Author's note: We're still busy as bees here, what with playing catch-up at work and all. Hence, we're taking this opportunity on the feast of St. Mary Magdalene to revisit our thoughts from a couple years back regarding the object of a recent popular delusion. We hope it tastes even better as leftovers.I know I'm awfully late in the game to be adding my own views to the mix on this topic, but that's never stopped me before.
Few media releases have caused as much empassioned national controversy as Dan Brown's novel, "The Da Vinci Code," and the Ron Howard screen adaptation of the same. As an avid reader of books, many have asked where I come down on the various issues intrinsic to the debate. To clear the air, I should go ahead and point out that I am not one of the story's growing millions of rabid fans, but not for the reasons you might expect.
As a Christian, I am supposed to object to "The Da Vinci Code" for its disputation of the divinity of Jesus. As a Catholic, I am supposed to object to it for its specific slanderous and false attacks against the Church of my membership. And while, if I were to read the book, I probably would object to it on the aforementioned grounds, they do not constitute my main reasons for avoiding it like a medieval pandemic.
Whenever any casual associates of mine who know very little about my paradigmal allegiances find out that I like to read, inevitably I am asked off the bat whether I am into Dan Brown, on the assumption that someone who likes to read must like his work. In this instance, my very soul requires me to object. "The Da Vinci Code" is quite obviously not a book written for people who like to read; it is without a doubt written for those who hate reading. I cannot cite the staggering number of these inquirers who tell me that Brown's blockbuster is the only book they have read all year long. Therefore, I must firstly avoid the book on the grounds that it is written for the anti-literary mind.
Secondly, I must object to the book for its utter lack of self-awareness. As a youth, I worked in Evangelical retail, and had a front row seat for the meteoric rise of the fundamentalist apocalyptic soap opera known as the "Left Behind" series. For Brown's part, he at least is not so presumptive as to claim his fiction dictates the future. However, he does fudge a juicy work of tabloid fiction based on history's exceptions, and tries to pass it off as a documentary with the names (of the people, not the organizations) changed. As such, I refuse to perpetuate anything that is, by definition, artificial, but asserts itself as reality. I have enough difficulty with Wal-Mart and the robots.
I have had the misfortune of being lectured on Christology by high school dropouts, harlequin romance enthusiasts, and the scripturally illiterate, all on account of this work of gossip that pretends to be something more significant. I've known for some time that the present age was dramatically oversexed; I have recently come to the conclusion that our sexual imperialism must extend into the past as well if it hopes to stay powerful.
Just yesterday, I was paying my bill at United Dairy Farmers, a Cincinnati-based convenience store, when one of the cashiers remarked to her coworker, in unfakeable dismay: "I think we actually sold a book! That copy of 'The Da Vinci Code' isn't over there anymore!' I feel as if all of my objections to the "Da Vinci" phenomenon can be summed up in this single experience.
With several thousand years of outstanding literature out there, as well as several decades of innovative and thoughtful film, it is my belief that one could spend a lifetime immersed in good art without ever having to bother with this latest work of ephemeral herd literature.
