![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Passion and BABIES! I mean, BRAINS!
Mar. 1st, 2004 11:57 amI know, at times I come across, at least in this medium, as a disembodied entity that watches the news, therefore she is. Like, I am the Kino-Eye, but in telly-land. Like, Kino-Eye for the Nielsen's Guy. I am like that dude on Mr. Show, the one that reports from under the desk of the news anchors. But lately I have been blunted, deer-in-headlighted, paralyzed by the news, like where to start? Jesus, uterus, nipple, fetus. Jesus fetus. Jetus.
So Mad Mel makes a snuff film. I am not really curious to see it, as gore doesn't do anything for me, but I would see it provided I did not pay money for it, since there's no way in hell I'm funding it. But thanks to the media maelstrom around it, I have been bombarded by clips and stills ad nauseum. So here are my two cents: (Warning: spoilers ahead, Jesus gets crucified.) The thing that is interesting to me is that the film embodies the concept of "out of context." The "passion" is an apotheosis of pain and gore, but structurally, outside of the entire New Testament narrative it's not more and no less than an object of fetish. Fetish is kind of like false synecdoche in m.o.: small part substitutes for something large, functionally defining it, even though that obfuscates the full picture. Like, a sexual fetish where a particular part of the body is reified that the entire discourse of sexual attraction in that situation pivots around it. So, Gibson fetishizes the 12 hours of the passion. Ironically, in stripping the passion from its context, he concentrates the apotheosis-as-gateway-to-mass-hysteria aspect of it, but structurally obliterates the catharsis, which, in my opinion, is the role of the "passion chronotope" in the New Testament narrative. Catharsis, as a product of classical tragedies, cannot exist outside of the three acts, except maybe in some pomo self-referential twist, but I think we all know this ain't the case here. The Jesus story in its totality has the three acts, the first pne culminates in his entry into Jerusalem, the second one culminates in the garden of Gethsemane when he allows Judas to kiss him, and the third one goes from arrest to the crucifiction. The resurrection is a coda. Within the parameters of suffering-as-defining-early-Christianity (martyrdom, really, Jesus was the first martyr), the catharsis is dialectically produced by the one-two combo of gruesome suffering and appended sainthood (again, think of any martyrs/saints narratives). Greek tragedies were pretty fucking gruesome too, so nothing new here. But catharsis as such cannot exist, unless tension has had time to build up, unless it is the climax of the apex and the nadir, up and down the axis of hubris*. Of course, hubris is present in the Jesus story, but in a kind of existential, fatalistic way. Jesus dies for his hubris, his crime being his insistance that he is the son of God. Of course, within the narrative, his actual legitimate status as the son of God makes hubris a wrongful projection, rather than a tragic flaw. [sidebar: the irony! Son of God finally came and they crucified him. Even though he had to be crucified for the world to be saved, so it was crucial that he be deployed before the world was ready. This is really starting to seem similar to the Soviet Marxism model, where the leaders persevered with the building of communist paradise despite the fact that Russia did not fulfill the conditions that would make it ready for such undertaking in Marx's book, namely post-agrarian industrialization and a period of sustained capitalism. And then lots of people suffered and died in the agony and the ecstasy.] Jesus isn't a tragic hero, because he lacks a tragic flaw, but nevertheless, for a story that is so faithful to a three-act progression, catharsis is important. In obliterating the structural and narrative context, Mel poo-poos all over the catharsis.
Also, I think there is a strong connection between the insanity over Mel's blood & gore production and the recent assault, by the legistlative branch, on women's abortion rights. I really think it all comes down to "what if we abort Jesus"? He went unrecognized the last time around, what if this time he will go unrecognized in utero, and those evil abortion doctors will doom humanity, because killing Jesus twice is not okay. So basically, since in the Christian metaphorical-is-literal paradigm, God is in all of us, life is sacred because any and every baby could be Jesus. I know it sounds awful literal-minded, but what separates the crazy fundies from more sophisticated gnostic discourses if not the anvil-like literalmindedness? So as a result we have
a)South Dakota just, like, up and banning abortion, and I'm not just talking about late-term abortion, I mean ALL abortion, with the grumpily conceded exemptions for the life of the mother (no exemptions for rape and incest, might I add).
b) The passage of the Laci and Conner's law, a.k.a. "the unborn victim" law, making an assault on a pregnant woman a double crime by separately criminalizing the assult on the fetus. Welcome to back-door dismantlement of Roe vs. Wade. Granting a fetus legal status and personhood from the time of conception may just trump the "privacy" grounds on which the stature was written back in the day.
c) Then we have John Ashcroft overseeing his personal pet project where for the last month late-term abortion patient records have been subpoenaed from various university hospitals across the country (Michigan, Northewestern, among others), and earlier last week from Planned Parenthood, which
refused. Now either Ashcroft is looking to retroactively prosecute, or is planning a more DIY approach by handing out abortion doctors' information to those websites where they put pictures of abortion doctors with a Target-like bullet aim drawn on their head, and their home addresses and phone numbers. Or it's possible he is spending Homeland Security money to conduct an investigation into whether Jesus has already been aborted. Either way, we're rapidly progressing towards a brave new world of Handmaid's Tale
Oh yeah, if you go to Democracy Now and click on today's 6.30 AM stream you can hear all about how the US kidnapped Aristide and deposited him in Central Africa. You are not going to find anything about it in mainstream press because...well, I could only end this sentence with a tautology, and tautologies this early in the day gives me migraines.
