Posted on 05/23/2006 9:42:06 AM PDT by Caleb1411
Lost in all the brouhaha about "The Da Vinci Code" is a simple observation that seems to have gotten lost with all the protests and condemnations and threats of boycotts.
It's just not very good.
I'm a latecomer to this whole kerfuffle. Blissfully oblivious to the controversy, I didn't even know what the book was about until a couple of weeks ago, when I picked it up to kill some time on a long airplane flight. I wasn't more than 20 pages into Dan Brown's thriller when I realized what a woofer it was going to be.
Readable? You betcha. I cranked through almost the whole thing on a flight to San Francisco and back again. Reading "The Da Vinci Code" is like eating popcorn: You keep reaching into the bowl, hardly aware of what you're doing, and suddenly, you're through.
But good? Hardly. With 105 chapters — each about the length of a potty break — and sentence structures not too far removed from "See Dick run," the book seems to be written at about a sixth-grade readability level. The plot advances in a series of enough improbable "a-ha!" moments to burn through a couple of grosses of light bulbs. And the galloping, thinly strung conspiracy theory makes your typical Kennedy assassination theorist look scholarly by comparison.
To call the thing a piffle is to insult piffles.
The film breathlessly packs the book's 450 pages into about 2½ hours. Tom Hanks is a much more skeptical protagonist than you'll find in the book, and the cinematic version soft-pedals the whole church-as-thug idea, assigning most of the malevolent deeds to a rogue, beanie-bedecked "shadow council" of clerics instead of Mother Church herself. Still, the movie is, if anything, more laughably strung together than the book.
Does it offend? The book irked plenty of people — just take a peek on the Internet. And protests broke out around the world before the first frame of the film was shown to the public.
But as a practicing Catholic, I find the idea of corrupt churchmen and Holy Grails far less troubling than the insinuation that any person with any cartilage whatsoever in their spiritual spine would find "The Da Vinci Code" the least bit threatening to their faith.
Faith is the acceptance of things we can't see, after all, and the idea that someone would suddenly believe that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married just because "Da Vinci" actor Ian McKellen said so suggests a faith that probably wasn't all that strong to begin with.
But linking art and faith is a tricky thing. If you believe in the power of "The Passion of the Christ" to kindle passions in the hearts of the reverent, then I suppose you also have to believe in the power of "The Da Vinci Code" to make the faithful falter.
Art has a unique power to open eyes, to foster conversation and critical thinking, and it's no secret that that provocative power represents a threat to organizations that rely on unquestioning obedience to authority.
Which, I suppose, puts me in the position of defending "The Da Vinci Code." And I don't really want to do that: I mean, I was so embarrassed to be reading the book in public that I peeled off the dust jacket so I could pretend to be perusing, say, Proust.
I'd just feel a lot better if the art that provoked us was as rigorous and well made and profound as the questions it tries to ask. Neither the best-selling novel nor the movie rises to anywhere near that level. They're just pop-culture schlock.
Is Dan Brown responsible? Well, no. He's a novelist, not a prophet. He just wrote the book — it's the millions who bought "The Da Vinci Code" who turned it into the kind of a best-seller that would inevitably be spun off as a movie. With its bite-sized portions and its pretensions to intellectualism, it's the perfect, easy-to-settle-for menu item in our fast-food nation.
And so, maybe it's not a crisis of faith we should be worried about. Maybe it's a crisis of taste.
Almost unfair, it is. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
Sometimes I wonder about the intelligence of Americans...
not on Freerepublic though!
~SNORRFLE~!
I saw several people posting here about the abysmal failure the book was...sad that Hanks finally is in a flop, though...
Its a book written for the leftist feminists who populate the chic bookstores and reflect on the ovarian symbolism of the egg.
The subtitle to the DAvinci code is "the emperor has no clothes."
How many people look to their "read at the beach/airport" thrillers to be examples of incredible literature?
I don't. I want to the storyline to be moderately interesting, but not overly complex. Overly complex is not good when you're trying to juggle the book and a rum punch on the beach while checking on your kids/wife/cute babes.
What a hoot. If anyone is "embarrassed" to be seen reading this book, perhaps you should think a little less about what a group of total strangers think about you or your reading material.
sad that Hanks finally is in a flop, though...
__________
77 million in the first weekend is hardly a flop. What was it, 250 million worldwide, so they've already doubled production costs (I thought I read it cost 125 million to make). In the first weekend, not bad.
Paying attention to critics is like paying attention to polls. Interesting to talk about buy ultimately meaningless.
Well, Papatola leans leftward in most of his critiques, so we'll chalk this one up to liberal hauteur. He does nail the underwhelming attributes of the book and movie, though.
The only reason I find the Da Vinci code threatening is exactly because it's such crap. It's plainly written for morons, and the same morons believe it.
So go ahead and cause those with weak faith (or no faith) to stumble. What did Jesus say about causing people to stumble?
-A8
Love what you said! And I have to agree: John Grisham is about as deep as I want to get, or perhaps Crichton.
Don't want to spill that Rum Punch [actually, I prefer Cape Cods: cranberry juice is good for the bod, doncha know!]
;o)
$$$ wise, not a flop, maybe. But I hardly think he'll put it high up on his resume.
Threat to a Christian's faith is NOT the problem. The problem is that non-Christians are lapping up the outrageous lies concerning the history of the church and the divinity of Christ.
Not many reviews start out with the writer identifying himself as a moron.
I don't think the issue is that it is threatening to anyone's faith or to anyone with faith.
See post 9: urbane, sophisticated, usually left-leaning Papatola wouldn't catch that theological nuance (and wouldn't want to be named among the group that catches it).
Unfortunately, 1/3 of the Brits or Canadians (I forget which) who've read the book believe it to be historically accurate.
And while the plot may be idiotic, the book addresses very serious issues and slanders Christ's Church and Opus Dei, while presenting Jesus as married.
Hopefully the box office receipts will drop as word gets out.
He was attending to works with greater literary heft.
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