Mel Gibson’s The Passion
of the Christ can be viewed as the macho director’s
revenge on feminists who have criticized most of his films
for their excessive violence, brutality and misogyny. What
would a true misogynist’s ultimate payback be, if that
misogynist happened to be a devout Catholic as well as a famed
cinema star and director? Why, of course, cast a woman (Rosalinda
Celentano) as Satan! Gibson’s epic treatment of the
final twelve hours of the life of Jesus adds the figure of
Satan, menacing and solitary in crowd scenes, in veil and
robes the color of death. Her gaze menaces the captive Yeshua,
the Christ (Jim Caviezel). Satan and her child, in the film,
are the evil mirror-image of the Madonna and Child. Satan
does not appear in any of the four Gospel accounts of the
Passion. Gibson’s feminine Satan disrupts his otherwise
faithful account of the New Testament story.
Demonizing women by feminizing Satan is an ancient indoor
sport enjoyed by male creators of art since the game began
with Eve in Genesis. Images in medieval manuscripts and monastic
carvings in stone reveal that Eve and Satan (in the form of
a snake) have the same human, female face. The female Satan
reappeared briefly in 1950 when Carl Fisher’s song “Satan
Wears a Satin Gown” (Frankie Laine) reached #28 on Billboard’s
chart of Top 30 Hits. Mel Gibson’s film plays the game.
The central women in The Passion of the Christ, Mary the
mother of Jesus (Maia Morgenstern) and Mary Magdalene (Monica
Bellucci), are passive, one-dimensional figures, present at
the Passion simply to act as witnesses to an inevitable cosmic
tragedy. No real-life Jewish (or Irish or Eskimo) mother could
watch without visible, gut-wrenching agony while her son is
flayed alive before her eyes. Yet in countless close-ups,
Yeshua’s on-screen mother withholds her tears until
hours into the historical horror. Maia Morgenstern’s
character shows almost no human response to the savage beating
that even real-time audiences are wracked by in the film.
She betrays little or no emotion at the awful sight of her
only son being brutalized, dehumanized, reduced to “a
worm and no man” (in the words of the Messianic prophecy
in Psalm 22) when he is stripped, mugged and hacked—for
hours—by Roman warrior-brutes.
Gibson ignores recent research by biblical scholars. The historical
Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute but a woman cured by Jesus
of demonic possession, possibly a cultural misdiagnosis of
mental illness. Even the Vatican has recognized Mary Magdalene
as the “Apostle to the Apostles” because she was
the first friend to whom Jesus appeared after the Resurrection,
the first to bring news of the Resurrection to the men in
hiding. Mary Magdalene, the strong co-leader of the early
Church with Peter (Francesco De Vito in the film) now emerging
from the Gnostic Gospels, is not recognized either by the
Church or Gibson.
The Gospels give Mary, the mother, no dialogue at all during
the Passion. But at one point in the film, Mary asks herself
in Aramaic, “When will he put an end to this suffering?”
The script by Benedict Fitzgerald and Mel Gibson recognizes
a central theological truth of the Christian faith: that Jesus,
fully God yet fully human, willed to die for all men. Mary’s
question is rhetorical. The suffering must continue until
the final moments on the cross, twelve long hours (two movie
hours) after Jesus’ betrayal by his friend Judas (Luca
Lionello).
The Passion of the Christ is a man’s film. It is an
almost completely physical experience, not a spiritual one.
It’s about endurance, not holiness. There is very little
evidence of the love at the core of Jesus’ teaching,
and almost no human feeling at all except pain. Only in one
brief flashback does the film show a human mother running
to protect her human boy when he falls. But The Passion of
the Christ, a brilliant cinematic gem, does exactly what it
set out to do. It forces an audience to watch, in vivid, brutal
detail, the earth-bound human pain and sacrifice of the Passion,
but not its transcendence. The transcendent love of the Christ
is another story, better told by mother and child.
Editors Note: Kathleen McGrory, Ph.D., is President of MKM
Associates, a communications consulting firm, President-Emerita
of Hartford College for Women, published author, Holy Grail
scholar, former Executive Director of the Society for Values
in Higher Education at Georgetown University, Dean of Arts
and Sciences and Academic VP in the Connecticut State University
System. In October of 2002, Kathleen co-produced the highly
acclaimed national conference, Women ~ Business ~ Spirituality:
A New Formula for Leadership www.WomenBusinessSpirituality.com.
Her email is KMcGrory@WomenBusinessSpirituality.com
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