Angels, Demons and the Magical Missing Middle Easterner
by Andrew LeighA frequent cavil by participants in the Angels & Demons debate is, “It’s just a movie!” (Or, “It’s fiction!”)
The implication is that the filmmakers made this movie just so they could tell a ripping good yarn. Stipulating for the moment that it is a good yarn, there’s no way to show that the filmmakers were indeed fully cognizant of their movie’s cultural impact. There’s no way we can get inside their minds, right?
Hassassin Assassin
Well, I’ve figured out a way to do just that. No, I don’t have ESP or a special mind-reading device. But I do have common sense (pace my wife).
Now, whenever someone adapts a book into a movie, it’s instructive to examine where the movie differs from the book. If the movie version alters a key detail in the book, you can’t blame the original author for that decision. It’s clearly a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmakers.
One key difference between the book and the movie here lies in the character of the Assassin. Simply put, he’s the bad guy. He is the one who actually commits all of the brutal, sadistic murders that take place in the main plot.
But in the original novel, this character is identified as “Hassassin,” a member of the original Islamic cult of the same name (and the origin of the modern English word “assassin”). He’s described as a misogynistic, “mahogany-skinned” Middle Easterner.
In Howard’s adaptation of The Da Vinci Code, the murderer is an albino member of Opus Dei, an actual Roman Catholic society. That character is kept entirely unchanged from book to movie. (Offending both Opus Dei members and albinos, incidentally.)
But in Angels & Demons, Howard decided to change the murderer from a Muslim Arab motivated by a centuries-old sectarian grudge, into… a nondescript Dane motivated by mere money?
You tell me, who is more fascinating? A member of an exotic, age-old secret society seeking revenge? Or just another white guy who’s only in it for the Euros? From a creative standpoint, it’s a no-brainer. The villain is a key element of a great story. Try to imagine Star Wars without Darth Vader, or The Dark Knight without the Joker.
Unless you are concerned about something other than mere good storytelling. Howard obviously had no qualms about offending Opus Dei or albinos, which is why the villain in The Da Vinci Code stayed the same from novel to film. But something made him radically refashion the murderer in Angels and Demons.
There’s only one plausible explanation for this change. The filmmakers wanted to protect the image of Middle Easterners. They know that how you depict people, even in a fictional movie, has an impact on our society’s views.
Sure, one character alone won’t make a sea-change, just like one movie may not transform the world overnight. But the cumulative impact of our culture is unmistakable. Culture is to people what water is to fish. Culture shapes the way people live, think and believe far more than does politics.
Does anybody honestly doubt that Hollywood is acutely aware of its power to shape public opinion? This very website is predicated on that (well-founded) assumption. Why do you think the Oscars persistently award the most progressive or liberal movies?
And why do you think Hollywood made a seemingly endless stream of anti-war movies during the peak of the Iraq conflict? After the first few bottomed out at the box office, they knew it was a financial loser. And yet they persevered in throwing more and more anti-war and anti-military movies into the cultural mix, like so many suicidal kamikaze planes.
And why do you think the advertising industry exists? If a 30-second commercial can change people’s shopping habits, what do you think a two-hour movie or 10-year TV franchise can do?
Let me stress that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this. If you want to make money-losing message movies, knock yourself out. One man’s ham-fisted, vomit-inducing, over-the-top message movie is another’s deep, socially relevant, life-changing event. Just don’t tell me that you had no idea your movie might have any social impact.
So, who’s being naive here? The people who say, “It’s just a movie”? Or the ones who understand there’s usually an agenda?
Check out this typical comment at my second-favorite blog created by Andrew Breitbart:
“We need to keep an anti-religion mindset in the popular culture if we are going to continue to fight Christian and corporate fascism. Any suspicion we can cast onto Christianity, or any other brand of guilt and fear-inducing magical thinking, gives the corporate and religious oligarchs one less weapon they can use to manipulate us with. – Retrofuturistic”
And the Guardian, hardly a defender of the Faith, posted this headline: “Angels and Demons WILL damage the Catholic church.” (Emphasis in original.) It went on to argue (approvingly) that the movie will “fuel the belief that Catholicism is incompatible with modernity.”
In interviews Brown (and the filmmakers) say that his books are meant to get people talking, to ask questions. Rather than lead to more clarity, however, the countless mistakes, deliberate or otherwise, create great clouds of confusion.
