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Nicole is hot, but if she is in a movie it's not a good sign. |
Posted on 12/14/2007 7:33:13 AM PST by Thorin
The Broken Compass
Posted by Tom Piatak on December 14, 2007
It seems fitting that Hollywood has chosen to observe Christmas in the year Christopher Hitchens’ atheist manifesto became a best-seller by releasing The Golden Compass, a movie based on the first volume of a fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials by another angry British atheist, Philip Pullman. Lest there be any doubt what Pullman’s objective is, he told the Washington Post in 2001 that “I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief” and the Sydney Morning Herald in 2003 that “My books are about killing God.”
Pullman, in fact, is the perfect representative of today’s post-Christian Britain: contemptuous of the literary tradition in which he writes, filled with hatred for the basis of his civilization, and advocating the displacement of traditional morality by unbridled sexual license and an assortment of PC platitudes. Pullman has dismissed The Lord of the Rings, the greatest of all fantasy novels and one of the monumental creations of the 20th century, as “fundamentally an infantile work” and a “trivial book.” He has described C. S. Lewis’ beloved Chronicles of Narnia as “morally loathsome,” and even lobbied against making the Narnia books into a movie, telling the BBC in October 2005 that Lewis’ tales were “a peevish blend of racist, misogynistic and reactionary prejudice.” And Pullman, like so many of the angry new atheists, has a deep hatred for the institution that did more to create the West than any other, the Catholic Church. He named the villainous organization against which his heroes battle “the Magisterium” —the name used for the teaching authority of the Catholic Church—and dismisses Tolkien precisely because he was a Catholic. As Pullman told MTV on November 1, 2007, The Lord of the Rings is “trivial” because “for Tolkien, the Catholic, the Church had the answers, the Church was the source of all truth, so Lord of the Rings does not touch those deep questions.” There was a time Hollywood observed Christmas by giving us It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street; now we get atheist propaganda disguised as children’s literature instead.
So far, so bad. What made this modern Christmas story even worse was the initially supine attitude of an organization which ought to warn Catholics of the dangers posed to the souls of their children by such as Pullman, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Even though The Golden Compass has generally been panned by secular movie reviewers—and one wag has dubbed it “the Chronicles of Yawnia” – the USCCB’s own movie reviewer, Harry Forbes, inexplicably gave the film a gushing review. In his review, Forbes burbled that the film is “Lavish, well-acted, and fast-paced,” “the effects are beautifully realized,” and “there’s hardly a dull moment,” and pronounced the whole film “intelligent and well crafted entertainment.” In fact, Forbes even claimed that “to the extent, moreover, that Lyra and her allies are taking a stand on behalf of free will in opposition to the coercive force of the Magisterium, they are of course acting entirely in harmony with Catholic teaching. The heroism and self-sacrifice that they demonstrate provide appropriate moral lessons for viewers.” Predictably, New Line Cinemas put together ads proclaiming that the Catholic bishops had found the film to be “in harmony with Catholic teaching,” in order to help expose more children to Pullman’s proselytizing atheism. The moral lesson applicable to Pullman is actually the one Jesus provided in Chapter 18 of St. Matthew’s Gospel: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
The USCCB’s review was, at best, bizarrely naïve. Forbes dismissed “Pullman’s putative motives” and suggested the answer to the question, “Is Pullman trying to undermine anyone’s belief in God?” was unimportant, without ever discussing Pullman’s express intent “to undermine the basis of Christian belief.” At the very least, before recommending this movie to Catholic parents and their children, Forbes should have told them what Pullman was up to. But Forbes doesn’t believe in discouraging children from reading atheist agitprop: “Rather than banning the movies or books, parents might instead take the opportunity to talk through any thorny philosophical issues with their teens.” Somehow, one doubts that either the USCCB or Hollywood studios would have taken such a benign view of Pullman if his villainous organization were named “The Synagogue,” his villains wore rabbinical rather than clerical garb, and he had been quoted as saying “I’m trying to undermine the basis of Jewish belief” and “my books are about killing Yahweh.” Opponents of bigotry would have been outraged—and rightly so. Had the film’s opening been accompanied by a psychopath’s shooting spree at synagogues (see the Dec. 9 massacre at two Colorado church facilities), the media would have been convulsed with discussion of a putative connection between these two events.
Of course, if The Golden Compass is a commercial success, sales of the books will soar, and the two succeeding books in the trilogy will become films. Forbes even recognized this: “The religious themes of the later books may be more prominent in the follow-up films which [director Chris] Weitz has vowed will be less watered down.” In fact, Weitz has said that “though I saw it as my duty to build the franchise of His Dark Materials on as solid a grounding as I could, it would all be in vain if the second and third films did not have the intellectual depth and iconoclasm of the second and third books…. The religious themes in the second and third books can’t be minimized without destroying the spirit of these books.” Will the USCCB’s film reviewers give their imprimatur to those films as well? Judging from Forbes’ review, it’s impossible to see how the USCCB’s blessing could be withheld on the basis of Pullman’s aggressive atheism alone. After all, parents can always “take the opportunity to talk through any thorny philosophical issues with their teens.”
The USCCB’s review captures in microcosm the dominant malady of the West: an unwillingness to defend one’s own against even open and obvious enemies. The poor immigrants and their offspring who scrimped and saved to build the myriad churches, schools, convents, and universities that dot Catholic America would have been shocked by bishops who, through the bureaucrats they employ, effectively recommended that parents expose their children to cinematic atheism. After all, those bishops began the daunting task of creating a Catholic school system because they feared that the cultural Protestantism then found in American public schools would undermine the faith of Catholic children they regarded as their highest duty to safeguard.
