Diana Walsh-Pasulka
Assistant Professor Department of Philosophy and Religion
University of North Carolina, Wilmington

Abstract

Much of the scholarship that examines the connections between film and religion is based on the assumption that there is a clear distinction between film reality and the reality of everyday life.  In other words, viewers suspend their belief structures while enjoying a film about the supernatural, but they always maintain a conscious separation between the film and reality.  This assumption is complicated when considering the urban legends and stories surrounding films like The Exorcist and The Passion of the Christ.  The discourse that surrounds these films, the urban legends, tales and folklore, reveal a realism with respect to the supernatural and religion that defies the assumption of the film's status as fantasy.  They literally bring the supernatural to life.   In this way, they blur the assumed boundary between film reality and ordinary reality.  In this sense they function much like a religious icon as used in popular devotional practices.

The Power of Popular Religious Movies

[1] The Passion of the Christ quickly rose to the top of the list of the most financially successful movies of all time, sharing the honour with other notable films such as The Sixth Sense and The Exorcist.  A cursory review of this list reveals that if financial success is any indication of widespread popularity, then the viewing public is fascinated with movies involving supernatural and religious themes.  Although the popular representation of religion is widely addressed by scholars, one aspect of this phenomenon has been paid relatively little attention–the urban legends surrounding these popular movies.  An examination of these legends, stories and folktales reveals a dimension of these films that is a potent social force–the belief that the sacred or supernatural is at work in the lives of those whom produce, star in, and view the movies.  The belief in the realism of the religious aspects of thematically religious films is well illustrated by a few popular examples. The Exorcist is widely regarded as the scariest movie of all time.  The film became infamous due to the trauma and visceral reactions produced in its audience, and it was associated with a curse that supposedly caused several deaths.  The fact that the movie was based on a "real" life case of demon possession added to the realism of the movie's effects.  More currently, a similar discourse of realism is attributed to The Passion of the Christ.  Lead actor James Caviezel (Jesus) was hit by lightning during the making of the film. Mel Gibson (writer and produce of The Passion of the Christ), in an interview on national radio, reflected on the metaphysical implications of the lightening incident: “you can’t deny it–how many times does lightening strike people anyway, and on the same movie set?”1 The dominant interpretation given to these real events (the “real” story of The Exorcist and its curse, the fact that Caviezel was hit by lightening) is that the supernatural is at work in the production and release of these films.  This interpretation is even supported by the film writers/directors.  William Blatty (writer and producer of The Exorcist) acknowledges that The Exorcist is a fictional narrative modeled on non-fictional accounts of exorcisms, and hopes that his movie will cause people to consider the real existence of the devil.

[2] This essay examines how thematically religious movies produce beliefs regarding the supernatural, as illustrated in the popular legends and tales surrounding them.  If, as other scholars have argued, certain films perform a religious function in our society, then this aspect of film, its ability to reveal the supernatural in ordinary existence, is an important phenomenon that has yet to be explored. These stories and legends reveal that audiences believe that these films instigate real effects, from miraculous cures to curses that kill.  In this sense, these movies function like religious icons, representations that, for believers, literally bring the sacred to life.

[3] Several recent books address how film functions as religion.2  In Film as Religion: Myths, Morals and Rituals, John C. Lyden argues that “film viewing, like religion, affords a link between the alternate world it imagines and the empirical world of everyday life " (53).  Lyden argues that films function like religion in forming the dominate values of American society by imparting collective myths and molding beliefs about what is held to be of ultimate value. Conrad Ostwalt, in his work on secularization, religion and popular culture in the United States, furthers this line of argument by complicating the secular/religious dichotomy and focusing on the forms religion takes in popular culture.  He argues that popular manifestations of religion, such as religious entertainment and films, may gradually supplant the authority of conventional religious traditions and the normative frameworks of religious institutions.   He states "even if religious institutions lose authority, the power of religion does not diminish in scope–the location of that power might, however, shift in focus " (5).  Lyden states that the film viewer is always able to demarcate the film version of reality from the empirical world– “film viewers are well aware of the unreality of cinema" (52).  This essay argues the opposite; that the iconic aspects of religious film blur the boundary between film reality and conventional reality.  Postmodern theorists have suggested that in contemporary society representation is reality, and Jean Baudrillard states that Americans have a hard time distinguishing simulation from the real.  No where is this more evident than in the popular reception of religious films.  It is precisely the tales, legends and lore of religious films that reveal a significant aspect of their force and appeal, and in part is what accounts for the shift from the institutional forms of sacred observance to one dictated by the entertainment industry.  Religious films function like icons; they are representations that embody the sacred and otherworldly, and thus blur the boundaries between film reality and the reality of everyday life.     

