You wouldn't believe how much hate mail I got from posting a little link to Mel Gibson's Passion with a different soundtrack…but maybe Chris Clarke can take some of the heat now.
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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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« Sensitivity, charm and cleverness: very sexy | Main | Another longshot Koufax possibility »
Fanning the flames
Category: Godlessness • Humor
Posted on: February 22, 2006 5:14 PM, by PZ Myers
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It's Euphemism Week! These words are banned: cock cunt damn fuck kirshenbaum mooney shit vegemite
Comments
Posted by: CanuckRob | February 22, 2006 5:47 PM
Hate mail? Who could hate Benny Hill?
Posted by: Zeno | February 22, 2006 5:48 PM
I'm sure the main complaint is that the parody is disrespectful (or actually blasphemous) and in poor taste. True believers are nothing if not refined and tasteful—or maybe not: God is kitsch.
Posted by: dbpitt | February 22, 2006 6:19 PM
Meh. Don't listen to them. I bet Jesus would have loved it if he were still alive.
Posted by: Mikko Sandt | February 22, 2006 6:24 PM
Hate mail? Self irony is something our Christian comrads need...
Posted by: Bruce | February 22, 2006 6:29 PM
Here is another one set to "Sometimes When We Touch"
http://www.passionchrist.info/
Posted by: spencer | February 22, 2006 10:13 PM
I'm sure the main complaint is that the parody is disrespectful (or actually blasphemous) and in poor taste.
Yeah, well, you could just as easily make the same complaint about the original version.
Posted by: Chris Clarke | February 22, 2006 10:33 PM
I bet Jesus would have loved it if he were still alive.
s/still/ever
Posted by: Robert S. | February 22, 2006 10:34 PM
Wow, I hadn't seen much footage from that film before. It makes A Clockwork Orange look like Bambi. And the scenes where Mary Magdalene kisses Christ and bloodies her lips and sprayed with his blood when his side is pierced are almost inarguably fetishistic.
It's porn for lovers of violence.
Posted by: Ronald Brak | February 22, 2006 11:34 PM
"Who would have thought the old Messiah to have had so much blood in him?"
Posted by: Marc | February 22, 2006 11:44 PM
As porn for violence fetishists, after a nice whipping, it gets kinda old, with Jesus just tripping and falling all the time so that it's pretty dull by the time you're ready for the money shot.
I did like the use of ancient languages, which is what interests me most about Gibson's latest effort, which is all in Ancient Mayan.
Posted by: Troutnut | February 22, 2006 11:45 PM
I wish CNN would play that clip. Then we could have a contest between the Christians rioting about that and the Muslims rioting about the political cartoons... a jolly old riot-off!
Posted by: John C. Randolph | February 23, 2006 12:23 AM
Oh, come on! Show us the hate mail! That stuff is hilarious.
-jcr
Posted by: John C. Randolph | February 23, 2006 12:31 AM
Of course, the main thing that this footage reminds me of, is that the Romans were the Third Reich of their time. Brutal, stupid, vicious, insane, and uncultured. Of course, so were nearly all of the cultures around them, too.
Human progress is the triumph of individual liberty over kings, over superstion, over slaveowners, over ignorance, and over poverty.
-jcr
Posted by: Graculus | February 23, 2006 12:50 AM
I did like the use of ancient languages, which is what interests me most about Gibson's latest effort, which is all in Ancient Mayan.
You forgot the sarcasm tags.
Posted by: Joseph O'Donnell | February 23, 2006 3:23 AM
I found that hillarious myself. Mostly because I don't like Mel Gibson actually now that I think of it.
I also happen to have a sense of humor, though I have been meaning to find a reason to riot lately....
Posted by: Ronald Brak | February 23, 2006 3:34 AM
I was surprised to see the sadistic expressions on the faces of the Roman soliders. You'd think that realistically they'd probably be rather bored and would be thinking, quite literally, "Oh Christ, not another crucifixion."
Posted by: Ick of the East | February 23, 2006 3:39 AM
Pfeh, Christians.
We make fun of their one-day torture story and they get all weepy.
Then they happily let us know that WE will be tortured, not for just one day, but for ALL ETERNITY!
If we can laugh off the insult, why can't they? Don't they have a personal, strengthening relationship with the eternal, all-powerful creator of the Universe?
My mind boggles. But at least some of us have one.
