The Name of the Rose

Knowledge. Knowledge is power. Perhaps the best way for a tyrant to remain in power is to restrict the flow of knowledge into the masses. In The Name of the Rose, a handful of malicious monks are even willing to murder their brothers in Christ to keep the knowledge they possess out of the hands of everyone outside their inner circle. When they are finally discovered, they choose to destroy the knowledge instead of share it. What was this knowledge that led to so many deaths? Well, it was a last copy of a book on humor written by Aristotle, and its contents were forever lost as a result of the monks’ unwillingness to enlighten the masses and see them as equals.

I enjoyed the film, and I felt like it highlighted some of the changes we’re currently seeing in the way information is distributed. Change can be a frightening process. In The Name of the Rose, the monks are afraid of the commoners having access to books and thus the same knowledge the monks do. In our current society, we’re seeing shocking amounts of classified information being distributed through the Internet and other sources. A good example of this would be the recent Snowden case, where an informant leaked classified government information via the Internet, exposing some questionable activities by our government. Some people see Snowden as a hero, but others including the government have labeled him as a traitor. Another example would be the Watergate Scandal, where two reporters exposed illegal activities being carried out by political candidates via the newspaper. The evolution of print technology has allowed information to flow more quickly and efficiently between recipients. This evolution has been one of our main focuses in this course, and I feel like The Name of the Rose touches on it, albeit hundreds of years ago. Even now, hundreds of years later, some of these recent changes are met with a similar fear. Evolution is a necessary process, and those who fail to embrace it ultimately end up like the evil monks from the film; they die clinging to beliefs that, when looked backed upon, make them look even more foolish than the uneducated masses they tried to keep down.