His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass (Chris Weitz, 2007)

[domino harvey]

I think it's more a matter of parents not wanting their kids to build the foundation of their existence off of a line of children's novels.

So they're banning Narnia now?

[John Bored]

Though one could argue the Bible is somewhat of children's novel as well.

I knew I'd get that response within a few minutes, at least yours lacks the usual smarmyness of Domino's.

[Poncho Punch]

Though one could argue the Bible is somewhat of children's novel as well.

I knew I'd get that response within a few minutes, at least yours lacks the usual smarmyness of Domino's.

While Domino's response may have been "smarmy", I think it raises valid questions. If the issue is parents not wanting their children to base their worldview on children's books, why the inconsistency between responses to this and C.S. Lewis' books (and their subsequent filmic adaptations). I'm not here to debate religion, I simply think that the response from certain sectors to this film is ridiculous.

[John Cope]

The funny thing is that this whole religious discussion will seem apropos of nothing once people get a look at the film. At least that's my sense. Still, if people read the books based solely off their experience with the films they'll certainly be in for a surprise. I suspect that's part of the objection, too--that Pullman's ideology is being smuggled in the back door in this way. Of course, the same can be said for Narnia given its similarly bland and toothless Hollywood adaptation. And I doubt any of this is naturally by Pullman's own design, though he must have realized that given our current climate any big budget adaptation would have likely gone the same way--hence my earlier expressed desire for a Greenaway version.

Ultimately, though I find the last two books caustic (others would say bracing), problematic (others would say complex) and polemical (thesis driven) I am positive, sight unseen, that they are more rewarding and worth engaging with than these films will turn out to be.

[John Bored]

While Domino's response may have been "smarmy", I think it raises valid questions. If the issue is parents not wanting their children to base their worldview on children's books, why the inconsistency between responses to this and C.S. Lewis' books (and their subsequent filmic adaptations).

I'd be equally against basing one's view of existence off Lewis' books-- but the comparison doesn't quite work since his books are a transparent sign pointing to the Bible. I can only assume that Pullman's books point to the world view of Phillip Pullman.

[Poncho Punch]

While Domino's response may have been "smarmy", I think it raises valid questions. If the issue is parents not wanting their children to base their worldview on children's books, why the inconsistency between responses to this and C.S. Lewis' books (and their subsequent filmic adaptations).

I'd be equally against basing one's view of existence off Lewis' books-- but the comparison doesn't quite work since his books are a transparent sign pointing to the Bible. I can only assume that Pullman's books point to the world view of Phillip Pullman.

Woah, hold up a second. I'll admit that Lewis' books are "pointing to the Bible", but that doesn't mean that they don't reflect his own individual interpretation and understanding of a Judeo-Christian belief system. His beliefs, similar as they may be to many others', are still unique. Likewise, Pullman's books, as much as they may reflect his own personal worldview, certainly represent a general Atheistic worldview.


Edit: If only someone would produce a good adaptation of Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series. Now there's a worldview I could get behind.

[Mr Sausage]

While Domino's response may have been "smarmy", I think it raises valid questions. If the issue is parents not wanting their children to base their worldview on children's books, why the inconsistency between responses to this and C.S. Lewis' books (and their subsequent filmic adaptations).

I'd be equally against basing one's view of existence off Lewis' books-- but the comparison doesn't quite work since his books are a transparent sign pointing to the Bible. I can only assume that Pullman's books point to the world view of Phillip Pullman.

Woah, hold up a second. I'll admit that Lewis' books are "pointing to the Bible", but that doesn't mean that they don't reflect his own individual interpretation and understanding of a Judeo-Christian belief system. His beliefs, similar as they may be to many others', are still unique.

Lewis' books may be "pointing to the Bible," but that tells you very little, since the same is easily said for The Divine Comedy, or Paradise Lost, or The Faerie Queen.

And it seems to me that the people who dismiss the Bible as 'children's literature(!)' clearly haven't spent much time reading it.

[Antoine Doinel]

I actually spent a good deal of my childhood with my nose in a Bible, being raised Lutheran and having been "confirmed". The stories and parables in the Bible are frankly just as fantastical as anything the Brothers Grimm could've come up with. I have nothing against faith, but taking the Bible at face value and not as exaggerated stories written hundreds of years after the fact is a bit naive.

[John Bored]

Lewis' books may be "pointing to the Bible," but that tells you very little, since the same is easily said for The Divine Comedy, or Paradise Lost, or The Faerie Queen.

The point is made; I'm not here to defend Lewis, the argument was only against basing such important life decisions off of works which themselves are subservient.

