I never thought I'd say this, but my family has joined the ranks of banning my sisters from watching certain movies. Not because of their age, which I could completely understand (even though they were watching rated R horror movies at a really young age). No, either my mom or their dad (I'm not entirely sure which right now) has banned them from going to see "The Golden Compass." Why? Because the whole point of the movie is to get kids interested in the books by Philip Pullman.
So, what exactly is wrong with that? Well, apparently Pullman is an atheist who kills 'god' in his books, and continually bashes on Christianity. So, of course, my little sisters can't watch it.
You'll note that I am not a Christian. I haven't identified myself as Christian in quite some time, but I don't exactly have a label for what I believe yet. However, my family has gone in the opposite direction as of late... my mother got baptized earlier this year, and she has been getting my sisters more and more involved with her church, especially through bible studies every Wednesday night. So as I'm writing this, they're all at church, and I'm sitting at my mom's house, typing out this blog.
With that background in mind, I was so confused when my mom told me that my sisters weren't allowed to see the movie. Now, I haven't read the His Dark Materials series, but I have had it recommended to me several times, as a way to 'cope' with the loss of Harry Potter. So, I did the only thing I could... I looked up the books on wikipedia. Apparently, "Authority" does die in the Amber Spyglass, but it is not supposed to represent God, and the way it bashes on Christianity is the institution, rather than the actual belief.
But, of course, this specific instance isn't the point of the blog. I don't understand the purpose in censoring anything. I really don't. I mean, by my mom saying that my sisters weren't allowed to see the movie, it made me purposely want to go out and read the books, which she is trying to prevent in the first place. When I told my boyfriend of it, he was determined to see it, even though he was previously waiting to see the reviews of the movie. So in the process of censoring it for my sisters, she actually pushed people to go see it and/or read the books, when we probably wouldn't have previously.
I do understand censoring things for the purpose of making it age appropriate. You don't want to show a movie with sex or graphic violence to a 6 year old. But censoring things because they have ideas that you don't agree with is not the way to do things. People should be exposed to all sorts of ideas, so that they can make their own choices, their own decisions. And by doing so, become productive members of society that can help foster change for the better, instead of remaining in a society where certain freedoms are restricted.
Censorship, in the end, is destructive, and it makes no sense to do it. So why has my family joined the bandwagon? Will my mom now read Harry Potter and decide not to let my sisters read that either?
(Edited because people are focusing on the wrong thing)
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I don't think there's much of a need to worry. By the third book, when the god-ish character dies, you just want to gouge your eyes out so badly that no one will be paying attention. The book gets really in your face with its already none to subtle message and, at the same time, gets really dull and is basically a bunch of people walking around in a field for a long time.
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
Friedrich Nietzsche
http://www.progressiveu.org/090204-dont-miss-this-chance
Okay, its REALLY REALLy annoying that everyone is talking about how evil or not evil it is but i am not even interested in watching it because I DON"T WHAT THE PLOT IS!~does the plot not even matter?
DISCLAIMER: I am not being rude. I'm stating my opinion. No personal attacks are meant. Please give some leniency on how you take my words. imagine me saying them with a smile. ^__^
Maybe you should try picking one of the books up.
Or you could be lazy and use Spark Notes...
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/hisdarkmaterials/context.html
Yes, the plot matters, but that isn't the point of the blog.
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
Friedrich Nietzsche
I liked the books a lot. It is definitley againist the church, and easily can be seen as againist god too. Pullman doesn't hide the fact that he thinks christianity is a joke, so why would I lie. The books are good, entertaining, and fun to read. So go see the movie, read the books, believe what you want and trust you've taught your children well enough to not be swayed so easily.(In this case your mom should trust that.)
Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted
Introduce your mom to him, lol. But I agree with your messege in the post because if you limit people in just seeing things about only your values they cannot create arguments or even their own judgements about the issue. My own father has done this he would not let me see Happy Feet because it talked about Global Warming. Um hello I was 17 at the time. What happened to letting us create our own opinions about things? AND who says the minute we see this studd we will automatically agree with it?? HUH, HUH? hahaha, this is a very strong messege you have posted....
"Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death." - Patrick Dennis
Who's this Friedrich Nietzsche guy anyway?
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
Friedrich Nietzsche
EXCEllent post!
Perhaps you should point out to your mother that if your sister's faith is not sufficiently strong to withstand a MOVIE, maybe the movie isn't the problem. Also, as you said, by forbidding it, your mother has only made this film more interesting.
