February 18, 2004

Passion Censorship

The Llama Butchers have an item up comparing controversies over Gibson's and Scorsese's visions of Christ's Passion. Personally, of the four camps, I'm in favor of number two, but for what I think are legitimate reasons.

What offended me about the Scorsese film wasn't anything necessarily in the film. Instead, I found the marketing campaign to be highly offensive. Temptation was a Universal Studios release and I recall it having minimal advertising, minimal exposure beyond press releases and hyping the banned nature of the film. They twigged the noses of the faithful to do their advertising for them so they could save a few bucks. I found, and still find, that to be morally offensive. I've never seen the film and refuse to on those grounds to this day.

Passion, by contrast, is an independent release and I've seen ads for it several times already so it's being properly promoted without relying so heavily on the surrounding controversy. For me, it's also a plus that there are no mass letters being read from pulpits condemning the movie and ordering everybody not to go but whatever its merits or flaws are, at least they're honestly earned.

Oh, I guess I should make things clear. I don't believe in censorship of either film, but I obviously believe in boycotts.

Posted by TMLutas at February 18, 2004 03:12 PM