h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Maniac,

I'm glad you started a thread about this. It needs discussion.

I went to see the movie just the other night. I thought I was unshockable, Gibson proved me wrong. It was shattering, for all the wrong reasons. What struck me was that it was ultimately horrible and yet unimaginative. Why? Because he was able to visualise every gruesome blow, every spit, every lash, every cut, particularly during the scourging, but he could not imagine the agony of the death on the cross.

What do I mean by this? Every account that survives from Roman authors agree ( according to the secondary sources I've read, especially concerning the Shroud of Turin and its authenticity ) that crucifixion was the most painful, and degrading death a brutal regime could dream up, and they were big into gruesome death. But after the obsessively gorey scourging, and the horrific climb to Golgotha, the crucifixion was strangely passive. Yes the nailing and so on was as obsessively graphic as the scourging, but the fact of the matter seems to be that torn between unspeakable agony as the body hangs by the wrists,( not the hands, which would have torn off the nails ) to relieve which the body pushes down on the nailed feet ( according to the archaeological evidence, the nails would have gone through the ankle and heel bones), causing equal, if not worse pain, the crucified literally writhe their way to death, unable to breathe, having to haul themselves up, again and again on the nailed wrists, for each agonised gasp of breath, finally dying of exhaustion.

But Gibson's Christ, being bound to the received Catholic iconography, just hangs there, in pain, yes, but not delivering the kind of shock that Gibson indulged in during the scourging. Furthermore, medically speaking, had the scourging inflicted the gruesome cuts Gibson displays, Christ would have bled to death long before the crufixion. Again, the Shroud of Turin ( which I believe to represent at least a true image of a scourged, crucified, thorn-crowned man...the recent carbon dating to medieval times was seriously flawed by contamination ) shows that the effect of the flagrum was to inflict a multitude of severe bruises, rather than cuts, painful, but not lethal.

Flogging in the British Navy usually caused death ( without metal strips in the cat o' ninetails ) after more than four dozen lashes. A flogging through the fleet was a death sentence, but the victim was usually dead long before the sentence was completed.

However, the real failure of the imagination was that Gibson readily imagined the gore, but fails to convey the love, or the sense of oneness-with-God that gives the death its meaning. And his imagining of the Resurrection was such an anti-climax, when for a believing Christian, it is the Resurrection above all else that gives the story of Christ its relevance.

For me, after recovering from the shocking violence, and it was the most shocking film I have ever seen, ever, I came away with the depressing realisation that man is still devising horrific ways of inflicting pain and death on man, woman and child. And if Christ was to preach the same message today, in , say, China, he would be put to death quite as brutally all over again.

As for the anti-Semitism, the movie basically followed the Gospel texts, which are deeply anti-Semitic, and, being the version the Pauline church accepted, strangely neutral towards Rome.

I wrote a poem about it, which I'll put in the next reply, as I'll have to find and copy it.

Here's the poem:

LOVE SENT HIM DOWN

Love sent him down into the dust of time
Love came to show that our love's path is his
Love broke the bread and blessed the cup of wine
Love turned his cheek, love kissed the betrayer's kiss
Love voiced the crowds who screamed for love in death
Love raised the scourge and flayed love's shattered spine
Love wove the thorns, love gasped each blood-choked breath
Love carved the cross, that love may carry mine
Love lay battered down, while love drove in the nails
Love bled in love, and bleeding loved the earth
Love bears me up whenever my love fails
Love died in love to bring new love to birth
Love died embracing every mortal pain
Love died so love need never die again.

Well written

I was numbed by the film. I also thought I was unshockable.
It certainly has caused a global stir!

I saw the flick yesterday, and came out with my ingoing attitudes and smallness of mind intact. Today it's making me think; and what I'm thinking is, it would take a bit of death and rebirth if you want to change something in your life, and this is a powerful dramatisation of such sacrifice. But I also picked up (at Chaiwallah's request) the booklet they're handing out at the cinema, "A Guide to the Passion", and that brings me back to the exclusively Roman slant of the film. I was brought up an Anglican, so a lot of the imagery is not for me -- Veronica's handkerchief, the special veneration of Mary, and so on. I agree with the French cinema chain who refuse to show this picture on the grounds that it is fascist propoganda; it is just a modern reworking of the medieval Mystery plays.