One more point-- I don't see the trouble in allowing a 6 year old to see nudity. It's just a body, everyone has one. What I object to is small children being exposed to scenes of graphic, excessive violence. I fail to see how a human anatomy is something to be ashamed of, when scenes of bloodshed are A-OK. But that's just my personal opinion.
I would tend to agree with everything written here.
The only time I would object to the nudity, which unfortunately happens often, is when it is portrayed in sexual situations. Children will often try and recreate what they see in movies, and they don't need to learn about sex when they are six. Let kids have their childhoods; but I see nothing wrong with their seeing nude adult bodies in non-sexual situations.
I also agree that violence should be limited. My brother is 14 and he still gets nightmares from violent movies. He's afraid to be home alone - it's a little bizarre, but may have something to do with the prominence of violence and aversion to society in many movies he's seen.
I mentioned nudity because the only time I see nudity in movies is when there's a sexual situation involved. As Katie mentioned... it's not appropriate to show 6 year olds sex. And I wasn't excluding anything else, just using that as one example. Just to be clear.
~C
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I would to disagree somewhat. Age-appriopriate sex education is a good thing, see here
Now yes, maybe small children don't need to know graphic details. But why mystify sex? It only enchances curiosity about it, makes it something "dirty" instead of something natural and necessary for the continuation of the species.
The ability to teach our children about sex in a responsible way, and not from sexual encounters viewed without a true understanding of their consequences, is what sets humans apart from animals.
I think we should embrace this, and teach our children about sex without showing it to them on a movie screen in compromising situations that make it look fun, exciting, and adult without demonstrating everything that goes with it.
Ok, I'll concede that point.
There's a big difference between age-appropriate sex education and letting a 6 year old see a movie with graphic sex in it.
~C
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Erakeys,
I was going to argue that it's not really censorship for parents to choose which movies their kids can watch. But I was thinking more in terms of not letting a 6 year old watch gratuitous violence. But a father who forbids his daughter from seeing Happy Feet at 17 must be pretty extreme.
Engkatiemarie and Allie_the_Neko, I agree with you two about nudity. I think the United States is the only developed country in the world where the government and media raters make such a big deal of it. It's completely irrational.
There's are hidden camera comedy shows, for example, in Europe and Canada (like Just For Laughs made in Montreal) where somebdy's pants rip or the signs get switched on the change rooms and the rest of the world has a laugh watching with their six year olds, but in the United States (that one was shown on ABC) they pixillate someone's butt cheek so as not to get fined by the FCC. Or in a Hollywood movie, in a shower everyone is wearing towels, while the rest of the world knows people come out of a shower naked and that it's an appropriate place to be naked.
And yet seeing someone getting stabbed or shot is out there for any kindergartener to see. It's as if the FCC thinks that it's taking a shower naked, and not stabbing people, that we don't want kids to imitate.
MVenus, I think that connection of nudity to sex is something that Hollywood does. In real life, most times people are nude has nothing to do with sex. In European movies, people can take baths and swim in the lake, sleep nude, go in the sauna, change clothes, breastfeed, etc., and it doesn't mean the moment we see a breast a sex scene is coming up.
Well, Hollywood is what does it then. In Hollywood movies, nudity is usually associated with sex. Children should not be exposed to sexual scenes. I know this isn't the case in other productions, as I've seen a number of foreign movies that show nudity without any relation to sex. But Hollywood typically doesn't do that. And Americans typically watch movies from Hollywood. That's just the fact of the matter.
And I don't know about you, but my family always puts on towels before coming out of the shower, for several reasons. One, it prevents water from dripping all over the floor if you dry off while still in the shower. Two, it gives you a little bit of buffer against the cold when you step out of the steamy shower. So coming out of a shower with a towel on is not completely irrational.
But in the long run, you're missing the point. Censoring SEX, VIOLENCE, DRUGS, WHATEVER, is understandable (whether you consider it censoring or not, it's parents not letting their children see something). Censoring something that simply gives a different view of a certain belief is not. It makes no sense. Don't focus on the nudity part of the blog, focus on the blog as a whole.
~C
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I'm an atheist, haven't read the series, but I do know that the one way to make a thing really attractive to a kid is to forbid it.
I don't agree with some of your other views, such as that nudity would be inappropriate for a six-year-old to see. Pornography would be inappropriate, but a lot of people, myself included, think that nudity is just nudity and ought to be demystified.
