“It’s like a conjuring trick. You know, take any card? You always end up with the card the magician forced you to take.”
“Suppose I don’t take it?”
“You will.”
“Who are these clerical cards I’m supposed to choose?”
“Well, with Church you usually get the choice of a Knave or a Queen.”
– Yes, Prime Minister
The following may contain plot spoilers about Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. You’ve been warned.
It must be a tough job being the bloke in the Catholic Church in charge of deciding what spanking new elements of popular culture to rile against. Take movies, for instance. On one side, you wouldn’t want heretical propaganda reaching the flock - who knows what those weak-minded individuals, completely incapable of making their own minds about things, might think when faced with one hour and forty-five minutes of movie that contradicts centuries of mostly immutable gospel. On the other side, if you start to make public your outrage against a previously obscure movie just because you perceive it as a threat, you risk bringing more attention to a film that otherwise would have played only in art houses or to audiences that were acquainted with the director’s previous work. Given enough time, the critic itself could have tore those films down with no Church intervention whatsoever.
I personally would have liked to see the face of the guy who decided that Dogma was blasphemous drivel and all copies must be burnt in a big bonfire in St. Peter’s Plaza, when they realized that Kevin Smith was mostly a cult director (read, seen by a rabid few) and that they had just put him on the world map.
-
“Oh, you mean that the director’s previous movies were seen by a
total of 37 people? Like, all of them? And this one has
world-wide attention because of what we said? Sheesh.
The old man is going to bring out the gimp.”
Special brownie points were earned when the guy realized that Dogma was actually pro-Catholic and quite optimistic about religious belief. But we can’t have all this God-portrayed-by-a-woman nonsense, can we?
After the Dogma debacle, poor Cardinal Angrylious probably got sent to a small office to classify alphabetically and by size the pieces of paper the Vatican was going to throw in the trash, where he seethed at popular culture and the way it treats the Church … er… the Lord.
But finally Cardinal Angrylious’s sin was atoned and, after stapling together enough pamphlets detailing the evils of contraception, he’s hard at work against a new target.
Why Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code? Because it spouses a theory that Jesus may not have died in the cross, but instead went on to marry Mary and have kids, with descendants of that bloodline currently living in France.
It’s an interesting, catchy theory. It’s also completely original… if we ignore the other 12,347 times I’ve heard it. Leaving aside Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, which most people didn’t even finish (more on that later), every other European conspiracy theory is about the Knights Templar, and most of those mention the Prieure de Sion and Jesus’ offspring.
So it’s not the original proposal that has the Cardinal fuming - Brown’s not saying anything here that hasn’t been said before. As I pointed out, that argument is one of the shapes that conforms the complex mandala that is Foucault’s Pendulum, which didn’t get the Church all worked up. While that may have been because the good Cardinal was otherwise occupied, I have another theory.
Most people weren’t able to get past the first five pages on Foucault’s Pendulum. The Da Vinci Code is a page-turner.
It’s as simple as that.
You can say a lot of bad things about Dan Brown as a writer and I would agree. You could say, for instance, that both Deception Point and Angels & Demons are basically the same story - it’s just that he removed the high-tech wardrobe and tarted it up a bit in old secret societies garb. I’d give you that. But one thing that you have to give him is this: the man can narrate.
I’ll put it another way. His books are literally page-turners. You can’t stop reading. His prose is like the tick of a metronome, a marching band forcing you on. They’re best sellers and even worst, the book may end up being optioned for a movie - try that with your Casaubon, Eco - in which case its nefarious effect could be even more widespread.
This means that now this nasty conspiracy theory is reaching millions of people; men, women and children who will gobble it up with the voracious and indiscriminating palate that happily swallows Grishams and, considering the credit that the Church usually gives its followers, won’t be able to recognize fiction from fact (hey, if they’ll believe Virgin Birth there are probably few things they won’t buy). That just won’t do, so the old dogs of war are unleashed once again by a master that’s attempting to do the same thing and obtain different results.
And guess what? It only helps sales.
One day all these whiners (because it’s actually not just the Catholics) will understand that providing free publicity to something they’d rather have people ignore may not be such a good idea. Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure they’ll name-call Brown a heathen right into a movie deal.
Thank you, Ricardo. You’ve just provided me with that “extra measure” of want. Now I can readily accept a friend’s offer to lend me the English-language edition of “The DaVinci Code”… and I may even go so far as to nudge and cajole and whine until Brown’s novel is in my hands.
BTW, the Brazilian edition hit #1 in the bestselling charts maybe two weeks after release — and books in Brazil are very rarely publicized outside of educated magazines/newspapers and even more elitist vehicles. Our biannual Book Fair in Sao Paulo (the compass point of bestsellers for the coming year), just wrapped up, may have added to the frenzy.
To tell the truth, I’ve never even heard of such catholic complaints before I read your post. Here, it’s being gobbled up as reading entertainment, the sort that pushes predictable novels up the charts. Parishioners here might be reading it just before they sit in front of the TV for dinner and soap operas.
That pretty much sums up the whole book.
However there are certain parts in the book which I can particularly see getting the church all riled up. In particular the implied assumption that St. Peter orchestrated the murder of Jesus’ wife to gain his favor. In passages such as that it paints them in quite an unfavorable light, something which for PR reasons might bring them say something about the book.
I’d have to say that part of the draw of the book is the partial basis in factual information, which does a great job of suspending disbelief. After a certain point without being properly researched in the topic you don’t know what’s fiction and what’s historically documented.
Finally, I’d have to posit that the only reason to avoid confrontation is if you think you’re not capable of withstanding the ensuing battle. It’s not like the book is going to destroy the church, and being silent will affect most those who actually listen to you (followers) and influence very little those who aren’t. For example, it’s not like I am affected in the least by what the church issues. Also in that same line of thinking those within the church feel divine right is on their side, and in that megalomaniacal perspective you feel invincible and don’t shy back from confrontation.
Also playing Devil’s advocate the whole book deals with religion, its structures and its message. The book is quite conciliatory actually, pointing out that none of the arguments revealed within actually clash with the church as a spiritual entity. If anything, I’d have to say it was a very well played move on the church’s part. I surely hadn’t thought about them until I read the book.