Posted by Mike O on: 11.01.2007 /
The Golden Compass, a movie based on the first installment of the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, is being released in theatres December 7th.
According to Wikipedia,
Several key themes of the novels, the rejection of organized religion and the abuse of power in a fictionalized Catholic Church, are to be diluted in the adaptation. Director Weitz said “in the books the Magisterium is a version of the Catholic Church gone wildly astray from its roots” but that the organization portrayed in his film would not directly match that of Pullman’s books. In an attempt to avoid a religious backlash, the Magisterium will instead be a critique of all dogmatic organizations. Weitz said that New Line Cinema had feared the story’s anti-religious themes would make the film financially unviable in the US, and so religion and God will not be referenced directly. Attempting to reassure fans of the novels, Weitz said that religion would instead appear in euphemistic terms, yet the decision has been attacked by some fans, anti-censorship groups, and the National Secular Society (of which Pullman is an honorary associate), which said ” they are taking the heart out of it, losing the point of it, castrating it”, “this is part of a long-term problem over freedom of speech.” The changes from the novel have been present since Tom Stoppard’s rejected version of the script, and Pullman himself believes the film will be “faithful”.
And according to snopes,
The 2007 film The Golden Compass is based on a series of books with anti-religious themes.”
The film is based on Northern Lights (released in the U.S. as The Golden Compass), the first offering in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy of children’s books, a series that follows the adventures of a streetwise girl who travels through multiple worlds populated by witches, armor-plated bears, and sinister ecclesiastical assassins to defeat the oppressive forces of a senile God.
And what I suspect will become the most noteworthy quote from Pullman - one I’m sure you’ll be hearing again and again and (IMO) will result in even more ticket sales for the movie - will be this one given to the Sydney Morning Herald in 2003:
“I’ve been surprised by how little criticism I’ve got. Harry Potter’s been taking all the flak. I’m a great fan of J.K. Rowling, but the people - mainly from America’s Bible Belt - who complain that Harry Potter promotes Satanism or witchcraft obviously haven’t got enough in their lives. Meanwhile, I’ve been flying under the radar, saying things that are far more subversive than anything poor old Harry has said. My books are about killing God.”
Conservative British columnist Peter Hitchens described Pullman as the writer “the atheists would have been praying for, if atheists prayed.”
What is your take on Philip Pullman or this movie? Has anyone read the books?
Comment by: Karen
1Yes, and yes. I loved the books as did my older son, who is a big fantasy/sci fi fan.
Comment by: Mike O
2Did you see Narnia? I’ve heard that The Golden Compass is a sort of backlash against Narnia. And looking at the trailer they have for it on Netflix, it does seem to have a Narnia-like feel to it.
Comment by: Stephan
3I have not read these books, and do not plan to. I’m just not interested.
There is, however, already Christian backlash, despite the dilution listed above. My wife has received email from several of her relatives pointing out this film and its anti-religious themes. I suspect the reason there has not been backlash up to this point is that the books are really not that popular outside of atheist circles. Now that it is getting more attention it will get ugly fast.
Comment by: Siamang
4This post sprung out of an email discussion that Mike and I had. I’m going to quote some of the things I said in those emails.
I only read The Golden Compass and half of The Subtle Knife (the second book).
I severely doubt that the “object” of the plot is to kill God. This sounds like the plot synopsis written by someone who hasn’t read the books. It’s as if someone told you that the “plot synopsis” of The Wizard of Oz was for a girl to murder a woman by crushing her with a house and then stalk her sister.
I haven’t read the last half of the His Dark Materials trilogy, so I cannot tell you exactly what goes on… not sure I could make much sense of it anyway. The Wikipedia entry describes a weak and frail god-like character called “The Authority”
As Aslan is not Christ, neither is “The Authority” Yaweh or one of His angels. He’s instead a symbol for an idea or a conception of that personnage in a fictional world. I’ll point out that “The Authority” is not the Creator, but the first angel, which would make him analogous with Lucifer in the Christian pantheon (though probably closer to the Gnostic protrayal of Lucifer) and Manwë and Morgoth in the Tolkien pantheon.
I don’t for a moment think that the His Dark Materials trilogy is some kind of an atheistic evangelism tool. It’s too well-written for me to suspect that. As I said, I read the first half, and I certainly didn’t see “we must kill God” coming. I think Pullman is playing with literary ideas, themes from Milton, especially. That’s Pullman’s playground, and so the ideas have religious shading to them. I think Pullman wants readers to think big thoughts and imagine big things.
According to wikipedia, the “Authority” is a god, though it is shown to have been a demiurge in the Gnostic definition and not the Creator of the universe.
I can see how the very notion of a Gnostic demiurge would shake up some people. Introducing young people to ideas that in past centuries were tried and convicted as heresies can hardly be popular in the current religious environment.
There are a good many Christians who see the idea of wizards and witchcraft as merely fantasy, and don’t find it threatening. This is something different, perhaps, and so may rile a different subset of believers.
For Christians who find Harry Potter threatening, the threat is that young readers might be seduced into a life of the occult, which they believe really exists as a power in the world.
But there is no doubt that the other worlds of His Dark Materials are fictional, and no child can be expected to try and ride a polar bear to the north pole. In His Dark Materials, the threat is the threat of ideas. It is clearly an impossible fiction. But it’s an impossible fiction where threatening ideas, even heretical ideas, are expressed.
I do take it to be a SORT of anti-Narnia in this way: In Narnia Lewis recast the Christian themes within a world shaped by British high-fantasy. In His Dark Materials, Pullman is telling his story in a world shaped by the mythology of Paradise Lost.
