Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Lies...

Granted, things were looking up for fundies around the world: Harry Potter was FINALLY done being written; Jerry Falwell was in heaven with Saint Peter licking his boots; and then there was that unfulfilled promise of a return or something they could all look forward to despite the four horsemen making the rounds at a local pub near you...

But then that evil, evil movie came along and made them realize it was even MORE important to bitch about "holiday trees," because it was just one more symptom in a world which could produce something so vile, so despicable, so atrocious as The Golden Compass...

Yes, my fellow occultists, agnostics, and ne'er-do-wells: The Golden Compass, a tale of magic, mystery, and an evil church (not much unlike the one on every street corner near you) was "The Big Bad" in this tale of a young child questioning the bigger things in life...

I know, I know--to most of you fantasy and sci-fi readers out there, this is SOOO been there, done that, it's like a bad remake of Buck Rogers with Paulie Shore in the lead role...

But between Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and The Chronicles of Narnia (Oh, wait! Chronicles doesn't count!!), you'd think every child in the world actually believed they could whip a rabbit out of a hat and praise Satan until the cows came home!

I think a lot of the--shall we say "horror" and "outrage"?--at such films is rooted in one very simple concept, as was pointed out in a wonderfully brilliant movie called Hogfather that I watched a few weekends ago:

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Death: Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?
Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
Susan: So we can believe the big ones?
Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.
Susan: They're not the same at all.
Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged.
Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what's the point?
Death: You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?

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I'm a bit surprised the fundies haven't discovered this little gem and railed against it yet...

The point being that, if children realize that fantasy is fantasy, and magic is just imagination and smoke and mirrors, how can they be expected to take this silly idea of god seriously? Can you just hear it?:

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Right-Wing Nut: We can't let them see that evil movie! It's all about magic and demons! It's evil!
Average Joe: What's the harm? It's only a story...
Right-Wing Nut: "Only a story"?! Do you realize the damage this could do?! Soon it's, "Can I have a magic wand?" and "Can I pull a rabbit out of a hat?", and that's not a long stretch from "Well, if that's only a trick, then how do you know Jesus' water-to-wine thing wasn't all just a trick?" Soon they'll be questioning EVERYTHING! And then who'll pay for the new church roof! I'll tell you, NO ONE! And all because some child said "Why?" We can't have this kind of free-thinking going on! What would Jesus think?!
Average Joe: Uh...

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They've said it before, they'll say it again: YHWH forbids it!

This is also why that stupid little phrase, "Jesus said it, I believe it, that settles it" is so popular among the sheep (also an appropriate moniker): it prevents any sort of "why's" and "wherefor's" from approaching the pulpit in any sort of logical or reasonable fashion.

I highly recommend Hogfather. You may just learn a thing or two...

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Susan: (reading to her two young charges before bed) "...and then Jack chopped down the beanstalk, adding murder and ecological vandalism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned, but he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you're a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions."

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YHWH forbid...