* Axis of hubris: a much more useful concept than Axis of Evil.
So Mad Mel makes a snuff film. I am not really curious to see it, as gore doesn't do anything for me, but I would see it provided I did not pay money for it, since there's no way in hell I'm funding it. But thanks to the media maelstrom around it, I have been bombarded by clips and stills ad nauseum. So here are my two cents: (Warning: spoilers ahead, Jesus gets crucified.) The thing that is interesting to me is that the film embodies the concept of "out of context." The "passion" is an apotheosis of pain and gore, but structurally, outside of the entire New Testament narrative it's not more and no less than an object of fetish. Fetish is kind of like false synecdoche in m.o.: small part substitutes for something large, functionally defining it, even though that obfuscates the full picture. Like, a sexual fetish where a particular part of the body is reified that the entire discourse of sexual attraction in that situation pivots around it. So, Gibson fetishizes the 12 hours of the passion. Ironically, in stripping the passion from its context, he concentrates the apotheosis-as-gateway-to-mass-hysteria aspect of it, but structurally obliterates the catharsis, which, in my opinion, is the role of the "passion chronotope" in the New Testament narrative. Catharsis, as a product of classical tragedies, cannot exist outside of the three acts, except maybe in some pomo self-referential twist, but I think we all know this ain't the case here. The Jesus story in its totality has the three acts, the first pne culminates in his entry into Jerusalem, the second one culminates in the garden of Gethsemane when he allows Judas to kiss him, and the third one goes from arrest to the crucifiction. The resurrection is a coda. Within the parameters of suffering-as-defining-early-Christianity (martyrdom, really, Jesus was the first martyr), the catharsis is dialectically produced by the one-two combo of gruesome suffering and appended sainthood (again, think of any martyrs/saints narratives). Greek tragedies were pretty fucking gruesome too, so nothing new here. But catharsis as such cannot exist, unless tension has had time to build up, unless it is the climax of the apex and the nadir, up and down the axis of hubris*. Of course, hubris is present in the Jesus story, but in a kind of existential, fatalistic way. Jesus dies for his hubris, his crime being his insistance that he is the son of God. Of course, within the narrative, his actual legitimate status as the son of God makes hubris a wrongful projection, rather than a tragic flaw. [sidebar: the irony! Son of God finally came and they crucified him. Even though he had to be crucified for the world to be saved, so it was crucial that he be deployed before the world was ready. This is really starting to seem similar to the Soviet Marxism model, where the leaders persevered with the building of communist paradise despite the fact that Russia did not fulfill the conditions that would make it ready for such undertaking in Marx's book, namely post-agrarian industrialization and a period of sustained capitalism. And then lots of people suffered and died in the agony and the ecstasy.] Jesus isn't a tragic hero, because he lacks a tragic flaw, but nevertheless, for a story that is so faithful to a three-act progression, catharsis is important. In obliterating the structural and narrative context, Mel poo-poos all over the catharsis.
Also, I think there is a strong connection between the insanity over Mel's blood & gore production and the recent assault, by the legistlative branch, on women's abortion rights. I really think it all comes down to "what if we abort Jesus"? He went unrecognized the last time around, what if this time he will go unrecognized in utero, and those evil abortion doctors will doom humanity, because killing Jesus twice is not okay. So basically, since in the Christian metaphorical-is-literal paradigm, God is in all of us, life is sacred because any and every baby could be Jesus. I know it sounds awful literal-minded, but what separates the crazy fundies from more sophisticated gnostic discourses if not the anvil-like literalmindedness? So as a result we have
a)South Dakota just, like, up and banning abortion, and I'm not just talking about late-term abortion, I mean ALL abortion, with the grumpily conceded exemptions for the life of the mother (no exemptions for rape and incest, might I add).
b) The passage of the Laci and Conner's law, a.k.a. "the unborn victim" law, making an assault on a pregnant woman a double crime by separately criminalizing the assult on the fetus. Welcome to back-door dismantlement of Roe vs. Wade. Granting a fetus legal status and personhood from the time of conception may just trump the "privacy" grounds on which the stature was written back in the day.
c) Then we have John Ashcroft overseeing his personal pet project where for the last month late-term abortion patient records have been subpoenaed from various university hospitals across the country (Michigan, Northewestern, among others), and earlier last week from Planned Parenthood, which
refused. Now either Ashcroft is looking to retroactively prosecute, or is planning a more DIY approach by handing out abortion doctors' information to those websites where they put pictures of abortion doctors with a Target-like bullet aim drawn on their head, and their home addresses and phone numbers. Or it's possible he is spending Homeland Security money to conduct an investigation into whether Jesus has already been aborted. Either way, we're rapidly progressing towards a brave new world of Handmaid's Tale
Oh yeah, if you go to Democracy Now and click on today's 6.30 AM stream you can hear all about how the US kidnapped Aristide and deposited him in Central Africa. You are not going to find anything about it in mainstream press because...well, I could only end this sentence with a tautology, and tautologies this early in the day gives me migraines.
* Axis of hubris: a much more useful concept than Axis of Evil.
