‘The DaVinci Code’: Everybody Wins — Except the religious right

May 27, 2006

Guest Post by Morbo

As far as I’m concerned, the reaction to the film adaptation of “[tag]The DaVinci Code[/tag]” is the best of all possible worlds.

The film tanked with the [tag]critics[/tag]. Its “fresh” rating on www.rottentomatoes.com is a mere 22 percent. Some of the negative reviews are so vicious they are hysterically funny. This enables snobs like me to continue sneering at it, even as the box-office is unaffected. No matter what the critics believe, the film is raking it in and pulled in $77 million on its opening weekend. It is the most popular film in America. The [tag]religious right[/tag] must be furious.

It’s perfect. I get to sneer, and the religious right gets annoyed. What could be better? (By the way, if you want to read the rudest snob review of “The [tag]DaVinci Code[/tag]” yet, don’t miss Anthony Lane’s take in the latest edition of “The New Yorker.” Lewis takes down the book and the film with style and aplomb. Ouch!)

When the film was released, William Donohue, the unpleasant blowhard and professional crank who runs the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, issued a press release gloating over the negative reviews. Not so fast, Bill. No one cares about the critics. Millions are flocking to the film, and your efforts to persuade them to stay away have been foiled. Curses!

One final thought on this: It occurred to me that the [tag]Christian[/tag] [tag]faith[/tag] must be on pretty shaky ground in America if so many religious leaders see a beach thriller as such a [tag]threat[/tag]. Is the faith of Americans really a mile wide and an inch deep after all? You mean to tell me that people sit in church week after week, watch TV preachers and generally soak up the atmosphere in the most religious country in the western world and still stand ready to dump core elements of the Christian religion because a pulp novelist tells them to? If this is true, America’s pastors have only themselves to blame. They must be doing a lousy job.

May 27, 2006 at 9:43 am

Part of the problem with the TV preachers is that most of them are selling entertainment rather than real spirituality. It’s the easiest job in the world to stand in a glitzy temple and make portentious pronouncements to mobs of adoring acolytes when all your lines are quoted from a book you didn’t write yourself.

But any time something comes along that even remotely threatens their paychecks and starts to loosen the undivided attention of their entranced masses, they bellow like gored water buffalo. And the cash keeps on flowing in.

Sad, really.

“One final thought on this: It occurred to me that the Christian faith must be on pretty shaky ground in America if so many religious leaders see a beach thriller as such a threat. Is the faith of Americans really a mile wide and an inch deep after all?”

My thoughts exactly, Morbo. This is the same type of hysteria, from the same group, that went nuts over Michael Moore’s “F 9-11” film. They want to keep people stupid and uninformed. One who has “faith” based on stupidity and ignorance is a form of delusion. On the other hand, “faith” based on reason, common sense and understanding truly does transcend the earthly world and does see the divine. When Jesus went into the Temple, it wasn’t to curse and destroy the learned scholars there; rather, it was to condemn the moneychangers. The same is true of Jesus’ parable of the Publican and the Pharasee.

Jesus’ condemnation is NOT on those who have true faith based on a full and fair understanding of this world, but rather upon those who use a public profession of faith to enrich themselves with earthly rewards instead of building up their treasures in heaven. The crowd condemning “The DiVinci Code” is the same crowd (Falwell, James Kennedy, Dobson, et al.) that still refuses to demand justice for “the least of these, my brethren” — they stay silent with BushCo’s warmongering and gutting of the social safety net for the poor and middle class — in exchange for Bush’s unconstitutional “faith-based initiative” millions of taxpayer money paid into their back pockets.

Pharasees and moneychangers in the Temple, indeed. Money really is the root of all evil in this world…

I think you nailed it, Morbo. A beach novel (though it was so full of itself I couldn’t finish it) made into a critically condemned movie (with a few exceptions – e.g., William Arnold in the Seattle P-I says it “deserves kudos for being a smart thriller in an era of dumb movies”) which the public is eating up with gusto (made more money the first weekend than the book has in two weeks on the best-seller list – a testimony to America’s failure when it comes to reading).

Perhaps related, America’s religion is a mile wide and an inch deep. It crawls out from the darkness every so many decades and – rebuffed in the political arena it has no business invading – retreats to abracadabra, snake-handling, and imagined guilt. There are some truly socially conscious people who claim to act because of religion, but they achieve what they do in spite of their organization’s leaders, who seem to be a combination of what Jesus referred to as pharisees and money changers.

I love the Da Vinci Code. I don’t buy any of its claims (well, maybe the one about the Merovingian dynasty claiming descent for Jesus and the Vatican putting them down for it), but it is great to get to make the counter arguments.

Why was Jesus bar Joseph, a Jewish man of the 1st century, not married?

Because he was an apocalytic acsetic who believed that the Kingdom of God, where there would be no death, sin (sin being something that happened to people, rather than something they do) or SEX, would be established ON THIS EARTH during the lifetime of his generation.

So why are the various christian churchs not willing to simply make this argument?

Because it proves that Jesus was WRONG, that the Kingdom of God did not come as he promised, and that the Catholic and all other Christian churchs have been scrambling for two millenium to cover the fact and inventing some supernatural otherworldly Heaven to replace it.

So when some evangelical Christian tells you that the Da Vinci Code is wrong, agree with him and point out why, than watch him twist in the wind.

Good times 😉

I don’t think the Religious Right is as concerned about the premise of The Da Vinci Code as they are afraid that it will stir peoples intellectual curiosity to do some research and people will find out how Taliban-like the early Christians/Catholic Church really were, The RR depends on weak minded people to do as they are told, accept the Bible at face value, and give them money until it hurts (you not them). This mindset explains why they accept and defend everything Bush does.

