Here is my last term paper at Claremont. It needs more polishing, but I'm proud of it. The second subtitle is: Or Why Osama Bin Laden's Death Bothers Me.
It is also what I wish my Easter Sermon would have been.
PDF version here.
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Christianity’s Perversion:
Zizek and Latin American Liberation Theology
The next to final scene in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart features several minutes of the protagonist, William Wallace (played by Mel Gibson), being beaten, choked, racked, castrated, disemboweled, and finally beheaded in front of a cheering fourteenth-century English crowd. Taken by itself, the scene would be akin to a snuff film or contemporary horror “torture-porn” (like Eli Roth’s Hostel). Instead, however, it evokes a powerful reaction from the viewer because of the context in which Wallace’s torture and death is given in the movie. For nearly three hours before this violent presentation we are shown the exploits of Wallace as he rallies the peasants of Scotland together to fight against England’s King Edward in an attempt to gain their freedom. Fearing Wallace as a threat to his power, Edward sees that he is eventually captured and sentenced to death. With this long background, the climactic scene is not just difficult to watch because of its violence, but because of that which led up to these final moments. His death points to his life and is presented as a testimony to his cause.
In The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, Slavoj Zizek concludes that the “perverse core” of Christianity is the message that Christianity is the “religion of atheism” wherein when “Christ dies, what dies with him is the . . . hope that there is a father.”[1] Though they would hardly consider themselves advocates of a religion of atheism, liberation theologians from Latin America[2] have made similar departures from the traditional understandings of the cross,[3] sharing with Zizek the view that “in theological terms, . . . it is not we, humans, who can rely on the help of God—on the contrary, we must help God.”[4] In this paper I hope to compare and contrast the departures of Zizek and Latin American liberation theologies as they both contrast themselves from the more traditional theology of the cross—a contrast that is particularly evident in a comparison of Braveheart with Mel Gibson’s other blockbuster, The Passion of the Christ.
