Don’t go see “The Golden Compass”

  • I’m hop­ing that all God’s chil­dren have got­ten the word by now, whether by e-mail or blog posts like Fr. Joseph’s (HERE) or arti­cles like this one, but since so many peo­ple see movies over the Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­days, it’s worth a repeat: Don’t go to see the movie in the­aters now called “The Golden Com­pass.” Or at least not unless you want to see an atheist’s man­i­festo aimed at chil­dren.

    The prob­lem with it is that it is pre­sented as being some fun-filled fan­tasy flick for the whole fam­ily (Allit­er­a­tive phras­ing — 10 points!) when it is truly anti-Christian, anti-church pro­pa­ganda. The author has never been shy about say­ing as much, even say­ing in a 2003 inter­view, “My books are about killing God.”

    This arti­cle from Snopes.com — the guys I trust to sep­a­rate fact from fic­tion in the age of the chain-email cam­paign — had more (empha­sis mine, of course):

    The Golden Com­pass, a fan­tasy film star­ring Nicole Kid­man that is sched­uled to be released into the­aters on 7 Decem­ber 2007, has been draw­ing fire from con­cerned Chris­tians. 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.

    Books of the tril­ogy have sold more than 15 mil­lion copies around the world, with North­ern Lights win­ning the Carnegie Medal for Children’s Lit­er­a­ture in 1995 and in 2007 being awarded the ‘Carnegie of Carne­gies’ for the best children’s book of the past 70 years. The Amber Spy­glass, the final book of the series, won The Whit­bread Prize in 2001, mak­ing it the first children’s book to do so.

    The series’ author, Philip Pull­man, is an avowed athe­ist who has averred that “I don’t pro­fess any reli­gion; I don’t think it’s pos­si­ble that there is a God; I have the great­est dif­fi­culty in under­stand­ing what is meant by the words ‘spir­i­tual’ or ‘spir­i­tu­al­ity.’” Crit­ics of Pullman’s books point to the strong anti-religion and anti-God themes they incor­po­rate, and although lit­er­ary works are sub­ject to a vari­ety of inter­pre­ta­tions, Pull­man left lit­tle doubt about his inten­tions when he said in a 2003 inter­view with The Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald that “My books are about killing God.” (Con­ser­v­a­tive British colum­nist Peter Hitchens labeled Pull­man “The Most Dan­ger­ous Author in Britain” and described him as the writer “the athe­ists would have been pray­ing for, if athe­ists prayed.”)

    Now, it’s a free coun­try, and Pull­man is enti­tled to his opin­ion. But when he makes a movie based on evan­ge­liz­ing = his opin­ion to a young audi­ence, dis­senters are allowed to respec­tively ignore stay home and teach their chil­dren as they see fit. The stu­dios tried to alter the movie to make it less offen­sive, but when you’re talk­ing about a guy who says that his books are about killing God, I just think Chris­t­ian movie view­ers — par­ents espe­cially — ought to know what mes­sage will be com­ing through when they go see this film. The enter­tain­ment indus­try has con­sis­tently attacked Chris­tians and Chris­t­ian val­ues. It is ask­ing a bit much for Chris­tians to return the favor by shelling out $9 apiece to see a film that is designed to degrade the things they hold sacred.

    Pull­man has the right to write his books. Movie stu­dios have the right to turn them into movies. And the Chris­t­ian pub­lic has the right to boy­cott those movies and remind the enter­tain­ment indus­try that with­out this sig­nif­i­cant share of the pub­lic, their movies make no money.


    Related posts:

    1. Is Hol­ly­wood “a very Chris­t­ian town?”
    2. The peo­ple speak to “DaVinci”
    3. Neato idol­otry
    4. The Last Mimzy
    5. Fairy tales, the Old Tes­ta­ment and Napoleon Dynamite

    November 23rd, 2007 | Grace | 5 Comments |

5 Responses and Counting...

  • Word­mama 11.23.2007

    Glad to see there’s been an uproar about this ugli­ness. The arti­cle I saw quoted the guy who wrote it as say­ing it was a direct attack on the C.S. Lewis Nar­nia books, an idea that really dis­turbs me — as, of course, it is intended to. And what comes through in the ads? Noth­ing but fun and excite­ment. The world is a sick place, espe­cially in this guy’s head.

  • Grace

    Yep. I really hope all Chris­tians are get­ting the word. For any that want to see it any­way — hey, what­ever. But as you say, I think the adver­tis­ing gives no indi­ca­tion of what’s really going on here.

    Read­ing the Snopes arti­cle, it seems as if some­one might say that the movie has had all the worst stuff removed. But (a) I don’t think that they can remove such a com­pletely hos­tile metames­sage, and (b) as some­one points out, that only means that a lot of Chris­t­ian par­ents will be lulled into buy­ing the books for their kids.

  • Grace

    Actu­ally, to add on one more thought, it is inter­est­ing to note (as Terry Mat­tingly does in this arti­cle) that there was such a great brouhaha from Chris­tians about what J.K. Rowl­ing MIGHT have meant with the Harry Pot­ter books, and here was a guy pub­lish­ing at the same time who came right out and said that he was writ­ing anti-church, anti-Christian pro­pa­ganda for children.

    I sup­pose I start to con­clude that even the best of us have to be dis­cern­ing and pick our bat­tles a lit­tle more carefully.

  • Haley

    I believe that the movie and the books by Pull­man are all opi­onated. If you want to see the movie, GO SEE THE MOVIE! But if you are against what it says about the church, don’t go see it. You can’t tell other peo­ple what to do or what to think, and thats one of the many flaws I see in reli­gion. I’m not against religion-but i am against orga­nized reli­gion whuch con­trols peo­ples lives. I am only 13 years old, but I am very stub­born on this controversy.

  • Grace

    Haley,
    You are a very well-spoken 13-year-old, and it sounds like you think through things, which is great to see. Stub­born­ness isn’t exactly a virtue, but it can be help­ful if you’re stub­born about the right things. Or at least I hope so, because I’m down­right bull-headed sometimes.

    I entirely agree with what you’re say­ing about peo­ple need­ing to make their own deci­sions. Though my sub­ject line just said not to see the movie, period, what I’ve said in the arti­cle is that I don’t want peo­ple to go IF they are mis­led by false adver­tis­ing and don’t know what the aim of the author was.

    As for orga­nized reli­gion and its many flaws, I sup­pose where I stand on that is that for me it’s not whether some­thing is flawed, but whether it’s true. =

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