Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The Golden Compass

In various interviews with Philip Pullman, author of "The Golden Compass," "The Subtle Knife," and "The Amber Spyglass," he describes his books as essentially the anti-Narnia books.

Pullman, who hails from Oxford, is an agnostic who, in 1995, began a trilogy of books called the "His Dark Materials" books. If any of this sounds familiar, it should. His first book is a new movie starring Nicole Kidman, and it comes out December 7th.

Plugged In Online has an excellent article concerning the new movie. Absolutely, it needs to be read. Here are a few excerpts.

"I hate the Narnia books, and I hate them with a deep and bitter passion," he told one interviewer, "with their view of childhood as a golden age from which sexuality and adulthood are a falling-away."

"I suppose technically, you'd have to put me down as an agnostic. But if there is a God, and he is as the Christians describe him, then he deserves to be put down and rebelled against. As you look back over the history of the Christian church, it's a record of terrible infamy and cruelty and persecution and tyranny. How they have the bloody nerve to go on Thought for the Day and tell us all to be good when, given the slightest chance, they'd be hanging the rest of us and flogging the homosexuals and persecuting the witches."

"There are churches there, believe me, that cut their children too, as the people of Bolvangar did—not in the same way, but just as horribly. They cut their sexual organs, yes, both boys and girls; they cut them with knives so that they shan't feel. That is what the church does, and every church is the same: control, destroy, obliterate every good feeling."

Pullman has said unambiguously, "My books are about killing God."

1 comment:

Matthew LaPine said...

Wow, powerful stuff. The scariest part is that most Christians will think, "it's just a story, there's no real damage a movie like this could do." But worldview battles are not won or lost on the philosophical levels. Oh pray for our songs and stories, by the time we realize they've changed it will be too late.