Making brutality brutal again

One of the many examples of film that should be considered to be a piece of art due to its ability to defamiliarize us to that which we have become habitualized to is Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. The story of Jesus and in particular the story of His crucifixion can, very easily, become something that we become familiar with, not in its depth, but in its literal depiction of the event. Simply reading or hearing of the details of the crucifixion can be gut wrenching, but overtime, they become somewhat “familiar.” All of this changed when Mel Gibson released his film depicting the historic documentation of the death of Jesus of Nazareth. The entirety of the film is able to defamiliarize us to the events surrounding His death because no other film has so vividly portrayed the imagery of His trial, flogging, and crucifixion. To focus on one particular scene from the movie and its ability to defamiliarize our perceptions of the actual event is what I hope to do here. This particular scene causes us to slow down and perceive with more intensity the reality of the flogging of Christ. The visual depictions of the brutality of Christ’s death within the film cause us to visualize the event as though for the first time. Even though it is not actually happening in front of us, the film allows us to get a very close and vivid picture of what the onlookers at the actual flogging of Jesus witnessed. The visuals effect us to the very core. What text is often not able to do, the film does powerfully. But how so? Well, everything about the scene causes this scene to be “unfamiliar” to us, thus, succesfully employing Shklovsky's theory about the purpose of art. The soldiers brutality and hatred is depicted through their jeers, their actions, their mannerisms, and their facial features. Even the discoloration of their teeth adds to the defamiliarizing effect. It causes us to view these soldiers visually. Rather than reading about their laughs, we hear their laughs. Rather than read about their intense hatred, we are able to feel, sense, and see their hatred and indifference for Jesus. In fact, we see the length to which they are ruthlessly beating Jesus in this scene when they bend over out of sheer exhaustion from striking Jesus continually. The depiction of Christ defamiliarizes us to the normal way in which we have come across this event. The clothing He is wearing is ragged and dirty. He appears to have been “through the ringer” already. He has visual bruises and wounds on His face. Then, once the beating begins, Jesus yells and gasps for air as blow after blow slam into his back. He hops and jumps due to the pain of the blows being driven into His legs. By the time the first round of the beating is finished, he is shown quivering and shaking and whimpering in pain. His flesh is exposed and blood visually seeps from his fresh wounds. All of these components add to the defamiliarizing effect produced from the film. Another component that defamiliarizes us to the brutality of this scene is the visual portrayal of the weaponry. Perhaps the most powerful example of this can be seen when the soldier takes the cat of nine tails whip and slams it into the wood table. Upon contact, the metal blades that are anchored into the end of the ropes stick into the table. The guard literally yanks them out. The visual power this communicates repulses us as the audience becomes aware that those jagged pieces of metal would be thrust into human flesh. Throughout the scene, Mel Gibson “defamiliarizes” us to this well-known historical event. He does so in a very graphic way, making it new again. Or, by paraphrasing Shklovsky, he makes the brutality of the flogging of Jesus brutal again.

Flogging of Jesus