debates: context

Lately I've had a few clashes online over the issue of Mel Gibson. I saw Edge of Darkness and I like it. The man makes good movies. Others are interested in promoting a negative image.

I find whatever the topic if I'm engaged in debate with someone the core of the debate is this: It is their goal to eliminate context and my goal to acknowledge context.

That seems to be a common element in any extended, significant fight with me.

I think some people are looking for something to simplify so it is purely something to from which the unconscious can react. People "love to hate" this or that, and wrap themselves in flags or embrace "umbrella" rules that have been extracted from specific incidents or cases. I have no interest in "umbrella" rules, except to reject them. And example would be: "So, the end justifies the means?" No, that's an umbrella someone is trying to hold over a specific case about which you do have an informed opinion and judgment.

Would you kill this person? Would you condone (blank)?

Yes.

So the end justifies the means?

No.

But. . .

One case at a time. No rule or law needs to be extracted from a particular example.
It might be necessary to keep a law in place that I can imagine breaking or circumventing. Subway passengers may need to be herded further along a platform while at the same time I need to find the most efficient way to get to the section of train which best lines up to the access point or escalator I anticipate at my stop. I would not extract an umbrella rule for everyone that says it is okay to skirt around a barrier. It may not be okay, and we don't want chaos, but this isn't about being a role model. It's about CONTEXT. Some will discard every element of context as self serving rationalization or "excuses," but in a novel for example that is exactly what allows us to accept the mini choices and compromises and accidents and failures and increments that deliver us to a strange and controversial turning point in question. For example:

Human beings love to raise someone up and then tear them down and will be relentless.

This principle has many examples, like Jesus Christ being tortured and killed by (or having this cheered on and/or tolerated by and ordered by) his own community. In Catholic Easter services, that community everyone present and all of us recite the taunts and rejections and the call for crucifixion. Wherever Jesus happened to be born in the world, people would have turned against him. It is understood that this is not a special case against Jews. The high priest Ciaphus has about as much in common with a modern rabbi as Judas has to Steven Spielberg. By the same token, I feel no special need to justify or defend white people who condoned slavery or any number of other injustices or atrocities through history. We barely have a connection to our ancestors let alone people who nominally share the same religion.

This is a tired example, but one made vivid and refreshing in the terrifying depiction by Mel Gibson The Passion of the Christ in 2004. I have no problem with this movie. Before it was even shot, there was an uproar discouraging even the decision to tell the story.

The inflammatory and loud position is: How dare anyone suggest the crucifixion was painful? How dare anyone suggest that Jews - any Jews - had culpability?
Do I have that right? Is that the outrage? Because the inverse is a fantasy land where a Roman thug is geared up to flog someone and does it gently, or someone is crucified nicely and painlessly, and where Jews are the only human beings in the world blessed with infallible ancestors. And if Jesus were in fact given special mercy, then why? Also, life gives all of us pain and fear and suffering and the story - true or not - has meaning and value to inspire if the person suffering manages to avoid hatred of his persecutors.

Mel chose to tell that story. He told it well and very persuasively.
Then he was persecuted even further and faced resentment over the financial success of The Passion. He still had offers to act in movies and turned down the excellent World Trade Center by Oliver Stone in order to direct Apocalypto. But by the time Apocalypto was in post production there was pressure on Disney to shelve it. Even though that story thread ended happily, at the time Gibson would have been up against the wall. There was enough stress that he took that deadly drink and fell off the wagon. In this case the wagon was traveling very fast on the highway and attracted police and he was drunk enough to mouth off. The police report was leaked to the internet, and because Mel allegedly babbled a few sentences that could be cribbed in memo books, he was firmly established as a sexist for calling one cop "Sugar Tits" and anti-Semitic for saying to the other cop, "Are you Jewish? Jews start all the wars of the world." Again, did I get that correct? Those two manifestos - the pro-sexist philosophy and the Nazi essay? Because this doesn't sound like someone who should be held up as if his fifty years of life are the sum of human hatred. He doesn't quite sound like he should be having beers with the President of Iran.

