obscenity test

Obscenity test
By Steven Zak March 21, 2004


Two narrative works recently made their way before the public -- one in the Alexandria Library in Egypt, the other on movie screens across America. The first was an Arabic translation of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a nineteenth-century forgery that purports to be the Jewish blueprint for world domination. The second was The Passion, a new-tech dramatization of Jews as killers of Christ. The two share a sordid history.

At the turn of the last century, Protocols, which a Czarist official who edited the document once claimed he stole from a fictitious Zionist headquarters in France, was used by Czarists to portray the Russian Revolution as a Jewish plot to take over the world.

A Polish version appeared in 1920, and the next year an Arabic version was used to portray Jewish settlers in Palestine as part of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.

In this country, Henry Ford published a version in a series of articles called "The International Jew: the World's Foremost problem," later republished as a book in several languages.

Among those inspired by "The Protocols" was Adolph Hitler, who cited it as justification for anti-Jewish laws.

The Fuhrer was equally fond of passion plays -- dramatizations of the death of Christ -- which he called a "precious tool" against Judaism. One such play, staged each year in Bavaria since 1634 and performed for Hitler in 1934, until recently depicted Jewish characters with horns.

Passion plays, to be sure, can have a genuine religious function, but the form has the inherent potential to paint a black picture of Jews. How do we know, then, whether Hollywood's new money-maker is a legitimate expression of faith or is merely obscene?

Forty years ago, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously wrote that he knew obscenity when he saw it. I'd suggest a more fruitful rule of interpretation which, incidentally, enjoys popularity among Mel Gibson's conservative apologists who excoriate judges for "making law": Stick to looking for the author's intent.

That means that it's no good to simply watch The Passion and tell us how you "feel."

Who cares that Front Page Magazine editor David Horowitz finds the film to be "an overpowering work"? Or that talk-show host Bill O'Reilly sees in it a "faithful rendition" of the execution of Jesus? Or that Hollywood-basher and author of Tales From the Left Coast, James Hirsen, feels that it's "a faith-deepening experience"?

We know that Protocols is an obscene defamation of an entire people not merely by reading it and getting in touch with our inner child but by understanding it in historical context. If it had another author -- one, say, who meant to parody stereotypes about Jews -- the same work would have an entirely different meaning.

And how do we know the intent of Mel Gibson?

Well, we know that he's a member of a reactionary sect that rejects the modern reforms of the Catholic Church, particularly its long-standing repudiation of the charge of deicide against the Jews.

We know, too, of his consistent defense of his outspoken anti-Semitic father. "He never denied the Holocaust," Gibson said, referring to a New York Times interview with papa. "He just said there were fewer than six million." Actually, as junior knows well, papa said quite a bit more -- like that Hitler had a deal with the Jews "to make it rough on them" so they could go to Israel. In a recent radio interview, papa said that the Holocaust was mostly "a fiction." Junior's view? "The man never lied to me in his life."

The point isn't to hold junior responsible for papa's ideas but to consider whether he shares them. By all evidence, he does. When Peggy Noonan in Reader's Digest asked him straight out to affirm that the Holocaust was real, he said, "Atrocities happened. War is horrible. The Second World War killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps."

That's as close to "no" as you can get without being forthright enough to just say it.

If Justice Stewart were still around, he might update his test for obscenity: "I know it when I see evidence of its author's wicked mind."