Spirituality Analysis: Rise of the Guardians

I’ve seen “Rise of the Guardians” a few times but I never really paid attention to the metaphors in it before. Despite having very little to do with religion directly, “Rise of the Guardians” is focused on faith and belief, and is a very spiritual movie.  

One of the main points of the story is that when the children don’t believe in the Guardians, they can no longer see them. The guardians can still do things that affect the childrens’ lives but the children can’t benefit from those things the way they could if they believed. Similarly, we don’t always see the blessings we receive, and we can benefit much more from God’s gifts to us if we believe in Him and are aware of them. This metaphor can be taken too far, of course. When children stopped believing in the guardians, the guardians started losing their powers and becoming weaker. God doesn’t become any weaker when we don’t believe in him. However, there are some real things, like legends, that do fade if people don’t keep telling them. I’m sure there are many wonderful stories that have been written or told that we no longer know about because no one passed them on.

The villain in “Rise of the Guardians” is a symbol of fear. Pitch causes nightmares and spreads darkness and terror. I think he was a perfect choice for an antagonist. Fear and doubt are the polar opposites of faith and hope. And Pitch isn’t just an overwhelming blanket of darkness, he attacks each person with what they are specifically afraid of. He doesn’t seem to like outright confrontations, instead sneaking into children’s rooms and turning their dreams dark. He takes away the guardians’ support before attacking them outright, capturing Tooth’s fairies and destroying Bunny’s eggs before going after the guardians themselves.

During an earlier part of the film, Pitch is confronted by, and defeats one of the guardians. Sandy has similar powers to Pitch and can be seen as a representation of hope. Sometimes our fears do defeat our hopes and we are left in darkness for a while. But in the end, Sandy was brought back by a small group of children in some town somewhere in the United States. It could have been any town, in any place.

The number of children who believe in the Guardians dwindles as the film progresses. In the end, there are just a few left. But there is one light that just refuses to go out. Pitch discovers that it only takes one single light to fight off a whole horde of darkness. My favorite moment in the film is when Pitch asks the Guardians who will defend them, and the boy who refused to stop believing steps forward and declares with determination that he will.  More than anything else it is children who defend our stories and holiday rituals, and even our religions. I know that for me, Christmas has become less and less magical as I’ve grown older. But I’m pretty sure it will be more special again when I have kids of my own who will see it as I did when I was young.

In the end of the film the villain is banished to obscurity, and light is restored across the world. One of my favorite things about stories like this one is that the metaphors are not forced or obvious. If you want to see them, you have to actually pay attention to them. I think all well-crafted stories have good metaphors. It’s hard to tell a meaningful story without representing truth in it, one way or another, and we humans are pattern-finders. Even if the makers of the film didn’t attempt to put all of this symbolism in it, we will make the connections. “Rise of the Guardians” just happens to be an especially good example of a film that promotes spirituality, in that it touches on a lot of truths about light and faith.

Critique Analysis: The Golden Compass

“The Golden Compass” is a book that I have seen on bookshelves and in libraries my entire life, but had never bothered to pick up and read before. The only opinion I had to go off of was my Dad’s disapproval of its “anti-religious” themes, so I was very interested to read it and come to my own conclusions about it.

The book is a critique of crime in the name of bettering society. That is an unquestionably real problem that almost all governing bodies face. Many times, throughout the course of history, governments or religious groups have been willing to commit atrocities in order to negate a perceived threat to society. For example, the Nazis imprisoned and slaughtered people of Jewish faith as well as other outcasts all under the obviously false assumption that the Jews were causing the economic problems in their society. In “The Golden Compass” children are cruelly separated from their spirit animals—called daemons—in a procedure that often leads to a slow, miserable death. This is justified by the people who are doing it because of a scientific phenomenon called “dust” which is attracted to people who have gone through puberty. The church has decided, without any scientific evidence, that this dust is either attracted to or causing sin, and so they are attempting to prevent children from reaching a level of maturity at which the dust can affect them. There is no proof of any kind that the dust harms anyone. The name “dust” may even have some significance, in that dust is small and harmless and nothing to get worked up about.

The book doesn’t just critique the institution of the church. The church is represented by the main character’s mother, who was the founder of the group that does experiments on the children. The main character’s father is a representation of the institution of science. He is also willing to sacrifice the lives of children, but for him the goal is scientific progress, not the ultimate end of sinfulness. In the end, he harnesses the energy released from separating a child and his daemon to open a portal to another dimension.

The solution in the end of the book was somewhat unsatisfactory in a storytelling sense because the problem remained unsolved and the main character did not really triumph in any way. However, the conclusion that the main character comes to is very close to something I think is useful and helpful. Both of her parents want to try to stop the dust, and everyone is assuming that it’s evil. Because of this, she decides that everyone is wrong and the dust must be good. She makes it her goal to prevent her parents from stopping the dust. This doesn’t sit well with me. Just because she jumps to the opposite conclusion doesn’t mean she isn’t jumping. However, her decision to search for the source of the dust is a very good one. She must find out for herself what the dust really is, and then decide whether it’s good or not. The decision to discover the truth for herself instead of relying on the assumptions of other people sets a very good example for readers of all ages.

There were a few things in the book that bothered me. Aside from the main character’s conclusions in the end, there were things that rang false to me about the daemons. It was implied throughout the story that when your daemon settles, you have discovered who you truly are. I don’t believe that part of maturing is necessarily choosing a road that you will follow for the rest of your life. The ability to change does not end when you become an adult. I might be taking the metaphor too far here, but that’s what it felt like to me.

Overall, I did enjoy the book. I think it pointed out true flaws of church and state, and accurately portrayed the kinds of consequences that can come about because of those flaws. The solution that was found in the end of the story may or may not have been a useful one, depending on the way you look at it. But it does encourage readers to find out things for themselves instead of taking for granted what the authorities say.