May
2006
‘Da Vinci’, Forrest and Opie: Slayers of Religion?
It’s always interesting to hear conservative religious and social commentators ascribe literally demonic motives for the movies and TV shows that Hollywood churns out, when just about all the time there’s only one agenda that the entertainment industry is concerned with: making a buck.
That’s not to say that The Da Vinci Code won’t offer any food for thought regarding religious issues. (To see if Da Vinci has anything to say to you and to hear what PCU co-founder George Regas thinks about the movie, please join us for a screening next Saturday, May 20 at 8:30 a.m. at the Paseo Stadium theaters in Pasadena. Please contact PCU for more details; tickets (priced at $12) will be available at All Saints Church in Pasadena this Sunday. From the perspective of the movie industry, however, the religious issues in Da Vinci are more of a headache than an opportunity to comment on a crucial subject. Sony Pictures, the movie’s distributor, has done little to reach out to people of faith beyond setting up a website to provide a place for dialogue on the film’s controversy.
One would think that the tremendous popularity of Dan Brown’s novel (40 million copies sold and counting) would assuage some of those headaches. But Sony is likely worried that the movie’s plot (historians and “symbologists” chase around obscure clues found in old paintings while religious fanatics chase them) doesn’t have strong appeal to the industry’s prime audience: young males with lots of time, testosterone and cash.
So if the studio has an agenda, it’s to make the movie look like an event (hence the way that the movie’s billboards call the film a “phenomenon”) and a compelling but not too complex action thriller. If Sony can lure frequent moviegoers and the novel’s fans to theaters, they couldn’t care less whether conservative Christian audiences (defined by Hollywood as devotees of Mel Gibson’s 2004 hit The Passion of the Christ) come or not.
Da Vinci’s co-producer and director Ron Howard (still fondly remembered for playing Opie on the old Andy Griffith Show) and star Tom Hanks are considered two of the good guys in Hollywood — along with being savvy creative players who know how to make hit movies. Clearly, their focus isn’t on getting the historical and theological details right, but on making the “facts” that the movie presents seem plausible, thus helping to generate a highly commercial storyline.
Portraying the Catholic Church as a ruthlessly powerful, repressive monolith trying to prevent a few brave souls from uncovering the (so-called and from some perspectives blasphemous) Truth isn’t intended as a religious statement by Messrs. Hanks and Howard. Rather, it’s an effort to create strong conflict between diametrically opposed and supposedly mismatched adversaries, a story archetype that has worked since (and well before) David and Goliath.
The way in which certain religious critics of Da Vinci have misunderstood these creative and industry imperatives isn’t surprising. But what’s disturbing about much of this criticism is the seeming determination to shove the movie — and by implication any other viewpoints on Jesus and the early church that don’t jibe with conservative doctrine — into a straitjacket of orthodoxy.
The idea that this or any other movie must hew to a single set of traditional guidelines is not only absurd but perhaps in the long run dangerous to Christianity’s efforts to grow and remain vital. Even The Passion, praised by conservatives for its “authentic” chronicle of the Gospels, took liberties with the source material. (Or am I the only one who doesn’t remember a guy in a lizard suit running around the Garden of Gethsemane?)
The story of Jesus still speaks to billions of us today thanks in part to how artists over the years — even ones focused on the bottom line — have come up with an endless variety of interpretations of Christ in art, music, literature and other popular forms of entertainment.
We don’t have to like all these portraits and we’re obligated to point out the inaccuracies in scholarship that they raise. But as Brian McLaren pointed out in a recent interview in Sojourners, Jesus has been alive for over 2000 years — He can handle the criticism.
Next: insights into what Da Vinci’s fans may be seeking.