Posted on 05/18/2006 6:05:43 AM PDT by governsleastgovernsbest
by Mark Finkelstein
May 18, 2006
After a couple days in which the only people that the Today show offered the opportunity to comment on the controversy surrounding the Da Vinci Code were the movie's director and cast members, this morning an outside expert and Catholic officials finally got their shot. The result was an oddly ambivalent reaction, in which the movie was simultaneously praised as offering an opportunity to teach about the Church, and condemned as filled with lies.
A quick recap on the state of play at Today. Matt Lauer has been "On the Road with the Code" this week. On Tuesday, as reported here, NBC reporter Melissa Stark timidly raised the matter of the controversy with Code director Ron Howard. Stark didn't bother informing viewers just what all the fuss is about - which is none other than the movie's premise that Christ wasn't really divine, that he was married to Mary Magdalene and had children with her, that the true religion is the "feminine divine" and that the Roman Catholic Church has perpetrated a murderous patriarchal plot to suppress the truth. That's all!
Howard sloughed off the controversy with some feel-good talk about it being a healthy thing for people to get in touch with their beliefs.
The following day, as noted in this story that has made its rounds on the web, cast member Ian McKellen added tons of fuel to the fire by suggesting that rather than the Da Vinci Code, it 's the Bible that should come with a disclaimer at its front "saying this is fiction."
Finally, this morning, outside critics were given their shot. First up was Georgetown Professor Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, who Matt Lauer said "has been described as the real-life Robert Langdon", the symbologist who is the movie's central figure. Apostolos-Cappadona emphatically stated that, contrary to the Code's central assertion, the figure portrayed in Da Vinci's Last Supper is indeed the Apostle John and not Mary Magdalene: "She is not there at the Last Supper. Sorry."
Next was a clip of author Dan Brown himself, who Lauer - seeming to slough off the controversy himself - introduced by saying "does there need to be such a fuss over a book?"
Brown was seen oh-so-modestly asserting that "Christian theology has survived the writings of Galileo and the writings of Darwin. Surely it will survive the writings of some novelist from New Hampshire." Then again, during Galileo and Darwin's days, broadband internet access and world-wide film distribution was significantly more limited.
Next, a brief clip of an editor of Catholic Digest: "Virtually no one that we polled knew anyone who has left the Church because of the book."
Lauer: "News that should be comforting to religous leaders everywhere. Now, if they can just get past the movie."
Finally, Lauer interviewed, live in St. Peter's Square, Father Gregory Apparcel, Rector of the American Catholic Church in Rome. Here's where the Church's ambivalence was evident.
Lauer: "Is the movie version a bigger threat than the book was?"
Apparcel: "I don't know if I would call either one a threat. I would say that for me the movie it's an opportunity to teach peole the truth about what their faith is. It's been a tool for me to use to help people understand what their history is."
Lauer: "Maybe this is an enlightened approach. But if it's not a threat, then why the calls by some for boycotts, why the calls by some for lawsuits, why the calls by others for a disclaimer to be put up at the beginning of the movie? Why are people in the Church worried about this?"
Fair question. Along similar lines, I don't ever recall a rabbi praising the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as offering a great opportunity to teach about Judaism!
Answering Lauer's question, Father Greg seemed to backtrack somewhat: "They don't like all this misinformation and untruths being told about the origins of the Church. All the things that haven't been said about [Jesus'] relationship with Mary Magdalene and various other things - that there's been a suppression of the truth. It's very upsetting to hear, misinformation or lies, basically, about what your faith is."
But then the good father zagged again: "This is an opportunity for people to come and talk about who we are and what we believe and why it's important."
When Lauer suggested that "the nuclear button" in the book was the suggestion that Jesus had a physical relationship with Mary Magdalene [prefacing his question by observing that he felt "almost awkward" making it in St. Peter's Square], Father Greg responded:
"For me the bigger one is that Jesus wasn't God. Him saying that in the book is really upsetting to a lot of people." I would think so!
