Mad Mel

I’m inclined to half agree with Matt Yglesias (it does happen every now and then) on the Mel Gibson debacle. Matt writes:

It seems to me that the work is the work and the author is the author and the one thing has very little to do with the other -- if we discovered tomorrow that The Birth of a Nation was actually directed by a talented African-American looking to make some cash by making a film that D.W. Griffith could put his name on that wouldn't alter the fact that it's a racist movie.

Gibson is undoubtedly a racist, if one generally astute and conscientious enough to keep his views private, but that doesn’t change the fact that Braveheart is a revolutionary classic, that the Lethal Weapon films are glorious buddy-cop frivolity incarnate, and that The Road Warrior kicks mighty ass in the way that only post-apocalyptic S&M-inspired punk-rock car-stunt films from the early 80s can. I even liked Payback, fercryinoutloud.

But I’ll have to disagree with Matt when he praises Gibson’s The Passion. While that movie was undeniably visionary and one of the few films that can truly be called “uncompromising,” I found it problematic, troubling, and outright off-putting on any number of levels, not the least of which was its anti-Semitism. But none of this has much to do with Gibson or his personal views. The movie didn’t work because the movie didn’t work, and Gibson's propensity for loathsome remarks doesn’t change the work one way or another.