A 'Da Vinci Code' primer

If you have been metaphorically living under a stone because every time you peek out you get embarrassed that you don't know anything really about the Da Vinci code and now they've gone and released a film, here's your chance to reintegrate into society. A bluffer's guide.

I really liked this bit.

Can I learn about art, history or theology by reading the book?
Most experts say that’s like trying to learn science from watching Star Trek.
As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.” And Mr. Brown gets plenty of facts wrong.

And this quote probably puts most of us in our place. It certainly woke up my inner pedant who has now stored that away and will plague me with emabarassment and self-reproach if I fail to put 'Leonardo' in front of 'Da Vinci'.

Art historians also snicker at Mr. Brown’s repeated references to “Da Vinci.” That would be like referring to “Fred from New York” as “from New York.” Leonardo had no last name, as we now think of it.

The article also expresses well why we might be bothered about the historical inaccuracies and downright falsehoods.

The Rev. Robin Griffith-Jones is the master of Temple Church in London and author of The Da Vinci Code and the Secrets of the Temple. His church is one of the places the novel’s protagonists visit on their quest for truth.
“I have recently seen Syriana and The Constant Gardner . I have never known anything about the oil or pharmaceutical industries, and probably never will,” he said. “But those films, which I know were of course fictional, were so vivid that they have given me a template into which I will from now on fit everything I read/hear about the oil/chemical business. Ditto with The Da Vinci Code, for a large number of people who will from now on see priests, monks, the church, Christian faith and churches-and-women in the light cast by the novel and film.”

Quite so, as I said to my sister, yes it is only fiction, but it it's all people 'know', and if it's wrong it creates a lot of work for people like me [priests and religious teachers] to unpick.

The article mentions but doesn't really analyse why it should be so popular. And that is the thing we should really be paying attention to because it tells us something of what is going on in our culture with regard to spirituality, religion and popular perceptions of Christianity.

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