SDG here with a non-election related post on some non-election coolness. (Pre-election coolness, actually, but I wanted to wait till now to blog about it.)
Incidentally, if you read the NCRegister.com blog, which I’ve cited in a number of recent posts, you may already be aware of this.
First, though, I just have to geek out a bit. Like many film critics writing today, I grew up watching Roger Ebert discuss movies with Gene Siskel on “At the Movies.” I remember watching them discuss certain movies in the early 1980s (e.g., Raiders, Superman II, Return of the Jedi).
I have the idea that the paper I delivered as a paperboy carried Ebert’s written reviews, and that I was reading them sometime in the early to mid-1980s. I may have I bought book editions of his reviews in college in the late 1980s; certainly by the time I had Internet access in the mid-1990s I was reading him every week, along with a few other favorites.
As an inveterate reader of all sorts of writing and an aspiring writer myself, I quickly came to appreciate Ebert’s literary skill and engaging voice as well as his critical insights. In many cases I enjoyed his reviews more than the movies he wrote about. In 2000, when I began writing faith-informed reviews and posting them on the earliest incarnation of Decent Films, Ebert was one of the touchstones I looked to in finding a voice of my own.
He was, and is, simply The Man.
One early piece I wrote that first year of writing film criticism was an essay on Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. It seemed to me an obvious test case of the style of writing I wanted to do — that is, to do film writing that was equally intelligible to my target religious audience and also to non-religious readers. (My model here was a writer even more profoundly influential on me than Ebert, C. S. Lewis.)
Few movies seemed as deeply polarizing to the two groups of readers than Last Temptation, so if I could make myself intelligible to these two groups of readers on this film, I could probably do it on any film.
I’m sure I read Ebert’s original review of Last Temptation, in which he argues that the film is not blasphemous, in preparation for writing my own. I didn’t quote it, although I did cite another review he wrote in 2000, for Spike Lee’s Bamboozled.
I never expected my Last Temptation essay to get much attention. I naively thought the controversy over that film was a closed chapter, and my essay was fundamentally written to satisfy myself that it could be done, and for the sake of a few readers who might care to look at it.
Much to my surprise, it has over the years consistently been among the most widely read essays at Decent Films. Feedback from readers has been fairly regular and all over the map (as I discussed a bit in a recent Decent Films reader mail column).
More recently, I’ve learned that my essay has been cited in more than one essay in a recent book on Last Temptation, Scandalizing Jesus. (One of the essays citing me was written by my friend and fellow critic Peter Chattaway; another, “Imaging the Divine,” is by Lloyd Baugh, whom I’ve never met.)
Anyway, last week I learned that my Last Temptation essay had been cited by Ebert himself in a new essay on Last Temptation that appeared both in his online “Great Films” series and also in Ebert’s new book Scorsese by Ebert.
As it happens, this isn’t the first time I’ve been name-checked by Ebert. He first quoted me in his review of Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, regarding Gibson’s portrayal of the Jewish leaders. Just think, if controversial Jesus movies were a Hollywood staple, I might have gotten a guest spot on Ebert’s show.
What’s more, this time around Ebert credits my essay with persuading him that, in spite of his arguments to the contrary nearly two decades ago, Last Temptation is in fact “technically blasphemous.” He adds that he no longer thinks this matters, but still it’s a startling confirmation that I succeeded at least partly in what I set out to do in that essay. Here’s what he wrote:
The film is indeed technically blasphemous. I have been persuaded of this by a thoughtful essay by Steven D. Greydanus of the National Catholic Register, a mainstream writer who simply and concisely explains why. I mention this only to argue that a film can be blasphemous, or anything else that the director desires, and we should only hope that it be as good as the filmmaker can make it, and convincing in its interior purpose. Certainly useful things can be said about Jesus Christ by presenting him in a non-orthodox way. There is a long tradition of such revisionism, including the foolishness of The Da Vinci Code. The story by Kazantzakis, Scorsese and Schrader grapples with the central mystery of Jesus, that he was both God and man, and uses the freedom of fiction to explore the implications of such a paradox.
