MetaCatholic

By a strange coincidence I finally got round to watching The Golden Compass on DVD at the start of this week, and then at the end of the week stumbled across this story in The Independent, in which doubt is expressed over the making of the sequel and Pullman blames the Christian boycott of his film.

Some readers will remember that I had little time for those voices calling for the boycott, and some critical appreciation, especially for the first two books in the trilogy, so I don’t post this as part of the “we hate Pullman” brigade.

However, I feel compelled to note that The Independent’s Arts Correspondent not only seriously misrepresents the overall storyline of the books, but buys big-time into the idea that the Christian boycott is the reason the film flopped at the box office (especially in the US). To be fair, Pullman only seems to see this as a contributory factor, but the journalist makes it the main story.

Here we have a strange alliance between Pullman and his Christian critics. It is naturally in the interest of the would-be boycotters to big up their power. Defy us at your peril, they can say, pointing to the low box office. And it is in Pullman’s and the studios interest to place themselves in the role of victim and martyr. See what these wicked religious fanatics have done to the cause of bold art by their repressive tendencies. It’s not our fault if we lost money on this film.

All this manages to miss the main factor. It really is a bad film. Its compression of the story line, with odd lacunae and laboured exposition denatures the narrative. The new vagueness about the nature of the Magisterium (toning down the anti-Christian polemic) makes the exposition about dust even more risible than it eventually turns out to be in the books. The first two books were powerful (though the last was a disappointment) and this film strips any real imaginative power from them in favour of set piece special effects. There are some quite good touches, and Dakota Blue Richards’ central performance as Lyra is brilliant, but neither the screenwriting team, nor the director seems to know how to handle the translation from print to screen.

My own view is that the influence of the boycott is negligible, if not counter-productive. Christians can increase box-office for films like the Narnia ones, or the Passion of the Christ, by effectively doing member turn-out drives. I’m doubtful that they can kill one. This was just a bad film. But the myth of boycott power suits everyone, including the studio. You’re much more likely to keep your job as a heroic martyr for some mythical freedom of conscience than an artistic and financial failure in the real world.

There are all sorts of ways in which we censor the Bible according to our own traditions, but in this case I mean it in the most direct way: we cut out or avoid the rude bits. Tyler has a great review post today on a new book I certainly want to get hold of: The Uncensored Bible: The Bawdy and Naughty Bits of the Good Book.

It reminds me of an occasion when I based a talk in church around some of the bits of the Bible we didn’t read. “God, you’re sarcastic” (ending of Job), “Ain’t life a bitch” (Ecclesiastes) and “I can’t get enough of your body” (Song of Songs). You’ll notice that this isn’t particularly daring – I steered well clear of the donkey-dicked Egyptians in Ezekiel (Ez 23:20) and other patently rude bits.

Afterwards the vicar (for this was a long time ago) said “I’m not sure that those parts of the Song of Songs are appropriate for reading in Church.” I suggested that that attitude was, in fact, illustrating the whole point I was trying to draw attention to, and that I’d chosen the sections I did (some of the more obviously erotic ones) to make the point. His reply? “Yes, but did you have to sound as though you were enjoying them?”