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"To those who complain about the violence of my film I have "Crucify him!" —Mark 15:13 During the Roman Catholic Good Friday liturgy the congregation repeats the words of "the crowd" who, "stirred up" by the Jewish chief priests, demand that Pontius Pilate release to them the murderer, Barabbas, and crucify Jesus of Nazareth. The theological grounds for the identification are clear—Christ died for the sins of all human beings, hence all human beings participate in nailing Christ to the cross. Mel Gibson, writer, director, and producer of The Passion of the Christ, underlines the theological claim and its implications for him as a Christian when he films his own hand grasping a thick iron nail just before it is pounded into Jesus' (Jim Caviezel) flesh. (Perhaps more to the point, Gibson publicizes the fact.) Beginning in the Middle Ages, manuals of prayer and meditation, devotional images, and visionary texts call on Christians to reenact Christ's sacrifice in similarly dramatic ways. A central goal of the religious life of the Middle Ages was the imaginative recreation of Christ's extraordinary suffering and gruesome death. Narrative accounts of Christ's life and death, often accompanied by visual illustrations of key moments in the drama, provided guidebooks for this meditative practice. The texts and images are often excruciating, elaborating in seeming endless detail on the cruelties Christ sustained. Authors speculate on the manner in which Christ was flogged, mocked, and crucified, often adding moments of torture and degradation not found within the Gospels. The widely read thirteenth-century Meditations on the Passion of Christ gives two different accounts of how Jesus was nailed to the cross, thereby exploring a wide range of the bodily indignities to which he might have been subjected. One particularly adept practitioner of the art of Passion meditation, the Italian laywoman Angela of Foligno (d. 1310), devotes herself to a long meditation on the piece of flesh pushed out of Christ's hand by the nail that pierced it. Meditation is a kind of memory work and meditation on Christ's life and death inscribes the central moments of salvation history in the heart and mind of the Christian. There are many reasons for the extreme violence of Christian meditative practice. In the medieval West, Christ's death was his central redemptive act. Meditation on Christ's Passion demands that the believer recognize her role in Christ's death so that she might understand the ramifications of her sinfulness and feel true sorrow for her sins. Through compassion for Christ's suffering, the sinner feels contrition, shares in Christ's pain through her compassion and remorse, and thereby participates in her own redemption. In addition, violence plays a crucial role in eliciting memory and emotion. According to the medieval theories of memory studied by the historian Mary Carruthers in The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200 (Cambridge, 1998), Passion narratives heighten the violence of Christ's final hours and death because 1) violent images are more memorable than nonviolent ones; 2) violent images carry with them emotions of grief and fear that render the images even more memorable; and 3) through these emotion-laden images the believer scares, grieves, and shames him or herself. The theological centrality of Christ's death and the requirements of memory, then, fit together seamlessly. Although some Passion narratives focus solely on the material provided by the four Gospels, the desire for detailed apprehension of Christ's suffering leads to ever more intense embellishment over the course of the later Middle Ages. In the Meditations on the Life of Christ, the unknown author explains to his audience:
The author justifies his additions and imaginative recreations on the basis of an understanding of scriptural interpretation derived from Augustine (d. 430). Augustine's handbook on biblical interpretation and preaching, On Christian Doctrine, argues that any interpretation of the Bible that leads to the love of God and of one's neighbor is warranted. Similarly, the author of the Meditations insists that
The goal of meditative practice is to make Christ's Passion so vivid to the believer that he cannot not see it enacted before his mind's eye. Only a very few adepts ever attain the goal, but for some women and men, meditation on Christ's suffering and death not only becomes involuntary but also engenders supernatural visions that provide further details about that suffering on which the visionary (and often others) can then meditate. The Carthusian prioress, Marguerite of Oingt (d. 1310), for example, justifies her additions to the passion narrative by proclaiming that although she does not know if the account she gives (of Jesus hit on the head with a bowl) is in the Bible, she does know that
