In an essay discussing the presence of the Christian myth in the new Star Wars film, radical Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek offers his own interpretation of Dan Brown‘s The Da Vinci Code (a book, Zizek says, that claims that “Jesus married Mary Magdalene and that they had descendants, that the true identity of the Grail is Mary’s vagina”) and the Catholic church’s recent condemnation of the book (“which barely concealed a longing for the good old days when it [the church] could simply burn books . . . Indeed, one almost suspects a conspiracy between the Vatican and the book’s publisher to give a fresh boost to its sales”). More seriously, however, Zizek notes that the Vatican’s claim against the book is consistent with Christian teaching and a desire to see Christian doctrine survive various forms of “New Age” spirituality. “The Da Vinci Code effectively re-inscribes Christianity into the New Age’s paradigm of seeking balance between masculine and feminine principles,” that is to say, the book challenges the Vatican’s spiritual authority, and allows readers, Zizek thinks, to retreat to “an attitude of inner peace and distance.”