I know there’s a film coming out, but for the love of god, no more! As if that silly “trebles all round at Random House” court case wasn’t bad enough (funny how it just happened to coincide with the start of pre-publicity for the film, wasn’t it), Channels 4 and 5’s entire output for the last two weeks has been nothing but promotional material masquerading as factual documentaries about “unlocking the code” (presumably a neat way to fulfil your public service obligations while pumping out populist trash, and/or collecting large cheques from the film company at the same time), and you can barely move in this town for other advertising of the more direct kind (and yes, Eurostar people, I’m talking to you. It clearly says jointhequest.com. Do I get a medal?)
Look. There’s no international conspiracy. I mean really… And even if there was, what does that actually mean? That the catholic church was “founded on a lie”? That’d be the same catholic church with the paedophile priests and the dubious position on condoms/AIDS in the developing world, would it? Hardly an institution that is universally lauded for its uncontroversial ethical stance.
The only “code” or “conspiracy” that I’d be remotely interested in solving would be the mystery of how the hell a plodding, inept, fifth-rate writer like Brown (or as he might have it “the renowned author Dan Brown”) managed to persuade millions of people around the world to read his shoddy book.
Anyone?
Even the title annoys me. Surely it should be called “The Leonardo” code. Vinci wasn’t his surname, just where he was from. And doesn’t it clearly say ‘Fiction’ on the back cover?
I’ve made a special effort to ignore the Da Vinci Code since reading a review of the book, here:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.html
I too am riled by the Eurostar tie-in – as if Paris, the Louvre etc weren’t inherently worth visiting but need to be promoted via a link up with a badly-written airport thriller. The LAST thing they should be encouraging is crazy cultish Dan Brownian tourists.
I’ve got nothing against Dan Brown – good luck to the guy for writing an adequate thriller yarn and making piles and piles of money – hell, I’d happily do it -but why are people taking the book so seriously? Is it just because it appeals to conspiracy theorists?
Also, the puzzles are shit. But so are the film reviews – hurray!
Actually, there’s quite a funny article in this week’s TNT about how there’s at least one “Dan Brown” themed tour in Paris that actively sets out to demonstrate that the book isn’t just a poorly-written, trashy thriller, it’s an “extremely poorly researched” one as well (for example, at one point the tour takes in the Tuileries Gardens, and points out that not only is it not possible to drive through them by car, as one of the characters does in the book, but you’d also struggle to see “four of Paris’ art galleries”, as the character supposedly does).