The Icon and the Religious Film

[4] For Orthodox Christians and many Catholic practitioners, the religious icon is a representation that possesses numinous qualities.  In the early Christian church, the veneration of images of Jesus and saints was a controversy that erupted in war on many occasions, most famously in the seventh century.  Strictly prohibited in Judaism and Islam, icons or representations of God were highly regulated by the early and medieval Christian Church.  The controversy stemmed from fears of Church authorities that the popular veneration of images of Jesus and his mother Mary would lead to idol worship. Theological debates regarding iconophilia dominated the ecumenical councils of this era, and early in the eighth century Leo III declared the veneration of icons a heresy.  Two women, Empress Irene and later, Empress Theodora, restored the veneration of icons.3 At the Seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicea in 787, the official dogma of the veneration of icons was promulgated, “For honour paid to an image passes on to its prototype; he who worships (ho proskynon) an image worships the reality of him who is painted in it."4  This is still official dogma in the Eastern and Roman Rite churches.  The popular veneration of images, however, many times appeared to defy official constraints.  From the sixth century onward, images were credited with the performance of miracles and they were often the objects of direct worship.  Images wept blood, tears, they spoke and generally intervened in the lives of believers. The icon, in popular devotional practices, possesses powers not attributed to other material objects.  Quite often an icon is the subject of a long tradition of miraculous discourse.  One example of this is the icon of St. Irene housed in the Greek Orthodox Church St. Irene in New York.

[5] Painted by a monk from Greece in 1919, the icon of Saint Irene, property of the Cathedral of Saint Irene in Queens, New York, has been the object of devotions and miracles for the past century.  Credited with interventions as diverse as easing the pains of childbirth to curing gangrene, the icon is the subject of a thriving discourse including hundreds of thank you cards and letters, many of which are published by the periodical “The Voice of Orthodoxy.”  Once the icon was loaned out to a church in Chicago, and it reportedly wept tears.  Subsequently its fame and influence spread further.  There is a website devoted to miracles believers attribute to the icon’s miraculous intervention.  Shockingly, on December 23, 1991, three armed robbers abducted the icon, forced priests and parishioners to lie on the altar, and escaped.  This prompted an outpouring of public grief.  The icon was worth a lot of money, but to its devotees, its true worth was priceless. “We don't care for the gold, we don't care for the diamonds,” said Bishop Vikentios of Avalon, the head of the St. Irene of Chrysovalantou Greek Orthodox Church. "We only want the icon back” (A1).5  The icon was returned, but without the jewels and precious stones that adorned it previously.  Orthodox theology clarifies that icons are not objects of devotion, but should be considered to be portals through which the divine can be contemplated.  Popular practices suggest otherwise.  The icon of St. Irene seems more than a gateway or portal to the divine; she seems divine in and of herself.  She is kissed, made the recipient of mail and cards, adored, grieved for when stolen, and referenced as an important member of many families.  She is an example of a representation with numinous qualities, and one that has acquired a unique history and miraculous tradition.

[6] A similar phenomenon surrounds certain religious films, and it is in a specific sense that they function like the icon of Saint Irene.  Like the icon, these films are numinous representations that bring the supernatural to the lives of ordinary people, and as with the icon, a miraculous discourse emerges from the films. Unlike the religious icon, which brings the sacred, not the demonic, to life, religious films often bring maleficent forces to ordinary reality, according to believers.  They are not uniformly benign.  Yet, like icons their miraculous properties sustain communities of believers.  The most current example illustrating this point is the discourse and “buzz” surrounding Mel Gibson’s ThePassion of the Christ.  Just prior to the movie’s release as a DVD, a television documentary was aired that featured miracles associated with the movie.  A baby was brought back from death; a murderer confessed and turned himself into the authorities, etc.  Leaving aside for the moment the question of promotional intentions, the program attests to a miraculous discourse surrounding the movie that speaks to a public belief in its numinous and sacred qualities.  In this way the movie functions like an icon for believers, and a powerful one at that.  The devotion to the icon of Saint Irene and other specific icons is eclipsed by the sheer volume of devotees inspired by Gibson’s film. 

