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The Da Vinci Code opens this weekend, the much-talked-about
film version of Dan Brown's best-selling novel. As a literary creation,
the novel is rather formulaic, but I'll be the first to admit that the
pages certainly do fly by--it's a fun, if light, mystery. While the
film has received poor reviews, its notoriety is sure to keep us thinking
about the relationship between literature and religion for some weeks
(months, if Sony Pictures and director Ron Howard are lucky). The Catholic
Church wants you to boycott the film; Sony Pictures hopes this call
for a boycott will only increase your interest in seeing the film so
you can formulate your own opinion about the controversy. Me? I'm happy
whether you see it or not, but I thought I'd take the opportunity to
suggest some further exploration of the relationship between literature
and religion--that is, if the controversy over The
Da Vinci Code has
caught your interest at all.
Much of the controversy concerns the question of how
much fact is mixed with fiction in The Da Vinci Code. The story makes what
it hopes is a radical assertion that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene;
it further claims that this centerpiece of its fictional plot derives indirectly
from historical facts. This claim constitutes the kind of move Oliver Stone
often makes in his films, and it certainly worked insofar as it sparked
people's curiosity. Many have objected that the so-called historical facts
remain, in truth, speculative fictions. Be that as it may, I'll leave that
debate for you to explore if you'd like. Instead, I'd like to offer a different
kind of criticism of The Da Vinci Code--a criticism that emphasizes the
literary by focusing on what kind of values the story implicitly forwards
through its symbolism.
While the story pretends to be edgy and radical, it
turns out to be boringly conservative and even potentially reactionary.
Its re-writing of the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene
as a symbolic ideal reflects a "focus on the family"-style modern
American dream of the nuclear heterosexual family. The story presents
Jesus and Mary as the embodiment of the essences of "male" and "female," which
together produced the line of direct descendents that become the
heart of the story's supposedly radical revelation. True, it depicts
Leonardo Da Vinci as a cross-dressing gay man (the Mona Lisa is a
self-portrait, according to the story), but his gender and sexual queerness
serve only to efface themselves by revealing what the story portrays as
the deeper truth of ideal masculinity and femininity in heterosexual
union, which of course results in all-important biological offspring. (Was
James Dobson in on the writing?) The Bible's portrayal of Jesus offers
us a far more edgy, radical, and challenging vision of the family--and
also of gender and sexuality. Jesus' teachings unsettled the concept
of the family current in his day. He displaced the patriarchal authority
that defined the family by insistently figuring God as our father: God's
authority can trump any human father's. Jesus also undermined the idea
of defining family by blood ties of biological offspring; instead, he defined
family by faith, which meant that it had an open-ended, expansive quality
(the long Christian tradition of referring to fellow believers as "brother" and "sister" is
a legacy of this teaching). He also challenged the sexual and gender
norms of his culture, valuing women, eunuchs, and prostitutes so
highly that he scandalized the holy rollers of his day. As it turns
out, his teachings challenge some of the cultural values of our day, as
well. If you really want to read something challenging and even radical
about Jesus, try one of the Gospels.
That said, you can also find a wealth of contemporary
literature that deals with religion in more interesting and challenging
ways than does The Da Vinci Code. Have fun with the movie or the
novel if you like, but you might also consider checking out two wonderful
collections of short stories that address a wide variety of religions
and religious issues through the medium of literature: the first
is God:
Stories, and the second, which followed on the heels of the first,
is Faith:
Stories (both edited by C. Michael Curtis). They include stories by
a range of extraordinary writers. You might recognize names such as Eudora
Welty, John Updike, Saul Bellow, and James Baldwin. The selections
emphasize 20th- and 21st-century writers, some of whom are still developing
their careers. Collections like these offer inexpensive and efficient
ways for you to explore a literary interest--in this case, the relationship
between literature and religion. Ignore what you don't like, and
follow-up on what you do. You might just find your next favorite author! |