Art historians have to wearily explain to their students, “No, Bernini wasn’t a member of the Illuminati, nor did he hate the Church. In fact, he was a devout Catholic who prayed for hours a day.”
Instead of teaching something new and true, they waste valuable lesson time debunking falsehoods, clearing weeds instead of planting new seeds. Just as bad currency drives out good, junk history pollutes minds instead of enlightening them.
One of the main attractions of Brown’s books, and the movies based on them, is the transcendent beauty of a culture once called Christendom. The tragedy is, Brown and Howard are exploiting this beauty, while at the same time contributing to its downfall.
Do you ever wonder why most modern and post-modern art and architecture seem so empty and cold, even alienating? Do you ever wonder why the art and buildings preceding the rise of Modernism are so much more inspiring than what has come since? Perhaps it’s because contemporary art and architecture are the products of a culture that has rejected sanctity, eschewed sacredness.
As philosopher Roger Scruton writes in the latest issue of City Journal:
“The current habit of desecrating beauty suggests that people are as aware as they ever were of the presence of sacred things. Desecration is a kind of defense against the sacred, an attempt to destroy its claims. In the presence of sacred things, our lives are judged, and to escape that judgment, we destroy the thing that seems to accuse us.
“Christians have inherited from Saint Augustine and from Plato the vision of this transient world as an icon of another and changeless order. They understand the sacred as a revelation in the here and now of the eternal sense of our being.”
Increasingly, modern man is akin to a barbarian tribe camped out in the decaying city of a once-great civilization, gaping incomprehendingly at the exquisite ruins in their midst, admiring them while not having a clue as to how to recreate them (or at least, how to recreate the conditions that made them possible).
Many here who said they wanted to see Angels & Demons despite the negative reviews cited the beauty of Rome and Vatican City as the main attraction. Isn’t it ironic that the movie is profiting from this awesome splendor, while viciously chomping on the hand that created that art in the first place?
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47 Comments
I've not read the book or seen the movie. That being said I've been challenging Opie and Dopie to do a version of "Satanic Verses" and see how Islam reacts. These two would have to go Unabomber and live in a hut in the woods for the rest of their lives, as opposed to private jetting to Cannes and sipping champagne cocktails and mocking Christians and the middle class working people of America. Opie has no balls, and no hair.
I'd go see that Islamic expose' movie,
I won't pay to see the current Opie opus.
I still say, Fiction is Fiction and Truth is Truth!
I don't think this movie will do any serious harm to the Catholic church (it survived us Lutherans). But whether it does or not, I really dislike the intention to do so. I'm not buying the "it's just a movie" trope. Da Vinci Code was merely anti-Catholic (and by extension, anti-Christian), but that was not as bad as what they've done with Angels and Demons. To add insult to injury, the producers and director add the dishonest portrayal of a key character, thereby intentionally continuing their anti-Catholic bias while at the same time neutering a character who in the book was a good representation of the real threat to western civilization. They are cowards for hiding from the people who would do them harm if that character had remained unchanged in the movie, and liars about their intention to harm the Church which will do nothing more radical than to criticize their portrayal.
Waxman – please don't try so hard to make us think you're a jerk – we already know that, so spare your energy so you'll have enough strength left to grab a bottle of aspirin after your forehead hurts from banging on your braille keyboard.
Fiction is fiction and truth is truth. Oh, jeesh. Now THERE'S something to stun us with your erudite wit, your brilliant grasp of logic and reality. Wow. Gee. What comes next? Assuming the Lotus position on the floor of mom's basement while you intone 'water is water and bananas are bananas'? Sheesh.
Carolyn, you are an idiot! That's exactly what it is, no more no less. It's a friggin book/movie, don't try to make it out to be more than that. With all the press you give it here it just makes more people want to see it. 5 bucks says right here and right now you haven't read the book or seen to movie, to which I reply until you have, shut your noise maker! And leave the big word to me, before you hurt yourself. And it's your mom's bedroom, not basement, wink, wink!
You are right, Mr. Leigh. A movie is not JUST a movie – any more than 'Triumph of the Will' was 'just' a documentary or 'Das Kapital' was 'just' a book, etc. Denigrating the evil of something by saying it's "just this or that" is the first dangerous step. Before Pastor Niemoller wrote his terrible warning, he heard too many people say in 1934 – 'They're not anti-semitic. It's just that Jews can't ride streetcars.' It's the small steps that begin the descent. We must always be wary of them. And nearly every single one of them began with the 'just' – 'oh, don't worry about it. It's just…..'.
