When I logged onto my Facebook account today, my news feed delighted in telling me that a group has started a campaign to boycott the movie "The Golden Compass," which is based on the first of Phillip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy. Apparently, people are concerned that the adaptation of atheist Pullman's books will encourage children to read it during their Christmas break. The group page links to a Fox News article with a headline reporting that Christian groups claim the movie is a "stealth campaign" for atheism.
Some groups want to wait and see the movie before making a decision about it; others see the movie as a means of sparking inquiry into their own faith. Controversy is certainly excellent at following its own script: Fox News is reporting on the conservative right's reaction, boycotts are in play, atheists and/or liberals are annoyed at the former's response, and moderates from both camps are desperately trying to break out of their stereotypical molds. Next, I'm sure, CNN will cover the story on repeat with a clever pun and graphic - How about "Compass can't guide way out of controversy?" CNN, I expect royalties.
Let me clarify some things: I haven't read "The Golden Compass." I don't plan on seeing the movie until I've read the book, which was recommended to me by both my Christian mother and my sister, who studies religion at Harvard Divinity school. I myself am a confirmed Episcopalian, and I attend All Saints Church. I come from the "buckle of the Bible Belt," as we Pampans like to call it. Even though I'm a Christian, I look forward to the intellectual points Pullman might make within his narrative.
Maybe that's an unexpected twist on where people think this column was going or who this columnist is. Maybe readers assumed this was going to be another rant published in The Daily Texan, the crazy "liberal" paper. Maybe I defy readers' expectations; maybe I don't. Regardless, as a group, everyone is doing a good job of fulfilling everyone else's expectations in the midst of this controversy.
Let's start with Fox News. Are we really surprised that the network is covering far-right Christian opinions? But even though Fox's article and its headline seem to support the far-right opinion, it does justice to Pullman's position and ends with an accusation by Craig Detweiler that the far right is capitalizing off the movie in the same sense it accuses Pullman of doing. Detweiler, the co-director of Reel Spirituality, a pop culture and religion think tank at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., says the movie and book provide an opportunity to introspectively question our own religious foundations in a positive way, to focus on faith rather than the bureaucratic nightmare of "destructive idols" we've created.
Pretty surprising stuff from Fox News, the same network that has brought us the one and only Bill O'Reilly.
Next come the boycotting Christians - you've got to give it to activist Christian groups. In a time when America seems to be suffering from an epidemic of apathy, Christian groups are still capable of raising a ruckus like none other. After their initial mobilization, though, their cause becomes gray, and the self-fulfilling prophecy strikes again. Christian boycotters confirm the point of Pullman's novel (and stereotypes of Christian activists in general). While I love a good boycott, it's easy to see how "boycott" can in turn be interpreted as "suppression of ideas." It's a disturbing concept that an organized group discourages its members from letting them see anything that contradicts their ideological message. Pullman may have had a point when he was quoted as saying that the religious icons and institutions in his book could be "any arbitrary establishment that curtails the freedom of the individual."
But this is a gray area, and Christian groups have a pretty good point. If you have a strong enough foundation for your beliefs, any message that contradicts them will urge you to thoroughly investigate them, hence strengthening your beliefs. But that doesn't mean you should be tricked into going to see a message that contradicts your beliefs. Freedom in this situation goes both ways. While people should have the freedom to access the information they want, people should also have the freedom to know what kind of information they are accessing. As ominous as the suppression of ideas may seem, there is a propaganda-like vibe in shrouding a loaded, ideological book in a winter blockbuster's clothes.
Sometimes it seems that we're all just stuck in a ridiculous, cosmic joke full of self-fulfilling prophecies. Let's not think about Pullman's deeper message or even hear it; let's just make sure people know to boycott it. Let's not think that Christians on the far right are capable of having an articulate point underneath the noise; let's make sure we stereotype them as unintellectual facists. Until we can have civilized, intellectual debate, our reactionary arguments confirm each others' stereotypes, keeping us part of the joke's punch line. At this rate, scientists are bound to make the discovery that sight is directly linked to hearing and thought, since everyone is so blindly faithful to their position that no one is hearing or listening. Orr is a radio-television-film and philosophy senior, and features editor of The Daily Texan.
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