The medieval Christian tradition of meditation on, contemplative of, and visionary experience about Christ's death continues well into the modern era, as witnessed by the visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774–1824), a German Augustinian nun whose visions were recorded by Clemens Brentano and serve as one of the many sources for Gibson's film. Although Gibson acknowledges the influence of Emmerich's visions and hence self-consciously places the film within the context of medieval and modern devotion to Christ's Passion, he simultaneously insists on the film's biblical basis. The conflation of meditative traditions with scriptural texts also occurs in Emmerich. In a preface to the Passion visions, the author, presumably Brentano, notes that "whoever compares the following meditations with the short history . . . given in the Gospel will discover some slight differences between them." Yet the author goes on to insist that "the following pages will appear to the attentive reader rather a simple and natural concordance of the Gospels than a history differing in any point of the slightest importance from that of Scripture." Some of the episodes in Gibson's movie that bear no relationship to anything in the four Gospels—Satan's (Rosalinda Celentano) appearance in the garden of Gethsemane, for example, or Pilate's wife (Claudia Gerini) providing Mary the mother of Jesus (Maia Morgenstern) with white cloth, with which Mary then wipes up the blood of her flayed son—have their origin in Emmerich's visions. Others—the woman (Sabrina Impacciatore) wiping Jesus' face with her mantle as he walks (in Gibson's film he more often crawls) the road to Calvary—are rooted in much more ancient, albeit similarly non-biblical, traditions. (Others Gibson appears simply to have invented.) The Meditations on the Life of Christ and other medieval texts insist that elaborations of the Gospels are justified if they do not contradict the spirit of scripture. In the context of modern debates about the absolute authority of the Bible, on the other hand, Brentano equates Emmerich's visionary elaborations of the Gospels with the Gospels themselves. Gibson, perhaps not surprisingly given his desire to appeal to both Protestant and Catholic viewers, follows Emmerich. Similarly, many who find the film powerful argue that it depicts "what really happened," and, adopting the rhetoric provided by Gibson, claim that the film's rendition of Jesus' final hours and death is rooted in a literal reading of the Bible. These appeals, however, crucially distort how the film itself and the traditions on which it is based operate. The powerful effect these scenes have on many viewers depends not on their claimed biblical origins, but on their extraordinary violence and the constant pressure placed on the viewer toward empathy for the victim of that violence. The film seems real or literal, not because it follows the letter of the Bible, but because of the extremity of the violence it depicts. (Stories of the injuries Jim Caviezel sustained during filming reinforce the illusion that the violence depicted within the movie is real.) The double emphasis—on violence and compassionate identification with its victim—again has its origins in the meditative and visionary traditions from which Gibson draws. Nothing in the Gospels enjoins the reader to share in Christ's suffering, to identify with Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalen at the foot of the cross as they suffer with Christ in his agony, or to take on Christ's suffering as one's own. Narratives like the Meditations on the Life of Christ, however, continually remind the reader that her salvation depends on compassionate meditation.
The tradition of meditation on Christ's Passion, then, continuously writes the onlooker into the story. The Meditations on the Life of Christ not only directly addresses its reader, calling on her (and by extension us) to "behold, the Lord Jesus . . . crucified and extended on the cross so that each of His bones can be numbered, as He complained by the prophet (Psalm xxi, 18)," but also pays close attention to those who were present looking on as Christ suffered and died. The reader is asked not only to see Christ, but also to "see how desolate [Mary the mother of Jesus] is, consumed with sadness all the day." In meditating on Christ's Passion one identifies not only with Christ, but also—and in some cases more immediately—with Mary as she identifies with Christ. Moreover, the emphasis on the onlookers escalates as Christ nears the cross.
Film is, of course, a radically different genre than the stories, prayers, and relatively static devotional images produced during the Middle Ages. Through film, Gibson allows his audience to see and hear a richly imagined, intensely corporeal meditative reenactment of the Passion. As a result, the film and the extremity of its violence do much of the work for the viewer, almost inevitably arousing strong emotions. (I know of only a very few viewers, mostly disaffected Roman Catholics, who simply found the film boring.) Unlike the medieval and modern tradition of Passion narratives, however, the film does not—and perhaps as film cannot—tell the viewer how to interpret the violence. Medieval Passion narratives, like the Roman Catholic Good Friday liturgy, insistently remind the reader that compassion and horror are the proper responses to Christ's suffering. They also insist on positioning the reader, in her sinfulness, as a participant in Christ's death. Her compassion, then, leads to guilt and remorse, which contribute to her salvation. The film viewer, on the other hand, receives few explicit directives for how to position himself in relationship to that which he sees and hears. His position is more passive and more voyeuristic than one actively engaged in the process of meditation and so, at least potentially, more sadistic than compassionate. (Although sadism and masochism come together in the medieval Passion tradition as they do in Gibson's film. This, together with the related movement between homosociality, homoeroticism, and homophobia within medieval and modern devotion to the Passion, will require another paper.) Without directives for how to understand one's emotions, the viewer's fear, disgust, repugnance, guilt, or compassion is often unreflectively shaped by how he situates himself in relationship to the Christian drama.