How about a nice book and or movie about the fictional killing of Obama? In this work of fiction we can have him killed by his gay lover Larry Sinclair. Then we can have all the liberals say it is just a work of fiction and no need to get alarmed about it.
Waxman, the twit is you. That is obvious to anyone. And I am sure you already saw the movie, once you borrowed some money from your mommy.
So then, if details in the book dont matter that much, how about this be a movie where the hero is Joe the Plumber, the church in question is the LDS church, the city is Salt Lake City and the bad guy is a mexican immigrant. Oh yeah, make sure he has a mustache.
What do you call bluring the two, truth and fiction? No, besides an Obama speech, what? These books and spin off movies are obviously secular fantacies to poke a stick in the eye of my Church. I buttress this position by daring Opie to take on Islam. If Catholics are fair game then why not Islam? There are boat loads of Muslims, why not tweek their greasy noses? Are ya chicken Opie? How bout you Waxman?
"But something made him radically [Missing verb] the murderer in Angels and Demons."
I'm guessing you would have used "alter" or "change" there, judging from the context, but your conclusion is still wrong: Opie didn't make the assassin a less interesting Dane rather than an Arab to protect Muslim culture, he did it out of fear.
"Do you ever wonder why most modern and post-modern art and architecture seem so empty and cold, even alienating? Do you ever wonder why the art and buildings preceding the rise of Modernism are so much more inspiring than what has come since? Perhaps it’s because contemporary art and architecture are the products of a culture that has rejected sanctity, eschewed sacredness."
B-I-N-G-O here though: In my music lectures I ask, "Can you name even one transcendentally great composer who was not a Christian – even a Jewish one?" The answer is no: Palestrina, Schutz, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, and Brahms were all devout men, even if some of their views were unorthodox (But none of them were as unorthodox as I am). Mozart is most misunderstood because of Amadeus, of course: He was nothing like that, and referred to himself as, "a religious man" often.
I hear Gustav Mahler put forward a lot as a transcendentally great Jewsih composer, but frankly I don't hear it: Big, bombastic BS is not great because it's big and bombastic, but I'll agree he was at least significant, and as close to truly great as any non-Christian has ever gotten.
For me, all of the greatest art was created by Christians who knew they got their inspiration from God, and I think that if you are not a part of The Body, there are places God just won't let you look. If you view contemporary art from this perspective, it all makes a sad kind of sense.
There is a level of gutlessness to most Liberal directors, but especially people like Howard, who actually have the power to make what they want but still choose to take the easy way out. The truth is, neither Howard nor Hanks would dare make a film that took a real shot at Islam. I doubt it's fear of their safety as much as fear of offending the PC groups that they so tightly cling to for approval. It seriously undermines the good things they have accomplished in their careers.
Not only do Howard and Hanks desire to denigrate Christianity, they ARE cowards, as many lefties are and are very afraid that the Islamo-facists WILL target them and they are safe from the Christians and/or Jews who live in America.
Opie ain't touching that subject matter. Gutless to the core.
The Secret Service is on the way.
You can't joke about the POTUS anymore.
If you do enjoy the movie, apparently, you will be the first.
Still, go for it!
Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto were just books–look at what they led to.
You're just a beta, Waxman–hoping that adhering to the party line will get you laid. Go cry into your pillow.
Why should we put money in Ron Howard's or Dan Brown's pocket? I know it's a crap sandwitch when I see one.
"If you haven't seen it you can't comment " is the stupidest argument in the Liberal Dweeb's Playbook.
Go cry into your pillow, beta–no sex for you tonight. Regurgitating the party line doesn't work.
[...] ‘Angels & Demons’: The Magical Missing Middle Easterner by Andrew Leigh [...]
Woooo! I can just see Michelle coming at you with her biceps. You'll be dead in two seconds. And if she turned her laser eyes on you, you'd be dead in one. Seriously, that is one scary woman. She is the only reason I can credit Obama with courage – Black Widows always eat their mates afterwards but he's still breathing, so you gotta hand that to him.
Seriously, I don't want Opie taking on Obama. I mean, who NEEDS someone giving Leni a run for her money?
That's it, Waxman? That's your mature adult 'reason' for seeing a film, so you can stick your tongue out at me from the sandbox afterwards? And even if you hated the film, you would lie and say you loved it just so you could go "Nyah nyah nah nyah nyah" at me? My God, Waxman, didn't you listen to what I just wrote? I said you did NOT have to prove yourself a jerk because we already knew it. Sheesh.