[7] Several recent critical anthologies of The Passion of the Christ deal with audience reception and its Catholic elements such as emphasis on imagery, yet none has attended to the miraculous discourse found in the urban legends and lore about the film.6  David Morgan argues in his essay “Catholic Visual Piety and The Passion of the Christ” that Mel Gibson returns to a premodern iconography and that the movie is a visual representation of Christ’s life.  From this perspective, Morgan argues, the film is meant to inspire reflection.  This places the film within the category of a religious icon from a traditional theological perspective, but ignores how icons are often used, and in particular how they effect real world action, in particular–miracles.  When examining how the film is represented by the lore and legends found in newspapers, blogs, DVDs and other popular discourse, it becomes apparent that it functions much like the icon of Saint Irene, that is, as an object of popular devotion credited with miracles and sacred powers.  Another scholar who has examined the Passion from an iconic framework is Robert K. Johnston.7  Like Morgan, Johnston focuses on how the film is intended as a devotional representation that evokes in the viewer ideas of transcendence.  What each analysis misses, however, is the aspect of audience reception that accounts for the belief in the miraculous power associated with the film.  It is this aspect of icons that is part of what makes them popular, how they bring the supernatural to the natural, real world.  Beyond evoking ideas of transcendence in believers, they literally bring the otherworldly to the this-worldly, through miracles and other direct interventions, sometimes not so beatific.  This type of discourse is specific to other movies as well.  The Exorcist, for example, reveals aspects of the numinous that are not so sacred or benign.

The Curse of The Exorcist and other Supernatural Discourse

[8] The film The Exorcist is routinely acknowledged to be on of the scariest movies of all time.  Its public reception in 1973 is legendary as audiences suffered traumatic reactions to the spectacle of a fourteen-year old girl possessed by the devil.  The impact of the film, however, exceeded its two-hour duration.  At the time of its release, newspapers documented that viewers were so disturbed by the movie they sought professional care due to its damaging psychological effects.  The film instigated a societal reflection upon the nature of supernatural evil.  The Exorcist was the first horror movie to be taken seriously by the film industry, and it won two Academy Awards as well as receiving nine nominations.

[9] The members of the Academy were not the only ones who took the film seriously.  The reasons for its success are hotly debated, but a consensus is unanimous with regard to one thing–the movie is scary because it tapped into the public’s latent belief in the supernatural as exemplified by a Catholic version of Satan.  Audiences and the media took the film beyond its role as entertainment as stories and anecdotes circulated that attest to the film’s otherworldly power.  First and foremost of these was the “curse of The Exorcist,” which involved a series of tragedies related to the making of the movie.  Several events contributed to the construction of the “curse.”  The film set burned down for no apparent reason.  Jack MacGowan, who played Burke Dennings–a character who is killed by the demon in the movie, died just after he ended filming his scenes.  Other deaths and tragedies were attributed to the movie’s production, in addition to strange phenomena that writer William Blatty and director William Friedkin each confirm.  Asked whether or not there was any truth to the “weird happenings on the set,” Friedkin replied “There were a great many unusual occurrences that I experienced during the making of this film that I had never experienced before, and hope to never experience again.”8  Actress Ellen Burstyn, who played Regan’s mother, stated that the film "deals with very heavy forces–I was a little worried about what that would mean."9

[10] These testimonials and tales reveal a subtext of the movie that is significant in two respects.  First, this otherworldly discourse undeniably contributes to the film’s impact and success.  With the film’s first release, audiences were drawn less by the content of the movie than for its reputed effects on its viewers.  These real effects were attributable to the fear of satanic evil as much as evil’s capacity to destroy a family.  This point is supported by the Catholic Church’s official statement condoning the movie as “realistic,” as well as statements by Friedkin and Blatty saying that the movie is based on a true account of demonic possession.  Asked whether or not he believed in demons, and consequently demonic possession, Friedkin replied “Along with the Catholic Church, I'm convinced that this case was authentic.”10  The “authenticity” of the movie coupled with its horrifying content spelled unparalleled success for Blatty and Friedkin.  On the one hand, the movie was successful because it told a good story, albeit strange–that of a single mother trying to raise her daughter and confronting something unheard of in secular society–the devil.  On the other hand, the film’s striking success is attributable to the extra-film discourse that helped to blur the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction.  The Exorcist was more than a film.  It was an event that seemed to bring to life supernatural evil.