Rather than hoping to appease a hostile culture, the American Catholic bishops used to try to shape that culture. And they even sometimes succeeded, by exercising moral courage. For example, the bishops deserve at least some credit for Hollywood’s Golden Age, which was the result of creative genius tempered by morality. The Catholic moral pressure applied to Hollywood then forced Hollywood to eschew sex and graphic violence, and instead use good stories to attract audiences. The Hollywood moguls of those days knew that if they produced moral filth, Catholics would not patronize it and the film would fail. Alas, Hollywood has no such inhibitions today, in part because the American bishops as a group are no longer willing to confront Hollywood, and in part because the bishops have ceded authority to USCCB bureaucrats all too likely to produce absurd pronouncements such as the Forbes review of The Golden Compass.
Fortunately, there is a somewhat happy ending to this story. The Golden Compass opened to a disappointing box office, no doubt in part because many lay Catholics and other Christians have been spreading the word among parents that Philip Pullman is no C. S. Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien, but rather a “Pied Piper of Atheism,” in the words of Sandra Miesel and Peter Vere. Some Catholic bishops, including the bishops of La Crosse, Wisconsin and Austin, Texas, have begun warning their flocks about Pullman. And, after I began writing this article, the USCCB even pulled the Forbes review from its website. Which is all to the good. But until the American bishops as a whole begin emulating their forebears, it is likely that our culture will be shaped less and less by Christianity and more and more by those who, like Pullman, despise Christianity and the civilization it created.
You might find this of interest.
The few I know who saw it didn’t think it was worth the ticket price.
If the receipts drop off more than 50%, the chances of the sequels being made are quite slim.
Atheists regularly write about the ravages of the Inquisition. Sure: It appears that the Inquisition over the centuries killed 5,000 people, which in my view is 5,000 too many. But Stalin and Mao killed not 5,000 or 50,000 or 500,000 or 5 million, but at least 50 million. Torturing and killing innocent people is a human phenomenon, not a religious one. There's plenty of sin to go around.
Keeping that Soviet and Chinese experience in mind, it's remarkable that Christopher Hitchens, author of "God Is Not Great," claims his fellow atheists "may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and pursuit of ideas for their own sake." Who is "we"? Hitchens writes that atheists who disagree on a question "resolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual excommunication." But the 20th century was a century of atheists resolving their disputes not by excommunication, but by murdering each other.
The Golden Compass might get smashed by the escapist twins “Alvin and the Chipmunks”, and “I am Legend”. I won’t be surprised if what you say comes to pass.
I’ve read Hitchens’ latest book and the Pullman trilogy. I just don’t get it. They are filled with hate and come across as otherwise intelligent people emotionally and even intellectually disabled by hatred. I just don’t see the attraction. I guess that only other such hate-fed disabled people who are desparately looking for enablers to justify their own hatred get the attraction. I sure don’t.
I always ponder over the fact that no other God or man has ever been more maligned, cursed, denounced, or disparaged than Christ, Jesus himself, and by turn, Christ’s Father.
Furthermore, it has always been of interest to me that the two groups of people that have been the most maligned and persecuted have been the Jews (from whom Jesus came and all the Holy writings that we have as Christians; yes, because we know that the early Gospel writers themselves were Jews as well), and, later, the Christians.
Considering how much time atheists spend on attacking a God they do not believe exists, I often wonder why they do not spend equal time attacking Santa Clause, Elves, Leprechauns, Fairies, Smurfs, Little Green Men, Jinn (Genies that the Muslims believe), and other characters that occupy the realm of what they believe is simply fantasy. Again, why so much vitriol, anger, and hatred. It cannot be because Christians are any more evil than others in this world. Many Christians have done evil, but no more so than other people. And for whatever it’s worth, I often have serious doubts about the faith of many committing evil that do call themselves Christians. I’ve heard many people refer to Hitler, for instance, as a Christian, when he absolutely was not and, in fact, was quite involved in the occult (big surprised there).
I also question why those of atheistic and agnostic believes have not spent as much effort and time on critiques of the many humanistic systems that have brought enormous evil to the world (including Communism, Socialism, and Fascism).
Thanks for the post. I know this is a little controversial right now. I have no bones about people writing books or making movies but it is interesting when one tries to peep beneath the surface.
By the way, Merry Christmas Thorin!
If you think about it, you’ll get it. In fact, I think you already do get it. It’s spiritual warfare.
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Nicole is hot, but if she is in a movie it's not a good sign. |
Unfortunately, Christians are writing these things about historical events too. I just finished reading one by a pastor of a very large evangelical megachurch. It’s bad enough when atheists come after the history—and the present—of the church, but now even evangelicals are turning on their own in greater numbers. It’s very disheartening.
Yes. I am NOT going to pay a dime to see this movie. Partly because it’s an attack on Christianity and the morality on which our civilization has been built, but partly because it’s an empty-headed propaganda film.
I like a movie in which the good guys battle the bad guys, even if the vision is confused, as it is in “Star Wars,” for instance. Or I like a movie that raises interesting questions about what is good and what is evil, and does so with great power, like Ingmar Bergman’s mesmerizing “Cries and Whispers”—a movie that is hateful in many ways, but too powerful to wish I had not seen.
But I don’t like empty, totally predictable, propaganda flicks. A movie where the climax comes when two armored polar bears duke it out, and you can’t tell the players without a scorecard? I don’t think so. A movie where the heroine’s father “saves the chilluns” by sacrificing actual children to a dark god, or to something called “dust”? I think not.
And all this so the kids can end the movie trilogy with good Hollywood sex without consequences or a feeble God to tell them no? Nah, I’d rather watch “Shampoo” or get the DVD of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” and see it again.
And Merry Christmas to you, too!
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