This is in regard to some factual and logical errors in the article 'Heaven and Mel' (Post Magazine, February 8) on Mel Gibson's new movie The Passion of The Christ.
Though I am fond of my Braveheart DVD, I am hardly a biased Mel Gibson partisan nor a spokesman.
First, the author of the article through innuendo implies that Gibson denies that the Holocaust ever happened. This is a quote from an interview Gibson gave to Reader's Digest: 'I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms. The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. Yes, of course atrocities happened. War is horrible.' While Gibson followed this with a statement of implicit moral equivalence between the Holocaust and the millions who died in the Ukraine famine in 1932-33, it is obvious that he acknowledged the existence and tragedy of the Holocaust. Apparently, Alan Neirob, his longtime spokesman, is also Jewish. Hardly seems fitting for a supposed anti-Semite. Second, even in Asia's family-oriented cultures, there may be views held by our parents or grandparents that we disagree with or find embarrassing. Gibson is from a more individualistic culture. It does not follow that the sins, or in this case views, of the father should naturally accrue to his son.
Last, reading between the lines of the article there is an intellectual thread somehow connecting the Holocaust and Christianity. This is hopelessly reductivist and contrary to the fact that hundreds of thousands of Christians died fighting Nazism and fascism.
Missing is the truly interesting story of how savvy businessman Gibson funded a movie he deeply cares about and, as a gifted artist, knows which proclivities in the public and media to inflame. Fascinating how in retelling a story 2,000 years old, he garnered enough movie publicity to make Spielberg or Lucas envious.
GEORGE LIN, Central