And 'fantastical' elements don't come close to grouping the Bible or the world's other religious texts into children's literature, that could only be the most superficial observation. The same mode of thought would reason that Solaris is a movie for young adults because it purports that a distant planet can materialize the contents of a person's mind.

[Mr Sausage]

Lewis' books may be "pointing to the Bible," but that tells you very little, since the same is easily said for The Divine Comedy, or Paradise Lost, or The Faerie Queen.

The point is made; I'm not here to defend Lewis, the argument was only against basing such important life decisions off of works which themselves are subservient.

Isn't that, tho', the structure of the church? To base important life decisions off of the words of someone subservient to the prime work (priests, ect.)? Why else attend church each sunday to hear interpretations from the pulpit?

I actually spent a good deal of my childhood with my nose in a Bible, being raised Lutheran and having been "confirmed". The stories and parables in the Bible are frankly just as fantastical as anything the Brothers Grimm could've come up with. I have nothing against faith, but taking the Bible at face value and not as exaggerated stories written hundreds of years after the fact is a bit naive.

The Bible is a complex mythological structure (to say nothing of the vast amounts of wisdom, Hebraic and Christian, applicable to secular circumstances). Its importance to the English language is rivalled, if we can estimate such things, only by Shakespeare. You cannot hope to grasp western culture and its products without it.

The Grimm brothers made a collection of simple folklore, quaint products of oral tradition, which, if we are to be pedantic, they did not invent themselves. Really, to take the Bible as a bunch of fantastical stories is very poor reading. Here are a couple of excellent books on the subject of the Bible's importance as myth and as linguistic structure by a fine writer and thinker, sadly dead.

[domino harvey]

Its importance to the English language is rivalled, if we can estimate such things, only by Shakespeare. You cannot hope to grasp western culture and its products without it.

Truer words were never spoken (written?). When I was getting my Bachelor's in English, no text was more invaluable-- you simply can not be a successful student of literature and not be at least passingly familiar with it. And I'm an Agnostic for what it's worth. Let me tell you though, few things were more entertaining than taking classes with The Angry Atheist who refused to acknowledge even the simplest, most apparent Biblical allusions in, say, Wordsworth's Michael!

[John Bored]

Isn't that, tho', the structure of the church? To base important life decisions off of the words of someone subservient to the prime work (priests, ect.)? Why else attend church each sunday to hear interpretations from the pulpit?

I'm not going to make any blanket statements, though I wouldn't hesitate to argue that you'd be better off reading the bible yourself. But within this context we're talking about literature made with the intent of appealing to children, working as an intermediate before entering into the greater bodies of thought/belief.

[domino harvey]

I don't see anything wrong with either the Narnia books or His Dark Materials books being read by kids. Talk to a nine year-old some time and you'll see neither side has anything to worry about with regards to them picking up the subtext in either book, no matter how obvious it seems to us.

[Antoine Doinel]

Hey Mr S, I'm sure we're probably more on the same side than our arguments suggest. I certainly don't deny the impact and importance of the Bible as a text and publication. But I think certain segments of Christianty stick so closely to the Bible they can't see that faith and spirituality expand into a much larger sphere in which the book is only a small part of a much larger structure of belief.

[Mr Sausage]

Isn't that, tho', the structure of the church? To base important life decisions off of the words of someone subservient to the prime work (priests, ect.)? Why else attend church each sunday to hear interpretations from the pulpit?

I'm not going to make any blanket statements, though I wouldn't hesitate to argue that you'd be better off reading the bible yourself.

I was talking about the Catholic church, and you cannot do that and remain Catholic. Doesn't mean it isn't a good idea, tho'. But then the problem becomes one of authority, since the Bible is a difficult and problematic read. It's rather tossing people into the deep end to just hand them a Bible and say "good luck." Eventually they're going to want some explication from a better reader than themselves, and that is where the church comes in. One cannot expect everyone to be an Augustine or a William Blake, however preferable such a thing would be.

But within this context we're talking about literature made with the intent of appealing to children, working as an intermediate before entering into the greater bodies of thought/belief.

I give children, and the possibilites of literature written for them, more credit than this sentence seems to.

Hey Mr S, I'm sure we're probably more on the same side than our arguments suggest. I certainly don't deny the impact and importance of the Bible as a text and publication. But I think certain segments of Christianty stick so closely to the Bible they can't see that faith and spirituality expand into a much larger sphere in which the book is only a small part of a much larger structure of belief.

You may be right, and I'm afraid I may be starting to come off rather like I'm on a pulpit myself.