Mike O wrote:
I was disappointed. I never read the books, but I went into the movie really hoping to love it. I felt like the movie failed to make an emotional connection between the children and the world they found themselves in. I was keenly aware at all times that the lion was a visual effect, and it made all scenes with him feel chilly and distant. Liam Neeson as a vocal choice was a stroke of utter tone-deafness.. he doesn’t exactly exude warmth. Children have a very difficult time acting with an invisible co-star… actually adults do too. In this film, I felt like the children were crying glycerine tears for a lion made of pixels.
I didn’t and don’t have a problem with children’s stories that have religious allegory to them. E.T. has strong religious overtones, for example. I don’t have a problem at all with it. I expect my fantasy stories to have nice deep themes in them, and religion is a very deep theme indeed.
Comment by: Eliza
5I read, and enjoyed, Pullman’s series. The religion stuff was a backdrop, imo more important in Pullman’s plans & thoughts about the story than for the reader - it was still a good story. (Metatron is the most important theistic figure, as I recall, from the books, though is referred to more than he appears…I didn’t see that anyone mention this character above, & also I have no clue how much, if at all, Metatron figures into Christian teachings & thought, in modern times.)
Similarly, the Narnia books are a good read even if the Christian allegories pass right on over your head (as I suspect they did for me). Aslan on the stone table, OK that one was pretty obvious, & I loved it in “The Magician’s Nephew” when Aslan’s new creation’s includes Strawberry the carthorse, his cabbie, & the cabbie’s wife, from London among the first creatures (Frank & Nell becoming Adam & Eve, of course). And Uncle Andrew brings the first evil into the new creation. (It actually struck me as a parody of Genesis 2 & 3…OK, so I apparently missed Lewis’s point!)
I didn’t pick up on religious themes in ET when I saw it years and years ago, & don’t recall reading about such themes - what were they?
Comment by: Siamang
6ET dies, is resurrected and ascends to the heavens. There’s a lot of Christ metaphor, he has the healing touch, stuff like that.
Comment by: Eliza
7Hmm, OK. I think my “problem” is not having ever been a Christian, the idea that something’s a
“Christian” theme doesn’t come to mind unless I get bludgeoned over the head by signals that can’t be ignored. (It helps if the person who is dying & coming back to life & ascending to the sky wears long robes & has a beard. If he’s wearing a nametag over the left chest, that’s also useful.)
Resurrection from the dead? For me that doesn’t usually suggest Jesus. I mean, lots of living things get re-animated in stories, including on film. The Phoenix. Persephone, for whom it happened over and over, in a way. Lazarus, even, and the others in the Bible who were resurrected before Jesus (there are 5-6 of them, total). Zombies. It happens all the time in horror stories, which I read alot of as a teenager (who knows why). I read a fair amount of sci fi, too, & have some vague recollection that Ray Bradbury wrote a bunch of short stories about an entire family of “undead” characters.
Someone ascending bodily up into the sky doesn’t make me think of Jesus, either, except in the situations above where the intended similarity is made obvious. I mean, going UP off of planet earth is the only way we know of to get off of the planet, and in most interplanetary sci fi (as in E.T.), the characters typically do ascend from the surface of earth if they want to get off earth, though I do admit that it’s usually by spaceship rather than “bodily”. And, for me, the image of Jesus ascending up into the sky to get to heaven does not make sense, even though I know that’s what is said to have happened. If heaven does exist, it’s not found physically up in the sky. The whole Jesus-in-sky thing would have been a way of getting him out of sight so that he could then get to heaven, perhaps without being observed.
Just explaining this heathen’s view on things…
Comment by: Eliza
8Here’s some of what Steven Spielberg & others are said to have said about religious themes in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (see link for references; bolding added by me):
Comment by: benjamin ady
9why does everyone alwasy have massively oversimplify and overcategorize things (hehe)
honestly, though, I’m in the process of beginning to learn mindfulness. and one of the things I’m realizing is this very .. non childlike tendency I have (although not *nearly* as bad as I had it 10 years ago) to categorize, so I don’t have to deal with things. instead of being present with something or someone or myself (that is to say, enjoying this moment), I automaticlly (and “automatically” is the key word here) … file it. into my already designed system. so … “That’s a Christian theme” or “That’s an anti-church theme” or “that’s a stupid right wing organization with closed minds”. This cuts off my presence/enjoyment with the person/thing, and so now I can move on to the next thing. I realized I had done this with Breakpint/Chuck Colson, when all of a sudden I found myself engaging with them, and realized they were a lot more complex and … rich than I thought (as is generally the case with humans, I suppose). I’m looking forward to Golden Compass because it looks like an engaging *story*, and it seems to me that *story* is an inherently excellent thing, by definition.
Comment by: Mike O
10I like the way you think, Ben.
Comment by: Ir (Helen)
11I love the trilogy which begins with The Golden Compass. I thought it was awesomely written. I loved the themes in it. It was one of the things that helped me see beauty in all of life.
My son said Nicole Kidman said she wouldn’t be in it unless they toned down the anti-religious parts so they have made them generally anti-authority instead. I don’t have a link for that…he read it on the Internet somewhere.
Comment by: Siamang
12Here is a great article on Beliefnet by Donna Freitas, to her “fellow Christians”.
http://blog.beliefnet.com/idolchatter/2007/10/responding-to-my-fellow-christ.html
Read the whole thing at that link above.
Comment by: Abbadun
13Hi
This is absurd when you compare this to all the anti-Atheist Themes in Literature and Scripts.
Here is a religious article on the Golden Compass from 2001.
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=2181
AB
Comment by: Siamang
14Golden Compass is getting really bad reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. One reviewer says it’s so bad because the ideas behind Pullman’s book have been excised in an attempt to placate the very folks who are calling for a boycott of the film.