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Sunday, May 14. 2006
Da Vinci Who?
There was a very interesting item in the New York Times May 11, an article about the Christian foes of the movie, The Da Vinci Code, which is set to be released This Friday, May 19. Once again a select few Christian extremists have trotted out the tired old horse of Christianity being under siege — PERSECUTED! — despite the fact that 84% of Americans in this country consider themselves of that faith. It’s the “War on Christmas” all over again, but this time it’s over a movie, not some malls with “Happy Holidays” painted on their windows.These fanatics must realize any action to try and stop the movie from being a blockbuster are doomed to fail; for them, declaring war against this film is just a way to stir up the few who will actually believe their religion is under attack. And with any luck — and some wedge issues like gay marriage — that small base will get out to vote in November.
Protest against the The Da Vinci Code is doomed because the book is one of the largest selling novels ever in the history of publishing, which makes the idea of effective boycotts and other planned events laughable. I’m going out on a limb here —a very sturdy branch — but I predict The Da Vinci Code will top all movies of all time in first weekend box office receipts. And, it will go on to become the biggest blockbuster in cinema history … or maybe a close second to Titanic, which has, so far, grossed 1.8 billion dollars since its release December 19, 1997.
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King grossed 1.2 billion — a formidable mark to be sure — but The Da Vinci Code — the novel — has been on the New York Times best seller list for 162 weeks now (that’s just over three years if you’re trying to figure it out) and is currently — still! — in the top ten at number nine with over 40 million copies sold.
I’m guessing a fair amount of Red State constituents either bought the book or borrowed it from someone else and these same people will not heed the calls from their various religious leaders to abandon the movie made from their favorite novel. Oh, they might give old Pastor Falwell lip service over it on the way out of church today, but many of them will secret themselves out to the theater for some sinful entertainment.
Some Christians feel genuine incensement over this film; it does, after all, call into question some long held sacred beliefs. But, when the leaders of the “Moral Majority” ramp up their indignation and get their armies of God marching, it appears they are interested in headlines and television appearances more than anything else. The real show won’t be the so-called religious leaders, but the TV talking heads themselves, especially if they whip up moral indignation at Hollywood that evil empire on the Left Coast defiling and corroding the moral fiber of our once Christian nation with their filth!
It’s the latest front in the so-called “culture war”, a conflict created by religious fanatics and exploited by the news media for the value of its ratings. We will hear these fanatics, and some politicians who claim to represent the fanatics and their followers, bemoan the decline of our culture and how this movie is so offensive to their religious beliefs, they can barely go on living. The melodrama will be high. Maybe Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will call a special session, ala Terry Schiavo, just to investigate the evil influence of Hollywood, all due to this movie.
I’ll be watching Fox News all week just for the entertainment value.
Chris Matthews, on his MSNBC softball show, in a statement I found utterly shocking, said he thought a war on Christianity was taking place, so the fanatics will have at least one sympathetic ear on MSNBC. Fox News has Bill O’Reilly and he will of course chime in on the topic, have some anti Da Vinci Code fanatics on his program and someone to rebut that nonsense — and then yell at that one person to “Shut Up!”
The easily impressionable will be wild-eyed with terror at the notion that this one film will tear asunder the very fabric of their religion; that their faith can be destroyed when the movie gets played on 2,000 movie screens across the country. God will abandon us, as he did Sodom and Gomorrah, if we don’t at least try to stop the film from being a big hit. And they will be wild-eyed with terror because the Christian fanatic leaders will tell them to be in fear. We’ve already had several examples of that tactic already.
On September 14, 2001 for instance, Jerry Falwell said the U.S. itself was to blame for the attacks on September 11 due to our tolerance and acceptance of such things as homosexuality and feminism — oh, and those who are not Christians.
The fanatics will note with furrowed brow and righteous indignation the fact that many U.S. newspapers didn’t run the Muhammad cartoons that set the Muslim world ablaze last year, but don’t take a stand against this film the fanatics find so offensive. This, you can mark my words, will be the lynchpin in their argument that bias — a godless left-wing bias — is at work in the U.S. media, the publicity arm of that evil empire on our left Coast! The media won’t offend Muslims but it will promote a blasphemous film that insults Christianity.
The problem Christians claim to have with the Da Vinci Code is that it undermines the primary tenet of Christianity: that Jesus was — is — the Son of God and therefore divine. But that’s not all and it may not be the most egregious offense of the book and movie.
Christianity, like Judaism and Islam, is built on the male supremacy model wherein the man is the dominant figure in society and the home. We men are the lords and masters here on Earth. You know, on second thought, I’m beginning to see the logic behind this shared philosophy. Maybe I should get married, have a wife and, as the reasoning goes, she’ll make sure our bedroom — my bedroom — is nice and tidy. I have three lovely and cherished sisters but none of them seem to grasp this philosophy, when it comes to helping their brother keep his domicile clean … but that’s a different rant altogether.
In recent times of course, women in our Western society have become more active and valued assets in our communities. This was due to the suffrage movement in the previous two centuries with the most significant gains made when women were allowed to exercise their voting franchise. That took place in the United States when the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution became law in 1920.
