The Unfavorable "Golden Compass"

We have all heard that on December 7, 2007, a new movie entitled The Golden Compass is coming to theatres. With a cast that includes Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig (the new James Bond), and Sir Ian Murray McKellen, this looks like it could be the Christmas blockbuster of this year. Let's also consider that it looks strangely similar in many aspects to a certain Narnia movie that came out a few years ago. However, the image is the only aspect of this film that can be in any way related back to the works of C.S. Lewis.

The Catholic League had this to say about the upcoming realease:

It is based on the first book of a trilogy titled His Dark Materials. The author of this children's fantasy is Philip Pullman, a noted English atheist. It is his objective to bash Christianity and promote atheism. To kids. "The Golden Compass" is a film version of the book by that name, and it is being toned down so that Catholics, as well as Protestants, are not enraged.

The concern raised by The Catholic League is defined as follows:

The Catholic League wants Christians to stay away from this movie precisely because it knows that the film is bait for the books: unsuspecting parents who take their children to see the movie may be impelled to buy the three books as a Christmas present. And no parent who wants to bring their children up in the faith will want any part of these books.

The brilliance is that they made a movie out of the least offensive of the three novels, so that they could use this movie as a launcing for the last two books that become more violent and discrimitory as you go on.

Philip Pullman, as author of the this trilogy, on his website declares his dislike in organized religion as the following:

...but organised religion is quite another thing. The trouble is that all too often in human history, churches and priesthoods have set themselves up to rule people's lives in the name of some invisible god (and they're all invisible, because they don't exist) – and done terrible damage. In the name of their god, they have burned, hanged, tortured, maimed, robbed, violated, and enslaved millions of their fellow-creatures, and done so with the happy conviction that they were doing the will of God, and they would go to Heaven for it.

That is the religion I hate, and I'm happy to be known as its enemy.

In the trilogy, a young girl, Lyra Belacqua, becomes enmeshed in an epic struggle against a nefarious Church known as the Magisterium; another character, an ex-nun turned particle physicist named Mary Malone, describes Christianity as “a very powerful and convincing mistake.”

Pullman himself wrote an article entitled The Dark Side of Narnia, where he said the following:

For an open-eyed reading of the books reveals some hair-raising stuff. One of the most vile moments in the whole of children's literature, to my mind, occurs at the end of The Last Battle, when Aslan reveals to the children that "The term is over: the holidays have begun" because "There was a real railway accident. Your father and mother and all of you are - as you used to call it in the Shadowlands - dead." To solve a narrative problem by killing one of your characters is something many authors have done at one time or another. To slaughter the lot of them, and then claim they're better off, is not honest storytelling: it's propaganda in the service of a life-hating ideology. But that's par for the course. Death is better than life; boys are better than girls; light-coloured people are better than dark-coloured people; and so on. There is no shortage of such nauseating drivel in Narnia, if you can face it.

What Pullman does not realize (or does not want to admit) is that Aslan is taking about about the life that Christians find in death: Heaven and everlasting life with our heavenly loving Father.

Pullman has gone on to say that he utterly despises Lewis and his Chronicles series, as quoted by Peter Hitchens. The ironic part is that his novel also includes a girl and a wardrobe, which in turn leads to something they didn't bargain for. Hitchens stated this in another article.

[Pullman] has described the Narnia Chronicles as grotesque, disgusting, ugly, poisonous and nauseating. Yet, as Michael Ward, an expert on Lewis, has pointed out, Pullman’s saga begins just as Lewis’s does with a girl hiding in a wardrobe and finding more than she bargained for. It is almost as if he wants to turn Narnia upside-down and then jump on it.

Another strong element to Pullman's novels are the use of "dæmon" (pronounced "demon"). This is the person's soul that lives outside their body. The physical appearance your dæmon would take on would be determined by your attributres as an individual.

Every character in Lyra’s world has a dæmon—an animal-shaped alter ego that is all but inseparable from its human counterpart. Not that the relationship is always congenial. In the first scene in “The Golden Compass,” Lyra quarrels with her dæmon, Pantalaimon, about breaking the college rules, much as characters in more conventional stories might argue with their consciences. The device could be gimmicky, but Pullman wields it with elegant metaphorical economy. Not only do daemons answer the writer’s need to turn a character’s internal struggles into drama; they speak to the ache of consciousness and the desire for an ideal companion. Children, owing to the plasticity of their personalities, have dæmons that can change shape—in the opening scene, Pantalaimon transforms from a moth into an ermine—but as a person comes of age his dæmon settles on a single form that reflects his essence.

On the website for the movie, there is even a quiz for the user so that you can find out what your dæmon would look like.

For myself, I think the most disturbing fact is that, in the final book, characters representing Adam and Eve eventually kill God, who at times is called YAHWEH. I don't usually write about movies, and anyone who knows me knows that my movie collection is quite extensive, but I can say that for anyone with children of any age should avoid seeing this movie.

This is an offensive movie, so please think twice before seeing it. Even if you were to look at this author, movie and trilogy of books from a secular point of view, it all promotes violence and hatred against those whom we disagree with, and in this case it is between the author and the Christian faith. It is only through love and respect of others (whether friend or foe) can we be true "fishers of men"...and this film leads by no such example.