A Bloodthirsty Salvation: Behind the Popular Polarized Reaction to Gibson‘s ‘The Passion’

This article analyzes viewer response to The Passion of the Christ, focusing on how viewers interpreted the film‘s dominant atonement images, in order to explore just how these images operate in popular culture, how they influence values, practices and beliefs, and to question the social impact of the discourse of violence and redemptive dynamics imbedded in the religious images themselves.