[John Bored]

I was talking about the Catholic church, and you cannot do that and remain Catholic. Doesn't mean it isn't a good idea, tho'. But then the problem becomes one of authority, since the Bible is a difficult and problematic read. It's rather tossing people into the deep end to just hand them a Bible and say "good luck." Eventually they're going to want some explication from a better reader than themselves, and that is where the church comes in. One cannot expect everyone to be an Augustine or a William Blake, however preferable such a thing would be.

Is going to church a better trade-off than reading the Bible? Questions like this could be argued into infinity, but you'd think in this age of milquetoast compromised faith it may be a good idea to at least try navigating yourself.

I give children, and the possibilites of literature written for them, more credit than this sentence seems to.

That's nice. But don't jump to conclusions about my assessments of children and the other, it was at least my impression that we were talking about two authors whose works are instrumental in spite of their inherent value.

[Mr Sausage]

I was talking about the Catholic church, and you cannot do that and remain Catholic. Doesn't mean it isn't a good idea, tho'. But then the problem becomes one of authority, since the Bible is a difficult and problematic read. It's rather tossing people into the deep end to just hand them a Bible and say "good luck." Eventually they're going to want some explication from a better reader than themselves, and that is where the church comes in. One cannot expect everyone to be an Augustine or a William Blake, however preferable such a thing would be.

Is going to church a better trade-off than reading the Bible? Questions like this could be argued into infinity, but you'd think in this age of milquetoast compromised faith it may be a good idea to at least try navigating yourself.

I fall on the Emerson side of the line: self-reliance all the way.

I give children, and the possibilites of literature written for them, more credit than this sentence seems to.

That's nice. But don't jump to conclusions about my assessments of children and the other, it was at least my impression that we were talking about two authors whose works are instrumental in spite of their inherent value.

I don't know that I was 'jumping' to any conclusions about you, but I did sense a certain tone in the sentence I didn't agree with. I don't, however, form my conception of people's characters around single sentences.

Out of curiosity, what are Narnia (which I haven't read) and the Pullman trilogy (the first two books of which I read when I was 12 or 13 or so) instrumental for?

[jbeall]

From IMDB:

Catholic League Protests 'Golden Compass'

Two months before the scheduled release of New Line Cinema's The Golden Compass, the Catholic League has launched an all-out assault on the fantasy film. The League, the largest Catholic lay organization in the U.S., has produced a 25-page pamphlet, titled "The Golden Compass: Unmasked," that it is selling on its website for $5.00 per copy, which damns the film as a pernicious effort to indoctrinate children into atheistic beliefs. Acknowledging that the film itself is unlikely to contain offensive material, Catholic League President Bill Donohue said in a statement, "If unsuspecting Christian parents take their children to see the movie, they may very well find it engaging and then buy Pullman's books for Christmas. That's the problem. We are fighting a deceitful stealth campaign on the part of the film's producers." Pullman has acknowledged his anti-religious stance but critics have said that his books present little that is likely to offend believers. Stephen Whitty, critic for the Newark, NJ Star Ledger wrote Thursday that he had read C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, which contain Christian imagery while attending a Catholic parochial school as a child and later read them to his Jewish children. "But that doesn't mean that any of us accepted Lewis's Northern-Irish Protestantism as our own faith. ... I know, for example, that when my children saw The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe they saw absolutely no obvious Christian imagery in it. I am sure that, when we go to see The Golden Compass, they'll see no atheistic agenda either."

My mother went to high school with Bill Donohue; she says that even then (and she was conservative at the time), she thought of little Billy Donohue as an idiot.

[Kinsayder]

There was an interesting article by Hanna Rosin in yesterday's Telegraph Magazine. Some extracts:

Given enough time and effort, Hollywood can tweak and polish and recast even the darkest message. In the end, the religious meaning of the book was obscured so thoroughly as to be essentially indecipherable. The studio settled on villains that, as [producer Toby] Emmerich put it, 'feel vaguely kind of like a fascistic, totalitarian dictatorship, Russian/KGB/SS stew.' The main theme became, in one producer's summary, 'One small child can save the world.' With $180 at stake, the studio opted to kidnap the book's body and leave behind its soul.

[...] all things being equal, Pullman told me, New Line would prefer he were, well, the late author of The Golden Compass. Dead? 'Yes! Absolutely!' If something happened to him, there 'would be expressions of the most heartfelt regrets, yet privately they would be saying, "Thank God."'

When we met, Pullman had just been to a screening of the film [...] In discussing the film, he chose his words carefully, acknowledging that his role now is to be 'sensible' so that the next two films get made. None the less, he was honest about what was missing: 'They do know where to put the theology,' he said, 'and that's off the film.'

Long silence.

