Sunday, May 21, 2006.
In Defence of "The Da Vinci Code."
I will write something here at some point. Here goes. The film of the "Da Vinci Code" is being universally panned. Everyone is saying how awful it is but still everyone is going to see it and writing about it. I would like to slightly leap to its defence. Yes it might be a pretty one dimensional piece of cinema but are the 5 or so other films on at your local multiplex really any better? I really quite enjoyed this film and quite enjoyed the book. They're not the kind of thing I usually like but I did quite like them.
Why? Because they had ideas in them. The Da Vinci Code is not an "inconsequential piece of writing" as an Independent journalist wrote. One consequence it had was her article but anyway. Why is it not inconsequential? Because it deals with questions of religion and of the meaning of European history and culture.
It may do so in a very slap-dash and inaccurate way but it nonetheless deals with these questions.
I don't like to call it "Western" history and/or "Western" culture because I regard this word "Western" as in a sense meaningless.
Also "Western" can often nowadays mean "The USA and England" or "the English-speaking world". Sometimes unconsciously so.
This is the height of deceit.
"West" or "Western" can also imply senses of superiority or otherness or separateness which are all just inaccurate.
The phrase "the Western bombing of Iraq" or "the Western bombing of Serbia". This is annoying.
The "West's" attack on Iraq was never the attack of the "West" if there is such a thing. It was an attack by the USA and England.
The "West" if it means anything, does not and should not mean "The USA and England."
Too often it seems to be allowed to mean this.
Similarly Latin America is perhaps part of the "West" if there is such a thing and should not be excluded in an ethnocentric way as it is by some. It incorporates in its world a lot of what we call Western culture.
This Samuel Huntington conception that the world is sort of split up into distinct civilizations with discrete areas on a map is like something out of a Dungeons and Dragons game for teenagers.
Surely in one sense civilisation is meant as a sort of quality that any part of the globe can possess. Anyway this splitting up of the world is silly. We're all humans.
In the front of the book "The Clash of Civilisations" by Huntington there is a map with the world divided up into various different "civilisations." What a load of childish piffle.
"Western Civilisation" does not occupy a space on a map commensurate with a group of specific countires or states. The same applies to any other "civilisation"..
You can talk of "Islamic civilisation" or "Persian civilisation" but they don't really occupy specific spaces on a map. You can in a sense experience them anywhere on the globe.
"Civilisation" is surely a concept as much as anything else which can exist anywhere where humans are.
I find the idea of a "Western cannon" ridiculous.
I don't know if the USA is part of "the West", if there is such a thing.
At the present time our culture has in a sense fractured off from its history. This is measured by the fact that many people can't tell you how much of the Da Vinci Code is history and how much twaddle because they don't have a clear idea of history anyway.
Anything that makes people engage with history in some way is a good thing, because it means to ask "What am I?", "What is life?".
I think the idea (if only just the idea) of the sacred feminine or divine feminine is of interest. It is true that the divine feminine or the female principle in religion was, if not supressed then diminished by the rise of certain religions.
I am not saying this was done by deliberate supression or deliberately at all. I don't believe in any of the conspiracy theory or in the interpretation of the paintings of Da Vinci in the book/film. Yes you could call it a "book/film", such is the similarity. The Holy Grail was entirely the invention of Cre'tien De Troyes; the word play "Sang Real" is just a coincidence. Anyway Baldrick is yer man for all that. Tony Robinson is on the case.
Nay he has it solved. I am an atheist; I don't particularly like the Catholic church as an institution.
At a stretch I might call myself a cultural Catholic of a sort because there are some things about Catholic culture that I like. I'm a rationalist, a humanist and an atheist.
Religions evolve and always have. Generally what religion people have, is what relgion works. Defining religion very broadly. I don't necessarily think that humans have to have a religion in the conventional sense of the word.
So if this film helps religion evolve then that's fine by me. Let's be honest though - the Catholic Church is probably absolutely ecstatic about the Da Vinci Code because it actually makes it seem interesting and sexy when it isn't really. It's a load of (sometimes harmful) nonsense.
The scenes where they "broad brush stroke" by flashback events in European history as if it was a Lord of Rings fantasy legend were I think enjoyable and I believe not entirely inaccurate.
If people are made to think about European history, if only to debunk all of this film then that is a good thing.
A thriller with a few ideas and a bit of history. That's a good thing in my view.
If the people consuming it have their critical faculties intact. That's where we're having the problems. But thre are ideas in this. However few.
