Gibson in the lion’s den

There’s something about the hot glare and blinding toothsomeness of the secular media that makes a religious true believer look a little medieval, possibly demented.

Or maybe it was just Mel Gibson, staring down the barrel of Diane Sawyer’s squinty malocchio. Over the course of Monday night’s hourlong “Primetime Special Event,” a fascinating hour of television during which a cockeyed Sawyer tried gamely to extract a shocking confession of bigotry, indisputable proof of insanity or, failing that, then at least a lurid account of the view from rock bottom from the onetime People magazine Sexiest Man Alive.

Gibson veered uncomfortably between looking like a pious man forced to defend his religious beliefs on national TV (where the camera adds 10 pounds of incredulity), an affable movie star trying -- and failing miserably -- to make light of a heavy situation, and a paranoid maniac former addict suffering from delusions of persecution.

Sawyer, speaking at times in a canting lilt and, at others, in the kind of tone used by a psychiatric evaluator conducting an intake interview with a potentially violent psychotic, offered the following interrogatory gems:

“What does the evil side want?” (This as a follow-up to Gibson’s statement that, “If you believe, you believe that there are big realms of good and evil and they’re slugging it out.”)

“How bad did it get?” (This, of course, as a follow-up to Gibson’s de rigueur confession of past debauchery).

And, “You said the Holy Ghost was working for you.... Do you believe God wrote this film?” (The moment when the interview journalistically jumped the shark; Sawyer couldn’t have been serious, could she?)

In terms of sheer strangeness, Gibson didn’t disappoint. The interview was peppered with manic effusions and bizarre outbursts -- some, to be fair, merely failed attempts at jokes.

Discussing his addictive personality: “Don’t I look like a rummy?”

Talking about how he’d like to hide out: “I’m going to pitch my tent near the weapons of mass destruction, that way they’ll never find me.”

And, perhaps most memorably, describing what happened after he reached the “pinnacle of what secular utopia has to offer,” as the period when “I got my proboscis out and dipped it into the fun and sucked it up.”

Whoa!

It was indisputably weird. But apparently not weird enough to beat “CSI: Miami” on CBS. At times, it also seemed quite clear that Gibson had not been granted the courtesy cleanup a “get” of his stature can normally expect. Sawyer and the producers of “Primetime” violated the usually sacrosanct cross-promotional compact. All of Gibson’s performance glitches -- his asides, his mugging for the camera, speaking directly to it -- were left in, which only enhanced Gibson’s jumpiness.

Jumpy as he appeared, Gibson seemed willing to submit to the ritual celebrity penance -- at least until Sawyer pressed him to speak publicly about his father, who has been quoted as scoffing at the extent of the Holocaust. Gibson, who said he believed that millions of Jews died in concentration camps, dug in when Sawyer pressed for more about Dad.

“He’s my father. Gotta leave it alone, Diane. Gotta leave it alone.”

Not having seen “The Passion of the Christ,” I can’t say whether Gibson deserves the scrutiny he has received in its advent. But given the pitch, tenor and volume of the criticism leveled against him, I would expect the film to be well beyond simply distasteful, bad or boneheaded.

Yet Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League and one of the movie’s leading Jewish critics, told Sawyer that he did not consider the movie nor Gibson himself to be anti-Semitic. Another Jewish scholar interviewed by Sawyer, Amy-Jill Levine, came to the same conclusion.

The biggest concern centers around whether the film could incite people prone to hatred to commit acts of hatred. It’s an interesting problem, in part because it puts the onus of having to predict all possible interpretations of the film on Gibson, who has not exactly strained to allay fears.

But there’s something creepily interrogatory about the Gibson-centrism of it all, not to mention symbolic.

“That’s what people do,” Gibson responded to Sawyer asking if he believes the world is full of conspiracies. “They conspire. If you can’t get the message, get the man. I think that’s what we’re engaged in, we’re engaged in character assassination.”

Granted, in this case, Gibson willingly took the bullet, having agreed to appear on the show and to sit down for numerous other interviews to promote the film and address his critics. But it was “Primetime” that really invited the messianic comparisons. At the very beginning of the show, Sawyer explained that throughout the “Primetime Special Event,” “the word ‘passion’ is used in the original sense of the word. The Greek ‘pathos,’ which means suffering.”

And what did they choose to title the interview? “Mel Gibson’s Passion.” It is as it was, or it looked like it anyway.