One way in which Gibson implicates the viewer in the film, again following the meditative Passion tradition, is through visual elaboration of the role of the onlookers to Christ's Passion. Each provides a guide to how a person differently situated with regard to the Christian story of suffering and redemption will respond to the violence depicted. Although I cannot elaborate the point here, many of the positions critics and viewers voice about the film are found within the film itself, in the differing reactions to the extremity of Jesus' suffering depicted within it. (One key to the anti-Semitism of the medieval meditative tradition and of Gibson's film—both of which far surpass the anti-Judaism of their scriptural sources—lies here. Jewish characters demonstrate the disgust and occasionally the pleasure elicited by Christ's suffering in unbelieving onlookers. Simon of Cyrene [Jarreth J. Merz] then enacts the possibility that Jewish repugnance and indifference can be transformed into compassion and hence into faith.) As in the Passion narratives, representations of the onlooker to Jesus' suffering proliferate as events unfold. The depiction of Christ's crucifixion occurs in a flurry of jump cuts—from the brutal tying down of Jesus' arm on the cross, to John's (Hristo Jivkov) face, to a flashback of the Last Supper, to a nail clutched by an unseen Roman soldier's hand, to the faces of Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalen (Monica Belluci), and John, to yet another flashback of the Last Supper. (Unfortunately, I do not have space here to discuss the role of the flashbacks in the film.) The constant movement from brutality to the onlookers' horrified responses to that brutality continues unabated. Jesus' arm is stretched and broken so that it will fit the hole in the cross through which the nail must pass. Mary the mother of Jesus and other women lament. Jesus cries out, "Father, forgive them." John's anguished face appears. Nails are pounded into Christ's hand. We see Mary the mother of Jesus, then Mary Magdalen. Blood drips through a hole on the back of the cross. Later, as the Roman soldiers flip the cross and pound down the nails abutting from it, we see Mary Magdalen, first prostrate on the ground looking under the cross at Jesus' face, then rising up over it, her face wrenched in anguish. More violence, more loving depictions of Jesus' broken and fractured body, and more distraught faces follow, interspersed with flashbacks to the Last Supper and Jesus words to his disciples. The film, like the Passion narratives from which it derives, renders concrete the identification of the privileged onlookers' suffering with the suffering of Christ most prominently in the figure of Mary, the mother of Jesus. When the Roman soldiers allow Mary and John to approach the foot of the cross, Mary kisses Jesus' feet and for the remainder of the film her face is smeared with blood. (After Jesus' death, a Roman soldier pierces Jesus' side and blood and water pour over those standing at the foot of the cross. Bloody identification with Christ's suffering then moves from Mary to include John and the newly converted Roman soldier.) Throughout these final moments of the film, the images become more and more static, increasingly resembling medieval and early modern religious paintings, sculptures, woodcuts, and manuscript illuminations derived from and often used as pictorial aides to the meditation on Christ's Passion. The two Marys, John, two Roman soldiers, and an old Jew (presumably Joseph of Arimathea) take Jesus down from the cross—the deposition. Mary holds her dead son in her arms—the pietà. The film then cuts to a pile of objects: Jesus' garment, the ropes and nails with which he was hung from the cross, and the crown of thorns—the arma Christi. In English, these are "the weapons of Christ" with which Christ conquered sin and the devil. Another pietà follows. Here, as in many medieval and early modern images, we see Jesus' entire body. Mary holds his head and upper body, John kneels by his side, and Mary Magdalen weeps over his feet. Another shot of the "weapons of Christ" appears. Most tellingly, perhaps, the Passion ends not with an image of Christ, but with a long shot of Mary's bloody, tear-stained face. The film, of course, does not end here. Instead, the screen fades to black and light slowly returns as if from behind a stone rolled from the front of a cave. Yet Gibson's depiction of the resurrected Christ lacks the imaginative force of his crucified Jesus. There is no joy in this Christ's face, no peace in his departure from the tomb. Instead the martial music, especially when coupled with the extremity of the violence just undergone by Christ and the reminder of that violence in a shot of his scarred hand, suggests vengeance rather than salvation. The film foreshadows the coming vengeance in two key scenes: when the bad thief mocks Jesus on the cross, a crow pecks out his eye and later, when Jesus dies, we see the destruction of the Temple and the accompanying distress of the High Priest who had sat in judgment over Jesus. (Revenge is a familiar motif within the Passion traditions—most often at the expense of the Jews. The risen Christ's apparent vengefulness, however, brings the film much closer to Kill Bill than Gibson seems ready, consciously at least, to acknowledge.) For many viewers, The Passion's extreme violence reinforces (perhaps even elicits) belief in Christ through detailed attention to the extremity and viscerality of his suffering. By juxtaposing Jesus' almost continual torture and seemingly inexhaustible bodily anguish with the relatively bloodless crucifixions of the two thieves, Gibson's film seems premised on the theological claim that no human being has ever suffered as Jesus suffered. (Moreover, devotion and faith—evidenced, for example, in the conversions of Simon of Cyrene and of the Roman centurion—are elicited by Christ's sheer physical endurance rather than by the power of his words or his deeds.) In the face of the atrocities committed daily throughout the world and throughout history, claims to the exceptional nature of Christ's suffering are historically, theologically, and ethically untenable. Yet that one human being would willingly undergo suffering in solidarity with the suffering of others—for the Christian believer, that God would become human and take on the suffering of human flesh and blood—can and does offer comfort and hope to many, including many who are themselves the victims of violence and injustice. The seeming inevitability of extreme physical suffering during the European Middle Ages renders this a likely contributory cause of medieval fascination with the Passion. In the end, I do not think this is Gibson's vision. Yet the position of the onlooker inevitably shapes what she sees, rendering it a vision available to those who watch Gibson's film with different eyes. Amy Hollywood is Professor of Theology and the History of Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School. In 1999-2000, she was a Visiting Scholar in HDS's Women's Studies in Religion Program. This essay will appear in a forthcoming book to be published by the University of Chicago Press.
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