Now, I think that Ebert’s new essay offers a lot of insight into the film. For what it’s worth, I don’t think that it is right to say that it uses “the freedom of fiction to explore the central mystery of Jesus.” I think that Last Temptation uses the central mystery of Jesus as a metaphor, and that what the film is really exploring is the human experience of duality. Screenwriter Paul Shrader acknowledges this in an interesting 2002 interview at AVClub.com in which he acknowledges the film’s blasphemy:
Actually, the whole issue of blasphemy is interesting, because technically, the film is blasphemous, but not in the way people think. The film uses Jesus Christ as a metaphor for spirituality. And, under a technical definition of blasphemy, if Jesus is regarded as something other than holy God incarnate, you’re being blasphemous. And so the film takes the character of Jesus and uses Him as a metaphor for our spiritual feelings and says, “What if this happened, what if He yielded to temptation?”
I think Ebert makes essentially the same point when he says, “What makes ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ one of his great films is not that it is true about Jesus but that it is true about Scorsese.” Be that as it may, where I differ from Ebert and other fans of the film is that, for me, my ability to enter the filmmaker’s world simply encounters an immovable obstacle when it comes to a Jesus movie that, however true it may be about the filmmaker, is so radically untrue about Jesus. I am just unable to go with Jesus as metaphor, for precisely the reason that Shrader indicates. I appreciate Ebert’s lament that “the direction, the writing, the acting, the images or Peter Gabriel’s harsh, mournful music” have been ignored by many writers — but for me that’s all beside the point. As I wrote in my essay:
Past a certain point, objectionability obliterates all hope or desire of approaching a work as art or entertainment. No level of production values or technically proficient filmmaking could make it worthwhile to watch a movie that indulged in child pornography, or that relentlessly celebrated the Holocaust, or that overtly romanticized the degradation and abasement of women. Cross a certain line, and message overwhelms medium, substance overwhelms style, what you have to say drowns out how you might be saying it.
Anyway, that’s how I saw it eight years ago. That this essay — one of my oldest pieces, an essay I wrote when I was first beginning to feel my way into the world of writing about film and faith — would receive such attention at this late date is both gratifying and humbling. I can’t even imagine how I would have felt back in 2000 writing the piece if you had told me that Ebert, whom I quoted in that piece, would one day be citing me in turn.
That the piece appears in Ebert’s Scorsese book is even more gratifying. As Nick Alexander suggested over at ArtsAndFaith.com, it seems likely that Scorsese has read Ebert’s book, so maybe he now knows that the movie is blasphemous, too.
Ebert’s new Last Temptation essay
WooHoo! I’ve been name-checked by SDG!! Woo-Hoo!!
Congratulations, Steve! Well done!
It’s about time the film world started to sit up and take notice, SDG. DecentFilms.com is my go-to site for film reviews.
Keep in mind, though, that Ebert gave The da Vinci Code a thumbs up. I understand he’s a professional role model, and all, but he’s got a loose lug nut in there, somewhere.
er…
What I meant to say was, “Congratulations!”.
It must feel great to get that kind of recognition from someone you have admired professionally.
SDG,
Cool and congratulations.
I miss the interplay between Siskel and Ebert. They were like the Huntley and Brinkley of film criticism.
The Chicken
You know, SDG, it just occurred to me how much I take technology, today, for granted. Even twenty years ago, it would have been almost impossible to think that I or anyone else who posts regularly to JA.Org would have had the chance to share comments, trade jokes, etc. with the likes of Jimmy, Tim J,. or you. How cool is that?
One wonders what G. K Chesterton would have done with the Internet. His G. K. Weekly would have probably had a much larger and international readership. As much as I rile about the cognitive sink drain aspect of the Internet, there are some aspects that I do really appreciate. Keep writing. Perhaps, in fifty years, some future Christian film (hologram?) critics will be reading your reviews and blog posts for inspiration.
The Chicken
Congratulations. And you are right, the flaws overcome any benefit to the film.
Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma notes that it is not “de fide” that the hypostatic union will persist after the Last Judgment. Whether looked favorably upon by the hiearchy or not, there has been speculation that the union would cease after that time — and not just speculation in recent times, speculation from many years ago before the council Pat Buchanan calls an “unmitigated disaster.”
Let’s get real. The real problem is that the movie portrays Jesus having sex in his dreams. I didn’t know it was “de fide” that Jesus did not have sex (Jesus is not subject to the positive law that sex take place only within marriage) or that it was “de fide” that Jesus did not dream about having sex.
In any event it is not blasphemous to portray Jesus as not being the Son of God. Otherwise those brave theologians who speculated on the cessation of or at least on the non dogmatic nature of the persistence of the union forever past the Last Judgment would all have been committing blasphemy. Furthermore, blasphemy as defined here:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02595a.htm
combined with a suitable application of a theory of definite descriptions applied to the language of cinema would mean that no blasphemy was involved in The Last Temptation of Christ.
