Nov 11 2007
The Northern Lights as a film!
I’m ever so happy that they’ve made a film out of The Northern Lights, called, predictably enough, The Golden Compass. Well, can’t have everything I suppose. I was just talking about the whole series to a friend recently: I had to heavily recommend it. It’s really fabulous, and I might read it again soon, because I can’t remember much about the beginning of the story.
The general theme of authoritarian religion and its pernicious effect on the way people behave has not been well received in the United States of America. There is a clip from Fox News with talking-head interviews with someone from the Freedom from Religion Foundation and a Catholic priest. The whole thing is a horrible indictment of what presumably passes for ‘news’ on the Fox network, but even worse is that it doesn’t address any of the relevant points.
Where is the spokesman for the movie? At least the director should know what he intended, rather than watching a bunch of morons discuss a film they haven’t seen.
They all looked like idiots. The priest made appeals to popularity, which have nothing to do with whether (a) the film promotes atheism or (b) whether this is a bad thing. In fact, these questions remained essentially unanswered. The Freedom from Religion woman was obviously pretty incoherent on that point too. I have no affinity for the other two but her performance was embarrassing. The anchor man was awful: not only did the priest get given ‘respect’ (what for, exactly? For agreeing to come on the show and talk rubbish?) but he called the other woman stupid and attributed someone else’s statements to her. I am impressed they found a phrase even more odious than militant atheist though, but they did: “known atheist”. (You have to say it with the same tone as ‘known kiddie fiddler’.) That one’s for the history books, I think. OMG he prolly eats babies!
Is the movie designed to promote atheism? (Spoilers ahead.) That’s a difficult question. There is religion, God and angels in the book. But it’s set in a fictional world where the ‘divine’ world reflects that of a tinpot dictatorship, with a decrepit godlike figurehead and a militaristic enforcer who wields the power. It’s probably more accurately anti-theistic and anti-authoritarian, since it really addresses the dangers of having powerful cabals who create arbitrary social rules. It’s as much an argument against Stalinism as it is against the Catholic Church.
But it also prompts readers to reflect on the way in which religion is viewed in modern life. If the Catholic Church think that this level of introspection is a threat to them, who am I to deny them?
Although this is probably not as big an issue as people think it is because Pullman has said that they’ve basically removed ‘The Church’ from the story, now it’s just just kind of nebulous organisation.
Yeah, but “the Church” was never really in it from what I remember. It was always “the Magisterium”. Which according to Wikipedia is a term for the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church. ;-)