To summarize the plot of Dan Brown’s novel is to recite the alphabet. We’ve all heard it. We know it all by heart. And we’re all sick of it.
Why is it then that people are still keeping this overrated heap of plot-driven drivel alive? Just two days ago, I was given a book entitled “The Da Vinci Code: A Quest for Answers.”
No, I did not throw it aside assuming the sole purpose of the thing was to inspire me to burn all copies of the fictional novel and place a hit on the students who watched the film last Friday at the Cheap Date Movie showing. I was inspired to write this article though, because it still looks as though a three-year-old piece of substandard literature continues to have some influence over a few of us.
Hype is a dangerous thing. It can give a movie the Academy Award for Best Picture or it can overstay its welcome as the underdog takes the prize (even though “Crash” was the better film, but that’s a different debate). Or, in this case it can transform a book drowning in bad dialogue with sporadic plot twists into a moneymaking machine that plagues the earth like an immortal Fran Drescher.
“The Da Vinci Code” is one of those rare creatures born for shock value. Granted, the book brings up interesting questions. What if Jesus had a wife? What if Jesus had a child? What if the Holy Grail was located at the Louvre? Exactly how much free time did Leonardo da Vinci have?
Not to answer a question with a question, but nowadays my response to these irresolvable inquiries is as follows: Who cares?
You can believe in God, that Jesus was celibate, that Mary was not his wife, that Dan Brown is a good writer, and that Santa Claus spends his weekends at the Ramada Inn with the Tooth Fairy. But please, please don’t believe that a book can change your beliefs, whatever they may be. Have a little dignity for yourself and what you stand for.
Ignore the likes of what some mediocre author of thriller fiction can concoct to make a quick buck instead of letting the pages of utter exaggeration and falsification shake the foundation of your religion and/or faith.
By handing out pamphlets chastising the book or the film, you are showing your insecurity in revealing that something so simple as a Tom Hanks film or Dan Brown novel has the potential to bother you so deeply.
Power to you for having an opinion, but if you honestly believe “The Da Vinci Code” has any more merit than your average fiction novel or blockbuster film, then it goes to show where Dan Brown is getting his money.
A word of warning to those of you equally disgusted with anything involving a man named Robert Langdon: avoid Nov. 15, the day a certain Ron Howard film comes to DVD.

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