The Da Vinci Code

It is interesing to note that right that after 9/11, first best-selling story / viewpoint in US did not include a mad furor about Islam, Middle-East, but it involved the Catholic Church, Renaissance, and Medieval knights. Surely it did involve religion, but not Islam. I am talking about the Da Vinci Code stories of course which brilliantly tapped into a nation’s psyche, its cultural fault line. DVC after 9/11 attacks reminded people about something they were familiar with: the dictatorial mentality of Rome (or the Roman Catholic Church), and its top-down hold on religion, knowledge and its symbols. The Western world already had that fight; Geiseric, who destroyed the Romans was seen a barbarian after all, he was a Christian whose only difference from the Catholic “party line” was his belief that Jesus was not God.

If the “bad” in the story is Roman Catholics, then the “good” could only have been something Medieval, and it was. Enter Templar “Knights” whose job is to protect “the secret”, the holy grail, whatever. Knights belong to an era after Romans’ fall, and the fall of modernity today ushering in an era similar to Medieval Age is the parallel here, that’s why the knight as a symbol still “sells” in movies, either in its original form, or in an endless stream of superhero pictures. Iron Man? He has an armor, has a fief (his hi-tech house), has squires (his little robots), is against Military Industrial Complex (modern Rome).

In any case: DVC book and the movies are on code, the code being the dividing line between Rome / Jesus, militarism / piece, mindless centurion vs. the knight.