Dan Brown’s Inferno and Hyperreality
Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t read Dan Brown’s Inferno and you are planning to do so, I recommend waiting until you finish the book to read this text.
"I do something very intentional and specific in these books. And that is to blend fact and fiction in a very modern and efficient style, to tell a story” Dan Brown
I want to say beforehand that Dante’s Divine Comedy and especially the Inferno section are among one of my favorite texts. One of my most accomplished orchestral pieces, From Hell, is inspired in fours scenes from Dante’s Inferno. In addition, I have been studying some transhumanist theories, especially by the hand of Ray Kurzweil’s thoughts and his theory of the Singularity and the Law of Accelerating Returns. Finally, I visited as a tourist Florence, Venice and Instanbul (and Harvard too), which makes me familiar with most of the diegetic spaces described in the novel.After reading the ending of Inferno (2013), the reader may think that all the narrative and the events of the book were unnecessary. In fact, when the book begins, our characters are probably already infected with the virus, along with most of the humanity. However, the plot arks are ultimately focused on stopping the spread of the virus. As readers, we do not have any doubt that this is the main objective of the story. Nevertheless, at the end we realize that when the book started it was already too late. We do not even know exactly what are our characters’ ethical positions on the consequences of releasing virus and if they are going to try to reverse the virus or not. Consequently, Inferno’s narrative may be analyzed in two ways: as useless or as a more complex postmodern-networked narrative.From this point of view, the ending of the movie Inception (2010) is similar. Even though the characters seemed to have accomplished their objective, we are unable to tell if they are still dreaming or not, or even if the whole movie was just a dream. And if it was the later, what would be, then, the point of the movie as a classical narrative? Both Inception and Inferno use a character-centric-objective-based plot structure. The main characters are the center of the plot and their actions have a direct effect of the plot. However, at the end we, the audience, are left out without the final payoff: our characters seemed to have finally achieved their goal when we discover that too many things remain unresolved. In Inception, the main point was to ask that if a dream felt real up to the point you woke up, why couldn’t we call it reality. Therefore, if when we are dreaming we feel real, why it is so important to know if we are dreaming? Leaving the ending open is a way to reinforce that it is not important to know what is dream and what is not, because they can be two ways of reality. If Cobb is happier in a dream with his family, it may be better than a physical reality without them if we accept that for him both seem equally real. Even though it is less straightforward in Dan Brown’s Inferno, the ending also points out that the virus itself is not really, what matters.The fact that the ultimate goal of the narrative is not what matters most connects the narrative of Inferno with the Hyperreal. The unclosed ending is an invitation for audience engagement and assimilation of the narrative. The diegesis of Inferno (world where the actions of the book happen) is a careful mixture of our factual reality, fiction and a pseudo science fiction approach to current research in biotechnology. In addition, it is easy for the reader to anticipate Langdon’s next step just by doing a quick web search. For example, it would take just a few seconds performing a Wikipedia search to know that Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo was buried in Istanbul. This is especially relevant on a narrative that relies heavily on gradually uncovering clues. In fact, most of the clues of the plot can be easily deciphered with a quick Internet search. The reader is able to feel identified with the main characters by anticipating their findings if he desires to do it, especially because they are quite often deprived from basic technology that we all now have in our pockets.I believe that consider Inferno just a novel is a simplification and does not properly reflect the network of meanings and media implied that interact to create an “artistic” representation in each of us. All the locations are amongst the top touristic places. This facilitates to an important part of the readers to be familiar with most of the locations. If not, Google Street view can serve as a good guide to actually trace the steps of the characters. Dante’s Inferno and his Divine Comedy is also one of the most popular classics, with even a videogame from a couple years ago and an animation film about the videogame available on Netflix. Of course, the whole Dante’s text is available online, with translations to most of the languages. Transhumanist movement is producing dozens of books a year, in some degree with the leadership of Ray Kurzweil and his Singularity University. The historical events mentioned in the story are not especially cryptic and, as I said before, easily to find in Wikipedia. Finally, Tom Hanks is Robert Langdon in the previous films based on other Brown’s books.In the other hand, the virus is completely fictional, the Consortium and its implication with the Iraq War is fictional too and even the problem of population increase is not as straightforward as it seems, as the population is reducing in most of developed countries. Also, the beginning of Liszt’s Dante’s Symphony does not have choir (it is reserved for the Paradise movement) and some of the ideologies of the transhumanist movement are fictional.Anyways, all this network of meaning, fictional and not, integrates in a piece of art that transcends a simple book and can only be properly understood from a Hyperreal approach. Even though this could be true, to some extent, with any fiction, in Brown’s Inferno it is fundamental. It would not surprise me that during the time someone is reading the book, they also read passages from Dante’s Comedy, looked into some transhumanist movements and their ethics or went back to their photo albums from Florence or Venice. Nevertheless, this is even clearer when we arrive at the end: all the events of the story were useless if their objective was to stop the virus. When the book started, the virus was already released! The narrative becomes, then, a way to interconnect meanings, references and ideas around the limits and the ethics of genetic modification and transhumanism.During the 20th century, we accomplished Wagner’s idea of a Total Artwork for mass population with Cinema. In some of the contemporary narrative, I believe that we are going even further, by linking them not to all different artistic and media forms but to connect it to different levels of reality and experience in a hyperreal construct. PS. I insert here my orchestral piece on Dante's Inferno: From Hell: 4 scenes on Dante's Divine Comedy[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/5429351" params="" width=" 100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]