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Monday, May 22, 2006
Old Wife's Tale
So I broke down and saw The Da Vinci Code over the weekend. Mostly I was curious, but I have to admit that part of me wanted to see the movie because it pissed off all the right people.
I was expecting a full-frontal assault of the Christian faith and on the Catholic Church in particular. I had hoped for evil Priests, scheming Bishops, and depictions of a power-hungry Vatican rotting from within. I mean, what less can be expected from a movie that is expected to incur the full wrath of God? Instead, I got a movie about a secret organization unknown to the Catholic Church, whose members are generally portrayed as lunatics, who want to destroy Christianity. In the end, the Church and the Faith are rescued, and all is well with the world. I wasn't struck by lightning, nor was I handed a tract on the way into the theatre. For me, the entire experience was as anti-climatic as the film itself. And of course, the "scholarship" of the movie is dubious at best--but what does one expect from a work of fiction? (Interestingly, certain Christians appear concerned with scholarly accuracy only in so far as it serves their interests. The rest of the time, they're quite happy to accept ridiculous fiction as truth.) And I can't help but wonder why this movie (and the book before it, for that matter) is generating so much attention and interest. It's a formulaic story told without any care. I wonder if there's a collective wish to see Christians, who have become so influential as of late, on the defensive. Or, perhaps people around the world are craving something of the Divine Feminine, which has been notably absent from Judeo-Christian traditions for about 4,000 years. 
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