a very good-looking woman. I'm sure the movie was better than she said.