In Defence of "The Da Vinci Code."
I will write something here at some point. Here goes. The film of the "Da Vinci Code" is being universally panned. Everyone is saying how awful it is but still everyone is going to see it and writing about it. I would like to slightly leap to its defence. Yes it might be a pretty one dimensional piece of cinema but are the 5 or so other films on at your local multiplex really any better? I really quite enjoyed this film and quite enjoyed the book. They're not the kind of thing I usually like but I did quite like them.
Why? Because they had ideas in them. The Da Vinci Code is not an "inconsequential piece of writing" as an Independent journalist wrote. One consequence it had was her article but anyway. Why is it not inconsequential? Because it deals with questions of religion and of the meaning of European history and culture.
It may do so in a very slap-dash and inaccurate way but it nonetheless deals with these questions.
I don't like to call it "Western" history and/or "Western" culture because I regard this word "Western" as in a sense meaningless.
Also "Western" can often nowadays mean "The USA and England" or "the English-speaking world". Sometimes unconsciously so.
This is the height of deceit.
"West" or "Western" can also imply senses of superiority or otherness or separateness which are all just inaccurate.
The phrase "the Western bombing of Iraq" or "the Western bombing of Serbia". This is annoying.
The "West's" attack on Iraq was never the attack of the "West" if there is such a thing. It was an attack by the USA and England.
The "West" if it means anything, does not and should not mean "The USA and England."
Too often it seems to be allowed to mean this.
Similarly Latin America is perhaps part of the "West" if there is such a thing and should not be excluded in an ethnocentric way as it is by some. It incorporates in its world a lot of what we call Western culture.
This Samuel Huntington conception that the world is sort of split up into distinct civilizations with discrete areas on a map is like something out of a Dungeons and Dragons game for teenagers.
Surely in one sense civilisation is meant as a sort of quality that any part of the globe can possess. Anyway this splitting up of the world is silly. We're all humans.
In the front of the book "The Clash of Civilisations" by Huntington there is a map with the world divided up into various different "civilisations." What a load of childish piffle.
"Western Civilisation" does not occupy a space on a map commensurate with a group of specific countires or states. The same applies to any other "civilisation"..
You can talk of "Islamic civilisation" or "Persian civilisation" but they don't really occupy specific spaces on a map. You can in a sense experience them anywhere on the globe.
"Civilisation" is surely a concept as much as anything else which can exist anywhere where humans are.
I find the idea of a "Western cannon" ridiculous.
I don't know if the USA is part of "the West", if there is such a thing.
At the present time our culture has in a sense fractured off from its history. This is measured by the fact that many people can't tell you how much of the Da Vinci Code is history and how much twaddle because they don't have a clear idea of history anyway.
Anything that makes people engage with history in some way is a good thing, because it means to ask "What am I?", "What is life?".
I think the idea (if only just the idea) of the sacred feminine or divine feminine is of interest. It is true that the divine feminine or the female principle in religion was, if not supressed then diminished by the rise of certain religions.
I am not saying this was done by deliberate supression or deliberately at all. I don't believe in any of the conspiracy theory or in the interpretation of the paintings of Da Vinci in the book/film. Yes you could call it a "book/film", such is the similarity. The Holy Grail was entirely the invention of Cre'tien De Troyes; the word play "Sang Real" is just a coincidence. Anyway Baldrick is yer man for all that. Tony Robinson is on the case.
Nay he has it solved. I am an atheist; I don't particularly like the Catholic church as an institution.
At a stretch I might call myself a cultural Catholic of a sort because there are some things about Catholic culture that I like. I'm a rationalist, a humanist and an atheist.
Religions evolve and always have. Generally what religion people have, is what relgion works. Defining religion very broadly. I don't necessarily think that humans have to have a religion in the conventional sense of the word.
So if this film helps religion evolve then that's fine by me. Let's be honest though - the Catholic Church is probably absolutely ecstatic about the Da Vinci Code because it actually makes it seem interesting and sexy when it isn't really. It's a load of (sometimes harmful) nonsense.
The scenes where they "broad brush stroke" by flashback events in European history as if it was a Lord of Rings fantasy legend were I think enjoyable and I believe not entirely inaccurate.
If people are made to think about European history, if only to debunk all of this film then that is a good thing.
A thriller with a few ideas and a bit of history. That's a good thing in my view.
If the people consuming it have their critical faculties intact. That's where we're having the problems. But thre are ideas in this. However few.
