symbolism and the da vinci code

Melissa Lebor

Com 232

Professor Hammond

4/7/10

Symbolism in The Da Vinci Code

Symbolism is the use of one object to represent or suggest something else. Broadly, symbolism may refer to symbolic meaning or the practice of investing things with a symbolic meaning. Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. It first appeared in the 1880s among French poets, les poètes maudits, who developed an idealistic type of verse, as a reaction to Naturalism and Realism. The Symbolists drew inspiration from the mid-century poetry and critical writing of Charles Baudelaire and also from the earlier works of Edgar Allen Poe.

Symbols form the most ancient use of ‘communication’; some believe humanity’s use of symbols to date back as far as 1.2 million years. It started out with relative ’simple’ markings. As time passed, and various cultures developed, the use of symbols grew in its complexity. Different symbols came to mean many different things and quite often certain symbols would have a different association depending upon the culture it was found in.

Symbolists believed that art should aim to capture more absolute truths, which could only be accessed by indirect methods. We can see examples of this in the movie the Da Vinci code. The novel/movie tells the story of Harvard professor and symbologist Robert Langdon who is called to the Louvre Museum in Paris to examine cryptic symbols found in Leonardo da Vinci's artwork. In masterful storytelling, author Dan Brown leads his readers on a journey that explains the "real" story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and the final whereabouts of the Holy Grail, with intriguing clues and symbols found in some of da Vinci's most famous paintings.

This movie has many symbols many of which are rooted in truth. Sophie Neveu’s red hair, mentioned at the beginning of the text, foreshadows her divine blood. When Langdon first sees Sophie, he calls her hair “burgundy” and thinks that her attractiveness lies in her confidence and health. He compares her favorably to the blonde girls at Harvard over whom his students lust. Later, at Teabing’s chateau, Teabing shows Sophie that Mary Magdalene is depicted with red hair in The Last Supper. By the end of the novel, when Sophie’s brother gives a tour of the Rosslyn Chapel and his hair is described as “strawberry blonde,” we understand that Sophie and her brother are of Mary Magdalene’s bloodline.

Blood stands for truth and enlightenment in The Da Vinci Code. Sophie realizes that her grandfather has left a message for her on the Mona Lisa because a drop of his blood remains on the floor. And at the very end of the novel, the discovery of the blood of Mary Magdalene running through Sophie and her brother’s veins proves that the story of the Grail is true.

In a novel/movie that spends a great deal of time interpreting ancient symbols like the pentacle, the chalice, and the rose, the cell phone might seem like an incongruous modern interloper. But the cell phone symbolizes the fact that in the modern world, secrets are both harder and easier to keep.

“God whispers in his ear, one agent had insisted after a particularly impressive display of Fache’s sixth sense. Collet had to admit, if there were a God, Bezu Fache would be on his A-list. The captain attended mass and confession with zealous regularity—far more than the requisite holiday attendance fulfilled by other officials in the name of good public relations.” This description of the French Judicial Police Chief’s supernatural sixth sense is an example of the false clues and mysteries that Dan Brown sprinkles throughout the text. This paragraph comes early in the novel, and it plants the idea that Fache, who has at this point made a dramatic effort to arrest Langdon for the murder of Saunière, might be involved with an evil force such as Opus Dei or the Church itself. The cross that Fache wears is mentioned, as is the fact that he lost a lot of money recently in speculating on technology. The reader is meant to think that Fache might be involved with the Church and the killings for reasons of money and faith. Later, Brown reveals that Fache had nothing to do with Saunière’s killings, and that the insinuations of Fache’s guilt were a red herring meant to throw us off of Teabing’s trail.

This movie has symbolism scatter throughout. Symbolism is used to connect aesthetics, cognition, feeling and though. Sometimes the viewers catch on quickly to the symbols and hints, while in other movies it is harder to point out.