My guess going in (which was confirmed) was that Gibson had portrayed the suffering Christ as the role model for the suffering self going through the hell and rebirth of getting off drugs or drink (as apparently Gibson did, with the help of the Passion story). Of all the things religion does, helping addicts out of their prisons is one of its spectacular successes.

But a few things jarred for me (oops, unfortunate choice of word, apologies to AA); bringing in the serpent to get its head bruised, for one; having Jesus work in a most uncarpenterish workshop, inventing the tall table (what has deity got to do with invention?), and the various Catholic insertions . . . and there was a definite hiatus in the subtitles while "The Jews" shouted something that has been reported as saying "His blood be upon our heads and our children's".

The cross became splattered with blood understandably as the procession began, but was miraculously wiped clean for Simon of Cyrene.

The soldiers at the cross were dicing for Jesus's robe which was a valuable item in the gospels, but a rag in the film. Incidentally the Romans start out as convincing skinheads, but gradually grow hair, and end up not far from the Life of Brian in their final confusion. (Indeed the cheesemakers were not far off-screen at the Sermon on the Mount.) The showering of the soldier in a gush of pulmonary fluid was not really edifying either.

I laughed out loud when Satan was revealed to be Sinéad O'Connor. A mean touch there, Mel. Incidentally her booger-maggot is derived directly from The Epic of Gilgamesh, where unlike here it is pregnant with meaning.

But we should separate problems with the film from problems with the gospels. I always and increasingly find the gospels viciously anti-semitic and disgustingly appeasing to the Romans.

The Guide booklet adds to the divisive message by denouncing pluralism as anti-religious, and it has the gall to link the weird image of a "hideous demon child" in Satan's arms with "our contemporary culture's frequent disdain of children (as revealed through the widespread acceptance of abortion and the reality of child abuse)" -- a masterly piece of tendentious juxtaposition.

There is a big problem in trying (as medieval iconography did) to portray moral ugliness as physical ugliness, and vice versa. The pretty Christ distances us, rather than welcoming us. It is evil that is pretty. The ancient wrong is continued in horror movies that have monsters with limited mobility, like Frankenstein's, promoting revulsion at disabled people's misfortune.

But the biggest problem I have with the whole message of this film, this book, and the Catholic Church, is the way it all hangs on a forcing of language. If someone were certain he was the one and only Son of God, then one could offer oneself meaningfully as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind. But there is no possible meaning to such unique certainty. It is absolutely indistinguishable from delusion. The dogma that God's mind was changed by the incident, symbolised by the rending of the veil of the temple, is . . . (there's no word for it).

Such meaning as the crucifixion has is given by the agreement of the faithful. The church had a message once that was offered (one supposes) in humility; it is utterly unacceptable as now offered in such complete lack of humility.

You can't help loving the bloody guy. It's the corporation I don't like.

In this country we are used to Catholic brow-beating, and perhaps exquisitely sensitive to it. I feel with Oscar Wilde: when asked about his religion he said "Well, you know, I don't think I have any. I am an Irish Protestant."

I went to see "Shaun of the Dead" last night. Similar amounts of gore, though not dwelt on in such long takes . . . but at least it had characters you could believe in.

Still thinking about the Passion . . . the fact that religion is indistinguishable fom delusion still doesn't destroy its value. But do the benefits of religion justify putting out falsehoods on its behalf? I don't think so. Call me naive.

I haven't seen the film, nor do I intend to (I'm squeamish and can't really be bothered).

The reference to Veronica is interesting, as it was accepted dogma in the Catholic Church when I was growing up. It is also one of the 14 Stations of the Cross in all RC churches. The story goes that Christ asked her for a towel to wet his face, and after she gave it to him, an image of his face remained in the towel afterwards. What's interesting is that the name "Veronica" literally means "True Image". Co-incidence or What? I think "What" is more likely...

She wouldn't be the first to be named for her attribute; Lucifer springs to mind, but there's lots more. In the cathedral at Dieppe there is a statue of St Expédit trampling on the serpent of Procrastination.