sadism and the cross – religious pornography
John Dominic Crossan (on fresh air, 2004.04.01)when you start to focus on suffering – on the whole meaning of, say, jesus’s life being reduced – and that verb is carefully chosen – reduced to suffering, it is not the way anyone thought about it in the first century. the romans did not compute suffering. they didn’t say “we need to make this person suffer as much as possible,” or they would’ve kept him in the barracks and tortured him for weeks on end. their purpose was not suffering, but public warning. so, when you bring it all down to suffering, it’s very hard to show it without sadism, and that’s what happens in this movie. how can you show two hours of unrelenting brutality, and ask people to watch it, and ask people to feel that they want it to happen, because it’s their redemption. so you have to be, as it were, on the side of the roman soldiers. you have to want it. you can’t even agree with that jewish woman that cries out in the crowd “somebody stop this!” you can’t. you are being coopted into collusion with sadism. and i think that there is no evidence that i know that the soldiers that scourged jesus were sadistic brutes as are shown in the movie. they could’ve just been executioners doing their dirty job, wanting to get it over and get back to the barracks. so, when you emphasize suffering to that extent, it is almost impossible not to slip over into sadism or even into religious pornography.
[more on crossan, not an uncontroversial figure (count those negatives!)]