When David Geffin announced that he would not work with Gibson, one wonders if it was out of disgust with the above quoted example of "anti-Semitism" or because of Mel's alleged "homophobia." One thing for sure is that a lot of people celebrated the idea that Mr. Family Values and Mr. Christian had a scandal and could be promoted as an icon of hatred. As opposed to Icon Productions boss. The naive view accepts the third act good deed of the criminal as proof of his nature and prefer the third act screw up to be more true than a lifetime of compassion, precision and empathy that came before it. In a culture of sound bytes and youtube rants, a blip of human failing ends up being celebrated.

And are they giving him the nice crucifixion or the relentless one complete with taunts and ridicule? I know, even talking about it opens me up to hear "Poor Mel, his movie has to lag behind Avatar. Poor Mel, in its second week Edge of Darkness has made just under 30 million when its production budget was 80 million. Will it stay in theaters? At the time of writing, I don't know. But it's bigger than whether a movie star opens a film strongly. Even if Mel Gibson the man were a jerk after all, the alleged incident being talked about is not the real issue. It is "Look at me, look at me, I'm a God. I'M THE GOD HERE. Meeeee!" It's the average person trying to plug in to something, to play good guys and bad guys, but mostly to say if you lower the stock market value of "gay" then you must be attacked, or if you lower the stock market value of "Jew" then you must be destroyed. The Passion of the Christ attracted the hardcore Christian audience who voted Republican and were against gay marriage and served up a second term for George W. Bush. Those judgments were about on par with taking one's little children to an R-rated movie like The Passion of the Christ. Those things are connected, but they need not be rolled up together as if they are all the same wad of silly puddy. Fahrenheit 9/11 was a fine movie too, and well attended. The Passion of the Christ did not re-elect George W. Bush. But it's financial success might have been a shot of solidarity in the collective arm of Christians. That fact alone isn't necessarily a negative thing. But if it spilled over into political zeal, it certainly didn't hurt the right wing.

I wish Mel Gibson continued and increased success.

I appreciated The Passion of the Christ, having seen it opening day before the full brunt of the fuss and the debate really caught on. I continue to share it on DVD.

No Jew I know has ever participated in a crucifixion.

Apocalypto is a fine movie deserving of success, a bold vision of someone willing to go to the edge.

Jaguar Paw is a cool Mayan. We like him. Some other Mayans were brilliant in math, science and archetecture and human sacrifice.

I like Jesus, and/or the idea of Jesus that I admire.

I feel gays deserve equality and marriage rights and so on, even though as many of them as us can be irritating twerps and whining cry-babies.

It is unfortunate that George W. Bush got into the White House at all, let alone for two terms.

Michael Moore is vital and interesting. Kevin Smith is one of my favourites and it's a shame he slams Mel and the Passion. The Last Temptation of Christ is a good movie, but very chatty so maybe that's why he likes it.

I don't care what happened with intoxicated, drunk driving Mel and what might have been said or what slurs were slurred. It's for the best that he was at least pulled over and didn't kill anyone. He was properly driven to the station. At least the cops got that part of their job right. But since context is so often thrown out the window and people react for the sake of reacting and use whatever images and scenes and quotes to serve whatever hot-button they wish to promote it is unfortunate that the police report was not kept more secure. People don't have a "right to know" every detail; not all information is equal, nor is all handling and function of it.
Especially when some people disregard the whole drunk driving issue and scold the alcoholic for his ramblings which are merely the unconscious rages that have been repressed by the civilized business person. Never mind that alcoholics say they came to realize they are "powerless over alcohol" and their lives have become unmanageable, and the man takes a drink and the drink takes a drink then the drink takes the man. What folly to get in the face of the alcoholic telling him to time travel back to before he took the fatal drink and simply will himself not to take it.
And folly is a polite word for it.

Anyway, those are a few thoughts on context while watching a DVD.