Sherry Chandler

The Yin and Yang of It

Juan Cole has an interesting post this morning that attempts to explain why The Da Vinci Code has such a firm grip on the Zeitgeist. It’s all about restoring balance:

Dan Brown’s narrative is about restoring the golden mean to contemporary Western modernity.

The novel has a binary structure. On the one hand you have the Church hierarchy, which is patriarchal, doctrinal, monotheistic, ascetic, and authoritarian. Those attributes are its normal pole, but it is open to corruption when they are over-emphasized. The first step toward over-emphasis is Opus Dei, which stands for a cult-like kind of monotheism in which individualism is much more surpressed than in the Church generally. But even Opus Dei is not so far from churchly normality. The villain of the movie is the man who corrupts the principles of Opus Dei itself, Bishop Manuel Aringarosa and his acolyte, Silas. They take self-denial in the direction of manic masochism…

This pole of the film reflects the authoritarian side of modern institutions and culture. It isn’t about Catholicism at all, or about Opus Dei. It is about the unchallengeable doctrines (norms) of society, and about the constant danger that ordinary obedience to the law can turn into a cultic exaltation of the law above principle and spirit. The Silas’s of the US are the Ollie Norths and the Irv Lewis Libbys, apparatchiks who are willing to break any law and throw over any constitutional principle in order to serve their masters. (I.e. Cheney gets to play Aringosa in the Plame scandal).

…The other pole in the Brown narrative is the priory around the female descendants of Jesus through Mary Magdalene. This pole is about paganism, feminism, individualism, scientific rationality and sexual freedom. This pole, likewise, can become corrupt and antinomian. Thus, the pagan orgy or hieros gamos repulses Sophie Neveu and causes an almost fatal break between the Grail (herself) and the priory. Likewise, scientistic society has led her to become an unbeliever, so that the Grail itself is corrupted by doubt. Sir Leah Teabing is the symbol of this pole gone to unethical extremes. In his quest for the Grail, he is willing to deceive and to kill. He is Silas’s structural analogue.

…The Brown narrative does not advocate replacing the patriarchal,authoritarian, self-denying Church with the feminist, individualistic, pagan, libertine priory.

It is, in fact, only the melding of the two poles that would create the golden mean. That would lie in gender equality, and in moderation in each of the values of authority and individualism, self-denial and self-indulgence, law and ethical principle.

That is the golden mean the public is looking for. It is religious, but for the most part values individualistic spirituality above dry Church discipline. It is willing to sacrifice, but not at the price of giving up self-actualization and individual ethical integrity. It is increasingly challenging patriarchy, though that struggle is lively. It recognizes the need for authority but is suspicious, in the Madisonian tradition, that too much authority will corrupt its holders.

The film is popular because it isn’t about Catholicism or France or some odd conspiracy theory centered on Mary Magdalene. It is popular because it is about the dilemmas of secular modernity.

I’ve cut out a lot of neat detail to bring you the outline of ideas, especially some parallels between Shiite Islam (where the prophet Mohammed did marry and have children) and the themes of the film. So you should go and read the whole essay.

Also, Professor Cole is talking about the movie and I think I heard that Ron Howard softened the ending a bit in his film.

Still, weariness with the culture wars seems as good an explanation as any why this mediocre book has been so enthusiastically received. I’m sure tired of all the shouting — have been since the Reagan years.

BTW, I have only read the book and don’t plan to see the movie, but I think Professor Cole has also hit on one of my major problems with Dan Brown’s craft (and I’ve heard that Ron Howard is very true to the original):

As a film, it has its disappointments. The figure of Langdon does not actually speak like an academic. His talk at the Louvre is a sermon, not an analysis. His arguments with Teabing are jejune and the substance unbelievable. There is too much exposition, too much explaining and dwelling on the details of the whole gnostic conspiracy theory. To be good, the film would have had to be more allusive and less preachy, to show not tell.

That, and the fact that the novel in a primer in how not to write an English sentence (as I read in the NYTimes).

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