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07/08/06
What's the fuss?
This past week Erika and I listened to The DaVinci Code on CD while driving to see my family for the July 4th holiday. After finally hearing this best-selling, controversial story, I really cannot understand what all the commotion was about.
Based on what I heard about the book, from both the fans and the protesters, I expected a well-researched, in-depth, biting exposé of the Church’s denial of the role of women in early Christianity. I thought it would involve a gradual revealing of historical events, painting detailed portraits of the people who orchestrated this theoretical deception. I thought it would involve a main character who is acting like a modern detective, gradually unravelling a conspiracy and cover-up of the past. I think that would have made a much better book.
Instead, what Dan Brown has given us is a simplistic one-chapter summary of a pre-existing theory about Mary Magdalene and Jesus, dressed up as a glorified treasure hunt. Very little of the suspense of the book deals with the past—it’s mostly deciphering anagrams and finding secret passwords invented by a man recently deceased. The best characters are not very interesting, and the worst ones are eye-rollingly unbelievable (A hulking, murderous albino monk? Come on!).
As a work of suspense, the book is entertaining enough, and some of the puzzles Brown comes up with are interesting, but it’s definitely not deserving of the resounding praise it’s received on one hand and the utter derision on the other. I think a lot of Christians who have made Dan Brown their latest boogeyman would be surprised to read the book and find out just how innocuous it is.
3 comments
We also listened to the Da Vinci Code on CD. Did you get the one with the cheesy voices and accents?I have to agree that I can't understand what all the fuss is about regarding The Da Vinci Code. My faith remained unshaken even though it was exposed to this book.
But our pastor (to my chagrin at first) did a series on the Code, and talked a lot about Dan Brown's Gnostic worldview that comes through in the book and film. Our pastor's take on it really shed some light on what the "fuss" is about, mostly that mainstream culture continually tries to strip Jesus of His divinity because following Him is hard.
Yeah, the narrator did all the voices, which did not help. Most of the characters ended up having over-the-top French accents. I did my best to just listen to the words and imagine the characters speaking in my own mind.I'm not sure that mainstream culture tries to strip Jesus of his divinity because "following him is hard." Maybe there are some people who feel that way, but I think there are also a lot of people who just don't believe in God and look to history to provide rational, realistic accounts and explanations for what appears in the Bible. There are also plenty of people who just like the intrigue of conspiracies, especially ones involving the Church. I think any number of motives drive new theories about the historical person of Jesus.
My father loaned me a version of the book that is illustrted with a variety of different paintings, buildings and other such that are brought up in the book. What this did for me was highlight the fact that Dan Brown tried to blend the line between where reality ends and where his work of fiction begins. I honestly can't say I know much about the Louvre, but it felt while reading that he had used the floorplans in coming up with his descriptions. By adding details like how many panes of glass were used in creating the pyramid out front it creates this feel that Brown MUST know what he is talking about. (Which is a laugh, as my wife looked this particular fact up online and found something COMPLETELY different.)
The point I guess I'm getting at is that -unfortunately- to me it seems that too many in our society accept what is presented as 'facts' without thinking about them in the least. It becomes assumed that if Brown knows all the little trivia so well (which is ultimately questionable) that his larger facts must be solid. Basing his big controversy around an already known area of debate really just helps fuel the assumption that he's on to something.
Our pastor didn't hold any sermons on the book, but in regards to the people up in arms about it he said: 'The church doesn't deny the existence of documents Dan Brown mentions, they've just already studied them and denounced them as fake.'
For me personally, I enjoyed it as a mindless read. I could see where it caused people to be up in arms, but I certainly wasn't one of them.
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