I really don't know what to say about this.

I think it's much ado about nothing for several reasons.

This same uproar was made over The Last Temptation of Christ, remember? And to what end? Millions of people, myself included, saw the film and no harm came to anyone's faith. I was christian then and was genuinely moved by Willem Dafoe's spiritual and sensitive portrayal of Christ. I then, and still do, consider that film to be an exquisite work of art.

The only problem I might have with Mel's film is that it was shot in another language and has no subtitles. Being the monolingual chick that I am I would really like to have at least some subtitles to follow. I'm pretty familiar with how it all happened, but still.

Here's another thing that serves as an irritant: for centuries people have been using the story of Christ's crucifixion as justification for keeping antisemitism going. Have none of these people read the bible? The jews were too terrified of the romans to have made any other choice but to do exactly as the romans wanted them to do - and while we're on the subject, it was the romans who not only invented that delightful style of killing people, but carried out the sentence itself. The romans.

And this has nothing to do with anything, but I loathe misinformation so I feel compelled to add that the death of Christ wasn't caused by exposure, starvation, blood loss or any of the other countless possible causes that have been debated ad infinitum over the last several centuries. Biblical scholars have come to the conclusion that he suffocated. Apparently being suspended by the arms for a long period of time gradually causes the muscles around the lungs to seize, cutting off the flow of oxygen slowly until the life is literally compressed out of the victim. The method is so agonizing and effective that Hitler ordered that it be used it to torture and kill jews during the rise of the third reich.

There's some irony in there somewhere.

Anyway, again, this is much ado about nothing and I'm not just saying that because Mel Gibson is involved. I say that because I've seen this kind of shitstorm before and it amounted to precisely zippo once the furor died down and the people whose collective panties were all twisted in a bunch realized that:

a) the film was going to be shown nationwide regardless, and

b) it was actually pretty harmless.

People are going to be racist, hateful sexist and antisemetic. Nothing can change that. To say that the showing of a single film is going to knock back the progress that has been made to curb hatred of jewish people assumes two things, both erroneously; that one movie is capable of devastating, opinion-altering impact upon an entire world, and that actual progress has been made. Look at the white supremacist movement here in this country and it's various cells worldwide, and at the problems in Israel. That has been going on for centuries.

No film could ever have this much impact. How ridiculous of people to even think it could.