You can't do that!

From a story on the BBC website:

The director and screenwriter of the film adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials is to remove references to God and the church in the movie.

Chris Weitz, director of About a Boy, said the changes were being made after film studio New Line expressed concern.

The award-winning trilogy - Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass - tell the story of Oxford girl Lyra Belacqua.

She is drawn into an epic struggle against the Church, which has been carrying out experiments on children in an attempt to remove original sin.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4077987.stm


The Christians don’t like these books. These books attack Christians – or anyway, Christians feel attacked by these books. And if Christians feel attacked, well then, Christians are being attacked. Right?

So what are those liberals out there in Hollywood doing?

Caving. Censoring themselves. Changing the text to make the Christians happy.

How do you like George W's America so far?

And --

Why should we care?

Here's why. Why do books get published? Why do movies get made? What's media for?

All of it is to make money, obviously. But if we have the people who control the money convinced that the Far Right Christians need to be appeased at all costs -- and apparently right now Bushco and Dobson and his pack do indeed have the money people convinced of that -- then things that might make those Christians whiny are less likely to be published.

This matters because those Christians, being all faith-based, are opposed to certain aspects of the culture that matter.

Parts that criticize dangerous aspects of their church, for instance.

Parts that deal with critical thinking, for another.

Parts that don't match their worldview: feminism, ethical relativism, evolution, environmentalism, and just the weirdest things. Who knew that Christians were opposed to little girls in shorts, for instance?

So -- anyway --

First they went after Harry. Now they're going after Lyra. When will they be happy? When we're all sitting around in church reading Sunday school bulletins?

(Ha. When none of us can read at all. That's when they'll be happy.)