The artist or director of that movie was not intending to portray the person who is Jesus, the hypostasis that as a matter of fact the human nature of the man known in mythological history as Jesus belongs. Let’s grant that the director believed personally that the human nature of the man known in mythological history as Jesus was not the person of God the Son. Well, then his movie wouldn’t be a portrayal of God the Son nor of the person who is Jesus since the person who is Jesus is the hypostasis that is God the Son. His movie would purport to be a portrayal of a hypostasis that is according to Catholicism NON-EXISTENT. For there is no created hypostasis associated with Jesus. So the movie would be about an individual, i.e. a hypostasis that is non-existent and thus could not possibly blaspheme anyone who actually exists, including Jesus or God.
This is not a perfect analogy and is likely to be flawed on many levels but off the top of my head someone who makes a movie about Santa Clause is not thereby blaspheming against St. Nicholas (with blasphemy defined broadly per the Catholic Encyclopedia above instead of strictly)
I won’t wildly speculate on what Ratzinger or now Pope Benedict might think about the movie or the issues it presents but I will note that his fan club presents an opinion contradicting SDGs in substantial important ways:
However, I disagree with what Steven Greydanus, movie reviewer for Decent Films.com and the National Catholic Register, had to say about Martin Scorsese’ The Last Temptation of Christ: [snip]
It is very interesting how two people can watch a movie and walk away with so utterly different impressions. For all of its flaws… I found The Last Temptation to be an overall decent, profoundly moving and spiritually-enriching film. Unlike the others mentioned, it did not strike me as being in the least way intentionally or maliciously anti-Catholic. Nor does it make any claim to being an accurate representation of the Gospels (Scorcese in fact begins the film with a disclaimer to that effect).
For those who haven’t seen it, “the last temptation” is the call of the Devil to Jesus to descend from the cross, abandon his Father’s divine mandate, and live an ordinary life together with the joys of marriage, sex and family (the reenactment of which is depicted in a dream sequence in the latter half). It was a cinematic adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’ fictional meditation on the struggle between spirit and the flesh and the implications of Christ’s assumption of humanity, about which he writes in his spiritual memoir, Report to Greco (1961): [snip]
if we accept the fact that Jesus, contra docetism, took on our humanity, and that he was “in every respect tested as we are, yet without sinning”” (Hebrews 4:15), then it seems to me entirely plausible that the Devil might, as Kazantzakis imagined, tempt him with the legitimate goods of an ordinary earthly life. And while such a film might be unorthodox, I would have to disagree with Mr. Greydanus that The Last Temptation was deliberately made to be “perfectly calibrated to trample on everything Catholics hold dear.” Rather, I find myself inclined to agree with the conclusions of this article in First Things:
http://www.ratzingerfanclub.com/blog/2004/08/last-temptation-of-christ.html
The First Things (led up by Fr Richard John Neuhaus) article is here:
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=3821
Here’s a snippet
“The fact that The Last Temptation of Christ has become shorthand for cultural degradation ought to disturb anyone who wants to preserve art’s power to engage the moral imagination. If cultural conservatism is not to produce a backlash against itself, we must distinguish between seriously attempted efforts within the legitimate bounds of artistic creativity and ad hoc throwaways like P___ Christ”
I would add that that would be all the more true in terms of distinguishing it from child abuse and Holocaust celebration, though I pass no judgment on P___ Christ, having acquaintance with that work only through the media.
I know that some favor censorship of movies like The Last Temptation of Christ or the pressuring of businesses to not make them accessible. It is one thing to abstain from patronage and even to discourage others to do so for fear of moral harm to these others. It is another to boycott advertisers and sponsors or to pressure theaters to not make available to those who do wish to give patronage to such movies or to as First Things mentions “picket” those who choose to see it. I believe with the exception of the extreme radical Catholics, no one favors picketing and censorship but some moderate radical Catholics do favor boycotting advertisers and sponsors. I hope that non-radical Catholics and moderate radical Catholics also see that it is wrong to “picket” patrons of gentlemen’s clubs and violate their privacy with cameras or violate the policy of the establishment by bringing hidden cameras inside. If such is legitimate it would be legitimate, were it legal, also to violate Catholic policy and go undercover and expose confessors who counsel penitents that voting for Obama in 2012 is a grave sin.
