It's wrong! The code is all wrong!
Sep. 20th, 2007 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kippurbirdChapter twenty five is a page. Barely. It's not even a chapter. It's a scene. Scenes are not chapters... or at least, scenes that are chapters are usually longer than a couple of paragraphs. The chapter is supposed to significantly move the story forward, there should be characters taking actions that result in something happening, or there should be character development or something should be revealed to the reader. None of this happens.
In this "Chapter" Fache learns that Langdon didn't call the Embassy and instead called Sophie. Also, we learn that "The [U.S. Embassy] is considered U.S. Soil, meaning all those who stand on it are subject to the same laws and protections as they would encounter standing in the United States." Which is wrong. The soil is still considered part of the foreign country, but the outside government has to ask permission to come in and retrieve people. \~/
Anyway, that was chapter twenty five.
Twenty six, we go back to the Mona Lisa, finally. Brown tells us that since its been in the Louvre she's been stolen twice, most recently in 1911. Unfortunately, I've been able to find no information in regards to this first theft. Also he says, "Parisians wept in the streets and wrote newspaper articles begging the thieves for the painting's return. Two years later, the Mona Lisa was discovered hidden in the false bottom of a trunk in a Florence hotel room." A Time magazine article says, however, "Then the Louvre received word from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The Italian officials said they had arrested a man named Vincenzo Perugia, who had brought the Mona Lisa to a local antiques dealer in order to sell it and restore it to Italy." Time article So, that's two things blatantly wrong. \~/, \~/
Langdon then goes on a monologue \~/ about the Mona Lisa and how Da Vinci's reverence for the picture has nothing to do with it's artistic Mastery but instead about how it is a joke about the Sacred Feminine \~/, he does this in a flash back to a class with in a prison, \~/. Brown also has Langdon mention that the Mona Lisa may be Da Vinci in drag. And that he was gay (which has not been proven) \~/ \~/ and that the Mona Lisa was supposed to be androgynous because her name is an anagram of Amon (The Egyptian god of male fertility)and his counterpart Isis who's ancient pictogram was once called, L'isa. \~/ \~/, which is impossible because Da Vinci never named the painting. It was named by other people. \~/
So, in this extremely long discussion of the painting which should be about whatever it is on the painting... everything discussed is wrong. And is all about Brown trying to be clever about his puzzles and things. One would think that a professor of Langdon's supposed intelligence and learning, would know that the Mona Lisa wasn't named until much later and therefor couldn't be part of his feminine mystique. \~/
The big problem with this is that an average reader isn't going to know much about this stuff (And indeed I've been having to do a lot of research on it) and so they're going to be trusting Brown to be giving them correct information because he says that everything he talks about is true in the very beginning of the book. This, I feel, is a violation of the reader's trust. The reader has certain expectations when the read a book. Sure, they don't expect everything to be accurate, that's what the suspension of disbelief is all about. Most of the time they want to go along for the ride. The anagrams and puzzling clues would be very interesting, if they were presented in a way that the reader could puzzle along with the characters. But the fact that Brown has I want to say deliberately put in miss-information, betrays the reader's trust. The author has a certain responsibility to their readers to take them through the story and give the information that is relevant and true for that story. This is what every writer has to do. If the horses in a world are always yellow, then the author is obliged to the reader that in some fashion. If the United States lost the War of Independence, again the author is obliged to tell their readers that. If the author tells the reader that things in the book are true then the things in the book better be true, because the reader is trusting the author on this.
This is different than the idea of the unreliable narrator which is, "A narrator who, for some reason, cannot or does not fully comprehend the world about him or her and whose conclusions and judgments the reader thus mistrusts. An author who uses an unreliable narrator generally provides clues indicating the narrator's fallibility and expects the reader to be wary of the narrator reports. Some authors, however, may purposely fail to provide the reader with the means to correct the narrator's false perceptions; others even intentionally fail to give the reader adequate clues to determine whether a narrator is unreliable in the first place" (page 413 the Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms). Some may say that then Langdon might be the unreliable narrator, but again the unreliability happens even when Langdon isn't narrating and the things that end up wrong are, according to BROWN and not any of his characters, true. Brown wants us to trust his characters. He wants us to see how awesome and intelligent they are. He's not going to make them fallible by making them unreliable. That would ruin their hero status.
That aside after our digression onto the Mona Lisa, we finally see something on the painting itself! Or at least the glass. Six words. So, apparently, Grandpa had enough time to walk into the Mona Lisa's room write on it, walk back out without leaving a blood trail, walk to the back of the gallery, write a message in the invisible ink, undress, fold his clothes up neatly, draw something in his blood and position himself in a specific placement before dying of a gunshot wound. And all of this without bleeding all over the place.
But, he can't sit around, hold his insides and wait for help to come.
Right.
\~/, \~/ That one deserves two drinks there.
Do we get to know what these six words are? No.
