The books are about the Church; the movie will be about "Authority"

Henry at Crooked Timber writes about an upcoming movie called His Dark Materials, which is based on a seris of books criticizing the Anglican church by a British author named Philip Pullman.

He links to an article in the London Times, where the film studio's decision to remove references to the Church is explained.

Sorry to throw around jargon, but I think this shows what's wrong with Foucault: it's now safer to criticize "Power" than it is to talk about individual instances of the abuse of it.

It also tells us something about the dynamics of representing power on screen vs. in books. The mainstream movies can show an aesthetic of totalitarian oppression, but they can't pinpoint it with any historical precision. Historial details still matter, but only in books.