This has been in the news a lot lately, so I’ve been thinking about it, and in thinking about it, I have a few things to say. As you’ve probably seen, this year’s Christmas season exploitation film is The Golden Compass, based on the series of books with a different name. The book has been called many things, but most notably it’s been called something akin to an atheist Chronicles of Narnia.

Most of the controversy surrounding the film has been from various Christian and Catholic organizations calling for a boycott of the film—something that the producers had feared would happen, and thus make the film tank in the American market. In order to avoid this, they took out the overt God-commentary, leaving a children’s film ripe for the toy market and little else. It’s still controversial.

Everyone is complaining about it either be a good thing or a bad thing, although most likely it will end up being a non-thing a few years down the road. Still, the debate highlights some more important, underlying points, which shall be my focus. Annoyingly enough for those of us who try to maintain a truly open and holistic perspective on these things, both the Christians and the atheists are in the wrong, here.

To the Christians:

“Boycotting is the new book burning.”

This is exactly what I’ve been talking about for years, most recently in my rant about book burning. Boycotting is the new book burning. Boycotting a movie like this has something of a flaw, namely: the movie’s already been made. Okay, maybe you want to stick it to the man; hit them in the pocket and let them know you’re really mad. I understand the sentiment.

Except it just doesn’t work that way—not any more, not with the global market and the internet and all of that. Boycotting a film in America doesn’t mean it won’t make a profit; it just might not make as large of a profit. Everyone who worked on the film got paid and the studio is large enough to bankroll a few failures if the movie really doesn’t do well. A boycott protest is as embarrassing as it ineffectual.

And it is embarrassing. Much like burning books, why, I ask, does anyone feel the need to participate in a boycott? First of all, if you weren’t planning to see the movie anyway, you can’t “boycott” it. You can’t boycott something you had no intention of participating in. A boycott is only effective when people stop using services that they’ve been using. Not attending a movie is not a boycott unless you had really good intentions to see it in the first place, but now are not going. But the first time most Christians have even heard about The Golden Compass is in conjunction with a phrase like “evil atheist conspiracy” at which point their mind is already made up not to go.

Secondly, it shows the same cowardice of participation in the free market of information as book burning does. I’m just going to continue saying this forever: if you have the truth, you don’t need to try and silence untruth. If atheism is so incredibly seductive and deceptive that basic pop culture will turn your children against you, I would suggest that maybe there is a problem inherent with the religion that you’re not addressing which is making the atheism seductive in the first place. Pulling these sorts of boycotting stunts makes you look desperate more than anything, and it’s certainly not converting the unbelievers which, the last time I checked, was still the prime directive.

The problem with religion today, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, is that it’s simply less relevant in many people’s day to day lives. Interpret that how you will—as a sign of the death of our culture, or the end of morality, or the coming of the end times. But stop trying to coerce everyone with brute force tactics. That doesn’t work anymore.

To the atheists:

Whatever the studios did to your champion film, what they didn’t do is censor it. Fighting censorship by going to see this movie is like fighting intelligent design by not going to the creation museum. The justification doesn’t fit the action.

There is a tendency in our culture today to immediately denounce any disagreement as a violation of free speech. On the one hand, I suppose it’s to be expected when you go as long as we have with free speech. You forget what non-free speech is—and it’s good to have zeal. But worse is misrepresenting what free speech is about in the first place, even if the opposition does have a louder voice.

The National Secular Society complained about what the studios did to the film, “castrating” it by removing the juicy god-bashing bits, and saying that it’s part of a larger problem over the freedom of speech.

“If you’re going to fight some greater battle, at least fight the right ones. “

No, it’s not. It’s called a business decision. Let us not forget that the author, Philip Pullman, sold the IP rights of the film to a studio. What happens to them after that point is the studio’s business and no one else’s. (Maybe Pullman’s to a certain extent, depending on the terms of the contract.) Many are the woeful tale of a studio butchering an optioned book as a script, or even re-editing a movie in the can to bastardize it from the original vision. In all these cases, the defense is “what’s going to sell” or “what the audience wants”. I will be the first to admit that this is a sadly pragmatic reason which ignores artistic nuance and panders to the lowest common denominator—but what it is not is censorship.

If you’re going to fight some greater battle, at least fight the right ones. What Turkey is doing to the publisher of The God Delusion in that country is censorship. Some guy choosing to sell the IP rights to his book is not.

Also, the book burning/boycotting/censoring issue goes both ways, here. If you’ve got the right answer, stop complaining about other people and their efforts to shut it down. Who cares if Christians make an effort to “boycott” the film? If it speaks to a greater truth, they’re going to fail anyway. Focus on the real travesties.

To both of you: this is silly, and neither side has the moral high ground. Goodness, it won’t matter in twelve months anyway.

-Ted