I believe they might be "I'm dying and I'm an idiot!" \~/
Drinks: 14
In this "Chapter" Fache learns that Langdon didn't call the Embassy and instead called Sophie. Also, we learn that "The [U.S. Embassy] is considered U.S. Soil, meaning all those who stand on it are subject to the same laws and protections as they would encounter standing in the United States." Which is wrong. The soil is still considered part of the foreign country, but the outside government has to ask permission to come in and retrieve people. \~/
Anyway, that was chapter twenty five.
Twenty six, we go back to the Mona Lisa, finally. Brown tells us that since its been in the Louvre she's been stolen twice, most recently in 1911. Unfortunately, I've been able to find no information in regards to this first theft. Also he says, "Parisians wept in the streets and wrote newspaper articles begging the thieves for the painting's return. Two years later, the Mona Lisa was discovered hidden in the false bottom of a trunk in a Florence hotel room." A Time magazine article says, however, "Then the Louvre received word from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The Italian officials said they had arrested a man named Vincenzo Perugia, who had brought the Mona Lisa to a local antiques dealer in order to sell it and restore it to Italy." Time article So, that's two things blatantly wrong. \~/, \~/
Langdon then goes on a monologue \~/ about the Mona Lisa and how Da Vinci's reverence for the picture has nothing to do with it's artistic Mastery but instead about how it is a joke about the Sacred Feminine \~/, he does this in a flash back to a class with in a prison, \~/. Brown also has Langdon mention that the Mona Lisa may be Da Vinci in drag. And that he was gay (which has not been proven) \~/ \~/ and that the Mona Lisa was supposed to be androgynous because her name is an anagram of Amon (The Egyptian god of male fertility)and his counterpart Isis who's ancient pictogram was once called, L'isa. \~/ \~/, which is impossible because Da Vinci never named the painting. It was named by other people. \~/
So, in this extremely long discussion of the painting which should be about whatever it is on the painting... everything discussed is wrong. And is all about Brown trying to be clever about his puzzles and things. One would think that a professor of Langdon's supposed intelligence and learning, would know that the Mona Lisa wasn't named until much later and therefor couldn't be part of his feminine mystique. \~/
The big problem with this is that an average reader isn't going to know much about this stuff (And indeed I've been having to do a lot of research on it) and so they're going to be trusting Brown to be giving them correct information because he says that everything he talks about is true in the very beginning of the book. This, I feel, is a violation of the reader's trust. The reader has certain expectations when the read a book. Sure, they don't expect everything to be accurate, that's what the suspension of disbelief is all about. Most of the time they want to go along for the ride. The anagrams and puzzling clues would be very interesting, if they were presented in a way that the reader could puzzle along with the characters. But the fact that Brown has I want to say deliberately put in miss-information, betrays the reader's trust. The author has a certain responsibility to their readers to take them through the story and give the information that is relevant and true for that story. This is what every writer has to do. If the horses in a world are always yellow, then the author is obliged to the reader that in some fashion. If the United States lost the War of Independence, again the author is obliged to tell their readers that. If the author tells the reader that things in the book are true then the things in the book better be true, because the reader is trusting the author on this.
This is different than the idea of the unreliable narrator which is, "A narrator who, for some reason, cannot or does not fully comprehend the world about him or her and whose conclusions and judgments the reader thus mistrusts. An author who uses an unreliable narrator generally provides clues indicating the narrator's fallibility and expects the reader to be wary of the narrator reports. Some authors, however, may purposely fail to provide the reader with the means to correct the narrator's false perceptions; others even intentionally fail to give the reader adequate clues to determine whether a narrator is unreliable in the first place" (page 413 the Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms). Some may say that then Langdon might be the unreliable narrator, but again the unreliability happens even when Langdon isn't narrating and the things that end up wrong are, according to BROWN and not any of his characters, true. Brown wants us to trust his characters. He wants us to see how awesome and intelligent they are. He's not going to make them fallible by making them unreliable. That would ruin their hero status.
That aside after our digression onto the Mona Lisa, we finally see something on the painting itself! Or at least the glass. Six words. So, apparently, Grandpa had enough time to walk into the Mona Lisa's room write on it, walk back out without leaving a blood trail, walk to the back of the gallery, write a message in the invisible ink, undress, fold his clothes up neatly, draw something in his blood and position himself in a specific placement before dying of a gunshot wound. And all of this without bleeding all over the place.
But, he can't sit around, hold his insides and wait for help to come.
Right.
\~/, \~/ That one deserves two drinks there.
Do we get to know what these six words are? No.
I believe they might be "I'm dying and I'm an idiot!" \~/
Drinks: 14
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no subject
Date: 2007-09-21 09:38 am (UTC)It's just so bad that it's hard to make fun of it...
no subject
Date: 2007-09-21 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-21 11:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-21 12:38 pm (UTC)The Doctor wrote a note to DaVinci in mirror writing, too. I remember that part. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-21 12:59 pm (UTC)Ha! I knew I wasn't the only one thinking that :3
no subject
Date: 2007-09-21 06:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-21 11:58 pm (UTC)They're a fake because the Doctor took a marker and wrote "This is a fake" on them. And since they didn't have markers in those days, they must be fake. ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-21 12:34 pm (UTC)I didn't know that about the Mona Lisa not being named until later, as well as some of the other stuff you researched (thank you for being more thorough than I!)and you are right, it is a betrayal of the reader's trust. I thought he'd at least get the factual parts right.
