The Da Vinci Code: A Guilty Pleasure?

[Desdichado]

I may eventually get around to reading it. Whether or not Brown really actually beleves what he has written is truth (and is not simply doing it for the marketing possibilities, which is probably far closer to the truth) is pretty irrelevant to me. It's a conspiracy theory novel and don't all of you remember that the heart of any good conspiracy theory is that everything you've been fed is a lie? All history, all you've been taught, all that you've read or researched, whatever, is a lie from beginning to end. It doesn't matter if you've gone and looked stuff up yourself: all printed material is tainted at the source. All you think exists about religious orthodoxy and faith and history and all that is a lie as well. Usually it's the Illuminati or one of the other hundreds of secret societies, but sometimes Antarctic Nazis and Greys figure in as well.

Go pick up Kenneth Hite's Suppressed Transmission stuff to get a huge helping and sampling of the various (obviously conflicting) conspiracy theories in an easy-to-read and -manage does.

True enough. And in that sense, Angels & Demons was actually a better novel, IMO. In fact, on all fronts, I thought it was a better novel. I'm surprised at the legs DaVinci Code has in some ways. It's not like A&D doesn't have the Catholic conspiracy angle to recommend it from a marketing standpoint. Although it doesn't specifically address the nature of Jesus, which is the big controversy DVC seems to have going for it to stir up interest.

 

[Prest0]

Brown tries to pass off bunk as legitimate history, all the while resorting to cop-outs ("It's fiction!") and demonstrably false cliches ("Only winners write history!") to cover his backside.

Now, maybe I take history too seriously, but judging by the number of historically illiterate folks I've bumped into who actually think Brown has any academic credibility, perhaps some seriousness - and some authorial honesty - are in order.

I read somewhere that his next book will be centered around Freemasons. It seems like he's very smartly targeting institutions that historically haven't publicly defended themselves and that the public only vaguely understands. They make easy, safe targerts on which he can broadly paint his own version of "truth". I shudder to think of what long lost "facts" he'll come up with.

 

[WayneLigon]

He won't be coming up with much new stuff; people have spun vast conspiracy theories about the Masons for quite a long time. I have personally heard people state with authority and gravity that the Masons are worshippers of Baphomet, that they run all the construction companies (What, la Bella Mafia doesn't have something to say about that?), and that the initiation ceremony involves several 'acts' that would make Eric's Grandmother spin like a table leg in a wood lathe.

The new movie 'National Treasure' probably has some similar things in it (it involves among other things a secret map hidden on the back of the original Declaration of Independence; the trailer shows Cage revealing the Masonic symbol on the back of some document).

 

[Kesh]

Ah, yes, that bastion of journalistic integrity.

If their TV report is anything like their internet summary, I'm glad I missed it. That ABC News can do this sort of report and not actually interview a single credible historian is par for the course for ABC. (Margaret Starbird gets a plug without being skewered as a fraud? Holy Blood, Holy Grail gets a mention without noting that the book is historical nonsense?)

I actually did see this show. It was mostly just regurgitating theories I've heard before, with some interesting new tidbits. I found it quite useful, especially since it tipped off a good discussion on religion with my mother.

Though the woman doing the interviews tried a little too hard to act like a skeptical journalist during her close-ups. She needs a few more lessons.

 

[Mark Chance]

I don't think what Brown is in any way comparable with (fictional) holocaust denial or advocacy of slavery. I also don't think referencing a false history about the Priory for backstory is like using the Protocols to try and stir up anti-Semitism. I really think you're both overstating your case.

The two situations (Brown's implicit anti-Catholicism, et cetera, and Holocaust denial) are comparable. In both situations, the historical record is falsified in order to malign a group. I will be first to admit that the two situations may not be equivalent, but that is another topic entirely.

What Brown did amounts (in the eyes of believers) to heresy and blasphemy. I really can't see why, in the modern world, this is scandalous and something to get worked up about. Is promoting some set of religious views at variance with orthodoxy (if that's even what Brown is doing) wrong?

Answering that question not only enters into areas forbidden on this board, but is also irrelevant to my central complaint, which is this: Brown and his ilk are liars. They say X is true, when X is not true (with X being such falsehoods as Brown's claim that Constantine is responsible for the canon of Christian scripture).

Regardless of issues of orthodoxy versus heterodoxy, I feel I'm on pretty safe ground by asserting that lying is generally not a good thing, and that lying in order to malign a group or institution is almost certainly not a good thing.

 

[nikolai]

I really don't want to pull this thread into areas that Morrus et al. won't be happy about and get the thread closed down. So I'm just going to clarify my view and leave it at that.

The two situations (Brown's implicit anti-Catholicism, et cetera, and Holocaust denial) are comparable. In both situations, the historical record is falsified in order to malign a group. I will be first to admit that the two situations may not be equivalent, but that is another topic entirely.

I may have misinterpreted your posts. I felt ragboy's post was implying that the situations were equivalent, just with unacceptable versus acceptable targets. That's the context in which I used the word comparable. You said the use of the Priory document was "on par with an anti-Semitic author using The Protocols". I think this overstates the case. My intended point was the situations aren't the same, I'm not saying they can't be compared in some manner. We're most likely in closer agreement on this that the posts imply.