And, yes, my real name is Carolyn.
Well, actually, kmichaels, it was a trade. She gave him money for the movie in exchange for making him wear his jammies with the feet for another year.
I went to see the movie, it was not as good as the first one. Way too busy and fantastical. An excellent point made about the ethnicity and motives of the assassin in the book and how that was changed in the movie. Hollywood's efforts to sidestep a Fatwah I guess. It does keep alive the myth that Christianity impeded scientific progress when in fact almost the reverse is true. The Catholic Church impeded scientific progress about as much as that other nemesis to rational thought, the medical profession. A cursory reading of medical history shows that advances in medicine were almost always fought by the leading scientific minds of the day. Check out the discovery of anesthsia and efforts toward anti-septic surgery. You won't find any priests chanting incantations. Hollywood can rewrite history at will because we can't be bothered to read.
"Can you name even one transcendentally great composer who was not a Christian – even a Jewish one?"
Felix Mendelssohn was a Jew. Aaron Copeland was a Jew. Don't know if they fit your definition of "transcendental," though. I've heard Brahms was an atheist. There are other skeptics/agnostics I've heard of: Schumann, Bizet, Ralph Vaughn Williams, Ravel, etc. Don't know how much or how little I can trust what I've been told. But there's at least as much evidence that a lot of them were nonbelievers but contrained from saying so outright as there is evidence that all of them were unorthodox believers, as you say.
One thing is definitely sure. Religion has inspired great music.
There is a story about the Andy Griffith show where Opie killed a mother bird with a sling shot. in order to get him to cry, they rubbed his nose in the fact that his own dog had just died… they treated him just like you would treat a Kleenex.
I am guessing that that set up a major "Fear Factor' response… which explains why he would rather die himself than upset the meanies who are in control.
If you are scared of a director on a cute sitcom, how then do you react to someone who would take your head off in Technicolour?
He is a coward and it diminishes everything that he does. he throws darts at a picture … from under his bed,
Ever hear of Uncle Tom's Cabin? Harriet Beecher Stowe? Both were "FICTION" and helped start the deadliest war in US History. The only thing that really matters is the impact of said Fiction or Book.
I'd pay good money to see that.
Brahms was an atheist? Not arguing – just questioning. Brahms composed the German Requiem, which for me is one of the most sublime pieces of religious music. I just don't see how someone who was atheist could/would have composed it.
"I hear Gustav Mahler put forward a lot as a transcendentally great Jewsih composer, but frankly I don't hear it: Big, bombastic BS is not great because it's big and bombastic, but I'll agree he was at least significant, and as close to truly great as any non-Christian has ever gotten."
Um, sorry, Mahler was truly great, a psychological composer to match Dostoevsky as a phychological novelist. "Big and bombastic" would be Bruckner, the onetime church organist.
More to the point: Mahler was *Catholic.* Converted in adulthood.
Still, I don't like the religious implications of your thesis. All great music is *European.* That perforce meant Christian, until the last century; and great 20th-c composers number several atheists including Vaughan Williams and Shostakovich, as well as Jews like Copland. And even with that, Wagner's "Christianity" is rather dubious.
(note: by 'European" I of course am referring to European culture, which includes us colonials)
I like it.
Has a certain ring of reality to it.
Especially the mustache.
I thought there is no such thing as truth and that each one of us has our own truth?
But seriously, you did not even bother to read this brilliant post, did you? And yet I'd bet you subscribe to some of the false ideas put forth in Brown's books about the Person of Christ, the Catholic Church and Christianity in general, all the while still protesting that you don't, and that it's "just fiction" and that oh, no, it won't affect you.
Thank you for proving the point of this post!
The minute someone starts calling names like a little spoiled baby is when I stop reading and taking anything they have to say seriously. You know why? Because you have no arguments to make, only childishness, ugliness and intolerance.
Thanks for demonstrating your immaturity and lack of arguments to put forth!
Actually, Brahms took epic long walks during which he read the Bible, and he had vast tracts of it memorized.
I love Copland, but don't put him in the "3 B's" league, and I also love Bernstein, but he's not really there either. Mendelsohn was born a Jew but converted, and yes, it seems Schubert considered himself an atheist, but he died at 31. I'd come around before that, but I went through an atheist phase myself.
