Our Sunday Visitor
April 9, 2006
INTO THE DEEP
The 'Da Vinci' Wars
Education and consumer choice may be the best ways to send Hollywood a message
By Colleen Carroll Campbell
The film version of “The Da Vinci Code” is expected to hit theaters May 19 and already, battle lines have been drawn. Christians outraged by the bestselling book on which it is based are mobilizing to refute its blasphemous claims by organizing seminars, Bible studies and web-based education campaigns. Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is releasing the film, has responded with a website that purports to give Christians “a forum where people can wrestle with the complex topics raised by the book and the film.”
Those topics are legion and so are the novel’s distortions, which range from a hare-brained hypothesis about a marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdalene to a denial that Jesus claimed he was God to assertions of a millennia-old Catholic Church cover-up complete with a homicidal monk.
Though author Dan Brown has tried to pass off his fiction as fact, throngs of scholars and authors have debunked his claims, which appear to be based on a mix of rumor, pseudo-gospels and pure invention. Fiction has proved more appealing than truth, however: Brown’s novel has sold some 40 million copies and many of his fans have accepted his revisionist Christian history as gospel. Many more will likely do so when his story hits the silver screen.
Christians seeking to respond to this latest “Da Vinci” challenge can treat the film as a teaching moment, by sharing study guides, web links and books that discredit the novel and its depiction of Christianity a vast conspiracy. Their efforts cannot prevent crowds from flocking to the film, but they can answer questions that arise among viewers.
Concerned Christians can also follow the advice of Hollywood screenwriter and blogger Janet Batchler, whose widely circulated e-mail recently advised would-be activists against staying home on the weekend of May 19. Instead, Batchler said, Christians intent on influencing Hollywood should flock to theaters to see other films. Her recommendation: “Over the Hedge,” a family-friendly animated feature that debuts the same weekend as “The Da Vinci Code.”
By throwing support to a competing film, Batchler said, “You’ll get a vote, the only vote Hollywood recognizes: The power of cold hard cash laid down on a box office window on opening weekend. ... Let’s rock the box office in a way no one expects – without protests, without boycotts, without arguments, without rancor. Let’s show up at the box office ballot box and cast our votes.”
It’s not a bad idea. America’s movie moguls may be insensitive boors when it comes to religion and morality, but they are acutely aware of the bottom line. Hollywood has been stuck in a sales slump for more than a year. The Motion Picture Association of America reported last month that the total U.S. movie box office take dropped 6 percent last year, a loss of more than half a billion dollars. For the third straight year, the number of moviegoers declined, as did ratings for last month’s Academy Awards, which honored such transgressive films as “Brokeback Mountain,” a gay cowboy romance, and “TransAmerica,” about a transsexual’s road trip.
In the week before the awards show, a poll from MSNBC.com and Zogby International found that 60 percent of Americans believe Hollywood’s values are at odds with those of most Americans. Had Hollywood producers been listening, they might have discovered a reason for our declining interest in their work. But movie moguls are a tone-deaf lot, and in the end, the ring of the cash register may be the only message they can hear.
Colleen Carroll Campbell is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.