The Da Vinci Code and Censorship
I must be one of the few people yet to read 'The Da Vinci Code'.
So, it is perhaps strange that I should be found pontificating
about it. But since when have the facts got in the way of a good
story?
The best-seller has just been banned in Lebanon after complaints
by Catholic leaders that it was offensive to Christianity.
Father Abdou Abu Kasm, president of Lebanon's Catholic
Information Centre, is reported to have described the contents
of the book as "insulting". "There are paragraphs that touch the
very roots of the Christian religion... they say Jesus Christ
had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene, that they had
children. Those things are difficult for us to accept, even if
it's supposed to be fiction," he said.
'The Da Vinci Code' had sold in great numbers in Lebanon where
about a third of the population are Christian.
There are many sub-sets of censorship, but one way of boiling
this thorny issue down is to split secular and religious
censorship. Secular censorship has often tried to protect us
from ourselves, with the result being that future classics, like
James Joyce's 'Ulysses' and D.H. Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's
Lover' were banned initially. It has also been used by
authorities such as Napoleon III and Nazi Germany as a tool to
maintain the status quo.
Religious censorship has often revolved around the notion of
image. In early Christianity, for example, the feet of the
saints and the Virgin Mary could not be shown bare. In the 17th
Century, Bartolome Murillo, a great painter of religious
subjects, suffered the wrath of the Spanish inquisition for
"suggesting that the Madonna had toes".
I suppose I have always instinctively felt that the essence of
civilisation was to allow fredom of expression.
In the realm of 'fact' whether books, or documentaries, for
example, we have a variety of laws such as libel, privacy,
incitement to racial hatred to protect society. Like all laws
they are imperfect, but nevertheless they are rightly there to
prevent people from peddling hatred and lies.
But do we want laws to prevent the publication of
self-proclaimed fiction? I'm open to argument, but I am minded
to say 'no'.
It is a difficult call. Earlier this week, Buddhist monks in Sri
Lanka, Malaysia and Burma protested against a film called
'Hollywood Buddha' which they said degrades the religion's
founder.
"We want the release of this film stopped," monk Mawarale
Baddiya told the Associated Press.
"The film scoffs at Lord Buddha, his character and his
teaching."
Not having seen this film and not having read 'The Da Vinci
Code', I cannot comment on their quality. But I don't believe
that the subjective judgement of quality should interfere with
matters of principles.
A practical illustration of where I stand is the work of T.S.
Elliot. Whilst I am repelled by his anti-semitism, I would never
want to live in a society that sought to ban his books; and
almost as importantly I think that such censorship would be
self-defeating. In the long run, there is nothing that
perpetuates antipathy more than the authorities placing
themselves on some moral pedestal, and dictating to us what we
can or can't read or view.
As a footnote, I see the major problem in another genre
altogether. Films and books that claim to be 'docudramas', or
'based on reality' allow themselves a freedom from the truth and
simultaenously a freedom from many of our laws. They exploit a
loophole so that they can present a portrait of people without
actually having to be factually accurate.