Gedanken über Angels and Demons

Having begun with a post on Theory, I will follow up today with some applied symbology, the object of my analysis being the film "Angels and Demons," based on Dan Brown's first symbologically oriented novel. I hope in the process to initiate a conversation which will continue with the forthcoming release of Brown's "The Lost Symbol." I have focused my comments on one of the essential areas of debate in which symbology must intervene: the ostensible conflict between "Science" and "Religion" to which Brown's novel and its cinematic version direct their attention. I use inverted commas to indicate, as my colleagues will agree, that the entities designated by these terms represent epiphenomenal deviations whose significance is only self-evident from the deluded perspective of the modern subject and whose essence, to paraphrase Hegel, consists solely in this, that each is solely through the other, and what each thus is it immediately no longer is, since it is the other. Let us see, then, whether and how Ron Howard's retelling of Brown's fable takes us where we always wish to go, to the place of the always-already known:

1. In contrast with the novel, which uses parallelism and counterpoint to reinforce endlessly the dichotomy of "Science" and "Religion," the film almost entirely elides the Science half of the plot. Leonardo Vetra appears only for long enough to get killed literally minutes after the antimatter is successfully created, and is inexplicably renamed Silvano. Vittoria only refers to him as "my research partner," and the parallels between the Camerlengo/Pope and Vittoria/Leonardo relationships do not surface. There is only one brief scene at CERN, and Vittoria's use of marine biology to challenge the assumptions of modern physics is not even mentioned. The film does, however, suggest that like any good "Scientist," she would know off the top of her head, for example, the exact physical manifestations of a particular type of poison on the body of a 14-day old corpse. Vittoria's presence is almost entirely decorative, although she does help Langdon with some Latin at one point (which, since the whole narrative about her being brought up by a priest is eliminated, seems to suggest that all good "Scientists" also must know Latin). Perhaps equally significantly, there is no Maximilian Kohler - one of the implications of which is that there is no "Scientific" counterpart to the Pope, and another of which is that there is never anyone who even briefly seems to be a real Illuminatus, since even the killer who brands the Cardinals makes clear that he is only a hired hand. Remember that in the novel, "Science" and "Religion" appear to be so entirely incompatible that, for instance, it would presumably be unimaginable for a Catholic University like Notre Dame to have a Chemistry Department or Medical School (for example, Kohler's beef against "Religion" is that his Catholic parents refused to give him medicine for polio when he was a child because they thought it would be blasphemous to intervene artificially in the course of events and not simply let God's will be done). The film is not even close to this emphatic.

2. I had wondered how Hollywood would deal with the stunning Orientalism of the portrayal of the Hassassin (which, alas, wouldn't have even been a problem back in the '80's or even '90's, and certainly would have been fun to see translated into the cinematic idiom). The answer is: by eliminating it entirely. The killer is instead a slightly geeky nondescript European who seems to bear no particular grudge against the Catholics, is even somewhat apologetic towards the Cardinals, and deliberately refrains from killing Langdon and Vittoria because "they didn't instruct me to kill you." Since none of the "Scientists" are portrayed as having any particular antipathy towards the Church nor seem to have any reason to, the effect of also depriving the plot of the bloodthirsty, prurient, and lascivious Arab desperate to avenge himself for the Crusades is rather startling: the Catholic Church, it turns out, seems not to have any actual enemies. In the novel, even though the killings and antimatter theft turn out to have been orchestrated by the insane and power-hungry Camerlengo in order to avenge himself on the Pope for his betrayals of "Religion" to "Science" and at the same time ensure his own elevation to the Papacy, there are a number of other plausible culprits who have their own detailed reasons to attack "Religion." Thus, Langdon's, and everyone else's, belief that the Illuminati are probably behind the nefarious plot is at least reasonable in relation to the range of possibilities created by the fictional world (although the novel's insistence on the reality of the Illuminati mentality - that is, that most "Scientists" do bear violent grudges against the Catholic Church - if not on the continued existence of the actual secret society does leave the question of why the "Illuminati" have not yet acted in the way that the novel wants us to think they are acting for most of the plot. The same problem turns up in DVC: if the Catholic Church is actually terrified of the truth about Mary Magdalene being revealed, why has it not orchestrated the assassinations of Saunière and other Priory of Sion members, instead leaving the job to be carried out by the, once again, insane and power-hungry Teabing?). What is strange in the film is that, even as potential motives behind an intricate ritualistic terrorist strike against the Vatican barely surface other than in Langdon's sporadic mini-lectures about the 17th century persecution of the Illuminati, Langdon and the other characters never for a moment seem to question who is behind the attacks (again, unlike the book, where his level of initial scepticism is absurd in relation to the objective overabundance of candidates for Illuminati membership, viz. Kohler and the entire CERN crowd minus the Vetras).