MVenus, I reread your edited original post.
I do completely agree that it is not only a parent`s right but his or her responsibility to decide what is appropriate for the kids to have around the house, including media.
Just last night, I was looking after my niece and I actually searched and searched the TV listings to find something appropriate for her to watch.
I avoided a particular episode of Family Guy even though I know she had already seen it (her mom and dad let her watch it even though I don`t}. I don`t think Family Guy is something a little kid should watch, even though I like it. I think you need to have a certain level of maturity to be able to kind of put its irreverant humor in its place.
I tried Zach and Cody and she said, `This is dumb.` Then I found this infantile cartoon about kids at school and she liked that one.
I feel like it`s very hard to find something that`s good for little kids to watch. I`d rather they would at that age be seeing shows in which characters work out problems constructively and there are no gratuitous insults, yelling, swearing, violence, sex, vomiting, etc.
All of those things have their place on TV for sure (and can be dealt with in dumb, gratuitous ways or in intelligently developed plots}, and I want the FCC to stay out of my living room and let me watch programs that are not all `dumbed down` to child level.
Even though I`m very careful about what a little kid watches, I think a dad not allowing a 17 year old to watch a cartoon about the environment (like Erakeys mentioned} is a case of going beyond reasonable concerns.
I read The Golden Compass, and the other books in the series, as a young teenage. They maybe written from an atheist perspective, but they didn't sway me from my Christian beliefs. I'm anxious to see the movie, and might even read the books again if I get some time. The books brings up some interesting theological/philosophical questions, but I don't think the negative hype about them is justified, in fact I think it's good to have your beliefs questioned.
How old are your sisters that weren't allowed to see the movie? If they're pre-teen or younger, I would understand your parents telling them they aren't allowed to see it until they're older, but I don't think there's any reason to forbid a teenage from reading the books or seeing the movie. If parents are worried about what their children will get out of a movie (or book) they should see it first and/or with their child and talk about it afterwards.
"Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise, risking more than others think is safe, dreaming more than others think is practical, and expecting more than others think is possible."
Nine and eleven. The 9 year old has super-intelligence (no, seriously, she was doing things I learned in high school the other night, and I'm advanced), and the 11 year old is learning disabled. Makes for some interesting dynamics around the house.
Their stepmom won't let them watch PG-13 movies at all (which... I'm iffy about. There's some PG-13 movies that they don't need to be watching, and others that I can't fathom why they're rated PG-13), which is why I suspect that it might not be my mom's idea to prevent them from watching it.
What bugs me most about the whole situation, though, is that it's all based on those propaganda messages being sent over the Internet. My mom actually sent me one of them the other night. It reminds me too much of Laura Mallory. Sure, if my mom or ex-stepdad or someone had actually read the books, and thought that they should not be read for a few more years, I could maybe agree. But banning the movie entirely because it will encourage them to read 'those godless books' is stupid.
~C
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The Golden Compass was on my Battle of the Books reading list in sixth grade. Contrary to what everyone else has said on the matter, the religious aspects really did bother me at the time. Being a hardcore Catholic, I had trouble accepting that the Church could do wrong, even in fiction. The story, however, was fantastic and original, and it's still one of my favorite fantasy novels. Of all the things that contributed to my abandonment of Christianity, however, The Golden Compass was not an important one.
Some parents in my town are refusing to allow their children to go on a class trip to see the film because the book has atheistic overtones. So, it's not just your mother overreacting to the "threat" that unorthodox opinions bring.
My question is: Who can possibly say no to giant, armored polar bears? Seriously.
T.k.
Oh, I know it's not just my mom. But my mom was perfectly ok with me and my littlest sister reading books like Harry Potter, and seeing the movies on opening day. Books that Christians like to ban, for some odd reason. She's the last person in the world I would think would want to prevent her children from watching a movie like that. That's why it's so shocking to me.
~C
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Maybe why your mother doesn't want your sisters to see that movie is because she's afraid that movie might give them a bad message that its not wrong to be against God, insult God, etc.
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Hmm... that's sort of the point though. It should be their decision to make as to what to believe about God and how to express that. Censoring doesn't solve a problem, it merely keeps one uninformed and ignorant of the various other ideas and concepts out there.
