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Da Vinci Code: Books
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It isn't a defense to say that The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction. Fiction can't change the basic facts about major historical figures without being subject to criticism. People would be outraged if Doubleday printed a novel portraying Adolph Hitler in a positive light. Christians have a right to be outraged when the basic historical facts about Christ are falsified. The criticism will be even more intense when a publisher releases a book parodying the most sacred beliefs of others in this fashion.
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The Da Vinci Code is a riveting murder mystery and a work of great imagination. However the book is tragically flawed. Its description of many historical religious events, documents, and personalities are simply untrue. The tragedy of this book is that it could have been edited to be much more accurate historically without adversely affecting its popularity.
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There is even a fairly close parallel here: In spinning its conspiracy tale, The Da Vinci Code relies on information provided by documents that are established forgeries: Les Dossiers Secretes. Doubleday's release of the book is comparable to a major publisher releasing a novel based on anti-Jewish forgeries such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. If the publisher would turn down an anti-Jewish conspiracy novel based on these documents, it should do the same with The Da Vinci Code. The fact that it did not do so reveals a double standard and bigotry toward Christianity on its part.
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Reactions to The Da Vinci Code range along a broad spectrum from loathing to rapture. Audience reactions to books and movies are very unpredictable, a frustrating fact for publishers and film studios, who would love to develop a surefire system to predict which projects will be blockbuster hits and which will not even recover production costs. But so far such a system has yet to be invented.
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For a book that propounds a subversion of patriarchy by the eternal feminine, The Da Vinci Code embodies a blandly traditional gender relationship between the elder, experienced male (Langdon) and the youthful, naïve female (Sophie). One of Langdon’s great paternal moments of pedagogy comes as he listens calmly to Sophie’s distraught confession that she had a “rift” with her grandfather after she inadvertently discovered his participation in a strange sexual ritual. Langdon patiently asks Sophie whether the ceremony took place around the time of the equinox, with androgynous masks. When she responds affirmatively, he explains that she witnessed an ancient ceremony called “Hieros Gamos” or sacred marriage, which celebrates the “reproductive power of the female.” What appears to be a “sex ritual” has in fact nothing to do with eroticism. “It was a spiritual act,” a means of achieving “gnosis—knowledge of the divine.”
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What makes a book like The Da Vinci Code grab hold of the hearts and minds of readers and climb the bestseller lists? No one knows. Even writers who have once produced a bestseller often fail to repeat. The odds are against it. In the year 2004, a record 195,000 new books were released in the United States. Of those books, less than one percent made the bestseller list. Publishers would love to know how to transform the other ninety-nine percent into bestsellers.
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