Via “Golden Compass Points to Controversy“:
Based on the first volume in the award-winning trilogy “His Dark Materials” by religious skeptic Philip Pullman, the movie already has been condemned by conservative Roman Catholics and evangelicals. They say it will hook children into Pullman’s books and a dark, individualistic world where all religion is evil.
But at least one liberal scholar has called the trilogy a “theological masterpiece,” and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops rates the film “intelligent and well-crafted entertainment.”
Meanwhile, some secularists complain the movie from New Line Cinemas waters down Pullman’s religious critique. They feel sold out by the author, who has described himself as both an atheist and agnostic.
Ha. They got hoist by complexity! Not so easy to simply condemn this outright is it?
I wondered what was taking so long. After hearing that the movies were being made, I expected immediate uproar, like there was for several other movies. When the response was silence, I figured the knee-jerk condemnations would have to wait until the dumb people managed to find someone that could read the books.
Now, how proud can Pullman be about this? The response to his complex work is complex! Maybe the person the dumb people got to read the books for them couldn’t explain it simply enough? However, I thought it would be as simple as saying, “They killed Kenny!” But, the complexity of the story appears to be such that even the condemnation of the movie ends up being not so simple as that. Witch hunts hunts aren’t so easy anymore, I suppose. This is a kind of progress, isn’t it?