Hollywood Heresy: Marketing 'The Da Vinci Code' to Christians

[Guest guest]

[Well, this is be a bit off-topic I guess, but the current issue of

The New Yorker contains this extremely informative and interesting

analysis of the religious politics surrounding the release of "The Da

Vinci Code as a major motion picture ...]

 

HOLLYWOOD HERESY

Marketing 'The Da Vinci Code' to Christians

by PETER J. BOYER

Issue of 2006-05-22

Posted 2006-05-15

 

In the three years since the publication of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci

Code," a best-selling suspense novel with pretensions to serious

scholarship, the work has inspired a vast literature of refutation,

including dozens of books and numberless essays disputing the story's

core contentions. The Internet, intrinsically hospitable to such a

purpose, has grown a busy marketplace of "Da Vinci" debunkers,

anticipating the big-budget film version of Brown's tale, now

arriving in theatres. Prospective moviegoers who have spent time at a

Web site called The Da Vinci Dialogue, the most polished of these

efforts, have been informed that the story is deeply anti-Christian,

a pseudo history "fraught with inaccuracies" and "spiritual tripe."

They have been offered the opinion that, of its type, the book was

only "moderately engaging," attracting fans who were easily gulled

and perhaps just a bit dim.

 

What is striking about these assertions is that they are part of a

marketing project paid for by Sony Pictures Entertainment, the studio

that has invested more than two hundred million dollars in

producing "The Da Vinci Code" and distributing and marketing it

worldwide. When Sony acquired the rights to the book, in June of

2003, it was the property that Hollywood most dearly coveted, a

certain blockbuster with sequel potential, and the reported six-

million-dollar deal that Sony made with Brown was seen as a triumph.

The article in Daily Variety announcing the deal suggested no hint of

possible religious controversy in the "Da Vinci Code" story,

describing it as a murder mystery with "clues to a 2,000-year-old

conspiracy encoded in the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci." John

Calley, the Sony executive who made the deal, described the book as

a "page-turner" and a "thrill ride" that seemed to have been written

for the screen.

 

If, in retrospect, Hollywood seems to have been oblivious of the risk

of the film's arousing religious ire, it was only reflecting the

attitude that had greeted the publication of the book. Reviewers had

generally praised the novel, calling it a brainy entertainment and,

as sales piled up, marvelling at its broad appeal; somehow, the

provocations at its heart were almost uniformly overlooked. Brown's

puzzler plot proceeded from a thesis that Christianity as we know it

is history's greatest scam, perpetrated by a malignant, misogynist,

and, when necessary, murderous Catholic Church. "Almost everything

our fathers taught us about Christ is false," one of the book's main

characters declares.

 

Two developments soon brought that aspect of "The Da Vinci Code" into

sharper focus, and changed the dynamic of the Sony project. One was

the realization by Church leaders that Dan Brown's legion of fans

included many of the Christian faithful, and that a large proportion

of them believed that some — or, perhaps, even all — of the book's

assertions were true. The other development was unfolding just a few

miles west of the Sony studios, in an editing room in Santa Monica,

where Mel Gibson was fashioning an early version of his sanguinary

vision of Christ's Passion. ... [continued]

 

FOR FULL ARTICLE SEE

 

SOURCE: The New Yorker

URL: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060522fa_fact

 

 

 

 

 

 

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