Oh Shit

It looks like the film adaptation of His Dark Materials is going to be sanitized for the benefit of the Christian right, whose feelings, of course, it is impermissible to hurt. (Rowan Atkinson, nee Edmund Blackadder/Mr. Bean, explains why that's not true here.) The trilogy is the only work of post-Tolkien fantasy that rivals LOTR for its breadth of imaginative power, and though Pullman's and Tolkien's writing styles are awfully difficult to compare, I'd have to say that Pullman's writing qua writing is better. (And by the way, if you're too hip to like Tolkien, the odds are still really high, maybe even better, that you'll like Pullman.)

Let's try to harness the power of the blogosphere on this one. Why is it important to do so? Because His Dark Materials is an immaculately subversive and anti-authoritarian book. And it is savagely indignant, to borrow Swift's wonderful phrase, about the horrors of dogmatic religious faith, and unapologetic about the imperative to break the shackles of uncritical religious oranization en masse. We all know that people don't like to read. A film version of the triology that's true to the books could be a cultural hinge point.

What can you and I do? Track down the names and contact info of the individuals and companies involved in the project. Here's a start: the director and screenwriter is Chris Weitz. Raise the subject every chance you get. If you're a blog consumer, leave messages on your favorite blogs that let people know what's up. Write nasty letters to New Line Cinema. Let them all know that we have a bit of purse-power too, and that we aren't willing to compromise our cultural values either.