3. Since the film effectively removes all potential sources of conflict outside the Church by never putting forward any potential Illuminati and eliminating the Hassassin character, the Vatican hierarchy itself turns out to be the only possible origin (which, of course, turns out to be the case in the book as well, but not for lack of outside candidates). What is odd, though, is that the only final explanation given for the main events of the film relies on a completely incomprehensible reversal. At the beginning, when Langdon first arrives at the Vatican, we are told that the recently deceased Pope was a "progressive," and his protegé, the Camerlengo, seems to fit that bill as well, speaking openly, for instance, of his remorse about the Church's treatment of Galileo and other Illuminati, making frequent remarks about the need for the Church to be more open, democratic, receptive to the people, etc, and giving Langdon access to the Vatican archives despite the latter's avowed agnosticism. Also on the "progressive" side seems to be Olivetti, the chief of the Vatican police. On the other, reactionary, side are the Swiss Guard, stoical, fanatical, and hostile towards Langdon, and the fuddy-duddy Cardinals, especially Cardinal Strauss, who mindlessly refuses to postpone the sealing of conclave and then to evacuate the Vatican despite the antimatter bomb threat, making what seem to be the unreasonable claims of mindless, irrational faith ("the Lord will protect us," "we must all be taken up by the Lord sooner or later," etc.) Except, well . . . . In the end, it turns out that it is the Camerlengo who is the insane reactionary, who killed the Pope, his beloved mentor, because the latter had approved of the Vetras' "God particle" experiments with antimatter (although, since the film has made clear that the Camerlengo is a "progressive" in favor of reconciling "Science" and "Religion" it is not clear why this would upset him), and then orchestrated the Illuminati plot in order to put on spectacular display the triumph of "Religion" over "Science" (the novel, of course, provides a second and more elaborate motivation which, although absurd, might at least explain why someone would be demented enough to go through with such an elaborate procedure: it turns out that the Camerlengo has found out that he was a test tube baby created by the Pope and a nun he was in love with, thus making his origin, from his own perspective, a kind of grotesque parody of the Virgin Birth and turning him into a sign of the Pope's blasphemous acceptance of "Science" and betrayal of "Religion" - none of this is in the movie, which makes the Camerlengo's megalomania completely inexplicable in the terms of the film, which as I said previously portrayed him as the voice of reason within the otherwise stuffy and reactionary milieu of the Church. Meanwhile, in the final scenes, Cardinal Strauss, Richter, the head of the Swiss Guards, and the rest of the traditional Vatican establishment, turn out to be conciliatory, reasonable, etc, and in no way opposed to "Science." In fact, the mainstream candidate for the Papacy, Cardinal Baggia, after being rescued by Langdon from death by water, takes the name "Luke" (get it? Luke was a physician . . . and a Christian!) when he is crowned Pope, as a "powerful symbol" of reconciliation.

4. The impact of these developments deserves some emphasis, as I think it can be understood as an interesting variation on the cop-out. Because, if you follow the implications of points 1, 2, and 3, the ostensible conflict between "Science" and "Religion" which is the occasion for the entire plot, turns out not to exist, except in the minds of a few of the characters - primarily, the Camerlengo and Langdon, who, it should be added, seem in the end to have been the only people who know or care about the Illuminati at all. Once again, then, the symbologist turns out to be more part of the problem than the solution, and the villain is merely a deranged symbologist bent on removing symbological knowledge from the safe, speculative realm of the academy and using it for the purpose of egotistical self-advancement (cf. Teabing, Bezumov, Herzog, Álvaro, etc). So in other words, the reconciliation of "Science" and "Religion" is not implicit in the teachings of a harmonious proto-civilization, but is actually always- already immanent in the world as we know it today. So once the film is over, the deranged Camerlengo done away with, and Langdon safely back at Harvard, we can simply forget about the whole thing and get back to the facile wisdom, which is so facile, in this case, that it does not even need to be articulated by a wise Copt or female descendant of Mary Magdalene. The film, then, I would argue, is a more consummately and rigorously symbological narrative than the book, because the book ends with the sources of conflict (fanatical Catholics of whom the Camerlengo is only the most extreme instance, fanatical Scientists, of whom Kohler is only one of many working at CERN, fanatical, sadistic, disgusting Arabs like the Hassassin, who are presumably the entire population of the Middle East) still out there, ready to disrupt our received knowledge and oblige Langdon to apply his symbological analysis to real-world problems.