As Christians around the globe prepare to celebrate Easter on Sunday, some will choose to rewatch Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. The movie, which came out 18 years ago on February 25, 2004, was a massive hit. The movie was a huge success. Worldwide gross $611 million. It was a difficult project for the hosts and journalists on ABC, CBS, and NBC to view with alarm and skepticism.
Diane Sawyer (then host of ABC) alerted viewers, February 16, 2004 about how controversial the movie was. In a primetime special, she warned, “This is the film that sparked a flurry of controversy and emotion in America.. And not only between Christians and Jews, but Christians and Christians, historians and scholars, true believers and secularists, and everyone who falls somewhere in between.”
Gibson shared the view that Sawyer believed the film was racist and originated in Nazi Europe.
DIANE SAWYER – Do you think this anti-Semitic film?
ABRAHAM FOXMAN (Non): I don’t believe that it is an anti-Semitic film. This movie could fuel and even reinforce anti-Semitism.
…
SAWYER: Hitler attended a passion play, and he left saying, “This is a precious tool in the battle against Judaism.”
A retrospective celebrating the 10th anniversaryTim Graham, Director at Media Research Center for Media Analysis explained the following:
Sawyer reported Gibson’s film suggests “echoes, the critics say, of what were called ‘Passion plays,’ which through the ages, were used to inflame Christians against their Jewish neighbors. Ghettos were sacked, the Jewish populations terrorized.” (Sawyer didn’t relate that Passion plays are read or performed annually around the world in millions of Christian churches without outbursts of anti-Semitic violence.)
Sawyer spoke to Peter Boyer The New Yorker and pushed the idea that the film was bigoted: “The Anti-Defamation League expressed concern over whether it would portray the Jews as, quote, ‘bloodthirsty, sadistic, and money-hungry enemies of Jesus.’ You spoke to the head of the ADL. Did he think it was an anti-Semitic movie?”
As contrasted by the MRC’s Graham, The Da Vinci Code – False portrayal of Christ’s divinity in a movie – was far less controversial.
The original MRC study about The Passion can be found here Go here. You can find more flashback examples in our Flashback Series, called the NewsBusters Time MachineClick here.
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