Letter: Lack of context undermines Gibson’s movie

Wednesday, March 3, 2004 | 8:46 a.m.

Reading Rabbi Felipe Goodman's guest column in Sunday's paper, his comments about how "some sort of subtext must always accompany a movie of this nature" immediately brought to mind a similar situation for me, in the high school classroom, when I teach another controversial book -- "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn."

I realize, unlike Mel Gibson, that to present certain images and details to an uninformed mass of people, namely my very impressionable and varied students, that if these images and details are not, first, given full explanation and some background, they can mislead and sometimes be cause for hurt, resentment and even instantaneous outbursts of anger. First, I must explain the context of the environment in which Huck Finn lived; next, I must tell students a bit about Mark Twain's own sentiments and background, and then, I ease them slowly into the novel by reading aloud to them and providing commentary and discussion. In this way, my students can come to appreciate a novel that otherwise they might have completely misunderstood and used as a springboard for justifying intolerance and close-mindedness.

Instead, they learn that the novel presents quite the opposite view, but usually they need this type of guidance, first. I think that Rabbi Goodman's arguments against Mr. Gibson's view of Christ's last hours are well justified in that people tend to jump onto bandwagons of hatred, intolerance and misunderstanding long before they allow themselves to completely understand the true facts about a subject, and this is perhaps the danger of Mr. Gibson's "Passion."

NANCY FELDMAN MAHERAS Editor's note: The writer teaches English at Western High School.