July 15, 2006 at 11:41 am (Pullman/His Dark Materials)
Heat and Dust
Philip Pullman
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Since 1993, Third Way has been talking in depth to men and women who help to shape our society or set the tone of our culture. We spoke to Philip Pullman, the first author to win the Whitbread Book of the Year Award (and to be ‘longlisted’ for the Booker Prize) for a children’s book, on the 13th February 2002. He subsequently described this interview as ‘the best I’ve ever read’.
The interviewer was Huw Spanner.
This interview is chiefly concerned with the trilogy His Dark Materials, which comprises Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. Please note that, inevitably, it gives away some important turns of the plot.
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July 15, 2006 at 11:40 am (Film and Myth)
Link
Only In Hollywood
It’s time for the envelopes, please. Tango hands out the Oscars for Most Dangerous Romantic Movie Myths
My friend Michelle and her on-again-off-again were off. Again. She complained that he just wasn’t going to the right lengths to win her back. “I need a big gesture,” she said. “I need roses. I need tears. I need Lloyd Dobler on the front lawn with a boom box raised over his head.”
Another friend, Laura, had not met anyone even halfway decent in months, and was starting to wonder if her best friend, Tiny Tony — a sweetheart who is unfortunately short, bald, and bulbous — might be the guy for her after all. “I’ve never been attracted to him or anything,” she said. “But maybe it’s a When Harry Met Sally situation. Maybe we’re meant to be and I just haven’t noticed.”
After almost 15 years as a faithful fan of romantic comedies, I’ve come to a painful conclusion: The movies we watch to supplement our love lives are actually sabotaging them. They make us wonder why our ex hasn’t appeared in our yard playing “In Your Eyes” at midnight even though, if he did so, we’d file for a restraining order, not a marriage license. They lead us to believe that an older, more sophisticated man who criticizes the way we look/talk/ dress will fall madly in love with our made-over selves — if it was good enough for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, it’s good enough for us.
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July 15, 2006 at 11:37 am (Religion and Popular Culture)
Volume XII: Spring 2006
Secular Versus Religious Fans: Are they Different?: An Empirical Examination
Stephen Reysen[*]
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Abstract
An 11-item survey was created and administered to examine differences between secular and religious fans with respect to fan behaviours and beliefs. Responses from 158 adults were examined. Responses from different secular fan groups (e.g., music, media, sports) were similar, lending support to the notion that fans are similar regardless of interest. Responses from different religious groups were also similar among themselves. However, secular fan group responses were different from religious member responses with respect to a number of the questions presented.
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July 15, 2006 at 11:35 am (Film and Myth, Star Wars)
Star Wars as Personal Mythology
by Jonathan Young
Link
Once again, an installment of the Star Wars series has become a movie event of galactic proportions. The spiritual underpinnings of the story have been widely recognized as a clear part of its enormous appeal. There has been much discussion on the mythic dimensions of the film. Now that the commotion has settled down, perhaps it is a good time to reflect on the implications of the tale for those interested in the life of the soul.
Early in the film, an imposing spacecraft is speeding through the darkness between planets. There is a crisis, and two Jedi Knights are on their way to help. The call to adventure is similar in all these movies because it matches experiences that are known to the audience. The events that cause us to develop strengths often begin as bad news. Something calls us to solve a problem, or survive an ordeal, and through this difficult process, we find that we are capable of more than we thought.
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July 15, 2006 at 11:33 am (Film and Myth, Star Wars)
Galactic gasbag
Beneath all the pseudo-mythic Joseph Campbell hogwash, the roots of George Lucas’ empire lie not in “The Odyssey” but in classic and pulp 20th century sci-fi.
By Steven Hart
Link
April 10, 2002 | Another “Star Wars” movie, “Episode Two: Attack of the Clones,” is about to hit the cineplexes. As with all cosmological phenomena, certain strange and even frightening things are likely to happen as the event horizon draws near.
Hardcore fans will prepare for opening night by polishing their toy light sabers and getting their Darth Vader costumes taken out an inch or so. Fast-food joints and toy stores will fill up with merchandise bearing the faces of alien creatures. And some gullible middlebrow — most likely Bill Moyers — will once again recite the pseudo-religious doctrine that attributes the phenomenal success of the series to producer-director George Lucas’ skill at tapping underground streams of ancient legends, using Joseph Campbell’s work in comparative mythology as his dowsing rod.