As far as theories, I've always liked the "DaVinci in drag" theory.
I saw the MOna Lisa when I was in Paris. It was just slightly disappointing, as it was small and almost impossible to see considering the number of people around it.
I never thought her smile was all that interesting, either.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-21 07:04 pm (UTC)^_^ Thanks. It's always nice to hear.
I didn't know that about the Mona Lisa not being named until later, as well as some of the other stuff you researched (thank you for being more thorough than I!)and you are right, it is a betrayal of the reader's trust. I thought he'd at least get the factual parts right.
When he comes out and says everything is factual at the beginning of the book, of course that means that I have to check all the facts. (Which is driving me loony, I have to say). The fact that he makes several large gaffs (small ones can be forgiven I think, or controversial ones) destroys any credibility he has with me. Why should I trust him to tell me a story, when he can't even get his basics right?
no subject
Date: 2007-09-22 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-21 04:32 pm (UTC)I believe that the first time the Mona Lisa was stolen, it was actually stolen by a Louvre curator who had fallen in love with the painting (literally) in the late 1800's. He kept it under his bed for years until he died, and they found the painting. I also want to say that he lived inside the Louvre, in the upper apartments, but I'm a little less clear on that. If that were true, then the Mona Lisa would have never left the museum.
I heartily agree with you about the unreliable narration. I believe there is a sacred trust between the author and the reader, and there are certain duties an author has in that relationship; to follow through on the reader's investment in the characters, for example, and to tell the truth, no matter how ambiguous that sounds. I hate it when authors dangle information over the reader's head, and I hate it when they trick the reader. Mind you, I don't mind twists (which should fit in with the rest of the story and make us thing, "Ah, I should have known!"), but I despise tricks (which don't fit in with the rest of the story because of information being withheld).
14 drinks? You must be getting smashed.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-21 07:24 pm (UTC)As for the second part, yes. I agree with you fully.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-21 09:02 pm (UTC)It didn't really occur to me at the time I was reading it, but now that I think about it, the withholding of information was incredibly annoying. I was young enough then to mistake it for suspense, but in hindsight I really was skimming all the non-event chapters in the hopes that something might happen and we might be told what it was.
As for theories, I do favor to Leonardo-in-drag theory about the Mona Lisa. Last year we read an article containing some of the current theories about the painting in one of my classes, and that one made the most sense, as they pointed out that historical records did not indicate that he had a model to sit for that painting, and showed how when you flip his self portrait to be facing the same way and adjust the images to be the same size, the image of da Vinci's face matches surprisingly well with the Mona Lisa. The brow is of particular interest, as it is much more pronounced than that of the average woman.
Still, though, I don't see how that would be particularly relevant to Brown's devine feminine theories (speaking of which, I remember being deeply offended by those theories, despite my gender), much less the story as a whole. It's just an interesting fact that doesn't really have much business being in the novel.
And in other news, I spent half a day at the Louvre this June when I was in France, and it is indeed enormous. I did not, however, see the Mona Lisa, as I'd heard it was disappointing and the room was crowded. I actually failed to see any paintings--and I think that the fact that I managed to look only at statues the entire four or five hours I was there will tell you just how ridiculously big the place is. This is especially true when you consider the fact that (and I'm guessing here) there's probably as much space dedicated to paintings as to sculpture, and I didn't even get to all the sculptures!! The idea of these characters being able to bop from gallery to gallery quckly is just silly.
Ah, and a thought just occurred to me...what restroom was Langdon supposed to have been using? The only ones we were able to find were in the ticketing area under the glass pyramid. Not exactly a location from where you can chuck a GPS tracker onto a passing truck. I guess it's likely there are restrooms elsewhere, but still. Keep in mind that it was built as a palace quite a long time ago, and any modern conveniences have had to be retrofitted.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-23 06:51 am (UTC)Apparently off the Grand Galley.
The in drag theory is interesting, now that I hear more of it.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-22 01:47 am (UTC)Also, wasn't the Mona Lisa stolen (or at least an attempt was made to steal it) in the 70s?
no subject
Date: 2007-09-22 01:52 am (UTC)(sorry for the double post, I just tend to get nitpicky when mythology gets involved.)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-23 06:53 am (UTC)Couldn't find anything about it.
And why am I not surprised?
no subject
Date: 2007-09-22 04:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-22 08:22 am (UTC)Are you familiar with VeggieTales? And, specifically, with The Song of the Cebu?
Because some of your analysis stuff of Code reminds me of the questions Archibald asks therein. "Why is the sad Cebu sad?"
no subject
Date: 2007-09-23 07:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-22 08:59 am (UTC)The whole sacred feminine crap is making me want to puke. And I'm a feminist, dammit. Way to go, Mr. Brown.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-23 07:02 am (UTC)