Its Hollywood, and today’s Hollywood has bought into the same basic idea that you can see in our Culture, or that is on display on this board, that in the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church was corrupt, evil, and the home of Superstition and Cruelty. The Politically correct version of History also says he Crusades were simply a war of Aggression by Violent Christians trying to kill Muslims out of Religious Hatred and steal their Land. This idea, to be fair, is old, going back to the Protestant Reformation in its earliest form, and progressing into the virulent Anti-Christian variety in the time o the Enlightenment.
Its now just the accepted Narrative.
Its much like how if an American writes of Colonial America, they depict the British as evil power-hungry monsters who oppressed the Poor Colonist and gave them no Freedom, and the Noble American Patriots fought for Pure Altruistic reasons like Freedom and Equality for all Men, or how in today’s minds its just accepted that the same America yielded a Civil War purely based on Slavery with the Union Forces fighting for the rights of all men and the South for Slavery.
Its no different really. The Historical Reality is forgotten and the Propaganda remembered as Fact as it fit’s the Paradigm we use to understand our modern world, and we often project onto the past out own Ideals, and thus select the version of History that best suits our prejudices. That explains why they showed the Church as Corrupt.
However, why did they show Nick Cage as a Dissenter from the Church? That relates to Hollywood’s other general trend in Movies, Anachronism. Hollywood has a tendency to think that the Audience needs a character they can relate to, and that embodies the Ideals of Modern Society, as understood by usually Politically and Socially Liberal Hollywood. Nicolas Cage and Hellboy are therefore given modern attitudes and ideals that simply out are out of place in the time period they are suppose to live in, in order to give the Audience a Hero to Root for that Embodies what is suppose to be our own Ideals.
Another movie that des this, more unforgivably, is “Kingdom OF Heaven” in which bailain of Idblin is made an Agnostic, like Ridley Scott, and set up against a backdrop of a Crusade that was really all about seizing land and gaining wealth, at the behest of a corrupt an intolerant Catholic Church that simply wants to kill the Muslims to steal their land or because they don’t like people of other Religions, and perhaps other races. The big bad Evil Catholic Church is basically rejected by Bailain in favour of a sort of modern Humanist stance on Morality, and he speaks about Ideals that are in common with today’s Democratic Culture, so we as an Audience can relate to him and see him as a Hero, or conversely absorb the idea that this is what a Hero stands for because he is the Hero. Movies, like Books, also exist to influence us to the Authors ideas.
In that way Nick Cage is a Modern Moderately Liberal Politically Left Wing man who happens to be a Medieval Knight facing the evil corrupt Catholic Church of the Middle Ages we imagine existed, so as to both fit our pre-existing prejudices and to instill in us modern values, and to provide us a Contemporary thinking man whom we can relate to as the Centre of the Story.
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kurgan-10
13 years ago
Yeah, the idea of showing period movies of violent corrupt Imperialist Christians goes back to Western guilt over Empire... (plundering native lands, colonialism, etc. the Cold War esp. Vietnam all the way to regime change and nation-building in Iraq).
It's the same old anti-Catholicism archetype dusted off to embody the latest perceived moral/political failure of our times.
Perhaps some day in the far future they'll make quasi-historical movies about the clergy sex abuse scandal, which will represent some contemporary anxieties and problems in that future society.
http://www.historyversusthedavincicode.com/
History vs. the Da Vinci Code
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