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July 15, 2006 at 11:31 am (Film and Myth, Star Wars)
An American Mythology: Why Star Wars Still Matters
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Note: This essay, which was written for Catholic World Report magazine, is partly based on reviews and essays that have previously appeared at Decent Films and in the National Catholic Register.
By Steven D. Greydanus
The circle is complete.
The saga that began in midstream over a quarter century ago with Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi — also known to aficionados as Episodes IV, V, and VI, respectively — has at last come to a close with the May release of Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, the third and final installment in the new trilogy of “prequels” detailing the back story to the original trilogy.
Though the new prequels have been widely contrasted unfavorably with the original trilogy, the Star Wars universe remains a cultural institution of immense proportions. Its impact on Hollywood alone has been incalculable. It’s impossible to imagine Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., The Matrix, or The Lord of the Rings without Star Wars. In fact, Lucas’s bitterest critics charge Star Wars with nothing less than “ruining” Hollywood by turning it from the gritty, “relevant” sophistication of films like The Godfather, Taxi Driver, and Annie Hall toward juvenile fantasy, spectacle, and romanticism.
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July 15, 2006 at 11:26 am (Narnia, Pullman/His Dark Materials)
The Guardian
October 1, 1998
“The Darkside of Narnia”
Philip Pullman
Link
Why are we marking the centenary of CS Lewis’s birth with parties and competitions? His books were reactionary and dishonest, says Philip Pullman
The centenary of C S Lewis’s birth on November 29 is being celebrated with all manner of hoopla, much of it connected in one way or another with the Narnia books. There will be an adaptation of The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company, a 100th birthday party at the toy shop Hamleys, a competition for children to draw greetings cards based on the Narnia stories, and fresh editions of the seven books, with newly coloured illustrations.
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July 15, 2006 at 11:24 am (Pullman/His Dark Materials)
Link
PHILIP PULLMAN, the winner of the Whitbread Prize, is a deeply superstitious man. He nearly had to abandon the book which won him the prize because he could not buy the specific notepad he needed. “I’ve been buying the same paper for years and years: narrow-lined with blue margins, two holes. But one day I bought a pad of paper in Rymans, came home and discovered, to my horror, that it had four holes, not two.”
What would happen if he wrote on a pad with four holes? “How could I?” he cries. “I mean, I put it to you, how could anyone possibly finish a book on four-holes paper? So I went back and said ‘Look, this is dreadful, I want two-holes paper, not four’, and they said they’d stopped making it. So I had to buy a pack of little white stickers and stick them over the extra holes.”
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July 15, 2006 at 11:18 am (Children's Literature and Film, Christianity, Film and Myth, Narnia)
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VERJEE: The new film “The Chronicles of Narnia” tells the tale of four children who tumble through the door of a magical wardrobe, then they discover a wondrous land where animals speak and unicorns roam.
CLANCY: Sounds really good. On the surface, “The Lion, the witch and the Wardrobe,” the whole setup doesn’t seem to be deeply spiritual story. But why are the marketers focusing so much on religious undertones as they promote the film?
Delia Gallagher has more on that.
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July 15, 2006 at 11:16 am (Harry Potter)
Never Snitch: The Mythology of Harry Potter
by Wendy Doniger
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Young Harry Potter’s parents are dead. So far, so good: many of the heroes and heroines of the classics of children’s literature are orphans, while others have invisible, unmentionable or irrelevant parents. The sorrow of grieving, not to mention the terror of helplessness, is quickly glossed over in favor of the joy of a fantasized freedom. (A particularly sharp 13-year-old patiently explained to me that if Harry’s parents weren’t dead, there would be no point in writing the book; it wouldn’t be interesting, no matter how many creative details there were.) The problem, for Harry Potter as for most orphans in children’s storybooks, is not the absence of parents but the presence of stepparents. From infancy, Harry has been raised by his horrid Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia Dursley, who hate him and dote upon their own cruel and stupid son, Dudley Dursley; they starve Harry and, when he is forced to spend summer vacations with them, they intercept his mail from his school friends, his only link with the world of people who care for him.
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