Yet once again, Apparcel then took a different tack: "But the people I talk to, the Catholics who come to church, see it as a novel, a movie. It's information that's used in the service of a thriller story. And it's wrong information and to present it as fact is wrong as well."
Father Greg also displayed a good sense of humor. When Lauer asked what he would ask author Dan Brown if he met him, Apparcel replied "I would ask him for a donation!" More seriously, he added "I would ask him in his next novel if he could get the facts straight. It's important because people believe what they read."
Asked if he would go see the movie, Apparcel responded "Eventually."
Lauer: "No hurry?"
Flashing a final bit of mordant humor, Father Greg responded: "No, I'm not in a hurry - especially after the reviews."
Rim shot!
Finkelstein, who has made recent appearances on the Lars Larson Show, lives in the liberal haven of Ithaca, NY, where he hosts the award-winning public-access TV show 'Right Angle'. Contact him at mark@gunhill.net
Well, no one is rioting in the streets. The Muslims did that over a cartoon of Mohammad, so on the whole the "reaction" to this movie is exceptionally mild.
The problem I have is that Dan Brown is quite disingenuous and wants to have it both ways.
He says the book is true. He says it's a work of fiction. He has tons of citations and quotes from people verifying his story. He says it's just a novel.
The Author Frey (I think that's his name) who was featured on Oprah and later found to have faked parts of his book and he got a lot of bad publicity for that. Now Dan Brown says his book is true, just like Frey did. But the fact is that the book is not true. Just like Frey's was not true.
How come Dan Brown isn't being criticized? Well, he artfully covered himself with his "It's true/It's a novel" approach. But also, he's criticizing Christianity and calling it a fraud.
No one ever gets in trouble for that.
Roger Ebert says that fictionalized biopics like JFK and X don't cause problems, that anyone who wants to learn about history will read a book.
The American Taliban, Johnny Doo Doo Lennon Lindh Walker claims his conversion to Islam came from watching X.
What's more, Hollywood is getting loopier (witness the rise of Michael Moore as a awarded "documenter").
And if you step outside of the Hollywood circle, there are countless propaganda films circulated on the internet exposing the "truth" of the 9-11 hijackings with a lot of antisemitic/antiAmerica rhetoric. They circulated weekly through Myspace bulletins from acquaintances bumping them along to all of their "friends"... "Hey watch this, yo!"
The public doesn't always discern truth from fiction, especially when they don't have a background in that truth (can they name another Da Vinci painting besides the Mona Lisa?). Start to mix in religious hatred and conspiracy theory (which IS circulated as fact by some groups) and it is hard to say where the "fiction" of the film/book begins or ends for the people behind this work. "It is a fictionalized account". So was "I Walk The Line".
I have, not to the level of the Muslims if it were about Mohammed of course, but people are getting mad. It's just free publicity for the author, putting money in his pockets.
"This writer" is me. Governs = Finkelstein. I'm not in the business of interviewing people. I maintain a blog covering the doings at the Today show. This 'random cleric.' It was a fairly senior official being interviewed in St. Peter's Square. I have to assume he was doing so with the approval of the Vatican. Morevoer, the other Catholic, editor of an influential Catholic magazine, downplayed the movie's impact.
I think your anger is misdirected at me. Have you looked at my columns of the last two days, chronicling Ian McKellen's remarks and Ron Howard's lame defense?
Are you refering to Satan or Matt Lauer?
TS
(I'll dispense with the easy one-liner and state, yes, they are two separate beings. Note that I didn't use the word "people".)
"this writer (and the unctuous Matt Lauer, of course) couldn't be bothered to find and interview someone from TFP."
I might add that my first column on the Today show's "On the Road with the Code" criticized Today for not having strong critics of the Code on the show. I suggested Today might have invited on Archbishop Amato himself, or perhaps Catholic League head Bill Donohue or Pat Buchanan, both of whom have written strongly in condemnation of the movie.
http://newsbusters.org/node/5384
http://amywelborn.typepad.com/openbook/2006/05/an_wilson_on_th.html
A.N. Wilson on the Code
He starts out by sneering at anyone who might think any harm might come from this work - and I was ready to go after him! - but then...