...Brown and his ilk are liars. They say X is true, when X is not true (with X being such falsehoods as Brown's claim that Constantine is responsible for the canon of Christian scripture).

I've already said my piece on lying in the context of fiction, which I won't repeat.

 

[takyris]

Nikolai, side thought re:Lying in fiction is "fiction", and therefore not on the same level:

I believe that this is true on one level but not on another. It is certainly true that if you write a story in which you have JFK as being abducted by aliens and replaced with a synthdroid and "assassinated" in order to provide a feasible way to get the synthdroid (which isn't that intelligent and has a short battery life) out of the picture, and then it turns out that the aliens took JFK in order to have him lead an intergalactic armada against an evil empire that wants to enslave the universe... well, that'd probably be fine. People would say, "Okay, yeah, that's fiction."

In fact, if you wrote a thriller involving JFK that focused on his assassination being a mob hit because he'd gotten a mafia daughter pregnant (and you made up the name of the mafia daughter), you'd also be fine.

If you used a real person for the mafia daughter, you'd be treading close to the line, though, in terms of being legally accountable in some coutries.

This is all just what I remember, though. It was something mentioned in a writing class. Having a character say, "I don't like Pepsi" or "What's wrong with this Pepsi? It tastes like it's been mixed with battery acid," is fine, because it only promotes a personal character viewpoint or an indication that one particular can of Pepsi has something wrong with it.

Having a character say, "I don't drink Pepsi, and you shouldn't either, because it's made from the ground-up bodies of twenty-third century freedom fighters whose remains are sent back in time to hurt morale in the resistance," is also probably fine, because, while gruesome, your statement is silly enough to be taken as fiction.

However, what if, in a work of fiction, you have a character say, "Oh, the cause of death was Pepsi. The man had an increasingly common type of stomach condition caused by too much protein and fat hitting the system -- the whole Atkins, South Beach thing. It's not much of a problem, except that 1 case of Pepsi out of every 6 that's purchased in the U.S. is actually made in Mexico, and Mexican water systems are years behind U.S. in terms of chemical safety. One out of every hundred cases of Mexican Pepsi have a broken-down agricultural pesticide in their water at a small level. For an ordinary person, this just makes the Pepsi taste a bit funny, maybe a bit more bitter than usual. But for someone with the Atkins-diet stomach condition, that chemical leads to an almost-immediate bleeding ulcer and serious long-term health problems. So basically, for someone on the Atkins diet, one can of Pepsi out of every 600 is poisonous."

Well, you'd have Pepsi, Atkins, and Mexican labor sources all up in your face in a heartbeat. They'd go after you for slander, arguing that what you wrote wasn't intended as fiction. It was intended as fact presented as background for a fictional story -- and it was, in that context, not a piece of fiction, but a lie.

 

[nikolai]

[If you said X] you'd have Pepsi, Atkins, and Mexican labor sources all up in your face in a heartbeat. They'd go after you for slander, arguing that what you wrote wasn't intended as fiction. It was intended as fact presented as background for a fictional story -- and it was, in that context, not a piece of fiction, but a lie.

I have no knowledge of the law on such things. I do remember there was a big battle between William Randolph Hearst and Orson Welles over Citizen Kane (which was claimed to be "fictional" slander). Though I can't remember the result. I'm sure there are some books that come pretty close to what you've described. It's been a while since I read it, but Fight Club leaps to mind.

In any case, I'll try not to say anything to impune Pepsi, Atkins, or Mexican labor anytime soon.

 

[Mark Chance]

I may have misinterpreted your posts. I felt ragboy's post was implying that the situations were equivalent, just with unacceptable versus acceptable targets. That's the context in which I used the word comparable. You said the use of the Priory document was "on par with an anti-Semitic author using The Protocols". I think this overstates the case. My intended point was the situations aren't the same, I'm not saying they can't be compared in some manner. We're most likely in closer agreement on this that the posts imply.

"On par" was too strong, but not by much. Anti-Catholicism is a very real prejudice that presents some very real and growing problems in several countries, including the U.S. Owing to the nature of those problems, which are all either religious or political, we really can't go into them here.

I've already said my piece on lying in the context of fiction, which I won't repeat.

Brown isn't just lying in the content of his fiction. If he was, no sweat. To a certain extent, all fiction is a lie. That's why it's called fiction.

But Brown does more than this. He makes claims in nonfiction contexts, such as fact pages and interviews, that are false. To recall the example of Constantine and his supposed influence on the canon of Christian scripture, Brown has made this claim not only as part of his fiction, but also as being a bona fide historical fact.

Now, I can concede that Brown may not know he is lying when he says such things about Constantine. He may be genuinely ignorant, even though I'd find that very hard to believe. But, ignorant or not, it doesn't alter the fact that Brown and the pseudo-scholars that he liberally borrow from are, outside the context of fiction, saying a great many things that are simply untrue.

 

[Frostmarrow]

I finished it last night. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I was able to solve a few of the riddles. I'm not a historian and I was swept away by the ideas presented by Brown. I found it exciting to cross-check the art on the Internet and look for the symbols Langdon lays-out. However, this does not mean that I take Brown's work for canon of the Earth-setting. I'm smart enough to realise that this is fiction and not the word of God. This book will occupy my thoughts for a few days but it will not utterly change the very fabric of my being. So lighten up a little. I'm not in need of protection.