[11] The urban legends surrounding the movie contributed greatly to The Exorcist's success.  Though likely unintentional, the realism associated with a religiously focused movie proved to be a potent marketing strategy.  This is well illustrated years later by the writer-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, who created the popular movie The Blair Witch Project (1999).  Aware of the tradition of this type of discourse or not, these directors consciously set out to create a “buzz” that functioned in the same way as the intertextual supernatural discourse of The Exorcist.  Whereas for the former movie the buzz was genuine–in other words not fabricated by the directors–the discourse created before the release of The Blair Witch Project was the result of brilliant premeditation. 

[12]  Prior to the release of the movie, the directors generated an urban legend with the help of their extended peer base, the internet, and other media such as the radio.  Their fabricated urban legend told the story of a group of college students who decide to document a real legend in the woods of Maryland.  During their filming, they encounter the actual witch of the legend, and they all disappear, presumably meeting their deaths at the witch’s hand.  The only thing left of their trip is the recovered footage of their documentary, which constitutes the movie.

[13] The promotional sound bite is as follows: "On October 21, 1994, Heather Donahue, Joshua Leonard, and Michael Williams hiked into the Black Hills Forest to shoot a documentary film on a local legend called 'The Blair Witch,' and were never seen again. One year later, their footage was found."11  In addition to claiming that the movie was the actual footage found by the missing college students, the directors establish verisimilitude by having the actors actually play themselves, thus creating as much as possible a convergence of reality and fantasy.   The generated urban legend as promo is unique in movie-making, and Myrick and Sanchez’s concept was a raging success.  The Blair Witch Project is an independent low budget film that reaped big returns–it was a box office hit.  Significantly, it did not advertise on television or as trailers to other movies–its success was purely by word of mouth and the internet.  In other words, the writer-directors were able to market the movie by manufacturing and exploiting the urban legends regarding the supernatural prior to the release of the movie.  This discourse was as important to the meaning of the movie as the movie itself.             

[14] The Blair Witch Project marketing ploy proved that the supernatural discourse around a movie generates publicity and thus money, yet it also illustrates a significant aspect about movies dealing with the supernatural.  Sanchez and Myrick intentionally tapped the American audience’s curiosity and belief, or perhaps desire, to witness the supernatural, real-world effects associated with a film event.  This is evidenced by the actions Sanchez and Myrick took to preserve the secret of the legend they created.  In these actions they acknowledged that the draw of the movie was its possible realism–that it could have actually happened.  In an interview regarding the unique marketing of the movie, Sanchez speaks directly to their intention to traverse the boundaries of fantasy and reality: “We didn't want to tell people that it was real, but we didn't want to tell people it was fake, either. We wanted to walk that line, you know?”12  Myrick concurs, “I think it's cool that people may make assumptions about whether or not it's real, but there's still a question in their mind whether it is.”13  Regardless of whether they intended in the end to have people believe in the actual reality of the Blair witch, they did design “the film to be, from beginning to end, a completely real experience.”14

[15] The belief in the realism of the supernatural aspects of religious films is best illustrated by the contemporary discourse surrounding Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.  Like The Exorcist, The Passion of the Christ is based on an historical event.  Similar to The Blair Witch Project, Gibson promoted the movie in a unique way.  Instead of exposing the movie to a mass audience via television, he staged national showings of the movie to selected audiences, mostly composed of religious figures and scholars.  After this initial tour, he allowed the movie to be shown to whole churches prior to its public release on the Catholic holiday Ash Wednesday.  The overall effect of this type of promotion was that it caused people to view the movie as a version of history that was being re-enacted.  Because the story of Jesus’ crucifixion is sacred history to many people, the comments of religious studies scholars contributed to the audience perception that the movie was the confirmation of a real event.  This occurred regardless of the fact that most religious scholars who did see the film were disappointed by Gibson’s lack of historical accuracy.15   Gibson acknowledged divine intervention both as an inspiration in making the film and as real occurrences on the production set.  Tales of conversions, weeping and sobbing audiences, lightning strikes on the set and even the intervention of the devil all converge to form perhaps the most realistic supernatural movie yet.