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Soar high and laugh on the wind
~Fallon~
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Until your sister is old enough to care for herself as an adult, then she must follow your mother's rules. There is nothing wrong with being opposed to something on the basis of your religion. I have muslim friends who will never eat pork because their religion says they should not. If your mother does not want your sister to be exposed to things that might affect her faith in God, then it is not your place to challenge it. Your sister is, at the end of the day, your mother's child, not yours. You can only recommend, and even then to a certain extent, after which you must be silent and let your mother do what she feels is best. When you have a child of your own, you may or may not allow them to read Northern Lights, the Subtle Knife, and the Amber Spyglass. Until then, I think that you should explain politely to your mother that you don't think there is anything wrong with the movie, but if she still says your sister can't watch it, then please don't sneakily allow her to.
First of all, it's sisterS. As in more than one.
Second of all, what makes you think I'm going to sneakily allow my sisterS to see the movie, or read the books? I don't live with them anymore, I see them about once every other week, and will see them less after I graduate in May. The point of the blog was not to gain support for a rebellion, it was to express the idea that I do not agree with my mother. It was a rant that I would not bring up to her, because that would be disrespectful. Don't assume that just because I disagree with her that I'm going to actively undermine her, especially over something this stupid.
Finally, I have a boyfriend that won't eat pork because he's Jewish. I have other Jewish friends that have no qualms about mixing meat and milk. It is their personal choice to do so. Additionally, they weren't bound by those religious restrictions until they were 13, after they were considered adults. My understanding is that Islam treats children in much the same way. So, that's a horrible example to use... it is their choice not to eat pork; it is my sisters' parents' choice to ban them from watching a movie. I'd have no qualms whatsoever if my mom were to allow them to go, and they decide not to go because the movie looks stupid or they've heard bad things about it.
So basically, it sounds like you missed the whole point of the blog. Things should not be censored because they show a different view of things, even to children. Censoring based on age-appropriate content I don't think is wrong, but just because something shows a different point of view than your own is stupid, because the only way we learn is by hearing new ideas. Even as far as religion goes... you can't be strong in your faith if you never question it.
~C
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So, I just saw the movie and your mother needn't worry. The words god and church are never uttered. The Church has become a secular institue, to all extents and puposes.
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
Friedrich Nietzsche
From what I understand, she doesn't want them seeing the movie, because it's watered down in order to promote the books, which are very anti-Christian. But thanks for sharing :-)
~C
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If the movies want to promote the books, I'd say they weren't doing a very good job. It was dissapointing.
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Said "God is dead" which is why I thought it was funny, lol... I guess just my humor saw it.... oh welllll
"Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death." - Patrick Dennis
I saw it. I was joking, obviously.
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything."
Friedrich Nietzsche
His Dark Materials is a very good fantasy series. Now, I can't speak for the first book (The Golden Compass) because I accidentally started with book two and then book three, but I can point something out.
SPOILERS!!!! You have been warned.
In the last book, The Amber Spyglass, it turns out that this figure they call God is a fake.He was simply an angel that told the other angels that he created them. Now, this doesn't necessarily mean there ISN'T a god, but that these people were swayed into believing the wrong being.
I'm not an atheist but I still love the books. I think a common theme we have to remember when considering religion with certain fantasy novels is this: THEY'RE FANTASY! Fiction is fiction, it doesn't assume itself to be true. It's a story for entertainment purposes.
It's getting a little frustrating to hear of so many cases of people banning their children from reading certain books or seeing certain movies. I wouldn't want to have such a narrow view of the world, and I definitely like to try/read/see new things. Last week I attended a controversial play called The Laramie Project. If you have the chance, go see it. It's amazing. But it was controversial because it talks about "the gay issue" as one character puts it.
Well, we can only hope that others will wise up and realize that the threat is not from fiction, but from crime or substandard education or politics in general.
I am firmly against censorship. The point of having different views, opinions and presentations of things is so that people can learn to think for themselves. And, although porn might now be a good idea, nudity is no crime. And I don't see the big deal with that, or ideas that are "too mature for children", simply because it is too mature for them and they don't understand anyway. Like Family Guy. Some episodes can have some raunchy stuff in it, but it is pretty much a bunch of subtle jokes that even adults don't understand. I don't know if I got my point across but I hope you get it.
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--The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return--
I hate the entire idea of censorship, and to censor a children's book/movie is absolutely ridiculous -- I wrote up a blog post myself about it. I live in a really religious town and I was almost certain the movie wasn't going to come to our theater, which is pretty much ruled by the church. People in school shun the book because "it was written by an atheist." And they act like the word "atheist" is synonomous with "devil." It's so annoying.