Da Vinci Code provokes protests ahead of premiere

[scandium]

Originally Posted by DeepSix

The problem with Da Vinci Code is the same problem as with Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and that recent book by... I think it was "Frey?" The one about addiction? They're all novels purporting to be true stories.

This is not true. The novel is just that - a novel. It is written by a novelist who writes fiction and who has made no attempt to portray it as anything other than that.

Like most stories, outside of science fiction, he weaves the story around actual events (in this case historical/biblical ones) which he in turn takes some creative license with. In this way the move is no different from the rash of historically set films that Hollywood has been releasing lately (such as "Troy"), in which artistic license (or "historical revision" if the movie made any pretense at being anything other than a work of fiction, which The Da Vinci Code does not) is used throughout.

One of the things the zealots want added to the movie, in fact, is a notice shown at the beginning of the movie announcing that it is fiction - as if it needs it (when was the last time you watched a movie, any movie, with such a notice at the beginning of it?).

So the problem is not that the novel pretends to be non-fiction (at least no more than any other novel does), but that there is fear among the christian fundamentalists that their congregations might be naive enough to see it and not realize it is only a movie... and that they might (oh no!) even have their sacred beliefs challenged.