“Everyone loves a conspiracy,” says symbology professor Robert Langdon, the main character in Dan Brown’s mega-bestseller “The Da Vinci Code” (2003). The novel develops a wild conspiracy theory about what is allegedly the “greatest cover-up in history”; that Jesus married a woman named Mary Magdalene who subsequently escaped to southern France carrying his child. 

The Catholic Church decided to repress this story for political reasons, thus denying Mary Magdalene ― the embodiment of the “sacred feminine” ― equal status within the Christian tradition. However, a secret, dissident society ― the Priory of Sion ― was founded to preserve the truth, as well as the royal blood line of Jesus and Mary Magdalene; thanks to the noble efforts of this society, Robert Langdon and his companion, Sophie Neveu ― who of course turns out to be the descendant of Jesus himself ― eventually discover the great conspiracy at the center of the Christian world.

Dan Brown’s novel was inspired by (or, as some claim, plagiarized from) various dubious non-fiction works, including “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” (1982) by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln ― a book which conjures up an impressive collection of arguments that have subsequently all been rejected by the academic community. “The authors” of “Holy Blood, Holy Grail,” as one critic puts it, “spin one gossamer strand of conjecture over another, forming a web dense enough to create the illusion of solidity.”

According to most scholars, there is no serious historical evidence whatsoever to suggest that Mary Magdalene was the Holy Grail; nor that she was married to Jesus.

In the 1970s, documents were discovered at Paris’ Bibliothque Nationale which seemed to confirm the existence of a secret sect called “The Priory of Sion.” According to these documents, the sect included renowned historical figures like Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Alexander Pope, Victor Hugo, and of course Leonardo Da Vinci. Subsequently, it turned out that the documents were in fact part of an elaborate hoax, and that they had been planted there in the library by a group of avant-garde artists who called themselves the Priory of Sion.

But then again, there is the thrilling possibility that the documents might in fact be genuine, and that the hoax story is a cover-up created by a powerful organization desperately trying to discredit the existence of this mysterious sect.

One notices here an important aspect of conspiracy theories; the potentially inexhaustible ability to turn everything, even the most glaringly discordant of facts, into signs that support one basic claim ― that in reality everything is connected, and more importantly controlled or masterminded by some kind of agent, e.g. the government or similarly authoritative institutions.

The pervasive distrust of institutional explanations and facts, which fuels conspiracy theories, thus reveals something crucial about our relation to the category of truth. The real causes and effects that define historical events are often a lot more chaotic and contingent than most of us would like to believe. In a contingent, chaotic world things do not always add up ― or, conversely, when they do, the explanation may appear disappointing; too mundane, too straight-forward, or too accidental.

By contrast, the conspiracy narrative offers the one theory that explains everything satisfactorily (the more exotic and grotesque the better), a theory that neatly endows events and signs with meaning, and identifies the people behind it all, as well as their motives.

In a related sense, conspiracy theories bear witness to a discrepancy or antagonism between the individual and the institution. Ralph Waldo Emerson argued that “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members” ― by which he meant that institutional, bureaucratic interests never wholly coincide with the truth and freedom of the individual.

It is in the gap between the individual and the collective ― or the authorities, the officials, the institution ― that conspiracy theories thrive, as ghostly narratives offering alternative interpretations that may at first seem ludicrous, but which in another sense enable the otherwise disempowered layman to rebel against an increasingly impenetrable, bureaucratic, and thoroughly professionalized society.

It is thus important here to note that conspiracy theories are not only ― or not necessarily ― expressions of deranged, pathological desires, but also, at least potentially, heroic (or, as one likes, nave) efforts to speak truth to power in a society that has seen any number of attempts to deceive and betray the individual. A thin line often separates a crackpot conspiracy theory and a genuinely revelatory theory.

Hollywood has made it a tradition to sympathize with the nutter’s absurd struggle against the institution; for example, the character Russell Casse who claims to have been abducted by aliens in “Independence Day” (1996), or the figure Charlie Frost who foresees the end of the world and the government’s attempt to keep it a secret in “2012” (2009).

Less ridiculous conspiracy films mostly date back to the Cold War era, such as “The Parallax View” (1974), “All the President’s Men” (1976), “Capricorn One” (1978), and “The China Syndrome” (1979).

Today, these films bear witness to an era haunted by paranoia, or, to be more specific, an era divided in two equally paranoid factions ― one part claiming that the globe was caught up in a giant communist conspiracy, the other alleging the omnipresence and omnipotence of the CIA.

Retrospectively, it seems inevitable that historical events ― such as the moon landing or the murder of JFK ― came to be viewed and understood through the conspiracy theory model. Caught up in the midst of a geopolitical struggle between two superpowers, the individual had every right to be suspicious of any institutional explanations.

If everyone loves a conspiracy theory, as Robert Langdon asserts, it is because we yearn for a grand narrative, a total theory that potentially provides us with the whole truth ― that is, not merely a partial, ideological or conditional truth ― in an increasingly digitalized age characterized by the availability of limitless amounts of online knowledge and information, but also a profound loss of grand narratives. Post-cold war conspiracy theories have arguably become stranger, less political, and a lot more fanciful ― such as the one outlined in Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code.”

Brown began writing the novel around the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks (or, according to numerous conspiracy theorists, attacks carried out by either the American government, the CIA, the Mossad, or Fidel Castro), and it was published the same year as the Bush-administration initiated what was to become an unpopular war in Iraq ― a war that led many people to question the government’s real motives.

The time was ripe, in other words, for a powerful conspiracy theory that could restore the perspective of one collective narrative, however ludicrous it might be, in which literally everything ― from obscure religious sects to the horrible snowman ― could hope to find a place in the grand scheme of things. In the vast gap that separates Dan Brown’s preposterous conspiracy fantasy and the world of facts and realities one glimpses the history of our times. 

By Eli Park Sorensen

Eli Park Sorensen is an assistant professor in the College of Liberal Studies at Seoul National University. He specializes in comparative literature, postcolonial thought and cultural studies. ― Ed.