The Passion of the Christ dir. Mel Gibson
Reviewed by Mistress Matisse
The Stranger
Here's a riddle: Why did Jesus die on the cross? He forgot his safeword! That's an old joke in the BDSM community, but I left the theater after watching Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ feeling like I'd forgotten mine, too. At least half the reviews I've read about this movie used words like "sadomasochistic," "S&M," and "fetishistic violence." It's nice that my community has given movie reviewers some new vocabulary, but, as a bona fide sadomasochist, my verdict is that this movie is not kink-friendly.
Why doesn't the film work as an SM scene? For one thing, there's no warm-up. We meet Jesus, there's a tiny bit of mind-fuck action with the Devil, and boom, the High Priest's goons jump right into heavy bondage and suspension. So that's all wrong. Jesus then gets dragged around to different tops, but neither Pilate nor Herod want to play with him, and I don't blame them, because Jesus is already smeared with blood and pretty unresponsive. Sloppy seconds, you know? But then we get to Mel's real blood-fetish come-shot, the flogging scene.
Now, calling it the flogging scene is somewhat misleading, because I saw various bad guys snapping whips throughout the entire film. However, Mel indulges himself in more than 10 long minutes of nothing but Jesus having the crap kicked out of him by some Roman soldiers. (I'm really afraid to even think of how long it's going to be in the director's cut.) The use of canes in this scene surprised me; I went to Catholic school for 12 years, and they never told us Jesus got caned. I don't know how they missed it, since the nuns took such delight in detailing all the other terrible things that Jesus endured, just for the sake of our unworthy little souls. However, I do know that the rattan-like canes they used in the movie are anachronistic; the Romans caned people with something called lignae, which is apparently the knobby root of a bush. Mel also got carried away with the sound effects here--thin rattan canes do not make such a loud thud when they land on flesh. But the body makeup used in this scene is excellent, because the marks did look very much like what you get with caning.
Then comes the flogging--or to be more Biblically accurate, the scourging. Jim Caviezel, the actor who plays Jesus, has been quoted as saying, "I experienced the whip." I believe he may have taken a few whacks in honor of Lee Strasberg, but I'm quite sure the Screen Actors Guild has some kind of rule about not exsanguinating its actors, and this scene is all about bloodletting. Jesus' shredded flesh and blood, rather than Jesus himself, is the star; dripping in slow motion, puddling on the ground, spattering the faces of the leering Roman soldiers--Gibson can't get enough of it. This isn't like watching a BDSM scene, it's like watching Jerusalem Chainsaw Massacre. I like blood, and even I sat there thinking, Eeuuww, gross.
Then there is how Mel has his Roman soldiers acting. They're jumping around and giggling like preschoolers at a birthday party as they beat up Jesus, acting like this is the biggest treat they've ever had. Now, I can accept that the soldiers who volunteered for flogging duty might have done so because they were inherently sadistic. It was a brutal age, and violent punishments were common; there was plenty of scope for nonconsensual sadism. But I'd have been more inclined to believe in a casual "Yeah, yeah, time to make the doughnuts" attitude from the soldiers instead of how Mel portrays them, simply because flogging a poor soul, even if that poor soul was Jesus, would be nothing unusual for them.
In the end, The Passion of the Christ doesn't work as a BDSM scene because it's not about connection. I didn't feel connected with Mel's Jesus, mainly because he spends most of the movie looking less like a man and more like a bloody rag doll with rolled-up eyes. Like many novice kinksters, Mel hasn't yet learned that the success or failure of a scene doesn't rest on how many strokes of the whip you give someone, but how everybody feels when it's finished. MISTRESS MATISSE
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