Thoughts on "The Golden Compass"

As you have no doubt heard, The Golden Compass is the first in a series of stories, written by atheist Philip Pullman, to be something of an "anti-Narnia" series. This has generated some controversy, which has no doubt helped ticket sales to people like me who otherwise would not have seen the movie.

A few thoughts. As a movie, this movie is mediocre. It has the potential to be really impressive, but I couldn't help but feel that it was very poorly edited. One felt as if one was watching the highlights of a much much longer movie that had been spliced together rather hurriedly. The story was disjointed. In virtually every scene some new character appeared who was immediately welcomed as a closely trusted advisor to the main characters, who are supposed to be on the run from the all-powerful Authority of the Magisterium (which would imply some level of caution).

Then there is the issue of whether this is a children's movie or an adult movie. Some of the dialogue is quite grown-up, addressing issues (favorite's of post-modern philosophy) of the relation between truth and reality on the one hand and truth and power on the other. Over against this is the annoying "kids movie dialogue" that could have come from any number of movies targetted at 6-year-olds. Also, some scenes are rather violent for children, as when one polar bear knocks the lower jaw clean off another, and it goes sliding across the ice.

Then there are the religious or ideological questions. The bad guys in the movie are attempting to control 'truth' in order to control people. In the old days we called that "propaganda" but in this movie it is recast in more postmodern terms: their truth vs. our truth. But even so, the truth that is discerned using the Golden Compass (a tool for gaining truth) is said to describe things as they really ARE. So this isn't exactly a post-modern "no absolutes" world after all. The "truth" of the Magisterium turns out simply to be lies.

Nicole Kidman claims that this movie is not anti-Catholic, though I think that is debateable. The evil powers that are trying to control everyone are called the Magisterium (and I only know of one institution in the world that goes by that name). They are willing to use any means necessary to squelch the "heretics" (a word with strong anti-clerical connotations in Europe). And in one scene, the local office of the Magisterium has painted on the outside of it Christian icons, apparently of the four evangelists, so that the office looks like the altar area of many churches. So the association is hard for the trained eye to miss: Christianity, perhaps especially the Roman Catholic variety, is associated with the evil Authority that is trying to control everyone. Now the average 10 year old may have no idea what an iconostasis looks like or what the words "Magisterium" or "heretic" mean in the real world, but one wonders if the really extreme lovers of this book can possibly grow up to be the very devout sort of Roman Catholics that the Church is no doubt trying to cultivate?

Finally, I should say there is the issue of the daemons - the spirits of the various characters that take the form of animals. Because of the spelling of the word itself, as well as the function of the daemons in the story, I feel they are intended to be associated with Socrates' daemon which he describes in the Apology (which is something like his conscience or connection to the divine will), rather than with demons as they are usually understood (fallen angels/spiritual forces of wickedness) in the Judeo-Christian tradition, though the words "daemon" and "demon" are clearly variants of the same word.

So the Authority/Magisterium of The Golden Compass could represent any number of actual regimes - including the Greek City-state that killed Socrates for that matter, and for that reason the movie is not explicitly anti-Christian/Catholic. Indeed one could even argue, I suppose, (based on having seen only the first movie) that the Golden Compass is a source of "divine revelation" and could be used as an analogy to the Bible. However the association of traditional Christian lingo and imagery with "the Evil powers" in this film is very noticeable to me.

Some interesting posts at "Anglican Mainstream"

"Anglican Mainstream" is a blog run by Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical, Orthodox, and Charismatic Anglicans, and often has some good posts (it is one of the Anglican sites included in the links further down my right side-bar). There are several good ones from December 7th and 8th that I recommend:

"Russian Patriarch: Losing their Christians roots the people of Europe will sign their own death warrant" on Dec. 8th

and "Where Netherlands goes..." on December 8th.

This second post discusses the move of the Dutch government to spend millions in programs specifically targeting orthodox religious believers, especially young Muslims to change their views on homosexuality to reflect to more "tolerant" position of the governemnt.

This raises a whole host of questions for me. Is it the governments's place to deliberately change the religious beliefs of people? Does the government play any part in forming people's values? Socrates (according to Plato's Republic) believed that it could not avoid doing so, since people will always use the laws as an ethical gauge of sorts.

Is that true? If so, what is the responsibility that it implies for the government in terms of accepting or rejecting various ideologies (as in this Dutch case - certain ideologies recieve official endorsement and others are targeted for destruction - through persuasion, of course). What does this imply for countries that are supposedly pluralistic? Can such a country even have laws that apply to all citizens equally (as our 14th Amendment supposedly requires)? How worried should I be about this?

Of course, all of these questions relate to Patriarch Alexy II's point that Europe has abandoned a whole web of inter-related ideological commitments (that of a Christian worldview) in favor of a hodgepodge of Enlightenment and postmodern plattitudes that may or may not be coherent together in their pre-suppositions about the nature of the world and of community and of justice (Pope Benedict XVI has written extensively on this, as I have noted before).

What do you guys think?

Teddy-Bear Crisis over...?

The British school teacher, Gillian Gibbons, who was jailed in Sudan for "insulting Islam" was released today into the care of British officials. She was arrested and sentenced to 15 days in prison for allowing her students to name a teddy bear "Muhammed." Under Sharia Law, which is enforced in Sudan, this is a punishable offense.

Gibbons released an apology, stating that she was sorry for causing distress to the people of Sudan, by allowing students to name a teddy bear "Muhammed."

New British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is delighted at the turn of events, saying that "common sense has prevailed." See source article .

My question is: if common sense has actually "prevailed" - then why is Gibbons, who has just been released from prison, issuing an apology to the people of Sudan over a teddy bear?!

If devout and orthodox Christians in the West had heard that a Buddist had named his dog "Jesus" we might be mildly annoyed, but clearly no one in the US or even Europe would be jailed for this.

This highlights how different Western and Islamic values are - we do see a sort of a "collision of civilizations" here, but not the sort that some thinkers had expected. Islamic civilization (as represented by the Sharia Law-enforcing countries*) is extremely defensive and non-tolerant in the face of opposition, and makes dissenting views illegal (just ask dissenters in Turkey who have "insulted Islam"), while late-modern/post-modern Western culture is determined to see all points of view as equally legitimate and to be inclusive/tolerant of every possible conviction (because, having rejected all "absolutes," we lack a coherent foundation to stand upon in opposition to any position). So, Sharia Law countries will lock people in jail for "insulting Islam" (whatever that may mean) and the sort of Western values that the Gibbons apology represent will expect such people to apologize for ever being so insensitive/intolerant to begin with.

Do you see how radical Islamic and radical pluralistic ideologies work so nicely together? - the one is aggressive and narrow-minded, self-assured in its own divine foundations; the other is so uncertain of any foundations or absolutes at all, that it is forever apologizing for those moments when it lapsed into having and defending real convictions of any kind.

And what do you expect will happen to more traditional Western values, such as freedom of thought/speech in such an environment as this?

* I recognize that there will some debate as to whether Shariah enforcing nations are representative of "Islamic Civilization." I agree that this is certainly a debateable point, and I hope that such debate will begin in earnest across the Muslim world. But it does seem to me (and I freely admit that I am NO expert here) that these nations represent the greatest continuity with what Islam has been historically, while more moderate varieties of Islam are moderate precisely in so far as they have integrated Western/Enlightenment values into their worldview.