ENTERtheyMEANT

I was in the fourth year of high school when Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code rose to fame like Britney Spears in our country. I don’t find it different with other films but the attention given to it was huge. It was like at any moment, the Philippines will be destroyed! A phenomenon was created without us knowing how.

My friends and I became interested in watching the film when the MTRCB gave it a rating of R-18. Questions such as Is the film that gore? What makes it R-18? Are there censored scenes? happened to be the talk of our group. Some of us have read the book; some have even watched documentaries about it. Me? I don’t give a damn. I don’t want to treat Dan Brown like a sort of a celebrity.

The weeks having The Da Vinci Code in cinema houses were a complete annoyance to me. My friends talk about it. My parents talk about it. My teachers talk about it. My schoolmates talk about it. Everyone has a say about it. They were like, Oh my God! and I was like, Shut up!

The Da Vinci Code is a novel written by Dan Brown to entertain its readers. The only problem is that he uses the names Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene for his lead characters. For me, it’s like having Adam Brody and Kristen Stewart changed their names for their romantic movie, The Land of Women. However, the Church talked about it; making the film more controversial.

Our faith were moved - it happened already - but not because of Satan or Dan Brown. The Da Vinci Code is only a book that was translated into a motion picture. Nevertheless, it changes a lot in our society: people questioning the Church, my friends telling me it was a BIG lost for me not to see it, my parents telling me I should be more religious and many more.

This only left me a question in my mind: are we altered by the Media? There is no point in our lives wherein we don’t converse about, refer or plan for the use of media in our everyday movements. Media becomes a ubiquitous Excalibur for us. Like the air, we can’t avoid its influence. It becomes part of our existence.