Googling the DaVinci Code

My daughter says that I am not writing about religion the way I actually speak about it. She thinks I’m trying to be friendly. Let’s do some housecleaning first: this is the last thing I will ever write about The DaVinci Code, hereafter referred to as TDC. The film is out and people are being interviewed. Some say it is a work of fiction, a profound observation. Some say they are rethinking religion, a profounder observation. Meanwhile, here I sit in what I take for the Real World and there are no albino monks running around killing the Ron Howards of the world. So how real is it? At this point you answer, “ Is what?” and I say, “Exactly.” And this brilliant conversation is somewhat clearer than the discussion in TDC. The real members of Opus Dei may be creepy, but they are our creeps and they do the works of mercy we are too good to do. They are the illegal immigrants of the spiritual world. As far as being a work of fiction, remember that To Kill a Mockingbird and Hostel are both works of fiction. One inspires, the other is murder considered as a fine art. Work of fiction is a shallow observation. But what is there about TDC that is not shallow and superficial? The condemnation of TDC is not that it is a work of fiction, but that it is Mass Market Consumerism fiction. In other words, it is crap. It was devised as crap. It was executed as crap. It was printed as meretricious crap. It was sold as crap… and we love it. Crap is cheap because it does not require 30 years of spiritual quest on the author’s part! There is an excellent Return on Investment on crap. The Last Temptation of Christ by Kazantzakis actually handled Jesus as Man and as Divine. It was a most original work of art. You have not read it because it was not designed for the mass consumer market. You never will read it. TDC is fodder for Hollow Men and Women, which is what we are. The simulacra of ideas contained within TDC (more like idea-bots of a malign and weird-wired nature) get within our hollow heads and rattle around, we spit forth gum balls of opinions from our oral dispensing unit for media-drones holding microphones, asking “ Did the film change your life? Do you feel its memes coursing through your mind?” We do not have a clue. Neither the sacred team nor the profane team are on the real playing field, a field which is not level by any stretch of the imagination. It is more like a battlefield. We prove that we are clueless every day in war zones where our fellow countrymen and innocent civilians are dying in a war based upon premises which were fundamentally unsound. We pretend. We pretend to have morals. We pretend to worship something other than Mammon. We pretend to talk to God. Ask the people outside the theater, rather, “Did this film change your view of the divinity of Money? of the divinity of Power? Did it strengthen your belief in eventual despair of all good acts?” “Did this film inspire you to charity?” This is a country not yet ready to put aside childish notions of the Holy and Morality. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child. ... Oh, the Googling bit. I have opened a search engine. With a trembling hand I type: “ DaVinci don’t live here no mo’ ” and with a trembling hand, I press the Enter button. Thus, do I Google The DaVinci Code out of existence. May 18 2006 May 17 2006 May 13 2006