Like I said, "For me" all of the very greatest artists were Christians, but I recognize that there is more than just a little inescapable subjectivity there, and many disagree with me.
"More to the point: Mahler was *Catholic.* Converted in adulthood."
You are right, I had forgotten that: He converted when he had to in order to occupy an imperial post, but seems to have grown in sincerity later. Still, I'm a critic of Mahler, and nothing can change the fact that his music bores me to tears, exactly as Bruckner's does, as a matter of fact. Perhaps it's ADD: I don't really like any epic length pieces outside of Beethoven and Brahms: They are the only ones who can hold my attention for an extended time. Schubert's epic "symphony of heavenly length" loses me in the introduction. LOL!
As I said above, there is an inescapable element of subjectivity to my view, but I'm still certain that I'm right.
Oh, and Vaughn Williams and Shostakovich… well, I have to stifle a gag reflex. Not as bad as with Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Cage, and Carter, but close.
Truth is only truth until it ceases being truth. This is what science teaches us. Truth can be eternal and unchanging. This is what religion teaches us. Fiction can be truth. This is what Hollywood and the MSM teaches us.
And that's the truth.
"Howard obviously had no qualms about offending Opus Dei or albinos, which is why the villain in The Da Vinci Code stayed the same from novel to film. But something made him radically refashion the murderer in Angels and Demons."
Ron Howard is unable to hide his anti-Catholic bigotry. Nothing more than that.
What, you expected them to tick off two religions at once? They only do that for Christians and Jews, because they're so close.
Maybe we need another Indiana Jones-like film where they can "accidentally" insult both Muslims and Hindus, so the makers can claim they weren't targeting any one specific religion. Remember Christianity by itself doesn't count, it's expected. Heck, that's practically a requirement to get investors.
"Instead of teaching something new and true, they waste valuable lesson time debunking falsehoods, clearing weeds instead of planting new seeds. Just as bad currency drives out good, junk history pollutes minds instead of enlightening them."
Brown, Howard and Hanks ultimate goal – misinformation so they can trash the Catholic Church at will to minds full of mush.
I tell people repeatedly that Hollywood makes the movies it can, not the movies it should. I've been done with Opie for a long time now.
Note the utter hypocrisy: when someone makes a transparently anti-Catholic movie and Catholics object, we're told "It's just a movie" and "You have no right to demand an accounting from the filmmaker." But when someone makes a violent, misogynistic movie like "Antichrist," all the hip glitterati are up in arms, demanding that the director explain himself and beg forgiveness from the Hive.
F these people. I see no reason to support them in any way, least of all by seeing their movies. It's not like I can't find something better to do…like sleep or watch paint dry.
"Increasingly, modern man is akin to a barbarian tribe camped out in the decaying city of a once-great civilization, gaping incomprehendingly at the exquisite ruins in their midst, admiring them while not having a clue as to how to recreate them (or at least, how to recreate the conditions that made them possible)."
Excellent, Mr. Leigh. Excellent column.
This site is good because it exposes so much hypocrisy – and saves me throwing away money on movie tickets.
I can't say I've ever been a fan of Howard or Hanks. I did like 'Apollo 13' and 'The Missing'. Aside from 'Apollo 13", Hanks has never done anything I liked. I guess I'm out of the fold when it comes to the popular taste. However, I think there is one possibilty regarding the omission of anything offensive to the Islamic world in 'Angels And Demons' and 'The DaVinci Code' which has been overlooked. Perhaps the makers of the movie want to sell tickets there. A billion Muslims packing into movie houses to see it probably has some appeal to unscrupulous profiteers.
At times Hanks and Howard are very good at what they do. Here they aren't. The fear of offending Islam would be an excellent subject for a movie. Who is Hollywood has the guts? Not these boys.
'It went on to argue (approvingly) that the movie will “fuel the belief that Catholicism is incompatible with modernity.”'
Isn't the entire point of Christianity supposed to be that it rejects modernity? Not techological advances, but modern mindsets? The entire message of Jesus Christ was to be "in the world and not of the world," ignoring the world's views of what's popular and right, and instead standing up as a beacon of what the Lord asks of you. The Bible is quite clear that Christ's followers are supposed to turn their backs on what is popular, and to reject those behaviors that God deems unfit, no matter what the consequences might be. Of course Catholicism is incompatible with modern ideas of moral relevance, that's the entire point of it. Rather than putting our trust in society, we're supposed to put our trust in God.
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