The Da Vinci Code: A Non-Review

This review was posted originally on cinekklesia on May 20, 2006.

In 1992, then-Vice President Dan Quayle publicly criticized the title character of Murphy Brown, a sitcom about a center-left broadcast journalist and the TV show she hosted. Quayle's beef had to do with the fictional Brown's decision to bear and raise a child as a single mother, which in the VP's mind was another pop-culture attack on traditional families and the values that uphold them. Though Quayle's term in office was marked by continuous ridicule for his lack of intellectual prowess, his critique of Murphy Brown nevertheless helped to spark the current "Culture War," a social and political phenomenon that has haunted us ever since.

The latest battle revolves around Ron Howard's adaptation of the Dan Brown bestseller, The Da Vinci Code (2006). I am titling my thoughts a "non-review" because I have neither the desire nor the intention to see this movie. You might be thinking that I am one of the hordes of Christians who are (a) boycotting the film, (b) demanding that the state censor it, or (c) running out to my local bookstore to purchase one of the many anti-Da Vinci Code treatises capitalizing on the phenomenon. No, my reason is much simpler: I'm sick of the whole thing.

After months (years!) of media hype and criticism, I simply want the whole franchise to go away. My wife tells me that I should read the book or see the movie, just so I know what all the fuss is about. However, the fuss is so pervasive, loud, and penetrating that I don't need to do anything (expect metabolize) in order to experience it. I got the gist: Brown's novel claims that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a child together; thus, their physical descendants are running around the earth as we speak. Oh, and the Roman Catholic Church is covering this up. Oh, and Opus Dei is evil. I think I've covered the major points.

What bothers me much more than Dan Brown's heresy is the generally sloppy response from Christians far and wide, a response that takes far too many cues from the Culture War and Dan Quayle's playbook. My first gripe has to do with the obvious fact that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Controversy breeds notoriety, which, of course, breeds sales. While I have heard that The Da Vinci Code may prove to be a financial disappointment, it seems hard to ignore the fact that Christian leaders, particularly those in the Vatican, have given Brown et al. an inordinate amount of free publicity.

My second gripe concerns Christians' seeming inability to get out of the suffocating (and ultimately false) Culture War dichotomy that depicts "liberals" as secular, overly-intellectual, snobbish denizens of the Northeast and West Coast and "conservatives" as religious, commonsensical, plain-talking inhabitants of the Midwest and South. The Da Vinci Code (within this demographic conceptualization of the United States) is yet another attempt by the former to attack the most cherished views of the latter, while hypocritically making a lot of money in the process. One problem with this dichotomy lies in its overly rigid categorization: it presumes that all liberals are secular and that they actively want to destroy traditional values, while all conservatives will boycott both the book and the movie. I hypothesize that the reality is more complicated and includes religious liberals, who may not want to see the movie because it looks cheesy, and secular conservatives, who don't mind spending a few bucks on a religiously themed thriller (heretical or otherwise). (For a secular take on this question, check out the comments of Tim Cavanaugh and Jesse Walker, both of Reason magazine.)

Beyond the Culture War's false dichotomy is the trap that Christians fall into again and again when it comes time to engage with the world. Any artifact or event that some Christian "leader" finds offensive and chooses to condemn publicly becomes a Pavlovian call for the rest of us to protest, condemn, boycott, threaten, etc. We saw it with Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), the hubbub over Roy Moore's attempt to prevent the removal of a Ten Commandments monument from an Alabama state building, the annual brouhahas all over the country whenever Church and State collide over the decoration of town squares with Christmas (rather than "Holiday") decorations, etc. The repetitive cycle of discover-publicize-organize-protest-sue-campaign is so predictable that I sometimes think that any true conspiracy lies neither in Roman Catholic cover-ups nor in secular attempts to discredit religion, but rather, in some third party who is keeping Christians busy with meaningless pop-culture "debates" while doing something really nefarious in the background.

Is there not more to our faith than this? Do we not have more theologically profound issues to discuss than whether to boycott an apparently mediocre adaptation of a novel written not for serious reflection but for lazy summer vacations at the beach? Should Christians be so aligned with the perpetual outrage machine, ready to pounce at a moment's notice on the next politician, actor, or broadcaster who says something that someone somewhere finds offensive? Do we have nothing better to do, or are we demonstrating that contrary to Christ, our kingdom is of this world and our concerns are wholly temporal?

Thus, I have no plans to see The Da Vinci Code. I have no desire to support either Dan Brown or his many critics, all of whom stand to make a lot of money and achieve a lot of exposure from this latest battle in the exhausting, never-ending Culture War. Both heretics and self-righteous moralists stand to gain much from the publicity, and I am giving neither side the satisfaction of my lucre. Maybe that will serve as my own "boycott" of this whole sorry saga. Wake me up when it's over.