In Reply to: Why I decided not to see Gibson's Passion of Christ posted by Carol (AG) on February 24, 2004 at 17:35:20:
I an not Catholic, but I work with directly with an Archdiocese on a large annual Catholic event.
I was interested a couple of years ago when they retired some of the processional crosses we had made for them several years back. They said, that for now on, all processional crosses had to have a "corpus" (body) attached.
What you wrote kind of reminded me of that, in terms of the focus on suffering.
I remember being at a summer camp as a teen run by the Conservative Baptists of America. I really didn't know what I was getting into there, I just went with friends.
I remember a real fire and brimstone sermon one night where the preacher went into very graphic detail about how Christ suffered. I remember wondering how he came up with all those details, given what we have to work with from the actual Bible. It did get my attention, and I'll never forget it.
Having worked in the entertainment industry in my younger days, I have a very strong opinion that the primary purpose for films is to entertain the public. I'm not sure if I want to see "Passion" either. I don't know if it is right to sell tickets to this kind of material.
I also object to a lot of the marketing methods, which include claims of miracles on the set. They don't settle on minor miracles, they claim that the actor who played Jesus was stuck by ligntening, fire shot out of his ears, and his hair got frizzy. They claim that the blind regained site, and the deaf began to hear. When I worked as an extra in Hollywood, I was lucky just to get paid the $25.00 day rate.
PT Barnum must be looking up with great delight at those tactics.
I just think it's a lot of hype about blood and gore. I really don't see it as appropriate.