{"id":8019,"date":"2004-01-30T22:42:33","date_gmt":"2004-01-30T22:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/he_makes_me_go_aaaaargh.html"},"modified":"2004-01-30T22:42:33","modified_gmt":"2004-01-30T22:42:33","slug":"he_makes_me_go_aaaaargh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/he_makes_me_go_aaaaargh.html","title":{"rendered":"He makes me go “Aaaaargh”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Philip Pullman that is.<\/a><\/p>\n

Honestly, people, get over Harry Potter. As I have been saying for ages, this other guy under your radar actually has an explicit anti-theist agenda he works into his books for 12-year olds. As in – God dies<\/strong>, and everyone’s better off. That’s the climax, okay?<\/p>\n

And in this week’s New Yorker, a story about a a 6-hour theatrical version of the trilogy, packing them in in London<\/a><\/p>\n

\nUnless you reserved a seat in December, even before the reviews came out, the only way you can see the adaptation of Philip Pullman\u2019s trilogy \u201cHis Dark Materials,\u201d at the National Theatre in London this winter, is to stand in line and hope to get one of the thirty seats or sixty spaces for standees that are set aside for sale on the day of the performance. Otherwise, you will have to miss a play that lasts six hours (it can be seen in one sitting, with a dinner break, or on separate days, in three-hour segments); includes witches, angels, armored polar bears, talking dolls who ride dragonflies, evil prelates, a hundred and seventeen scene changes, multiple universes, Timothy Dalton, and a hot-air balloon; and features one of the few theatrical representations of the death of God (who turns out to be a tiny old guy in a plastic casket, and who, when he has his big moment, literally croaks). ….<\/p>\n

Pullman also has a following in the United States\u2014his prose is more elegant and his plots are more sophisticated than Tolkien\u2019s or J. K. Rowling\u2019s\u2014and a lot of people in the theatre for that January performance were Americans. A three-movie adaptation is in the works, to be produced by Scholastic Entertainment in collaboration with New Line Cinema, which produced Peter Jackson\u2019s three-movie adaptation of \u201cThe Lord of the Rings.\u201d A script for the first volume has already been written, by Tom Stoppard<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Philip Pullman that is. Honestly, people, get over Harry Potter. As I have been saying for ages, this other guy under your radar actually has an explicit anti-theist agenda he works into his books for 12-year olds. As in – God dies, and everyone’s better off. That’s the climax, okay? And in this week’s New…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nHe makes me go "Aaaaargh" - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/he_makes_me_go_aaaaargh.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"He makes me go "Aaaaargh" - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Philip Pullman that is. Honestly, people, get over Harry Potter. As I have been saying for ages, this other guy under your radar actually has an explicit anti-theist agenda he works into his books for 12-year olds. As in – God dies, and everyone’s better off. That’s the climax, okay? And in this week’s New…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/he_makes_me_go_aaaaargh.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-01-30T22:42:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"He makes me go \"Aaaaargh\" - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/he_makes_me_go_aaaaargh.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"He makes me go \"Aaaaargh\" - Via Media","og_description":"Philip Pullman that is. Honestly, people, get over Harry Potter. As I have been saying for ages, this other guy under your radar actually has an explicit anti-theist agenda he works into his books for 12-year olds. As in – God dies, and everyone’s better off. That’s the climax, okay? And in this week’s New…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/he_makes_me_go_aaaaargh.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-01-30T22:42:33+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/he_makes_me_go_aaaaargh.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/he_makes_me_go_aaaaargh.html","name":"He makes me go \"Aaaaargh\" - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-01-30T22:42:33+00:00","dateModified":"2004-01-30T22:42:33+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/he_makes_me_go_aaaaargh.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/he_makes_me_go_aaaaargh.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/01\/he_makes_me_go_aaaaargh.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"He makes me go “Aaaaargh”"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}