In case anyone is interested, Akiva Goldsman is commonly belieed to be the model for “Charlie’s brother” in the movie “Adaptation,” (a movie I heartily recommend for those who wonder what sort of nutjobs we screenwriters really are). He is Robert McKee’s “Outstanding Example” of Do What I Say And You Too Can Be A Bazillionaire.

Anthony Lake’s takedown of Dan Brown’s “rite-ing” is priceless. Brown is the perfect example of my old friend Harlan Ellison’s observation that there are two kinds of writers – professional and amateur – and the fact of publication and success has no beaing on which category one belongs in.

When Goldsman is topped by the most boring director in the history of the movies, Ron Howard” (I remember the review a friend of mine wrote of “Far, Far Away”: Far, Far Away – Where You Should Stay.), whose only good movie was Apollo-13 because it had a mechanical story to tell, and they’re dealing with turd-rate b.s. like that godawful book (unlike Anthony Lake I actually read the whole thing – looking and looking and looking for whatever iit was people I didn’t normally think of as bozos were finding in it… and not finding it), well, to me the outcome was foreordained as they say.

I am constantly telling young writers that they would never hire a carpenter to work on their home who can’t drive nails straight, and that words are a writer’s nails. Brown not only can’t drive a nail straight, he can’t hit it to begin with.

All I think people are “finding” in it is some sort of tacit permission to question their own (or their parents’, if they are particularly smug) “faith”. (Maybe we should spell the unthinking, Pharisitical kind “phaith”?)
It’s a chance to be naughty while pretending to be thinking; with the bonus of watching the “penguin” of their grade-school days get hers.
Anyway, it’s not really Falwell & Dobson so much this time, is it? Most of the hysteria this time around seems to be RC. But then, back before Vatican II, wasn’t proscription of a book pretty much a guarantee of increased sales?

There is no room for critical analysis or intellectual introspection in the world of Evangelicals. It is difficult enough to “believe” in a 6000 y/o Earth, Noah & the Ark, and a resurrected Christ without looking for reasons to question. Ignorance truly is Bliss and hardship and “faith-testing” tragedies (political, financial or personal) only serve to reinforce the sense of martyrdom and therefore bring them closer to Salvation. The one thing they do hold in common (besides glorifying the mediocre a la Bush) is they all know that the sinners (that would be us) are gonna get ours…they relish the idea that God’s judgement will punish us for our high-minded ideas and our seeking knowledge for knowlede’s sake.

This the the South’s “Identity” that they share at the core. They are diminishing in numbers and this (Administration?) is their last gasp…dangerous to the end, they would welcome Armageddon at the expense of all civilization (verily).

If we can just last a few more years…the old among them are dying and it is becoming more and more difficult to remain willfully ignorant. Their young move to cities and their towns are being filled with immigrants (brown ones) not so close minded and sheep-like.

It is the end of their world and they know it and are fighting every step of the way to prevent, what is for the Progressives, inevitable (a growing world citizenry turning away from an exploitation economy towards managing dwindling mutually-shared resources and common-cause issues).

Conservatives should NEVER lead. We do require a robust conservative opposition to encourage thought and subtlety in humanity’s forward march, but ultimately, every conservative position is based on fear and worry, and you cannot build a healthy citizenry on fearmongering. Try though they might.

“In seeming to provide new ways of thinking about Jesus, the Da Vinci Code clearly tapped into a genuine need” sayeth “The Week” magazine.

Perhaps the Fundamentalists feel like they are on shaky ground, rather than Christianity at large. While the history in the movie/book is clearly fiction in parts, it does convincingly question the infallibility argument (that God guided the Bible’s translations and the decisions about what was left in and out).

Hi ‘ I am one of those christain right people. I am not concerned about the da vinci code taking christians out of God’s hands. I am cocerned that there might be people that would see the movie and believe it is true. There by never coming to know how much God loves them. I love a good story but I don’t belive that hobbits are real. so why are there people who believe that this ficional story is true? I don’t know the answer to that, but I think that this movie will open up many oppurtunities to let people know that God loves them and that Jesus died for their sins so that they don’t have to. There are many other christains who feel the same. So bring on the movie I love a good story and I also like skip (Tom Hanks) and richie (Ron Howard).

I’d sure like to know how many devotees Bill Donohue has. I’d bet I have more fingers than he has followers. He’s so dumb, he doesn’t realize that his pontificating (gotcha!) draws more attention and curiosity to something that would otherwise quickly disappear.

“I am cocerned that there might be people that would see the movie and believe it is true. There by never coming to know how much God loves them.” – Michael

Why would believing that the Da Vinci Code is true make people think God doesn’t love them?

What possible difference does it make if Jesus was or wasn’t married?

What difference does it make if Jesus was divine or human?

If you are saying God proves his love by sacrificing his (divine) son/himself on the cross, I’d think there must be easier ways.

For instance, God could create his kingdom on Earth without all the idiotic caveats about who gets in and who doesn’t. After all, he is the one picking. I’m kind of ammused that the rules say Ghandi is out but Pat Robertson is in. Is there some sort of cosmic regulation restricting who God CAN let into the Kingdom?

After all, if he decided not to end this world of sin, death and sex before John the Apostle died, that being when Jesus promised, than surely God doesn’t have to follow some absurd set of rules about who can get in.

“I am cocerned that there might be people that would see the movie and believe it is true.” What…as opposed to the crock of shit about virgin birth, healing lepers and the blind, walking on water, raising the dead, dead and buried on the third day he arose from the dead? I am mightily amused that a bunch of ridiculous superstition believing brain wipes are upset that another bunch of absurd fiction will stear people wrong. BWAHAHAHAHA!

Dan Brown’s book got me through many airports with a modicum of sanity. I wasn’t going to see the movie, but after reading Mr. Lane’s take on it, I think I will. 😉

Comments are closed.