[16] The movie’s most direct link to the supernatural is the script, which Gibson implies is divinely inspired. “There is an interesting power in the script," he claims, "a lot of unusual things have been happening–good things, like people being healed of diseases. A guy who was struck by lightning while we were filming the crucifixion scene just got up and walked away."16  Gibson regrets that he admitted, early on, that he believed that the holy spirit was guiding him to make the film, “while it's true, it's also one of those things that can easily be used to belittle what I was going through and what led me here.”17  The belief in the spiritual efficacy of the script affected the whole production crew.  The actor who plays the disciple Peter (Francesco De Vito) also acknowledged that he and others were affected by the palpable presence of the holy spirit on the set: "I talk with Judas [Luca Lionello] and with John [Hristo Jivkov] about this movie and about faith on the set, and there is something going on with many of us. We've become very focused–it has changed us."18  Even actor Jim Caviezel feels that his fate to play Jesus is divinely ordained: "Do you realize I'm 33 years old, the same age Jesus was when he went through all of this?", he exclaimed to Gibson when the two discussed the possibility that he would play the lead role. "I'm interested in letting God work through me to play this role. I believe the Holy Spirit has been leading me in the right direction and to get away from my own physical flesh and allow the character of Jesus to be played out the way God wants it–that's all I can do."19

[17] For the production crew, as well as the writers, there is no clear dividing line between the world of everyday life and the reality of the film.  In the case of Gibson’s movie, the power of the script supernaturally touches the production crew.  They have not suspended their belief structure for a time, as film viewers and even actors are often thought to do, in order to gain an experience while then returning to the safety of normal life.  The discourse surrounding this film reveals that it has very real world effects, from curing illnesses to striking people with lightning–even the devil makes an appearance in an attempt to thwart the movie from being made.  In one of the more bizarre stories associated with The Passion, composer John Debney admits to battling Satan in an effort to score the music for the film: “The first time it happened, it scared me. I had never before subscribed to the idea that maybe Satan is a real person, but I can attest that he was in my room a lot and I know that he hit everyone on this production.”20  This discourse makes clear that the movie creates the conditions for the real appearance of the supernatural (according to those who believe it).  It is not the case that the audience (and production crew) is willing to suspend normal judgment for a time and then return to an ordinary belief structure.  They believe that the movie has brought the sacred and the supernatural to their lives.

[18] This belief structure is not limited to the production crew, who could arguably be manufacturing such stories for promotional purposes (much like the writer-directors of The Blair Witch Project).  While much of the intense audience reception is attributed to the violence of the crucifixion, the proliferation of stories that attest to the power and the impact of the movie reveals that audiences are responding to something more than the violence.  After viewing the movie, a Texas man who murdered his girlfriend offered his confession to police.  In Georgia, a movie theatre randomly assigned the numbers “666” to the tickets for the film, and moviegoers refused to take them.  “666” is the mark of the beast in the New Testament book of Revelation.  Like the relic that Mel Gibson carries from eighteenth century nun Ann Catherine Emmerlich, the movie is associated with sacred power.21  It works much like a Catholic sacramental or icon–it is thought to be empirically efficacious.  The film functions like a literal icon of sacred power, one that blurs the boundaries between the sacred and the ordinary world, and brings the supernatural to life.

