Separating Art from Artist: Gibson's 'Passion' still speaks for itself

Dallas Morning News | Editorials:

“The personal life and beliefs of an artist help explain a work of art, but they don't define it. The Passion of the Christ is the same film today – no more and no less anti-Semitic – as it was before Mr. Gibson's grievous lapse last week. ”

Ed Cognoski responds:

Yes, the film is the same film as before. And now that its producer/director has publicly revealed his anti-Semitism, those who saw anti-Semitism in the film before this incident now have another reason to believe that they were not imagining things then. And those that failed to see anti-Semitism before now have to at least question whether they perhaps failed to see something that was in the film all along.

It's like young students in 2006 reading Arthur Miller's The Crucible and seeing only a straightforward play about Salem witch trials. Then, teach them about McCarthyism in the US in the 1950s and watch them see the play in an entirely new light. Same play, but totally different appreciation about what it's all about. Fans of Gibson's 'Passion' who fail to see that film in a new light after its director's anti-Semitic outburst are simply blind.

Postscript: Rod Dreher, who wrote the editorial on behalf of The Dallas Morning News, defended himself on the paper's blog against a reader who accused Gibson of being no different from Hitler. Mr Dreher called this the reductio ad Hitlerum fallacy. Well... no. That fallacy is equating something with Hitler because of a shared trait unrelated to the evil that was Hitler. (You drive a Volkswagen Beetle. That was Hitler's car. Therefore, you are evil.) In the case at hand -- anti-Semitic remarks -- I'd say Gibson's rant was pretty much something Hitler might say. The comparison is apt. That doesn't make Gibson another Hitler, but they do share at least one evil in common.