Da Vinci Code, Mohammed cartoons and other controversies
After reading on JU about the “furor” surrounding the release of the movie based on Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code, I have to admit that I initially thought that it was simply another episode in America’s curious culture war in which American christians are pushing themselves to the fore as a new oppressed minority, battling against secularist ‘persecution’ and ‘slander’. However, a just rebuke to this idea from Bakersteet caused me to look into the matter more carefully and I found that this movie, and the ideas behind it, have indeed touched a nerve not just in the ‘Red States’, but around the world. Protests have been sparked even in Europe, which prides itself as a bastion of a sophisticated, albeit complacent tolerance.
The media is currently full of news about pickets and hunger strikes marking the release of the movie. Comparisons have been made with the protests in the muslim world following the publication of the Mohammed cartoons, mostly comparing the relatively restrained nature of christian protest favourably to the more violent expressions of outrage by muslims. There is a lot to be said for this comparison, although a brief look at history reveals that this has more to do with the nature of the societies in which the religions are currently practised than in the nature of the religions themselves. Fortunately, western christianity has been marinaded in liberal tolerance for a couple of centuries, giving it today quite a different flavour to when it too sought to stem criticism and mockery by torture and murder.
In some places, evangelical christians have reacted positively to something that they consider blasphemous and offensive by nevertheless seeing it as an opportunity for educational outreach and evangelisation. That has to be a constructive and sensible approach. Others take the work’s claim to be a work of fiction at face value and see little in it that seriously threatens their faith. However, with equal sincerity other religious voices are being raised claiming that their faith is being mocked and slandered, and that is the cause of the current controversy.
In trying to untangle just what is going on, there seem to be several distinct aspects to the issue which are often jumbled together, although to be rationally discussed they need to be looked at separately: namely free speech, the giving (and taking) of offense and whether or not there could be any truth in the ideas contained in the book.
Free Speech.
Free Speech is a key component of the collection of ideas, attitudes and practices that we think of as western culture. It is often framed as an issue of liberty, and that is a very important aspect of its value, but it is more than just that. Free speech is an absolute pre-requisite for the free circulation and competition of ideas which is the main engine of the astounding advances we have made. Without it, our science and our social progress would ground to a halt.
Historically, free speech began as a right to dissent from religious orthodoxy without fear of imprisonment or violence, which raises the question of whether free speech is essentially a secular value. Liberal christians might indeed point out that the very ideas of liberty and tolerance so important to contemporary western culture have a traceable source in our culture’s religious beliefs. Certainly the first to benefit from this initially revolutionary new freedom were religious dissenters. However, it is also important to acknowledge the role of non-religious ‘free thinkers’ in securing this liberty, and their strong antipathy to religion was also an important energy in bringing it about.
Giving and taking offence.
In both the case of The Da Vinci Code and the Mohammed cartoons, some have argued that the need not to inflame or give offence should modify or even overrule any abstract notion of free speech. And the positions held on this issue cut across left and right. Some on the left argue an uncompromising pro-free speech position, while others caution against giving offence, particularly to minorities. On the right almost the same dichotomy can be found, the usual difference being which ‘offended group’ each side is seeking to protect. The difficulty here is that free speech is not free unless it is free to be offensive. Of course to tell people that what they most deeply believe in is false and that they are stupid to believe it may indeed be unpleasant. However, it is worth asking why some people are deeply upset by this, while others take it in their stride.
Religion, while it may be something that touches people at their deepest level, and is therefore a highly individual experience, also has a social dimension. Some people have profound interior lives that require little external validation; others experience their religion more socially and require some measure of external validation for their faith. That external validation can come positively by the presence of a community of common belief or negatively through an absence of disrespect from the wider society. It is usually these ‘social’ believers who are the first to take offense and it may be literally true that they require this absence of disrespect in order to be truly comfortable in their faith. Whether or not the wider society, (if it no longer shares this faith), owes them this ‘comfort’ or whether they have the right to use violence or protest to secure it, is the vital issue.
The ‘truth’ of Dan Brown’s ideas.
Amongst the protesters, some religious ‘moderates’ are demanding a ‘compromise’ by which, rather than banning the movie, a disclaimer of some sort be added to the movie, making it clear, (for those who haven’t already got the message), that they are about to see a work of fiction. The problem with this is that this ‘fiction’ is being counterposed to religious ‘fact’. In reality, religious beliefs however sincerely held, are ultimately only unproven theories about the nature of ultimate reality. That is why there are so many of them - mostly mutually contradictory. Were a single one of them provable in any objective sense, then probably all the others would then fall away, like other discarded scientific theories that have been thrown away once a better explanation was found. Those demanding that the movie begins with a disclaimer are therefore claiming for their pet religious theory a privilege that it does not deserve.
The difficulty in this area has largely come about through Brown’s claim that: “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.” Interestingly no accuracy is being claimed here for the theories on Jesus’ relationship with Mary Magdalene, or the purported machinations of Opus Dei, although this is the main area of contention for those offended.
All this raises the question of whether or not this contoversy has been intentionally provoked, as Bakerstreet, amongst others, has suggested. I think the answer to this is yes, but not in the way that he means. Baker elsewhere makes an excellent comparison between Brown’s poorly written and inaccurate book, with similar treatments of arcane ideas by Umberto Eco. The main difference between these two writers is that Eco writes readable, thought-provoking and entertaining works on subjects about which he is already an acknowledged authority, whereas Brown seems to have gone to the library with the express intention of hanging a bestseller on shoddy research. Several million dollars later, the controversy has finally achieved what was all along its prime objective.