A Shift in Religious Authority

[19]  Religiously themed films often form communities of believers from diverse religious backgrounds.  Even though Mel Gibson is a traditionalist Catholic and the Catholic elements of his film are obvious to most Catholics, the movie is popular with Christian denominations worldwide.  What can explain this mass appeal?  Conrad Ostwalt argues that generally, the appeal of religious popular culture is a postmodern development.  He argues that idea that secularization will replace religious devotion, a thesis popular among many scholars of religion as well as sociologists, is wrong when examined in light of popular culture.  The thesis states that processes of secularization will eventually weaken religious belief, which will then be replaced by principles of rationalism.  He argues that what has demonstrably happened is that traditional religious institutions have lost authority to secular and civil institutions.  However, religious belief has not declined, but religious authority has shifted from its traditional frameworks to those of secular culture, like film, music and television.  The supernatural discourse surrounding religiously thematic films is an important aspect of this development.  Some of the more convincing explanations for the overwhelming audience response to The Passion of the Christ include arguments that it is the medium of film that enables the movie to form and unify communities of believers.22   They argue that “media experiences that are religious are thus transethnic, transdenominational, and transsociocultural in nature, offering potential ‘oneness’ or unity otherwise absent from many nonvirtual Christian environs” (165). This is no doubt part of the explanation for why religious and supernatural films are so successful in unifying communities of believers.  However, scholars must also attend to the content of the beliefs regarding these films, instead of how the films function to inspire zealous public response.  What are audiences saying about these movies?  They are saying that these movies bring the supernatural–sometimes sacred, sometimes maleficent, into their ordinary, everyday lives.  This essay has illustrated this belief by examining the popular legends and lore surrounding popular films that deal with religion and the supernatural.

Notes

1 Sean Hannity interview with Mel Gibson, March 16, 2004, http://www.hannity.com/story.php?content=/audio_archive#political

2 There are various ways of understanding the connections between film and religion, including looking at religious elements in films, how films critique religion, etc.  I am focusing on the literature that addresses how films function like religion, i.e., how they inculcate values, provide collective myths, etc. The following recent analyses deal with this aspect of religion and film: John Lyden, Film as Religion: Myths, Morals, Rituals (New York: New York University Press, 2003); Contrad Ostwalt, Secular Steeples: Popular Culture and the Religious Imagination, (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003); Joel W. Martin and Conrad E. Ostwalt Jr., eds., Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Film (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995); Stewart M. Hoover and Shalini S. Venturelli, 'The Category of the Religious: The Blindspot of Contemporary Media Theory?', in Critical Studies in Mass Communication 13 (September 1996).

3 It was Empress Irene who convened the council that would be the last shared by the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, and she is primarily credited with establishing the veneration of Images. See Judith Herrin’s Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2004).

4 Mansi, XIII, pp. 378-9; Harduin, IV.

5 Donatella Lorch, “Queens Church Robbed of Weeping Icon,” New York Times (December 24, 1991).

6 These include the following: J. Shawn Landres and Michael Berenbaum, eds., After the Passion is Gone: American Religious Consequences (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004); S. Brent Plate, ed., Re-viewing the Passion: Mel Gibson’s Film and Its Critics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Multiple on-line journal discussions involve the movie as well, including the a Special Issue of Journal of Film and Religion dedicated to the film (8,1 [February 2004]).   

7 Robert K. Johnston, “The Passion as Dynamic Icon: A Theological Reflection,” in Re-viewing the Passion, 55-70.

8 Friedkin interview, USA Today, October 11, 2003: http://www.usatoday.com/community/chat/1011friedkin.htm

9 BBC News, June 15th, 1998, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/111367.stm

10 Friedkin interview, USA Today.

11  Official web site, The Blair Witch Project,  http://www.blairwitch.com/.

12 The A.V. Club interview, July 1999, http://www.theavclub.com/avclub3525/avfeature3525.html.

13 The A.V. Club interview, July 1999.

14 The A.V. Club interview, July 1999.

15 See the special issue of the Journal of Film and Religion dedicated to "The Passion of the Christ"  (see n. 6 above).

16 Holly McClure, “A Very Violent Passion,” The Frontpage Daily News, http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/54288p-50909c.html

17 Lawson, Terry, “Divine Inspiration: Mel Gibson and other Movie Producers say Film was Guided by Faith,” February 17, 2004, http://www.freep.com/news/religion/mel17_20040217.htm

18 Lawson, http://www.freep.com/news/religion/mel17_20040217.htm

McClure, http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/54288p-50909c.html

20 Jeanette Walls, “Symphony for the Devil,” March 3, 2004, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4375708/

21 Mel Gibson attributes much of his vision for the movie to the texts written by eighteenth century visionary Ann Catherine Emmerlich, and he carries her relic. 

22 Robert H. Woods, Michael C. Jindra and Jason D. Baker, “The Audience responds to The Passion of the Christ,”  in Re-viewing the Passion, 163-79.