Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 7:43 pm
So they're banning Narnia now?John Bored wrote: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.
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So they're banning Narnia now?John Bored wrote: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.
I knew I'd get that response within a few minutes, at least yours lacks the usual smarmyness of Domino's.Antoine Doinel wrote:Though one could argue the Bible is somewhat of children's novel as well.
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 Bored wrote:I knew I'd get that response within a few minutes, at least yours lacks the usual smarmyness of Domino's.Antoine Doinel wrote:Though one could argue the Bible is somewhat of children's novel as well.
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 wrote: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).
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.John Bored wrote: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 wrote: 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).
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.Poncho Punch wrote: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.John Bored wrote: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 wrote: 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).
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.Mr_sausage wrote: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.
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?John Bored wrote: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.Mr_sausage wrote: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 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.Antoine Doinel wrote: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.
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!Mr_sausage wrote: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.
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.Mr_sausage wrote: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 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.John Bored wrote: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.Mr_sausage wrote: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 give children, and the possibilites of literature written for them, more credit than this sentence seems to.John Bored wrote: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.
You may be right, and I'm afraid I may be starting to come off rather like I'm on a pulpit myself.Antoine Doinel wrote: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.
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.Mr_sausage wrote: 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.
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 wrote: I give children, and the possibilites of literature written for them, more credit than this sentence seems to.
I fall on the Emerson side of the line: self-reliance all the way.John Bored wrote: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.Mr_sausage wrote: 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.
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.John Bored wrote: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 wrote: I give children, and the possibilites of literature written for them, more credit than this sentence seems to.
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.Antoine Doinel wrote: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."
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.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 saw it myself. I don't think it indoctrinates atheism any more than Chronicles of Narnia indoctrinates Christianity.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.
Religion aside, anything too intense for a seven-year-old?malcolm1980 wrote: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 wrote:I saw it myself. I don't think it indoctrinates atheism any more than Chronicles of Narnia indoctrinates Christianity.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.
Well...GringoTex wrote:Religion aside, anything too intense for a seven-year-old?malcolm1980 wrote:I saw it myself. I don't think it indoctrinates atheism any more than Chronicles of Narnia indoctrinates Christianity.