Sunday evening already?

[cleolinda]

So, here's what's new in the world of L'affaire Lexicon:

soleta_nf remembered Steve Vander Ark saying at Convention Alley 2004 that "his real reason for starting the lexicon was that he knew JKR would be publishing an encyclopedia someday, and he hoped that, by having already created one, he would be the person she approached to help her with it."

Comments

[theatre_angel]

The Tolkien quote by Pullman was taken a little bit out of context -- he was talking about both C.S. Lewis and Tolkien (and actually said that he preferred Tolkien over Lewis) and how Lewis would always address these very serious issues in his books because he was constantly questioning his faith; whereas Tolkien, who was secure with his beliefs and what the church represented for him, wrote about things that were "trivial" because he wasn't wrestling with the greater questions that Lewis was. That being said, he's a really eloquent speaker and very funny. :-)

(The atheism-selling thing boggles me. The books are not particularly against religion as a concept, though they are anti-organized religion. I don't know, it just kind of bugs me that they don't specify that, because Pullman's coming off as a crazy here.)

[cleolinda]

I'll mention that, then. It bugs me because I really love the books and I love what we've seen of the movie so far, and it's a hard enough sell with all these Religious Right types running around shrieking. I almost just want to lock Pullman up somewhere quiet for the next three months, although it's not his fault if media outlets take things he says out of context for maximum impact on a headline.

[theatre_angel]

He was actually pretty good about the whole thing. He's so un-radical in person that it's almost hard to understand why anyone would find him threatening. Someone asked him a question about why he was opposed to religion, and he answered that he was opposed to theocracy -- and that the most dangerous theocracy in history had been atheist, aka the Communist party. I thought that was an interesting way of addressing the whole issue, but it probably didn't assuage very many people.

[idrach]

What gets me is the (of course) hypocrisy. They're flipping out over the "atheist agenda" but these are the same groups of people who have explicitly stated again and again that they have an agenda as well.

Not only that but, um, Narnia anyone? I don't recall much of this worrying over the agenda in that film either...

[inkytwist]

Narnia was written by a Christian. We're supposedly terrified of the other side, and not confident in our own beliefs to protect us from teh evals.

grr.

[theatre_angel]

Well, Narnia wasn't really a problem because it was embracing Christianity and is generally viewed as an allegory for the crucifixion/resurrection and the larger issue of faith. HDM is examining the other side, which freaks the hardcore Christians out, thus prompting this mass frenzy over the books and movies. It's more than a little ridiculous.