the other reason that “Christian activisits” are down on Pullman and his movie?
http://www.slate.com/id/2179387/nav/tap3…
Christian activists who fear that this movie [ The Golden Compass ] will spread the books’ anti-clerical, pro-sex message can relax in the knowledge that not a scrap of Pullman’s theology has made it through the Hollywood blandification machine.
Woah, woah, woah!
Can anyone provide me with even a single quote showing that “Christian activists” are down on the movie because it’s “pro-sex” ?
I haven’t read that anywhere.
Is this real reporting, or just attacking the usual caricature of the opposition?
December 9th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
Try this (hope it doesn’t need HTML code):
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/religious-movies
“This is exactly what happens in the Garden of Eden,†Pullman told me. “They become aware of sexuality, of the power the body has to attract attention from someone else. This is not only natural, but a wonderful thing! To be celebrated! Why the Christian Church has spent 2,000 years condemning this glorious moment, well, that’s a mystery. I want to confront that, I suppose, by telling a story that this so-called original sin is anything but. It’s the thing that makes us fully human.â€
December 9th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Oops, didn’t mean to post that.
I’ve read the trilogy, and while I thought the first was pretty good for kiddie lit, the last book was absolutely awful. Basically just Pullman’s rant against God.
As a Christian, I’m not wasting my time worrying about the movie. It will have about as much long-term effect as “Chronicles.” None. Or did I miss the revival that broke out after Passion, Nativity, LotR, and Narnia? No Third Great Awakening? I’m SHOCKED!
December 9th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Third time’s a charm. Sorry for spamming the comments.
I meant “Didn’t mean to post that YET.” So instead of one neat comment, you got three messy ones. Hopefully I don’t get disemvoweled.
December 10th, 2007 at 12:18 am
[quote comment="107863"]Try this (hope it doesn’t need HTML code):
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200712/religious-movies
“This is exactly what happens in the Garden of Eden,†Pullman told me. “They become aware of sexuality, of the power the body has to attract attention from someone else. This is not only natural, but a wonderful thing! To be celebrated! Why the Christian Church has spent 2,000 years condemning this glorious moment, well, that’s a mystery. I want to confront that, I suppose, by telling a story that this so-called original sin is anything but. It’s the thing that makes us fully human.â€[/quote]
So Pullman thinks that Christians are anti-sex.
…but are any actual Christians getting upset for that reason?
Pullman citing it is just more evidence that lefties read things that way, not that things are actually that way.
December 10th, 2007 at 3:26 am
It’s pretty obvious that Dust is non-volitional sin, or as far as we descendants are concerned, the very apple itself. It is non-innocence.
Given that, I’m amazed that religious authorities haven’t freaked out more. The last time I saw this worldview forcefully presented on-screen was in Pacino’s “I’m a fan of Man!” speech. I’m not really expecting it to show up on-screen in a children’s movie though….
_His Dark Materials_ is literally Satanist. Perhaps the religious in America are refusing to notice this because the terms of engagement are the Old Testament and therefore a little less directly threatening.
I lived in Boston for ten years too. Gross generalizations of Christians are just stupid. But if you’re looking for existence proofs of any illiberal view, it really isn’t that hard to head that far into the American South before you can start finding assholes ready to justify their bigotry in religious terms. You’d think the cure for that would be in Jesus’s own red words, but the connection never seems to be made, and there is never any public discussion of the sane voting even the most extreme off the island.
December 10th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Original sin? Sex?
I thought the original sin was disobeying the “of this fruit you shall not eat” edict.
The fruit being the knowledge of good and evil… not quite sure where that has anything to do with “sexual awakening” (why does everything have to do with sex?). I’m not quite sure where the girl-heroine fits in with the sexual awakening part, since she still seems prepubescent…
I’ve gotten good recommendations on the book, so I’m going to ignore the literary commentary (including that of the author’s, which sets my teeth on edge) and give the thing a try.
December 10th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
[quote comment="107934"]I’m not quite sure where the girl-heroine fits in with the sexual awakening part, since she still seems prepubescent…[/quote]
She’s entering puberty – there are scenes in which her daemon loses its ability to change shape. Which matters because the daemons of children can change shape at will, but those of adults are locked into a single form.
December 10th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
[quote comment="107897"]Jesus’s own red words[/quote]
A digression: how many of the regulars here understand the “red words”, there? I’m curious to how generally-acceptable a reference that is; I wouldn’t have understood it, myself, until about a year or two ago.
December 10th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
[quote comment="107965"]
A digression: how many of the regulars here understand the “red words”, there? I’m curious to how generally-acceptable a reference that is; I wouldn’t have understood it, myself, until about a year or two ago.[/quote]
I’m familiar with the concept, but I think I just stumbled into it once upon a time; it’s not anything I learned formally.
December 11th, 2007 at 12:35 am
I get the “red words,” but my grandmother was an Assembly of God preacher and I was raised going to Baptists churches and in a rural area, so it was a part of the social fabric.
If Christians are worrying about Pullman’s movie, they need not, it sucks. It’s only sort of possible to tell the magistarium is a church. Indeed, if it weren’t for knowing the backstory and slant of the trilogy (from wikipedia) the movie would have sucked more.
Pullman’s stated purpose for the stories is an atheist view, but I think he cheats a bit with the pseudo-religion dust (although he seems to like flirting with pagan ideas).