Nice handle, believer in Jesus. You know, it occurs to me that the term “believer,” much like “catholic,” can bear more than one meaning. For that matter, the term “Jesus” is also subject to different usages.
Let’s get real. No, it isn’t.
The bedroom scene (whether it is a “dream” scene is very much open to question) is certainly a problem, but it is very far from the problem, as I wrote a long essay explaining.
I’m not sure this is correct, but in any case my argument doesn’t rest on this claim.
I have no quarrel with the excellent article at First Things or the opinion at the Ratzinger Fan Club website. Neither author directly addresses the points I raise in my essay.
Oh, this is just silly.
Believer in Jesus wrote:
In any event it is not blasphemous to portray Jesus as not being the Son of God.
A portrayal may be for many purposes: in some cases dydactic, in some cases, exploratory (as in a hypothetical), in some cases, illustrative, as in an historical recollection. The movie is entitled, “The Last temptation of Christ”. This indicates that the movie is about the Christ of history and not some hypothetical other Christ of fiction, since the movie intends to relate what is known about that specific Christ (that he was tempted) to a hypothesis of what could have been (in the opinion of the writer) his final temptation.
Since the movie intends to portray the Christ of history and since the Christ of history is the subject of Faith, then the Catholic Encyclopedia article on blasphemy clearly indicates that such an assertion would be heretical blasphemy:
Blasphemy, by reason of the significance of the words with which it is expressed, may be of three kinds.
1. It is heretical when the insult to God involves a declaration that is against faith, as in the assertion: “God is cruel and unjust” or “The noblest work of man is God”.
2. It is imprecatory when it would cry a malediction upon the Supreme Being as when one would say: “Away with God”.
3. It is simply contumacious when it is wholly made up of contempt of, or indignation towards, God, as in the blasphemy of Julian the Apostate: “Thou has conquered, O Galilaean”.
Again, blasphemy may be (1) either direct, as when the one blaspheming formally intends to dishonour the Divinity, or (2) indirect, as when without such intention blasphemous words are used with advertence to their import.
Since the fact that Jesus is the son of God is de fide, any portrayal to the contrary would be blasphemous if it intended to portray the Christ of history (and not some, mere, hypothetical Christ) as something other than the son of God.
If the movie were about a hypothetical Christ, then who could really care about the film, since there are an infinite number of hypothetical Christs who are not worthy of worship or respect and it would be nothing more than a type of sick fantasy to make a movie about one such hypothetical and claim it had significant as either a vehicle for teaching something in the moral sphere (where the Christ of history resides). If the Jesus of the film were meant to be a hypothetical Jesus, then the Last Temptation of Christ is nothing more than sick fan (or non-fan) fiction; if the Jesus of the film were meant to be the historical Jesus, then the concept that Jesus is not the son of God is blasphemous.
The Chicken
Let me try that last sentence, again:
If the movie were about a hypothetical Christ, then who could really care about the film, since there are an infinite number of hypothetical Christs who are not worthy of worship or respect and it would be nothing more than a type of sick fantasy to make a movie about one such hypothetical and claim it had significant either as a vehicle for teaching something in the moral sphere (where the Christ of history resides) or revealing some aspect, hitherto unknown, about the Jesus of history. If the Jesus of the film were meant to be a hypothetical Jesus, then the Last Temptation of Christ would be nothing more than sick fan (or non-fan) fiction; if the Jesus of the film were meant to be the historical Jesus, then the concept that Jesus is not the son of God would be blasphemous.
The Subjunctively Impaired, Always Willing to Correct Poor Grammar, Chicken
…always enjoyed Ebert on television…congrats on the recognition!
Congratulations, Steve! How cool it must feel. But just for the record, I much prefer your reviews over Ebert’s.
+J.M.J+
>>>Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma notes that it is not “de fide” that the hypostatic union will persist after the Last Judgment. Whether looked favorably upon by the hiearchy or not, there has been speculation that the union would cease after that time
Then what would happen to Jesus’ Sacred Humanity after the Last Judgment? Would it simply be annihilated?
The Church does teach de fide that there is no human person in Jesus. He is the Divine Person of the Word who has two natures: the Divine Nature that He eternally shares with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, and a human nature that He received in the Incarnation – His Body from the Virgin Mary and His human Soul created directly by God.
