According to the TNR article, Mel Gibson's movie about the crucifixion of Jesus makes no attempt to be historically accurate and is based on the same Vatican II-rejecting theology that his father subscribes to. If the final result follows the script that Fredriksen and her Catholic and Jewish colleagues reviewed, it will be a cinematic version of a traditional Passion Play. Throughout Europe for 1000 years, Passion Plays reliably inflamed hatred of Jews which was expressed in mob violence (as Fredriksen puts it, "dress rehearsals for the Holocaust").
This won't happen in America in the 21st century, but that's not the point. Imagine that Robert Byrd, for example, financed a movie about the Civil War that claimed to be historically accurate, yet referred to discredited eugenics theories and featured stereotypes of blacks that have historically precipitated lynchings. Such a movie would not result in lynchings of African-Americans here and now in the US. But it could certainly influence the kind of individual who goes on killing sprees against minorities. Certainly the intentions of its producer can be legitimately questioned, and declarations of his love and respect for African-Americans is bound to sound a bit disingenuous.
And as Fredriksen points out, although this film is not dangerous to Jews in America,
I shudder to think how The Passion will play once its subtitles shift from English to Polish, or Spanish, or French, or Russian. When violence breaks out, Mel Gibson will have a much higher authority than professors and bishops to answer to.Tacitus - whose blog and commenters I respect - tends to have a blind spot about these things. He is airily dismissing the issue, apparently not having learned much from the "blood libel" thread, where he eventually grudgingly admitted his critics had a few points. I think he doesn't take the physical danger seriously, and views our anxiety as a lot of whiny political correctness. But there is such a thing as murderous violence motivated by hatred of a group, and it is the height of naivete or willful blindness to deny that the same images and lies can precipitate a new round of violence.
UPDATE: More on Mel's "traditionalist Catholic" movement," and even more clarification that Gibson follows in his dad's footsteps. Also, the report from the Catholic scholars group, who make it very clear that they
called together by expert staff members of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Anti-Defamation League to review a version of the screenplay of the Mel Gibson film, The Passion.and that their
evaluation was founded upon magisterial teaching documents of the Catholic Church, which were extensively quoted in a four page appendix in our eighteen-page confidential evaluation. Suggestions that our criteria for evaluating the screenplay were not authoritative Catholic teaching compromise the magisterium's absolute rejection of the long-lived "Christ-killers" libel against Jews, a rejection enshrined in the Second Vatican Council declaration Nostra Aetate and subsequent Vatican and episcopal conference documents.UPDATE: Tacitus links, and they're discussing it a bit over there.
UPDATE: However, I don't think it's anywhere near this big a deal.
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