And yet, the new Daily Show website fails me again.

[queen_of_kithia]

I know, because I looked it up in my journal, that on April 26th, 2005 the Daily Show reported something that Bill Donahue of the so-called "Catholic League" said that made me angry, but I can't remember what it was, and thedailyshow.com can't (or won't) locate any videos from that date (nor does searching under the term "bill donahue" bring up

Comments

[eofs]

I've not quite finished Spyglass yet, but I would say that thus far it's very much anti-ChurchwithabigC rather than anti-religion. And it's only anti-Church if said Church is all-powerful, totalitarian and puts its own interests above those of its people. And frankly every person I see crying about how this film is anti-religion I want to ask them if that is how they see their church. I know that there are some readings though which even go so far as to say that it is pro-spiritual and pro-... having a good relationship with your god? Dunno, hard to say. Especially without having read the ending yet. But certainly one argument I've seen is that it is about the importance of free will. And apparently doing stuff God likes out of free will is better regarded by him than doing it out of fear? I dunno, I'm no theological scholar. But that sounded like a convincing argument to me - partly because that's the objection I've always had to a lot of organised religion.

I just went to get you a review from CatholicNews.com (which was good and actually a] bothered to see the film and b] judged it reasonably) only to find that it has been removed from the site by the USCCB who gave no reason for doing so. My cynical side which is disgusted by the backlash did not want anything positive about the film to be associated with the word Catholic. Especially because they kindly offer links (in the post you're redirected to) to articles with titles like "Author of book behind ‘Golden Compass’ criticized as anti-Christian" and "Critics debate merits of ‘The Golden Compass’ movie".

If you're quick though, you can still read the review. Hit escape (or whatever makes your browser stop loading pages) as soon as you can see the page has loaded, before the redirect kicks in. Link. It has the best parental advisory note EVER: The film contains intense but bloodless fantasy violence, anti-clerical subtext, standard genre occult elements, a character born out of wedlock and a whiskey-guzzling bear.

I would urge you, as a Catholic, to read the books (and see the film if you want) when you have the opportunity and make up your own mind. Don't do what the 150,000 people joining the biggest Facebook GC-boycott group have done. And ignore Pullman. You know how you feel about this Donahue guy? I've seen a lot of atheists getting pretty pissed off by what Pullman's been spouting. I suspect I would be if I read it. But the way I see it is that Lewis' beliefs are abhorrent to me, yet I enjoy the Chronicles of Narnia. Agreeing with the author and enjoying the work do not have to go hand in hand.

The sad thing is that whilst it's topped the box-office this weekend, it made 'only' $27m in domestic sales its opening weekend. That's not good for the size the film ought to be. At all. It was known in advance that this film would likely make or break New Line and based on that weekend, it's looking like the final death knell only 4 years after RotK. Of course, it's impossible to ever say how much of that damage was done by the backlash by people like Donahue. It was a horribly timed release - during finals/the Christmas run-up for the 16-30ish crowd who make up a lot of readers and a few weeks before the Christmas hols, thus unlikely to draw huge numbers of families in just yet. If it can hang on in screens until people actually have free time, it might pick up. International sales should help it too - without the Christian problem messing things up over here. But poor secular reviews won't help.

They kind of shot themselves in the foot really. They majorly toned down the anti-Church stuff (which isn't that prevalent in the first book anyway) in order to appease the real world church. This pisses off the atheists and book fans. Meanwhile the real world church are not appeased because they accuse the film of luring children into reading the books by appearing to be all sparkly and family-friendly. Lose-lose. I'm so sick of the idea that everything non-Christians do must have an agenda.

Apologies if this doesn't entirely make sense - I've been piecing it together in my head for a few days and I might have forgotten things.

[queen_of_kithia]

Yeah, I pretty much see eye-to-eye with you on this. From what I have read about the books they seemed to be more anti-authoritarianism and anti-corruption than anti-Church or anti-Christian. I cut out the part where I quoted the Augustana professor in that Argus Leader article where he said (now I'm paraphrasing) "the Church in the books has very little resemblance to the Church I belong to and worship in", and from what I've seen and read of it, that's how I feel too.

And I absolutely agree with you that you don't have to agree with an author's views to appreciate literature. I had been piecing this together in my mind too before I finally wrote it down, and at one point I was going to point out that I don't agree with Tony Kushner on certain things (though I have a deep amount of respect for him), yet I still enjoy "Angels in America". Art and literature is to be interpreted; if there's no scope for interpretation it's propaganda, and if you're just going to parrot the artist/author's views, what's the point?

I probably will read the books at some point; according to all credible sources they're very good and well-written. It's not that any of this nonsense will turn me off of it, it's just that there are many other books that I want to read more. And they're all checked out of the library, and there's a waiting list, and I can't afford to buy them, especially before Christmas. But I do and always have had every intention of making up my own mind about it. I suppose I should have refrained from posting about it until I'd had the chance to do one or the other, that would have been the more academically responsible thing to do, but since that probably won't be for months all the hubbub would have died down and perhaps no one would have cared what I had to say anymore.

I don't remember now if CatholicNews.com was the same outfit who initially gave a positive review to Brokeback Mountain, and then remembered, "oh yes, we don't like the gay" and recanted that. Unfortunately for me, Wikipedia no longer remembers either. And that's disappointing, and I wish they wouldn't do that because it sort of adds credence to the authoritarian and controlling perspective, but on the other hand the fact that those reviews got through in the first place shows that some of us are capable of reasonable and non-judgmental thought and ... I don't know how to say this...I guess interpreting things in the context of scriptures and not just taking the dogmatic view.

[queen_of_kithia]

Okay, I was confused before about the review you were talking about because I'd never seen anyone use the abbreviation USCCB before, so I wasn't sure who it meant. But anyway, I'm pretty sure it was the same situation with Brokeback Mountain, is that the Catholic News Service published a positive review which was later retracted. I also notice that these particular reviewers don't have any letters after their names or titles before their names, which implies that they themselves aren't bishops but merely people employed by the bishops to review movies, and it seems to me that if the bishops are going to censor their movie reviews anyway, they ought to cut out the middlemen and write the reviews themselves, and if they don't have time for that then they ought not to bother having movie reviews at all.

Blah. My brain is mush and I can't say the things I want to say the way I want to say them. What else is fucking new? And I'm tired of trying. I was going to go to bed early tonight so I wouldn't be so damn tired at work tomorrow like I was today. Good job, Mary, well done. I guess my point is just this: Bill Donahue, aside from being a crazy man whom the news networks like to put on TV because he shouts a lot, is a conservative. The US Conference of Bishops seems to lean to the conservative side, but I actually think it's more about caution than it is conservativism. And I guess I'll quit there.