“Da Vinci”, Modernity, and Box-Office
First off, “The Da Vinci Code” raked in over 77 million dollars its opening weekend (224 million worldwide). While it didn’t beat “The Passion’s” opening weekend (around 84 million), it looks like the film is well on its way to becoming a financial hit with movie-goers. This means both “sequel” (actually prequel), and it means that the Da Vinci message won’t be going away any time soon.
While I stand by my “it’s the Goddess, stupid” take of why it is so popular, there have been some interesting alternate theories. My favorite so far is from historian Juan Cole who claims that “Da Vinci” is a parable of American modernity.
“Dan Brown’s narrative is about restoring the happy medium to contemporary Western modernity…The Brown narrative does not advocate replacing the patriarchal, authoritarian, self-denying Church with the feminist, individualistic, pagan, libertine priory. It is, in fact, only the melding of the two poles that would create the happy medium. That would lie in gender equality, and in moderation in each of the values of authority and individualism, self-denial and self-indulgence, law and ethical principle. That is the centrist position the public is looking for.”
In essence it is the public’s hunger for a compromise between the “secular” left and the “religious” right that makes this book/film so darn popular. Is our culture craving a “middle way” out of our current political and social 50/50 stalemate and a book about the lost feminine power of the Christian religion is its subconscious expression? Stranger things have happened.
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