The people speak to “DaVinci”
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For those in need of a pepper-upper, here are “DaVinci Code” reviews on the site “Rotten Tomatoes”. The reviews are a mix of professional and “just folks” and they average out at giving the movie a 23% rating. I’d love if they’d say things like “Too dismissive of 2000 years of Christian teaching and tradition” or something, but knowing the world we live in, I know that it’s much more damning to its success for would-be viewers to read that it commits that terriblest of sins — being BORING:- “…ridiculous and crushingly dull”
- “Way too long and duller than watching Da Vinci’s paint dry”
- “… mostly inert”>
Actually, the closest to hearing what I want and what will keep movie-lovers away comes from The Hollywood Reporter review:
A jumble of historical myth, religious symbology and international thriller-action makes for an unwieldy, bloated melodrama.
Well, um, yeah.
The news isn’t as good, of course, when you notice how many of them only dislike the movie because it wasn’t as “powerful” as the book. That’ll continue to be what gets me down about the whole thing. Christian-challenged friends that I couldn’t have gotten interested in the lightest, breeziest Christian-esque read (C. S. Lewis, Brother Cadfael mysteries, even those Chicken Soup books) picked up this strange, violent, hare-brained book and loved it.Someone I know asked, “So isn’t this whole controversy misplaced? It’s a work of fiction.” And that should be right, but I don’t know how else to account for its enormous popularity other than to say that its metamessage — “You can take what you want out of Christian church history and dogma and still get the naughty kick of slamming the church, Christians and Christ” — was something that people wanted so badly that they were willing to put it in that hazy place of suspended disbelief that they keep so many fond — but essentially stupid and incredible — ideas. (Astrology, feng shui, ghosts, aliens, conversing with the dead, etc. etc. Have you ever tried talking someone out of those things who starts off by saying, “I don’t really believe in this stuff. Still, y’know, …”?)
The jury is supposedly still out on whether there will be room in the wake of all this for any real dialogue with interested fence-sitters, but I think not. Christian optimists have thought there would be. But that assumes that for once the mainstream culture lets Christians have their five minutes of rebuttal time. We’ve certainly gotten out a host of books to counter the myths of “DaVinci” and even if those books are only being read by Christians that were a little weak on orthodox dogma and history, it won’t have been a wasted effort. But as far as really landing a solid counter-blow, I think the time has already passed.
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I fit into the “What’s the fuss?” category. First, trying to use something like the DaVinci Code as an evangelism or dialog tool is really bad business, imho. Christianity has to be taken or left on its own terms and not on the terms of the seeker. Using something like the DaVinci Code as a dialog point will ultimately so misshape the debate or discussion that the Christians will have lost before they ever begun.
Second, I find movies like “Left Behind” much more disturbing than “The DaVinci Code.” Time LaHaye and his sidekick push those books and movie as if it’s presenting authentic, mainstream Christianity. I’ve never seen Dan Brown claim that he’s a mainstream Catholic and the movie people are particularly religious at all, so there’s no claim being made by something that could be construed as the Church saying that the DaVinci Code is the way it is. The media, of course, tries to pass it off as good history, but no one except the media itself takes the media seriously.
Third, Christianity is not designed to be gripping. If it were, Jesus probably would have had his ghost writer put together a mystery novel. Gripping stories (in the sense that a thriller novel is gripping) enflame the passions and get people to suspend rationalisty for the thrill of the passions. That is antithetical to Orthodoxy (although certain strains of Evangelicalism like to play that little game). In this light, the DaVinci Code is neither good nor bad, it’s merely a bit of throwaway cultural trash that has little to nothing to do with introducing people and inviting people to Christianity. When questions come up about it, the correct answer is (as it was with the “Left Behind” novels), it’s not particularly Christian. If you would be willing to spend a few weeks at Divine Liturgy, from that context you will begin to see what I mean when I say that it’s not particularly Christian.
I think I’m about done fussing about this whole thing as well. There’s a big “what’s the point” lurking behind even this last entry. I continue to be floored that so many people were into that book and still are, but what are you going to do?
I hadn’t thought of the contrast with the Left Behind books. I think I’m with you; it’s probably a toss-up which is worse. When I was a kid “Jesus Christ Superstar” came out. Devout Christians had a fit (as I would’ve), but as someone that was just toying with religious thoughts, it may have actually given me a push in the right direction. I also read “Late Great Planet Earth” when it came out, and it took years to un-learn the mistakes in its eschatology. But it gave me a push as well. It can be really strange sometimes what ends up “ministering” to you, as the Prots say.