Your lukewarm response to the film deserves a kiss.

Apropos the question of Gibson’s Passion: The large photograph on the cover of today’s New York Times — the caption reads, “Ali Hadi, a professional body washer, prepared the body of a bombing victim for proper Muslim burial in Najaf while the man’s relatives watched.” — quotes from image-repertoire we associate with representations of Christ. It underscores the fact that we do not need a blockbuster bloodbath to locate the affective power of violence, death, and (crucially) redemption in our world. It clarifies the point that whatever may be worth preserving in the concept of Jesus Christ is not even the property of Christians (certainly not those of Gibson’s persuasion) per se. And among the many other things it eloquently conveys is the way the heated attention to Mel Gibson’s well-financed fantasies amount to only so much wasted time in a world overflowing with suffering. When almost two hundred people are blown up in an Iraq street, we really don’t require the body Christ to organize our attention. Tattered, tired, Hollywood-trained sense-systems be damned: We can surely do better than that.

You may find the photo here: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/multimedia/index.html

I felt it was rather uninvolving myself. I am glad to hear that i was not the only one. Most everybody seems to either love it or hate it.