With the release this week of The Da Vinci Code, we are witnessing the latest assault on our ability to think for ourselves. Some religious leaders, who already have attempted to influence our voting, medical care, immigration laws, scientific research, and personal freedoms, now want to interpret our movies for us. Before we even see them. Just to make really sure that we really understand "the truth".
Dan Brown's novel has been controversial ever since it was published in 2003, with its theme of the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and the resulting bloodline. Those descendents have supposedly been both protected, and hunted, by secret societies. And the church is allegedly the world's greatest suppressor of women.
Brown, like many successful authors, cleverly blurs history with conjecture, using details of actual places to add realism. But the story is just a story. And not even a new one at that. Other writers have opined on the "official" doctrine of Jesus' life, and the true meaning of the Holy Grail, as the world's oldest conspiracy theory. But, now that the celluloid version is reaching millions, religious leaders have geared up to vilify it, and make sure that we, the unable-to-think-for-ourselves public, don't mistake the book for the Good Book. Church officials worldwide have spoken out as if Da Vinci was presented as a historical document.
Officials of Westminster Abbey would not permit filming there, claiming the story is "theologically unsound". Just last week, a priest in Athens ordered police to arrest a camera crew which was filming parishioners handing out leaflets from the Greek Orthodox Holy Synod which said, "The work attacks and undermines in a treacherous manner religious knowledge". Churches have even created their own television shows like "Da Vinci Delusion" and "Opus Dei Unveiled" to rebut Brown.
Tom Hanks, who stars in the movie, told London's Evening Standard "We always knew there would be a segment of society that would not want this film to be shown". But he added that it is "a good story", and not to be taken too seriously.
Of course, many churches were singing an entirely different hymn in 2003, when Mel Gibson's equally controversial The Passion of The Christ was released. An ecclesiastical must-see. Like Brown, Gibson reached for non-traditional thinking - the Jews were responsible for killing Christ. But few in the church had a problem with this one. Again, a Hollywood creation - clearly one man's opinion - was treated almost as a Testament.
The same religious scrutiny accompanied Steven Spielberg's Munich, which never purported to be a documentary, but nonetheless drew the ire of those who felt that Spielberg, who is Jewish, should not have bent over backward to be "fair" to the Arab terrorists who murdered 11 Israeli Olympic athletes and coaches.
Do our religious leaders really not trust us to think for ourselves? Did Passion really change anyone's mind about the culpability for Jesus' death? Are the church's fundamental tenets going to crumble because Dan Brown has repackaged an age-old controversy? Anyone who could question his or her lifelong faith based on a movie probably didn't have much to begin with. But the church's shrieking denials have played right into the hands of the Hollywood P.R. Machine.
There are now probably few people in this country who haven't heard about The Da Vinci Code furor. They are much more likely to want to see the "evidence" for themselves, despite poor reviews. And they have, no doubt, searched for a picture of The Last Supper to see whose hand, and whose face, are really there.
Perhaps it is not coincidence that President Bush's denials of wide-scale domestic spying come as Da Vinci is being released. After all, the Pres (who has a religious supporter or two) is asking us to do exactly as those many religious leaders are demanding: don't accept what you hear and see. Do accept what I tell you. There is a good explanation, and it is not the one you are being lead to believe.
We are being treated, to use William J. Lederer's 1961 phrase, as a Nation of Sheep. We are seen as so easily influenced by Mel Gibson, or Dan Brown, or Steven Spielberg, that we can not even be trusted to watch a movie without getting Organized Religion's version first. So when our President tells us that those millions of phone records aren't really being compiled, cross-indexed, and saved for the day that someone, anyone, with access, wants to investigate you, your friends, or your uncle Joe, won't we follow right along? Like sheep?
If he tells us that our civil liberties aren't really at risk, would he mislead us? After all, it was only a few months ago that he assured us domestic surveillance was not being done on the average American citizen.
It makes you wonder if religion gets its ideas from politics, or the other way around. Church leaders tell us the real "truth" of movies. The President looks into our TV screens and assures us that there is nothing wrong here. And they all think that we will not think. Baaaaaa.
So if you feel you are being force-fed "the truth", from a House of Worship or the White House, remember the prophetic words of television anchorman Howard Beal, in the classic film Network : "You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass madness! You maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! We are the illusion!"