(scroll down for his section of the article)
The second point - and here is where I am on the side of the Catholics denouncing it - is the film's overt message.
Not once, but over and over again, the professor, played by Sir Ian McKellen and the 'symbologist' Tom Hanks offer the Last Living Descendant of Jesus and Mary Magdalene the chance to blow the whistle on the lie the Church has purportedly been hiding for 2,000 years.
By exposing the marriage of Jesus to Mary Magdalene, Ms Tautou is given the chance to end "all the oppression of the poor, of the powerless, of women - you can put an end to that".
The factual absurdities could all be dismissed by anyone with the smallest knowledge of history. What is harder to dismiss is the blatant anti-Catholicism, which is as crude as any Paisleyite sermon or No Popery pamphlet of the 19th century.
Roman Catholics, of whom I am not one, are surely entitled to wonder what would have happened to the Empire Cinema Leicester Square, where I saw this film, if the figures in the fantasy had been not Jesus and Mary Magdalene but the Prophet Mohammed and his family.
I think it would have been a case for the fire brigade.
A fair reading of history, first of Europe, then of the rest of the world, would speak of many wrongs done by the Roman Catholic Church, including persecutions and holy wars.
But it is also the Church that kept civilisation and learning alive in Europe. And in our own day, the work of Catholics in the poorest places of the world to relieve suffering and identify with the poor puts some other groups, including the vast bulk of stay-at-home secularists, to shame.
There are no good Catholics in this film. The monk-murderer is the militant representative of an Catholic organisation that is portrayed as fraudulent and malignant.
In a free society, we are entitled to portray Catholics as we please, and to debate their faith. As I have already hinted, anti-Catholic prejudice has an old though not very glorious history in this country.
But the reason I found the film depressing was not just that, in its blundering, ignorant way, it was making cheap gibes at Opus Dei, a devout group within the Roman Church.
It was also openly stating that a free and decent way of life was possible only when we had spat upon our past, and kicked away the tradition that for 2,000 years was at the core of all that was most humane and decent in European history - namely the story that God humbled himself to become a poor human being.
Very many of us must have doubted the divinity of Jesus. Yet the respect for humanity shown by Catholics in situations of starvation in Africa or among the shanty towns of South America derives directly from their belief in Jesus Christ as the God-man, who embraced poverty.
To accuse the Church, which has done so much to stand up for human dignity and peace, of being no more than a group of gangsters and perverts is to do much more than just to insult one religious denomination.
It is yet another symptom of our contempt for our past.
Put this side by side with our craven fear of saying Christianity is true and Islamists are in error, and you have more than enough reason not just to boycott The Da Vinci Code - but also to deplore it.
Powerful words. Thank you, FRiend.
You have that right. One obvious example Hariet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Toms Cabin. When Stowe met President Lincoln in 1862, he is said to have exclaimed, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!" Whatever you think about the book now Uncle Toms Cabin had an enormous impact on the American public in the years leading up to the Civil War.
"I don't understand why some are getting so worked up over a piece of fiction. Poorly written fiction at that."
Come on now. Think about that. Even when lies are demonstrable "I did not have sex with that woman..." there are idiots out there who will believe them. The Dems LIE and LIE and LIE, and their idiot followers believe them. I get worked up about things like that which may or may not be important.
Now, when you talk about something as important as eternal life or eternal condemnation, some of us really get upset that people who don't know any better are being LIED to.
If anyone's faith is so weak as to be shaken by a terrible movie or a poorly written book, they weren't really believers anyway.
Well said. (Respectful applause)
My point exactly. I'm talking about the LOST, who know very little about true salvation in the first place.
But now that you bring it up, I'll tell you this: If I know enough about you and what you "know", I can make up a story that will set your head spinning, and you won't know what to believe, at least for a while.
And I'm only human. If I can do it, Satan is much better. He uses things like this to distract people from the most important thing in life, their relationship with Christ.
You appear to have very little compassion for the lost, and the weak among us, my friend.
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