If God the Son jettisons that human nature, how could it exist separate from Himself without a human person? It would probably have to cease to exist. Now, God doesn’t even annihilate the devil and the souls of the reprobate, why then would He annihilate the divinized Body and Soul of His Son, the most blessed and highly exalted part of all creation? It seems incongruous.
Also, the Incarnation is precisely what brings about the glorification of the redeemed and of the entire cosmos at the end of time. If it ends after the Last Judgment, where does that leave redeemed creation? How can it be glorified if the source of its glory no longer exists, or is no longer hypostatically united to its Glorifier? Too many problems with such speculation.
Anyway, what was the point of bringing up this speculation in the first place?
In Jesu et Maria,
+J.M.J+
>>>In any event it is not blasphemous to portray Jesus as not being the Son of God. Otherwise those brave theologians who speculated on the cessation of or at least on the non dogmatic nature of the persistence of the union forever past the Last Judgment would all have been committing blasphemy.
Huh? Theologians who speculate that the hypostatic union may end after the Last Judgment do not necessarily deny that Jesus is the Son of God. Even if He were to forfeit His Sacred Humanity someday, Jesus would still be just as much the Son of God as He was prior to the Incarnation. He just wouldn’t be human anymore.
In Jesu et Maria,
*just for the record and I would hope that others follow this practice, IIRC, I made the post above by “believer in Jesus” … also for the record sometimes my changes in name were a result of harassment (it was outside this forum … something I tried to explain before) and other times due to what I viewed as unnecessary distractions … for example at a certain point in time I was not Catholic concurrent some posts which were posted by “catholic maverick” — despite the primary definition of the word “catholic”, particularly in its lower case, some objected to that name … so I’m not sure if I recall perfectly but I believe I ended up extending that name to “pro-choice catholic maverick” lest I be accused of passing myself off as pro-life … which would be odd since I was expressing sympathy with certain pro-choice views! .. that ended up IIRC being abbreviated at some point to “pro-choice catholic” leaving an impression of multiplicity that is not accordant with fact. I also once posted as “Pantheist Christian” but chose to abandon that due to among other reasons (1) people not apprehending the variant of pantheism I was espousing even if it be inaptly termed pantheism and (2) various individuals with variant degrees of persistance placing “sic” after my name when addressing me. One such individual did so once and then — though this may bear no relation to it — after I further clarified my pantheism, refrained from doing so any further. Other individuals however even as recently as a few days ago chose to place “sic” after it (or its abbreviation “PC” — an abbreviation they employed).
**also, my world view has changed significantly since the post above
Anyway, I was curious that SDG would be incapable of seeing the artistic value of or enjoying said artistic value of this film due to an element he groups for these purposes with films such as those celebratory of the Holocaust (which films celebrate the Holocaust?). A film that is celebratory of Holocaust presumably would celebrate perversion of human nature. But a film of blasphemy — granting that it is blasphemy — doesn’t descend to that level; it only expresses a world view that does not agree with parts of special revelation (i.e. that is some parts which are not also parts of natural theology). So a film made by a Muslim or Hindu presenting a portrait of Jesus as not divine in any fashion may be blasphemous — let’s grant that — but how could it be considered worse than a film celebratory of the Holocaust (or the other two categories you mentioned)? You didn’t say it would be worse, but I got that impression.
In any event, why are you able to see the artistic value of and enjoy said artistic value of a film you acknowledge to be permeated by racism and even recommend (be it with reservations) the seeing of said film to others yet would not be capable of doing likewise for films celebratory of the Holocaust? Both films would involve a kind of racism, what is the nature of the difference and its accounting? And since the Last Temptation of Christ you group with films celebratory of the Holocaust (in the context of giving examples for your point above), what feature common to the Last Temptation of Christ and to films celebratory of the Holocaust is present that you would not be able to see or enjoy the artistic value of said films and yet be able to see and enjoy the artistic value of (and even be it with reservations recommend) that film permeated with racism (it’s an old film). We’ve discussed this particular film before so I’m sure you know which one I mean. (Just so there’s no confusion on other people’s parts, I don’t have any issue to present with SDG’s opinions or review of that film; I am exploring SDG’s world view as it relates to the Last Temptation … I certainly don’t mean to suggest for example that SDG is indifferent to some kinds of racism and sensitive to others … I think one possibility is some inconsistency in approach but another is simply that I don’t have full knowledge of SDG’s operative view … so that’s the spirit with which I ask these questions)