Fact or Fiction? # 12

In a recent e-mail interview with, Peter T Chattaway, a film critic and a christian. They spoke on allot of interesting topics regarding, the much debated movie, The Golden Compass. It seems that often times people like to look at the person writing the book before reading it. And then entering the book with a pre-set mindset. Philip Pullman, writer of the the fantasy book this movie is based on, is an atheist. Yet in his interview he tries on many occasions to explain that the book is fantasy, and nothing more. He is quoted saying, "Books which satisfy us and feed us and nourish us have to have this substratum of genuine truth in them, ... And i don't see much of that in most fantasy." Here he is clearly disconnecting truth with fantasy, be saying that this book is fantasy, or fiction. Later on he says "I had passed through the entire British education system studying literature, culminating in three years of reading English at Oxford, and they'd never told me about something as basic as the importance of point of view in fiction!" it seems that he is trying to say that people should take things in their own point of view. When people watch fiction movie, they can mental make anything seem to be something else. Surprisingly enough, that's why people call fantasy movies fiction. Even more surprisingly fiction is closely related to the word fake. Which is exactly what Philip Pullman wants people to understand. These fantasy/fiction movies, and or,books are fake, written to tease the mind, to stimulate imagination, nothing more. Philip Pullman is not trying to do anything other than write enjoyable books to inspire the imagination in his young readers. "[The golden Compass] a story, not a treatise, not a sermon or a work of philosophy. I'm telling a story, I'm showing various characters whom I've invented saying things and doing things and acting out beliefs which they have, and not necessarily which I have. The tendency of the whole thing might be this or it might be that, but what I'm doing is telling a story, not preaching a sermon."-Philip Pullman. The truth is exactly like the old quote-Don't judge a book by the cover- except that in this case, Don't judge a book/movie by the author. Take it for what it is..... a fantasy story.