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Mel Gibson

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Mel Gibson (born January 3, 1956) is an American-born Australian-reared movie actor, director, and producer best known for his role in the Lethal Weapon series and Braveheart.

Gibson was born in Peekskill, New York as one of 11 children, but raised in Australia from the age of 12. He maintained his U.S. citizenship.

In 1996 he received two Academy Awards (Best Director and Best Picture) for the film Braveheart (1995).

Following a victory on the Jeopardy! game show, Gibson's father Hutton moved his family to Australia in the 1970s in protest of the Vietnam War and for concern over the way that American society was turning, morally. The elder Gibson is a member of the "traditionalist" Catholic Church, who believes that the Mass should still be said in Latin and that all of the Second Vatican Council is in error, and that there is a conspiracy behind the leadership of the Catholic Church. Hutton is an advocate of Holocaust denial; Mel Gibson has made a number of public statements recently supporting his father's views, and has donated money to financed the construction of a traditionalist cathedral in Malibu, California called Holy Family. This church will preach his father's anti-Catholic conspiracy theories and related beliefs.

The Passion

Mel Gibson recent complete the controversial movie, The Passion, a 12-hour film in the Aramaic language. The movie has received praise by many conservative Christians, but has been heavily criticised by both Catholic and Jewish scholars as promoting anti-Semitism, as violating Catholic teachings on the New Testament, as including many gross historical errors of fact. When a commitee of interfaith scholars attempted to work with Mr. Gibson on the issue, all efforst were rebuffed for several months. When an interfaith committee eventually wrote a review of the script, Mel Gibson threatened them with legal action.

The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil-rights group, recently issued a statement on Mel Gibson's The Passion. In part, it reads:

Throughout history Christian dramatizations of the passion, i.e. the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, have fomented anti-Semitic attitudes and violence against the Jewish people. During the past forty years the Roman Catholic and most Protestant churches have issued pastoral and scholarly documents that interpret the death and resurrection of Jesus in their historical and theological contexts. These churches repudiate the teachings that gave rise to Christian accusations that Jews were "Christ killers."
...In light of the numerous media accounts of Mel Gibson's upcoming film, "The Passion," the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) joined with the Secretariat of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in April, 2003 to assemble Jewish and Catholic scholars to evaluate an early version of the movie's screenplay (the names of the committee's nine scholars appear below).
The committee unanimously agreed that the screenplay reviewed was replete with objectionable elements that would promote anti-Semitism. Based upon the scholars' analysis of the screenplay, ADL has serious concerns regarding the Mr. Gibson's "The Passion" and asks:
Will the final version of The Passion continue to portray Jews as blood-thirsty, sadistic and money-hungry enemies of Jesus? Will it correct the unambiguous depiction of Jews as the ones responsible for the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus? Will it show the power of the rule of imperial Rome-including its frequent use of crucifixion-in first-century Palestine?...
...the final product must rid itself of fictitious non-scriptural elements (e.g. the high priest's control of Pontius Pilate, the cross built in the Temple at the direction of Jewish religious officials, excessive violence, Jews physically abusing Jesus before the crucifixion, Jews paying "blood money" for the crucifixion), all of which form an inescapably negative picture of Jewish society and leadership.
For filmmakers to do justice to the biblical accounts of the passion, they must complement their artistic vision with sound scholarship, which includes knowledge of how the passion accounts have been used historically to disparage and attack Jews and Judaism. Absent such scholarly and theological understanding, productions such as "The Passion" could likely falsify history and fuel the animus of those who hate Jews.
ADL statement on Mel Gibson's The Passion

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Selected Filmography

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