only the names, locations, and events have been changed

Right-wing Vatican official Angelo Amato has gotten lots of press calling for Catholics to boycott the DaVinci Code film. It should be noted that Amato heads up the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Vatican office that attempts to maintain a particular vision of Catholic dogma, one rooted less in Christian scripture and the social justice tradition and more in a medieval, church-as-rules-and-regulations model. Pope Benedict spent most of his career working for the same office.

Interestingly, all commentary on this rhetorical moment seems markedly simplistic. The Vatican's position--the novel and film are full of "lies"--of course demonstrates a bizarre lack of genre awareness. What, after all, does it mean to say a work of fiction is untrue? Few in mainstream society are taking the Vatican's calls for a boycott seriously, but the response--hey, it's just a book--is equally devoid of much analysis. And the academic world, of course, won't touch DaVinci Code for fear of being associated with such a low-brow text. (About three years ago I immediately went and got DaVinci Code from the library and read--and also enjoyed--it in a single weekend after I overheard colleagues at a department meeting at my former institution chatting about how they'd never get caught reading the crap their students read.)

DaVinci Code is a work of fiction, a narrative that plugs into the culture's optimistic and mythic hope that state apparatuses indoctrinate us through grand conspiracies, not through everyday practices. And speaking as a lifelong Catholic, the narrative also plugs into frustration with the persistence of the hierarchical, patriarchal structure of the Catholic church. The novel's success stems in part from the irony that Jesus spent his lifetime engaged in a ruthless but kind critique of religious hierarchy and then had his name attached to an even more vast and dominant hierarchy.

Archbishop Amato has recently said:

Christians should be more willing "to reject lies and gratuitous defamation."

He said that if "such lies and errors had been directed at the Koran or the Holocaust they would have justly provoked a world uprising."

He added: "Instead, if they are directed against the Church and Christians, they remain unpunished."

Now, that needs some unpacking because, again, the hey, it's just a book response just isn't enough. Amato tries to play the "reverse racism" card, implying that popular culture never disses the Jewish or Muslim faiths. Regarding the latter, check out nearly any Hollywood action film from the 1990s, Archbishop! Remember the scene in "True Lies" where dozens of Arabic Muslims pray over the nuclear warheads as they pack them into crates of priceless art for smuggling purposes? Such a scene became virtually cliche in most Schwartzenegger films from the era. Both Islamaphobia and anti-semitism are still pervasive.

But the chilling part of the quotation is Amato bemoaning that negative representations of Christians go "unpunished." How, exactly, should we "punish"? Who should we "punish"? Of course Amato is likely referring to economic punishment via a boycott, but it's telling that Amato has no qualms about using a violent, bellicose discourse. We should think about the significance of representations of Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and other Christians. Representations matter, whether they appear in non-fiction or fiction venues. But those genres do matter. And historical context also matters. Sorry, Archbishop, an anti-semitic representation has a different kind of weight than what you perceive to be an anti-Catholic representation. But anti-Catholicism *also* has historical weight in the U.S. where the KKK came to prominence in particular cities and regions (like my hometown) precisely to oppress Catholics (like my great-grandparents).

See, that's the point. There are lots of "but"s involved here. A complex rhetorical moment, one that I fear humanists will shy away from because they see this novel and film as being too lowbrow to care about. Perhaps the DaVinci Code film might consider cribbing the tagline from Will Ferrell's hysterical Anchorman:"The following story is true. Only the names, locations, and events have been changed."