Once upon a time Mel Gibson was a respected filmmaker. Before a drunken antisemitic rant to a cop revealed (or confirmed suspicions of) his harboring reactionary beliefs about Jews, women, and minorities, Gibson was an A-list movie star and director with accolades and awards. Looking back, I think The Passion of the Christ was the first real dent in his Hollywood reputation — for the general public, at least. To this day it is Exhibit A in the case establishing his antisemitism.
This cartoon addresses the concerns about the film’s influence. I grew up in a very Catholic city with a good sized Jewish population, so as the controversy around the film was growing, I was pretty familiar with its key elements. I had also studied passion plays and morality plays as part of my undergraduate English literature studies; identifying the antisemitic elements was part of the analysis. And I have several Evangelicals in my family, so the “Jews killed my God” accusation was not new. As a nonreligious person myself, this particular charge always struck me as theologically confused. If your god is dead, why are you worshiping him? If resurrected, then why hold the grudge? If God is real, can He really be killed at all? This seems like a flimsy excuse to persecute and slaughter people for thousands of years.
