Religious Bigotry's Biggest Ally

I was fascinated by the reaction of male film critics to The Golden Compass, an excellent fantasy film and an assault on religious authoritarianism. Could it be that most male film critics are religious bigots? This seemed unlikely. Yet there it was: female critics are almost unanimous in praising the film, while male critical responses are almost two to one unfavorable.

The answer, I finally realized, was simple: the film had a female protagonist. I've noticed this in the past: a great many males--including far too many film critics--have such fragile egos they think if they identify with a female protagonist for two hours their little willies will fall off. This issue tends to dominate film criticism.

Of course, the male critics had to find 'artistic' reasons for their dislike. It "doesn't flow quite right", it's "hard to follow", it's "loud" and "disjointed", it's "shallow and inchoate", there's "no sense of wonder", it "doesn't have heart". Several reviewers compared it unfavorably to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which, they implied, was not loud, hard to follow, disjointed, shallow, inchoate, but had heart and wonder and flowed perfectly. Anyone who actually saw the trilogy, as I did, can only laugh. Not that the trilogy didn't have some wonderful moments. But let's face it: most of all three films was taken up with the slaughtering of an unending supply of computer-generated Orcs. This seems to be what male critics mean by "heart" and "wonder".

The sad truth is, the main thing Rings had that Compass doesn't, was a whole slew of male protagonists. There was hardly a female to be seen.

This persistent bias in male film criticism perhaps explains why a film that doesn't have any comic book superheroes, shootouts, fistfights, or car chases--deals, in other words, with mature people in real-life situations--is stigmatized as a 'chick-flick'. Small wonder women are dominating college campuses these days, while men dominate soup kitchen lines.

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Comments

[slg]

I've been wondering for years why I've never heard a female narrator on a movie trailer. Still waiting and still wondering when I read your review and it all made perfect sense. We need that deep male voice to make us pay attention.

[alsm9]

Not surprised. You can find this kind of chauvinism throughout pop culture and art. It's still very much a "man's world" out there. But things are changing, regardless of its very slow pace.

[Jeffin90019]

Oh baloney. There was no bias. The movie was dull, had a muddled plot, and a backstory that was never really explained. All it had going for it was special effects and slinky, frozen-faced Kidman. Then it abruptly stops. All that was missing was the "tune in next week" roll across the credits.

[HighPlainsAg]

I confess I am saddened and puzzled by the critical hostility to The Golden Compass. I purchased His Dark Materials and read the first and second novels before seeing the film.

I was doubly pleased.

Not only is the film a brilliant distillation of the first book into two fast-paced hours with little exposition and more than enough visual delight to keep a child entertained, but it does not, as purists claimed, bowdlerize the conclusion to pander to middle-brow audiences. The film ends ten pages early, with the crew of friends on their way to Lord Asriel. What happens when they get there will launch the second film. As a strategy for keeping audiences informed in the gap between the two films, it makes vastly more sense to put such crucial and controversial information at the beginning of Book II rather than the end of Book I.

Your suggestion of the real cause for critical disdain makes sense. Not only is the protagonist female, the antagonist is female. And the next most stunning person is the witch Serafina Pekkala. Face it, the only starring male is, well, a possibly gay bear....

I hope the film is holding up outside the U.S., where the tatters and pinions of patriarchal Authority are not waved quite so enthusiastically.

[CanProf]

Wow. So glad to see this analysis of The Golden Compass in print. I said exactly the same thing to my husband when I heard about the film's 'failure' to attract audiences in North America. And I'd been talking to my students earlier in the term about the tendency in our culture to universalize the male perspective--girls and women will cross over to identify with male protagonists, while boys and men are less likely to do so. I asked them to consider, seriously consider, whether Rowling's Harry Potter series would have been as successful if Harry had been a girl. When my daughter is older, I hope she'll read Pullman's books (His Dark Materials and Sally Lockhart alike)--not for the religious controversy or the epic adventure, but for Pullman's remarkable heroines.