Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
nathan1977 said:
You qualified the villain's treatment in the film by saying they were "so Jewish." But when presented with Jesus, Peter, John, Mary, the other widows, etc., all of whom were Jewish and who avoid the Shylockian treatment, you suddenly say they're "non-Jewish" precisely because they don't fit the Shylockian treatment. You can't have your cake and eat it too on this one -- your own racism comes into play based on who you think is "truly" Jewish.
woah. hold it right there. my own racism? and you're attributing quotations to words i haven't written.
i am pointing out precisely what Gibson has done -- give the "bad" Jews the Shylock-treatment. this is a well-understood, well-defined historical stereotype, and the priests in the film certainly live up to it, they're almost Nazi fantasies. the "good" jews have none of these Shylock-characteristics. i never said they weren't Jewish, though within the context of the film, they aren't "Jewish." the quotes matter.
it's Gibson, and you, who are trying to have their cake and eat it too. he's using the Shylock stereotype to emotionally batter the audience and give them easy-to-identify bad guys, yet presenting us with non-Shylock Jews as protaganists that gives you a very easy out when it comes to the rather obvious anti-Semitism embedded in the visual presentation of the Jewish priests in the film.
see! they're not all bad! some of my best friends are black!
simply because i am well-versed in the semiotics of anti-Semetic stereotypes does not in any way belie some kind of racism on my part. not in any way.
[q]Which Aryan features are you talking about? Blonde hair? Blue eyes? Which of those do we see in the film? Whose beautiful bodies do we see? A broken, battered one? [/q]
Jesus looked pretty good in the various flashback scenes, especially the one with Mary when he splashes her face with water -- some nice biceps and pectorals there. i suppose his Aryan features are most apparent when you see the lack of any sort of Semetic features, especially if we were to do a side-by-side comparison with Jesus and with the priests.