Then, 'I think if everything that is made explicit in the book or everything that is implied clearly in the book or everything that can be understood by a close reading of the book were present in the film, they'd have the biggest hit they've ever had in their lives. If they allowed the religious meaning of the book to be fully explicit, it would be a huge hit. Suddenly, they'd have letters of appreciation from people who felt this but never dared say it. They would be the heroes of liberal thought, of freedom of thought... And it would be the greatest pity if that didn't happen.

'I didn't put that very well. What I mean is that I want this film to succeed in every possible way. And what I don't want to do, you see, is talk the other two films out of existence. So I'll stop there.'

[...]

The final shooting script includes no mention of sin. As Emmerich told me, Dust is 'akin to the Force' in Star Wars. Coulter tells Lyra that Dust is 'evil and wicked' and makes people 'sick'. Asriel sounds like Obi-Wan Kenobi: 'They taught themselves to fear Dust, instead of master it,' he says. 'They've ignored a tremendous source of power.'

[Director Chris] Weitz told me he tried to keep in a line where Asriel says, 'Dust is sin', but 'that didn't make it. What can I say?' Hollywood 'is just terrified that anything that brings up religion or anything controversial will be disastrous.'

I'd been hoping that New Line might have grasped the nettle with this adaptation, as the National Theatre did in their production, but it sounds like they went at it with a scythe. Further proof that Hollywood is the last place to look for courageous filmmaking.

[John Cope]

The first five minutes.

[malcolm1980]

Catholic Bishops Give Thumbs Up to 'Compass'
The U.S. Conference of [Catholic] Bishops has split with the Catholic League, the nation's largest Catholic lay group, over The Golden Compass. The League has called for a boycott of the movie, which opens Friday, claiming that it promotes atheism. But the official review of the film by the Conference says that "the good news is that ... explicit references to this church" found in the book on which the movie is based "have been completely excised." The review continues: "This is not the blatant real-world anti-Catholicism of, say, the recent Elizabeth: The Golden Age or The Da Vinci Code. Religious elements, as such are practically nil." However, William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, has insisted that the movie will encourage young people to read the book. "The idea is to sell the horrors of Catholicism and the virtues of atheism to youth," he said on Fox News Channel Wednesday.

I saw it myself. I don't think it indoctrinates atheism any more than Chronicles of Narnia indoctrinates Christianity.

[GringoTex]

I saw it myself. I don't think it indoctrinates atheism any more than Chronicles of Narnia indoctrinates Christianity.

Religion aside, anything too intense for a seven-year-old?

[Tommaso]

I'm just returned from the cinema watching this. Not bad at all, a curious mixture of LotR and those old Jules Verne films visually. Some rather striking images and fx, I'd say.I haven't read the book and so can't say how faithful it is to the novel, but I had the feeling that a lot was left out. The appearance of certain characters and some of their motivations is sometimes not really explained, and as it's a very episodic film, the constant changes of setting and mood proved somewhat irritating for me. I have the strong feeling they will do a "Lord of the Rings"-style extended dvd version next Christmas.
Well worth seeing, miles ahead of "Harry Potter" and "Narnia".

[Kinsayder]

Catholic Bishops Give Thumbs Up to 'Compass'
The U.S. Conference of [Catholic] Bishops has split with the Catholic League, the nation's largest Catholic lay group, over The Golden Compass. The League has called for a boycott of the movie, which opens Friday, claiming that it promotes atheism. But the official review of the film by the Conference says that "the good news is that ... explicit references to this church" found in the book on which the movie is based "have been completely excised." The review continues: "This is not the blatant real-world anti-Catholicism of, say, the recent Elizabeth: The Golden Age or The Da Vinci Code. Religious elements, as such are practically nil." However, William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, has insisted that the movie will encourage young people to read the book. "The idea is to sell the horrors of Catholicism and the virtues of atheism to youth," he said on Fox News Channel Wednesday.

I saw it myself. I don't think it indoctrinates atheism any more than Chronicles of Narnia indoctrinates Christianity.

The Catholic League's point is that the film, though declawed, may lead children to the book - which is ardently anti-Christian. How long, I wonder, before some enterprising publisher brings out the book-of-the-film-of-the-book - minus, of course, any troubling religious references.

[malcolm1980]

I saw it myself. I don't think it indoctrinates atheism any more than Chronicles of Narnia indoctrinates Christianity.

Religion aside, anything too intense for a seven-year-old?

Well...

Spoiler

There's a scene where Iorek knocks the jaw out of his rival. And a couple of intense battle scenes that are any more violent as those found in Lord of the Rings, if your kid can handle those, s/he can handle The Golden Compass.

I don't think it's ahead of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. It's as good as Narnia though.