The Golden Compass

I went to The Golden Compass because I had heard that in the movie there was a sophisticated sub text of criticism of the Catholic church. I don't really need to see a sophisticated sub-textual criticism of the Catholic church, (that topic having been thouroughly played out since Paine's day, if not Luther's). But a movie with any sort sophisticated subtext beats one without, so I thought I would see it.

Whatever there is in the novels, nothing made it to the screen. There is the slightest criticism of an entity called the Magisterium. In the movie, the Magisterium is, of course, the Anglican Church, not the Roman, (at least the headquarters of the Magisterium is a modified St Paul's). (It's a sad commentary on the status of affairs that nobody can even tell when the Anglican church is even the target of criticism anymore—the Anglicans have drifted so far out of consequence that even when they're the night's whipping boy, nobody even knows who they are and assume they're Catholics.)

But even with that, all it comes down to is that the Magisterium is bad, no reason is given as to why, really, they're just bad.

The movie also has unusual things happening all the time which made no sense, although they might have in the book. There's a army of flying witches that come storming through at one point for no reason at all. Since it's a fantasy, you accept anything that happens as being a part of the fantasy: "Oh, this is a parallel dimension, here apparently armies of flying witches come and go." As opposed to armies of flying haberdashers from Melbourne.

But why there are flying witches, or who they are, or what they're doing, or why they aren't engaged in haberdashery in Melbourne, I don't know, and the movie does not say.

It's all very pretty, and all very cg fascinating, but nothing substantial. It's a children's fantasy story

An interesting yet minor furor occurred in Blighty over this movie. Philip Pullman, the author of the novels, has spoken out against the movie and its elision of the religious critique. The President of England's National Secular Society has spoken to the press: "It was clear right from the start that the makers of this film intended to take out the anti-religious elements of Pullman's book," said Terry Sanderson, president of the society. "In doing that they are taking the heart out of it, losing the point of it, castrating it. It seems that religion has now completely conquered America's cultural life and it is much the poorer for it. What a shame that we have to endure such censorship here too."

What Sanderson didn't get is that the producers of the movie are hardly clerical grandees who have mangled the beauty of the original work. They are a handful of utterly secular people out in Southern California who took out the religious content because it seemed boring. All that content got in the way of the talking bunnies. They took it out because they didn't understand it. But they did know damn well that anti-clerical polemics don't sell theater tickets. (At least they haven't since, again, Paine's day.)

So I guess Pullman and Sanderson feel so put upon by sneaky clerics out to get them from behind every arras, that they've jumped the gun here and are already on the counter-attack against imagined threats that are not there. Or maybe they just wanted to traduce America by resorting to a stereotype that the country is run by redneck zealots. "Religion has now completely conquered America's cultural life," indeed.

Either way, their defense of secularism has only worsened their position in the lists.