nowhere in my post did i call anyone “unintelligent”, so you’re flat wrong there. i don’t know any of the posters here personally, so i can’t comment on their intelligence level. besides, intelligence isn’t synonymous with good judgement or wisdom. a person can be highly intelligent and highly misguided – look at sir bertrand russell, for example.
You said:
Originally Posted by tomarin
…
it was an honest review of a movie that apparently had the gall to speak to us as if we were intelligent adults – which appears to be what so many around here find offensive.
Which states that many here find it offensive to be spoken to as intelligent adults. Why would we take offense at being considered intelligent adults?
what i said was the review had the gall to address us as intelligent adults. what i meant was it gave it to us straight about what was or wasn’t in the movie, as far as the reviewer could discern, and let us make the judgement call for ourselves about whether it was appropriate to see. it didn’t use the review as a soap box for a referendum on the author’s ideas as expressed in the books or his controversial statements, which really don’t impact the movie version.
The offense taken, by me anyway, from the review was that it limited itself to “NON-CATHOLIC” issues regarding the movie AND THE SOURCE of the movie (Pullman), which supposes to supplant the REVIEWER’S “important aspects” of the subject (the movie AND source and NOT only the movie) for those of CATHOLICS who he is supposedly there to serve!
This is at best a serious failure of judgement on the part of the reviewer. Using a person for a purpose which they obviously don’t understand is a diservice to said purpose, and doesn’t justify apologetics in favor of an objectively bad decision.
the reviewer also made the assumption that his audience could tell the difference between the movie version and the book version. that presumes a certain amount of intelligence on the part of the audience. the posters here obviously reject that distinction for whatever reason.
The posters reject that distinction because it violates the reason for them inquiring into a CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVE of the film.
It could be said that it presumes a certain amount of intelligence on the part of a reviewer to understand the audience he’s talking to.
The “intelligent” reviewer on a CATHOLIC movie review site might take into consideration the obvious “path” between seeing the “cool” watered-down (aka palatable-ized) movie and wanting to read further about the source of the film.
To NOT see that “path” is to utterly fail in the job of being a CATHOLIC reviewer of works of art.
i prefer the bishops’ lighter hand style of guidance over a harsher, stricter model which just tells us what to see or what not to see. i don’t think they should participate in any conservative culture wars, which is, i think why they seem to be so hated here.
as for the difference between catholic intelligence and non-catholic intelligence, there is none. the faculty is the same whether you are a catholic or something else. (if that’s what you were asking; to be honest i didn’t completely what you were driving at there).
I prefer CATHOLIC reviewers to be CATHOLICS who are looking out for those things which CATHOLICS are concerned about, and not compartmentalized functionaries of the secular media.
Intelligence is intelligence, and the ability to understand the attributes of a Catholic review concerned with Catholic sensibilities is a sign of being a Catholic WITH intelligence.
You “seem” to call those who couldn’t see the review as “valid” in the context in which the reviewer chose to formulate his review, less intelligent. Those who objected to the review did so not because they didn’t understand that the review was valid according to the parameters set by the reviewer, but because the review CHOSE those particular parameters!
You are absolutely right that no one should be annoyed at a secular review of a movie which has NOTHING to do with the book or author from which it came, but you are wrong to object to people who are annoyed at that review being foisted off on them as a CATHOLIC review.
Thanks for your very interesting commentary, by the way, on this subject.