In Canada, that came about in steps but by 1940 women throughout that nation had the right to vote and hold office. In 1917 Canada made it legal for women to vote but allowed the provinces to make that decision for themselves, which is why it occurred in steps. Britain in 1928; 1913 Norway, 1915 Denmark and Iceland, Finland 1906, Australia 1902, New Zealand 1898. The United States was actually behind the curve on this one.
Despite the political gains achieved when given the right to vote, women still lagged far behind men in society, much — if not all — of that suppression fueled by religious dogma; a woman’s place was taking care of home and hearth while the man went out into the world and provided for his family. It says as much in the Bible and “scholars” have confirmed it through the centuries:
“As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power ...” St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica.
“And I find more bitter than death the woman, whose heart is snares and nets, and her hands as bands: whoso pleaseth God shall escape from her; but the sinner shall be taken by her.” Ecclesiastes 7:26
“Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” Genesis 3:16
“But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.” 1 Corinthians 11:3
The list of Scriptures supporting the subordination of women could go on, but the point is, to this day women still occupy a lesser role in society, especially in those areas where the Bible is the dominant philosophical reference.
During World War II, when a large segment of the male population went off to fight the Japanese Imperialists and German Nazis, women took over in the foundries and factories, building the war machine that finally prevailed in that war. When it was proven that women were every bit as capable as men when it comes to labor — and willing to work for a much smaller paycheck — their value to business didn’t go unnoticed.
Nevertheless, most women opted to return to working in the home so the men could return to the jobs outside the home. But there were those women, having tasted the freedom of self determination, who decided now was the time to get what they believed was rightfully theirs and the “feminist” movement was born.
In The Feminine Mystique (1963), Betty Freidan’s landmark book on women and their condition in society, she starts with this astounding (for the time) position: “The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — ‘Is this all?’ ”
The Da Vinci Code attempts to answer that question, although Dan Brown might not have thought of it in such direct terms, but the answer to Freidan’s question, according to Brown and the scholarly work he took his novel from, is that no, that’s not all there is and further more, God had decided women would become the hierarchy until the men subverted the message of Jesus for their own gain.
This, more than any other aspect of Brown’s novel, has men upset. Some women too who have bought into the male supremacy philosophy espoused in the Bible. No one will admit it of course, because the glory is in calling out Brown for the blasphemy of suggesting Jesus was not divine. More importantly, admitting that one’s authority — male supremacy — is being challenged aknowledges the influence (of that challenge) on beliefs that had at one time been unquestioned. Which is why people like Jerry Falwell (and his mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh) condemn “feminism.”
It’s bad enough Senator Hillary Clinton stands a good chance of becoming president, but do we have to tolerate the raising of Mary Magdalene to the status of Disciple and therefore the elevation of women in general? Well, that’s going just too far! The next thing you know we’ll have to start paying an equal wage to women and that of course will doom American business.
Just one small tangent: I found it interesting and alarming that the United States was behind many, many other countries in giving women the vote. It had always been my impression we led the way in civil rights. Apparently not. And, as long as we’re on this side track, why has this nation still not elected a woman president — or even vice president — when so many other developed and developing nations crossed this threshold a long time ago? Well, that’s a topic for the future.
Although a Catholic Cardinal based in Rome (Cardinal Francis Arinze) suggested Christians should take legal action to block the film’s release, the U.S. Conference of Bishops have decided on a more scholarly approach to refute the film. “We believe we can fight the Da Vinci Code's position from the point of view of scholarship, and we don't have to shut them down,” Monsignor Francis Maniscalco, a spokesman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said to the New York Times. They have created a Web Site and produced a documentary set to air on NBC the same weekend the film opens.
Called Jesus Decoded, it’s a pretty nice site and worth looking at if you would like to read some scholarly rebuttal to the premise of The Da Vinci Code which posits Jesus was not divine and did indeed wed Mary Magdalene. This is the most intelligent response to the book and film and does much to challenge Dan Brown’s novel — which after all is a work of fiction.
This whole episode reminds me of our collective moral indignation when the government of Iran put out a “hit” order on Salman Rushdie when his novel, The Satanic Verses was published in 1988. Why, how could those Muslims be so ... closed minded! We couldn’t understand why them Muslims were so offended.
Like all gigantic blockbuster films, The Da Vinci Code will grab our attention for about two weeks and then the interest will dribble away, the only reminders being the pundits who will occasionally mention the movie’s gross box office receipts because, in the end, the God of America is really the Almighty Dollar. We will look with awe and wonder, as we do with Titanic and Star Wars , upon this film; legions of followers contriving and playing Da Vinci Code games and investigating a whole catalogue of other sensational conspiracy theories, convinced there’s a Da Vinci-like code in all of them. We may even revisit the assassination of President Kennedy. That conspiracy theory never seems to go away anyway.
This also brings to mind the legions of Trekkies who dress up as their favorite characters, remodel their homes to resemble various sets from the many TV shows and movies, name their children after Mr. Spock or Mr. Scott — kids, if your parents named you “Spock,” that might be grounds for justifiable patricide — and otherwise decrease their chances of ever having a date with a member of their preferred gender … unless they meet someone at the next Star Trek convention.
The Da Vinci Code will be a cultural phenomenon for a while and we will use it to mark our history, as we compare future films and entertainment to the effect this film has on our current affairs. Do we all remember Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ? Of course, but are we still talking about it? No … and that pretty much will be the fate of The Da Vinci Code when it is all said and done.
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