Posted by: Andrew Brown | February 23, 2006 5:52 AM
I think it's horrible, not becasue it's blasphemous against Christ but because it's blasphemous against anyone who has ever been tortured to death. Putting a silly soundtrack on such a representation and then laughing because you're cleverer than the people who don't laugh is uncomfortably close to the poeple who laughed - and laugh - at real executions and deaths by torture.
Posted by: Magnus Malmborn | February 23, 2006 5:59 AM
to Chris Clark: geek.
Posted by: Andrew | February 23, 2006 7:08 AM
I think your correspondent jcr forgets that this is a film, and what's more a Mel Gibson film. So, its not real history, much like Gibson's distortion of Scottish history in Braveheart, and portrays only the message Gibson wants to get across. I have been a student of Roman History (with a doctorate) for approx. 20 years and the epithets jcr uses to describes Rome are really misplaced. They were certainly nothing like the Third Reich. On the contrary Romans were smart, very cultured, inventive, and amazingly light with their bureaucratic hand. To describe them as vicious misses an understanding of Roman social and moral values (and indeed those of the ancient world generally), and to call them insane is really just silly.
Posted by: NelC | February 23, 2006 7:12 AM
It's funny because it isn't about someone being tortured* but because it's about someone pretending to be tortured, i.e. acting. My reading is that it isn't Christ's suffering being cocked a snook at, it's Mel Gibson's pretensions.
* Except maybe the audiences for Passion.
Posted by: chris | February 23, 2006 7:31 AM
Laughed my ass off! ...i'm going to hell.
Posted by: gravitybear | February 23, 2006 7:52 AM
I have not seen Gibson's film. It looks like Christian violence porn. Gratuitousness (is that a word?) for its own sake.
But c'mon, the Benny Hill soundtrack was hilarious!
Posted by: Dave S. | February 23, 2006 8:17 AM
Sounds like some of you here need a dose of good old Jack Chick to set you on the path of riteousness. :)
Posted by: Jake | February 23, 2006 8:25 AM
Wow, I'm glad I didn't see the film. Is it really just those torture images for the whole thing? Looks terrible, and sickening.
Posted by: Jake | February 23, 2006 8:26 AM
Oh, and I second the request that you post the hate mail. I love hate mail!
Posted by: Rheinhard | February 23, 2006 10:00 AM
Can I third the hate-mail request? Always good for a laugh. :)
Posted by: Anonymous | February 23, 2006 11:20 AM
Professor Myers,
Please don't think of this as ordinary hate mail.
I just needed to let you know that tonight I shall be leading six hindred followers in chanting "Death to Myers", announcing a reward for your head (andy yes, your pharyngula too, if we can find it), level the nearest Pizza Hut to the ground, and finally set fire to the lower floors of the Pharyngulan Embassy.
Thank you for giving me something to do.
Posted by: CanuckRob | February 23, 2006 2:42 PM
The last commenter is onto something. A Pharyngulan embassy presupposes a Pharyngula nation state. Perhaps this is what the godless need, their own homeland, where we can live in freedom from religion. We would welcome tourists but they must declare that they do not believe in any supernatural entities. Currency would have to say In Reason We Trust or something sensible. Newspapers would be encouraged to publish cartoons mocking anything and everything. The national holiday would obviously be February 12. October 31 would be celebrated but only costumes involving cephalopods would be encouraged.
Posted by: Wally Whateley | February 23, 2006 3:43 PM
I'm glad I passed on "The Passion" for the same reasons I'm glad I passed on "Saw," "Hostel," and "Cannibal Apocalypse." Movies that glorify torture suck.
Posted by: Robert S. | February 23, 2006 7:33 PM
"Oh Christ, not another crucifixion."
Absolutely, the line of the week! If that wasn't in Life of Brian, it should've been.
It's funny because it isn't about someone being tortured* but because it's about someone pretending to be tortured, i.e. acting. My reading is that it isn't Christ's suffering being cocked a snook at, it's Mel Gibson's pretensions.
Excellent point. And let's not forget there were Xians who didn't like the movie either - they thought its violence and focus on the passion of Christ exclusively emphasized the wrong facets of his life.
Of course, we really don't know what happened to a man named Jesus way back then anyway. He may have been some poor bloke who never asked to have a religion started in his name, and who knows how much of the passion story really happened, what was exaggerated, etc.
Posted by: John C. Randolph | February 23, 2006 9:01 PM
Andrew,
The only semblance of culture the Romans exhibited is what they looted from Greece and the other countries they conquered. Roman "culture" was nothing more than affectation.
-jcr