"MEL'S JESUS: A 'Real Man' or Just a Toon?" Paul Flesher reviews Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ for Bible and Interpretation. Excerpts:

Jesus� determination not to simply give in to his situation but to defy the cruelty with which it takes place constitutes a key aspect of Jesus� character in this film. Jesus has agreed to God�s plan for humanity�s salvation, but he has not given in to the human agents who carry it out. He is not a weak, passive, or spineless figure who gives up his pride when he gives up his body. His defiance of the Roman soldiers forms an implicit judgment on their actions. In broader theological terms, his continually resurfacing determination to defy his tormentors shows that he has not lost his inner strength. Although he is the victim, he is the strongest person there. He actively carries out God�s will, using his strength to ensure those around him do what needs to be done even as he defies the cruel means by which they do it. This is not the feminized Jesus the twentieth-century inherited from the Victorians, but a male Jesus who displays his macho strength to the end.

So how is the audience who views Jesus� suffering supposed to react to this macho Jesus? They are supposed to be changed. Gibson makes this clear by adding non-biblical scenes in which bystanders in the film are changed, perhaps even converted into followers, by witnessing Jesus� suffering and his reaction to it.

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Finally, to people who get immersed in the film�s story--both believers and others--this is an effective and compelling portrayal of the Passion. In the context of modern filmmaking, however, the continual beating of Jesus constitutes part of the �more! more!� character of its portrayal of violence. It reduces the man to a cartoon rather than elevating him to his divine nature. In Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, cartoon characters (�toons�) are depicted as living actors, not drawn characters, who pursue lives off the set. Their value to the film industry in Roger Rabbit is that they can absorb without effect large amounts of beating, pain, and injury. In the past couple of decades, the increasing sophistication of special-effect technology has given human actors in film the same ability. That is, the effects enable them to become like toons; they can survive car wrecks, explosions, falling from high buildings, being shot, and then just shrug it off and continue to fight. Has Gibson�s twenty-first-century Jesus become a toon? Several times in the film Jesus undergoes beatings and physical torture each of which would kill a person. He not only does not die, but he continues to be conscious, to be mobile, and to struggle with his fate. Does this film present Jesus as a �real man,� or has it reduced him to a human, live-action toon?