Weekly Written Analysis 1 Assignment #1-3

The Golden Compass Controversy
I blame popular culture for the controversy that is being caused by “The Golden Compass”. As a member of society I enjoy going to see a good movie with my family. So when we first seen the trailers for the movie “The Golden Compass” my family said, “We would like to see that movie”. Shortly having seeing the trailer I started to hear people speculating about the movie’s content. I hadn’t a clue as to what they were talking about until my boss told me. Until that point I did not know that “The Golden Compass” was based on a book, let alone controversial book. ABC News was reporting that peoples and critics fears were that the author of the book had instilled his beliefs about atheism into the film (Friedman, 2007). To me this assumption seemed absurd because the movie seemed geared towards a younger audience and it was only rated PG-13.
What really surprised me was the power the mass media had over the influence of society’s opinions and actions. People were simply forming opinions based on what they had seen and heard from the media instead of forming opinions of their own. I blame popular culture for this. The media was publishing information simply based on the books history and was using their power to steer society away from the movie. It seemed as if they wanted the movie to be a failure. I have learned from seeing many of movies that my opinion, the medias’ and the critics’ opinions vary dramatically. So I don’t care what they write about a film, if I like it I’m going to go and see it and form my own opinion, and that is just what my family and I did.
One Friday night we went and seen “The Golden Compass”, the movie was great! I seen some of what media was critiquing as trying to say it was against some religion, like were the children had their own demons, but in my opinion, my boyfriends and my 12 year old son it went along with the story lines. Had the children not have had their own demons there would have been no plot. There was no such talk or anything in the movie directed towards atheism. In the end it was a pleasant experience and a great family night and we are looking forward to seeing the next installment. What’s a shame are all the people who will miss out on a great film simply because the media says the film should be “boycotted” (Friedman, 2007).



















Reference
Friedman, E. (2007). The Golden Compass Spur Controversy. ABC News. Retrieved January 6, 2007, from http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=3970783&page=1