The Mental Toys: I Support The Golden Compass!!!

Stardust is very good. Apart from the less inspiring change in ending (which is still nice), the movie is one of those love stories that holds my heart and spins my head into a childish frenzy. Yes. Watch. Easily 9.9578563/10.

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The fuss about The Golden Compass irritates me just about as much as the fuss about The DaVinci Code about a year ago. I firmly believe there is a tremendous amount of power that can be generated with silence and conscious ignorance. I am a Christian. I naturally am displeased with the themes found in The Da Vinci Code and The Golden Compass, and even Harry Potter. I generally discourage children from watching these things (although yes, I do read and watch some of these things to know exactly what the fuss is about, but that too, is changing within me). Yes I do think it is an abomination to write about these things. Yes I do think that these books contain lies that are severe and very very damaging to people's lives.

But I would rather not give these books and movies free publicity. I sometimes think that street protests and massive online campaigns to boycott certain shows and movies contribute largely to these films' overall revenue, thanks to stirring intrigue and interest.

A very nice example would be a recent local documentary, The Last Communist. It was banned in Malaysia for literal reasons. I'll be frank and tell you that the pirates will sell it well. People will order it off the net, bring it in from other shores, and watch it. Because it was so openly critisized and scrutinized and reported in many major newspapers.

Now let's be honest and realistic here. If no one said a thing about it, it would've screened in the cinemas to a small audience, create almost no fuss, and pass on into the archives of completed films in two weeks. End of story. No controversy.

I'll address this issue once. I might address again it in the far future. But I don't want to be wasting my words and time and effort and money shouting out protests and appeals for boycotts because quite honestly, it's really stupid. It's free publicity for things I don't like.

Sometimes we need to make a stand, don't get me wrong. But most of the time, seriously, we need to just take no heed, and let it pass. And you'll realize that nobody cares.

Yes, Nicole Kidman and all that jazz will make people watch it anyway. Bla bla bla. But for goodness sake, stop highlighting the whole atheist thing. If you highlight it, and a kid chooses to watch it anyway, that will be the only bloody (mind my language) thing they will see in the show. Opening your big mouth is sometimes the biggest harm you can do about these things.

Again, sometimes, I think, we need to make a stand. Most times, shutting up would do.

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And anyway.

It's just my personal observation, and my personal stand. Feel free to be offended. Feel free to take it personally. Because even if I said don't take it personally, some people would take it personally anyway. So I might as well go with the flow. Hah.