ABC is in preproduction on a new mini-series about the Holocaust. Nothing new there. There's been a lot of tellings over the past couple decades as the last of the survivors of the Holocaust are dying. But there's something special about this particular story, it's not that is about a particular girl, or her husband to be, or their amazing story of escape that failed only to have to try to survive in German occupied Holland from 1940 to the end of the war. It's not about anything having to do with that story or the making of it. It's about who will produce this movie. ABC is in talks with Mel Gibson's production company, founded to create Passion of the Christ, so that the controversy will bring in more viewers.
First, the justified crap to get it out of the way: I will always defend freedom of speech and expression. And I would hate my government if it ever tried to censor even the likes of Mel Gibson. I believe in the free market and I believe in the capitalism that comes with it and if that means we get a lot of what I don't agree with, then that's the price I pay. I have to have faith that common sense and decency will win out in the end (though this has not been happening so much these past 5 years.)
I saw the Passion illegally downloaded, 'cause how do you boycott a movie you haven't seen but how do you boycott a movie once you've paid? Aside from the fact that this really isn't a good movie, just a lot of torture and eerie scenes, I dislike the movie for the message it's passing on. Mel Gibson is a member of the Catholic Church from before Vatican II. He even built a church on his property because there is no one around who practices like he does. But I look to his father most of all for Mel's views. Because it's easy to not say things and therefore not reveal your true self, but when you don't deny things, that's the way into how you really think. Mel's father has said the Holocaust never happened, that it's made up. And Mel has gone far enough to say that there were lots of atrocities in WWII and that Jews died just like everybody else died and Jews did die in concentration camps. But right there he is making the holocaust the same as political assassinations or soldiers dying on the field or innocents being bombed during a battle, and not the planned extinction of a race. Plus he went out of his way to say, and here is the key part, that his father never lied.
So why am I putting two and two together? Messed up point of view with a bad movie? Because there is an agenda behind it. He made that movie to spread his message of what he thinks life/god/everything is really like, which as I said before is his right to do, but it is my right to boycott it and to boycott the rest of his works so that I send my message that I disapprove. That I will defend his right to say it is one thing, but to condone it, to approve of it, to let it go by without me saying my piece, that will never happen. Which brings me back to ABC who is simply, as they have even stated, using his religious controversy to increase ratings. All ABC is doing then is condoning Mel's view along with their Holocaust movie. Granted he'll have nothing to do with the making of the series but putting his name on it, what purpose does that serve? They think it will bring the Christian community that believes in what Mel is doing to the idea that the Holocaust happened and here's some of its story? What kind of irony is it when you get a person to back something they don't believe in so that others will believe more in him? And what does that do to the original message?
If this turns out to be something good it'll be like watching Hitler have to give the gold medal to Jesse Owens. Watching something wrong having to do something right, Mel having to come out and push for a more respectful view of the Holocaust. And the way this is playing out that is not going to happen. And if this turns out bad, it will be like the family that turned in Anne Frank so they wouldn't get into trouble. It will be us, the Jewish community and everyone else who believes in keeping what really happened alive, dropping our principles for the sake of vanity, for the sake of the limelight of controversy at the expense of what we believe in.