The female representation in Brown’s DaVinci code and Howard’s adaptation

 Author: Aqeela Tahir

The DaVinci Code, a “theological thriller” which purports to uncover hidden truths about Christ embedded in Leonardo DaVinci’s paintings, has been a publishing phenomenon since its release in March 2003. Although The DaVinci Code offers a radical view of history that argues for the equality and power of women, at the end of the novel nothing has actually changed. The comparison of this novel by Dan Brown with Ron Howard’s 2006 film adaptation in the light of a feminist analysis of the female protagonist, Sophie Neveu, reveals that the negative stereotypes of women that still exist in current American society, and shows the roles popular media such as literature and film have in both reflecting and perpetuating these beliefs. Laura Mulvey’s psychoanalytical theories of gender and the gaze form the theoretical base for my observations as they are closely related to gender and the detective genre.

Historically, in the detective genre, women have been associated with the qualities of irrationality, powerlessness, injustice, and immorality. In her article “Murder,

Mass Culture, and the Feminine: A View From the 4.50 From Paddington,” Angela Devas

attributes this convention to the fact that

A detective novel concerns elements that can be seen as related to the masculine sphere, such as rationality and authority, with the detective responsible for the restoration of justice and the imposition of moral order. The persona of the detective embodies the ability to enact these qualities, and therefore the obvious candidate for this kind of role is a man. (258)

This objectification of women, then, becomes problematic, or unnatural, if she is to be

seen in an active role. Hence, “where the detective is a woman, there is therefore a disturbance in

the ‘natural’ state of affairs and the boundaries of the genre itself are called into question” (Devas 258). It is also important to note that to keep the feminine appeal intact the female detective is still placed within the confines of Western standards of feminine beauty. The text is balanced out by partnering of Sophie, a cryptologist working for the French judicial police, and Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon. However, upon examining the plot more closely, it becomes apparent that as the text progresses there is an unequal balance of power, with Langdon’s strengths increasing as Sophie’s decrease.

As the text unfolds, it becomes apparent that the Grail is not the chalice from which Jesus drank at the last supper, but the bones of Mary Magdalene, wife of Jesus and mother of his daughter. More important, the Grail is a symbolic representation of the sacred feminine, which in the text represents a balance of power between men and women, an equality of the sexes. This balance is disrupted within the text when two baffling descriptions for Sophie are found within the text. By the masculine institution that she has been working with, she was “one of the DCPJ’s biggest mistakes” as she was “proving far more distracting than most” for the men working in the field with her (Brown 50). From the text it is evident that she is not characterized as an active body, but rather, as an objectified one. Langdon sees her as “unlike the waifish, cookie-cutter blondes that adorned Harvard dorm room walls, this woman was healthy with an unembellished beauty and genuiness that radiated a striking personal confidence” (Brown 50). By comparing Sophie to “waifish, cookie-cutter blondes” he is associating her with something other than typical representations of female beauty. At the same time, though, he is confirming her “to-be-looked-at-ness” by concentrating on her physical appearance, suggesting her confidence comes from her “unembellished beauty” (Brandt). This structure is the pure enmeshment of the current norms and expectations of the current American society.

Although Brown’s novel, particularly in its conclusion, is more overtly misogynistic, Howard’s adaptation, with its de-emphasis of the sacred feminine and its erasure of the majority of Sophie’s empowering scenes from the novel, adopts a similar tone and plays into the existing conventions of mystery/detective films. This is seen to be done through multiple characters filling all three important roles of criminal, victim, and avenger. Certain characters blur the distinctions between the three, as they simultaneously act out multiple positions within the narrative (Brandt). As the movie begins, Sophie is seen as the avenger; aligned with the DCJP French police, she appears at the crime scene to help figure out the codes surrounding Saunière’s body. However, as soon as she helps Langdon avoid the police, she becomes a criminal as she aids and abets his escape. As it is quickly learned, Sophie is the granddaughter of Saunière, which also aligns her with the role of victim. Functioning in all three roles, Sophie challenges the distinctions between them.  In investigating the crime and acting on behalf of the victim and/or his or her family, the avenger or detective’s purpose is to bring “the criminal to justice and [reestablish] the social order the crime has disrupted” (Leitch 13). As the events of the movie unfold, Sophie finds herself further in the position of victim, as Langdon’s role shifts from suspected criminal to detective. However, as he continues to figure out the clues, the mystery becomes less about solving Saunière’s murder, and more about the search for the Holy Grail. If the ultimate goal of the detective is to restore social order, then one would expect that the discovery of the Holy Grail should somehow aid in the achievement of this goal. At the movie’s conclusion, the location of the Grail is discovered, but it is kept a secret. This, therefore, suggests that in order to restore the social order, the nature of the grail must not be revealed, but like the power of the sacred feminine, must be kept hidden.

At this point it is important to bring forth the feminist film theory, spearheaded by Laura Mulvey’s in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975), where she argues that women on the screen are merely objects of desire for male and female audiences, Mulvey brought the subject of “the gaze” to the forefront of film theory. This is important because it places an emphasis on the ways that women are seen, despite the apparent autonomy granted by their roles (Durham and Kellner). On the surface, Sophie may appear to be empowered by the fact that she is a cryptologist working with the French police; however, Mulvey’s theory becomes important when one considers the ways in which Sophie actually appears on screen.

Literature does not exist in a vacuum; it is one of the many playing fields in which ideology creeps into cultural discourse. Film holds this hegemonic power to an even greater extent. Based on plot elements alone, I have a strong basis for my conclusion that The Da Vinci Code is one of the most current and salient examples of the gender disparities and inequalities that still exist in contemporary American society. The differences between the novel and the film, then, become less significant when we consider their respective contexts. Both show an inherent misogyny that merely manifests itself in different ways. The novel, in its attempt to be a feminist text, denounces the sacred feminine through its characterization and treatment of Sophie and the legend of Mary Magdalene. The film, on the other hand, takes the route of entirely de-emphasizing the role of the sacred feminine and Mary Magdalene. Both texts punctuate their points through the conventions of the mystery/detective genre, which are employed by the various techniques of their respective mediums.

Works Cited

Brandt, Jenn. THE NOT SO SACRED FEMININE: FEMALE REPRESENTATION AND GENERIC CONSTRAINTS IN THE DA VINCI CODE. p. 97.

Devas, Angela. “Murder, Mass Culture, and the Feminine: A View from the 4.50 from Paddington.” Feminist Media Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, Jan. 2002, pp. 251–65. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1080/14680770220150890.

Durham, Meenakshi Gigi, and Douglas M. Kellner. Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks. John Wiley & Sons, 2009.

Leitch, Thomas. Crime Films. Cambridge University Press, 2002.