LA Times op-ed: Mel Gibson's dark fantasies and bloody porn

[DeepModem Mom]

What's with Mel's bloody porn?
Gory scenes of torture in "The Passion of the Christ" and "Apocalypto" tell us much about Gibson's sensibilities.
By Richard Schickel (RICHARD SCHICKEL is a film critic for Time and the author of many books, including "Elia Kazan: A Biography.")
December 13, 2006

....why is Mel Gibson's "Apocalypto" so upsetting? Let's set aside the director's drunken anti-Semitic rant of last summer (if that is possible). Let's also set aside the rank primitivism of "The Passion of the Christ" and its gazillion-dollar success (if that's possible). Let's simply concentrate on what Gibson is showing and telling in this particular movie....I know the movie topped the box-office charts last weekend. But I suspect that in the end, "Apocalypto" will perform like your average horror movie — doing well with bloodthirsty adolescent males for three days, then dropping 50% or 60% the following week. Maybe we should just let it die its death. Generally, we do not comment extensively on road kill. We just avert our eyes and hurry on past it.

That's especially so when the critical community has done its job, crying "Yuck" (in chorus) about this movie. I thought that was particularly true of Kenneth Turan, writing a follow-up piece in this newspaper in which he compared Gibson's approach to that of Clint Eastwood in his two current releases, "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima," both of which depict death and make us question its military necessity but do not linger on the agonies of the final moments of people we've come to admire in the course of the films. This is, one might say, old-fashioned moviemaking, and the two films are the better for Eastwood's discretion. Or should we say his maturity?...

***

(Gibson) loves to get people painfully restrained and then do really bad things to them — Turan mentions the actor's drawing-and-quartering scene in "Braveheart" and the ghastly flogging of Jesus in "The Passion." We are not, in these instances, dealing with mere "violence." We are dealing with ritualized sadomasochism — an open manifestation of one of those dark fantasies that those in thrall to them must endlessly repeat and that have, of course, some sort of psychosexual component....Psychosexual violence of the kind Gibson is drawn to takes us to a truly ugly place. It is beyond the reach of the law, diplomacy, public policy or moral resolve. We can punish its practitioners only when fantasy turns into horrific, real-world acts. But we cannot cure them. They represent the irreducible, ineluctable evil of the world — the grimmest side of the social compact.

Gibson, of course, would argue otherwise. He believes that the blood of martyrs fertilizes good things like faith and freedom and that graphic depictions of their torments must strengthen our resolve in these matters. I say his slavering interest in the torture of the innocent and the idealistic is a form of pornography. I wouldn't ban it. But, were it not for stern critical duty, I would shun it — because it is infantile. And because it tells me more than I want to know about the filmmaker's mind, spirit and unspoken fantasies.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-schickel13dec13,0,7156372.story?coll=la-home-commentary

[tularetom]

1. I betcha Mel masturbates to snuff films

He is obviously a very disturbed human being...

[Skittles]

2. I will not see his movies

he makes me sick

[devilgrrl]

3. That makes two of us...

he makes me vomit too and I will never watch a film of his again. :puke:

[The Count]

4. Lots of critics loved the POS, and moviegoers validated Mel

I was especially disgusted by Roeper, who thought Borat was in bad taste, Flushed Away - over the top, the spider in Charlotte's Web was too scary but raved about the beauty of this film - "you got your beheadings...."
No one even went bankrupt underestimating Americans' blood thirst and bad taste. It truly upset me!
here's another review in the vein of LA Times one - notice the very rabid mel support in the comments
http://www.cinematical.com/2006/12/07/review-apocalypto/

[katty]

5. Mel has the $ to film his dark fantasies-charge others to see them

[quickesst]

6. Ida-Mae(Kudzu)

Strikes again, and again, and again. Oh, and again. Thanks.
quickesst

[rhiannon55]

7. I can't believe I used to think he was cute

I didn't realize the ugliness that lay beneath his facade.
How embarrassing... :blush:

[Sequoia]

13. Don't worry, even Lucifer was the most beautiful of all God's angeles.

And Mel's not even close to angelness.

[0rganism]

8. what I don't get is why it's automatically "bad taste" to show suffering

> (Turan) compared Gibson's approach to that of Clint Eastwood in his two current releases,
> "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima," both of which depict death and make us
> question its military necessity but do not linger on the agonies of the final moments of
> people we've come to admire in the course of the films.

In the mainstream, we're fine with showing death, we're fine with depictions of violence, and we're even fine with displaying violent deaths in a graphic manner.

AS LONG AS IT'S NOT EXTENDED AND/OR PERSONALIZED.

God and Hillary forbid that we be exposed to any depiction of the actual suffering of the soon-to-be-deceased, or that hollywood exercise its powers of enhanced make believe to portray the grisly details of the events leading to said suffering. :crazy:

IMHO, we should fault filmmakers and newsmedia at least as much for what they don't show as what they do. We blame filmmakers for showing too much horror for our tender sensibilities, yet we support and pay for realities at least as foul and lingering with our votes and tax dollars. Perhaps if we were exposed to more of the consequences of our cultural agression, we'd be less inclined to act on our lower impulses. We have been too far removed from the butchery whose fruits we embrace.

Mel Gibson's primary artistic fault is not that he makes bad films, per se, but rather that he makes good ones -- they are well-crafted, well-funded, and well-attended, in addition to detailing the fears and suffering of principals. If Gibson were cranking out Hellraiser XII or other horror cruft, no one would give it a second thought.

[Disturbed]

9. If the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were shown in graphic

detail would most of the World be repulsed?

[0rganism]

12. They ARE - on Al Jazeera, in the middle east...

which is one reason we have problems convincing those folks of our pure intentions.

I've seen some AJ footage of what happens in some of the "surgical airstrikes" in Iraq and the West Bank that, frankly, kept me up nights. And that's the kind of thing that those lucky enough to afford TVs are seeing on a daily basis over there.

[Frank Cannon]

10. Like I say, if Mad Melvin weren't a multimillionaire filmmaker...

you'd be seeing his face on a post office wall near you.

[Rosemary2205]

11. Gibson is one sick guy.

We knew the man was a freak long before his anti-semitic tirade.

[LoZoccolo]

14. I tend not to ascribe much credibility to editorials bent on causing class one disagreements.

A class one disagreement is one in which one side cannot explain the position of the other to the other's satisfaction. This gross fabrication of Mel Gibson's intentions pretty much sets one out there.

[Radio_Lady]

15. I just saw the second Clint Eastwood movie yesterday, and am preparing to review it

when it opens Wednesday, December 20. Thanks for posting -- I'm also planning a comparison among these three films. It's hard not to draw these inferences. Eastwood's violence is photographed in subdued light, using colored film almost completely drained of its hue. Eastwood's depiction of violence is still upsetting -- but in a more subdued way.