I’ll stop posting items on The Da Vinci Code soon, really I will. But a few more thoughts on the matter have wafted into my brian.
First, this is an opportune time to return to a brilliant essay on film that G.K. Chesterton wrote 70 years ago. Several years ago, I posted a copy here; the relevant bit is this (emphasis added):
The second fact to remember is a certain privilege almost analogous to monopoly, which belongs of necessity to things like the theatre and cinema. In a sense more than the metaphorical, they fill the stage; they dominate the scene; they create the landscape. That is why one need not be Puritanical to insist on a somewhat stricter responsibility in all sorts of play-acting than in the looser and less graphic matter of literature. If a man is repelled by one book, he can shut it and open another; but he cannot shut up a theatre in which he finds a show repulsive, nor instantly order one of a thousand other theatres to suit his taste. There are a limited number of theatres; and even to cinemas there is some limit. Hence there is a real danger of historical falsehood being popularized through the film, because there is not the normal chance of one film being corrected by another film. When a book appears displaying a doubtful portrait of Queen Elizabeth, it will generally be found that about six other historical students are moved to publish about six other versions of Queen Elizabeth at the same moment. We can buy Mr. Belloc’s book on Cromwell, and then Mr. Buchan’s book on Cromwell; and pay our money and take our choice. But few of us are in a position to pay the money required to stage a complete and elaborately presented alternative film-version of Disraeli. The fiction on the film, the partisan version in the movie-play, will go uncontradicted and even uncriticized, in a way in which few provocative books can really go uncontradicted and uncriticized. There will be no opportunity of meeting it on its own large battlefield of expansive scenario and multitudinous repetition. And most of those who are affected by it will know or care very little about its being brought to book by other critics and critical methods. The very phrase I have casually used, `brought to book’, illustrates the point. A false film might be refuted in a hundred books, without much affecting the million dupes who had never read the books but only seen the film.
Second, Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote a column today — excerpted at Jeffrey Overstreet‘s blog — on how Sony had successfully duped conservative Christians into supporting and promoting The Da Vinci Code. The most relevant bit:
The Machiavellian mission for the hit-deprived Sony studio was to co-opt conservative religious critics who might depress turnout for a $125-million-plus thriller portraying the Roman Catholic Church as a fraud. To this end, as The New Yorker reported, Sony hired a bevy of P.R. consultants, including a faith-based flack whose Christian Rolodex previously helped sell such inspirational testaments to Hollywood spirituality as “Bruce Almighty” and “Christmas With the Kranks.”
Among Sony’s ingenious strategies was an elaborate Web site, The Da Vinci Dialogue, which gave many of the movie’s prominent critics a platform to vent on the studio’s dime. Thus was “The Da Vinci Code” repositioned as a “teaching moment” for Christian evangelists — a bit of hype “completely concocted by the Sony Pictures marketing machine,” as Barbara Nicolosi, a former nun and current Hollywood screenwriter, explained to The Times. The more “students” who could be roped into this teaching moment, of course, the bigger the gross.
Ms. Nicolosi remains a vociferous opponent of the film. On her blog she chastises Sony’s heavenly P.R. helpers for coaxing “legions of well-meaning Christians into subsidizing a movie that makes their own Savior out to be a sham.” But you do have to admire the studio’s chutzpah, if the word may be used in this context. It rivals Tom Sawyer’s bamboozling of his friends into painting that fence. The Sony scheme also echoes much of the past decade’s Washington playbook. Politicians, particularly but not exclusively in the Karl Rove camp, seem to believe that voters of “faith” are suckers who can be lured into the big tent and then abandoned once their votes and campaign cash have been pocketed by the party for secular profit.
I forwarded this column to a friend, who wrote back:
“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” is I think the appropriate saying for Christians approached by secular power brokers for their support.
And then it hit me: The studio had done to Christians exactly what the film says Constantine did to Christians. The movie says Constantine co-opted Christianity, compelled it to co-operate with paganism, and filled the Church with pagan ideas and attitudes — and that’s pretty much what the studio did in promoting this film!
(Never mind whether the historical Constantine actually did what the filmmakers say he did; the point is, what happens inside the film reflects what was going on outside the film.)
I’m not sure what to make of this connection, but it just occurred to me, and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else make it yet.
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