thecosmicdance's Journal

"My books are about killing God"
First, I want to say that I have actually read the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, more than once in fact. I've formally reviewed it, and I've had many long discussions about it with others.

So, I joined

christians against my better judgement. And this person comes on and tries to spread that spam message about "The Golden Compass". So I did something I keep swearing I'll never do, and I snapped at them.

Because, good grief.

Now, Pullman does have an agenda. And I don't really like his agenda. But first off, the agenda doesn't really come into play until the third book- a movie which may never get made and if it does, it'll be about four years from now at least. They've already significantly cut down on the religious content anyway.

But if you ignore things he says in interviews, you can interpret *most* of the story however you want- I mean, the first time I read through it I was like "Oh! It's Gnostic!" When atheists write fantasy it often comes out more Gnostic than atheistic, because they don't believe in gods and the supernatural but they've chosen to write fantasy and specifically the kind that makes them unable to avoid gods/the supernatural so they have to produce this weird compromise where gods/god like things exist but they don't want what's best for humanity. This story kills God at the end, but it doesn't destroy the angels, the magic, or any of the rest. It's not atheist, despite the beliefs of the author, it's Gnostic (like "Buffy", "Angel" and Doctors Nine and Ten). So I tend to think of the books as stories about people fighting against authoritarianism, fighting for their right to self determination, the Happy+Manipulated versus Free+Miserable scenario. You can take that in an atheistic direction but you don't have to. "Good Omens" didn't.

I try to learn as little as possible about Pullman as I can, because I don't want these books ruined for me (I have many non religious complaints about them, such as their disturbing messages about women but that's not important right now). This is also the reason why I haven't bothered to learn as much about C.S Lewis as I probably should.

I'm refusing to pick a side, and it helps when I don't particularly care what either guy thought/thinks of his own work. It's what I think about it that matters. And I think I'm starting to prefer JK Rowling to either of them. She's positively subtle when compared to those two (no really, she is! So subtle about the religious themes that fundamentalist Christians wanted to burn her books. And you can take the Christian themes out and the plot won't collapse like "LWW" or "HDM" would).

Of course, I enjoy the work of many people who say stupid things, irritating things, or lie or contradict themselves, so I never take the author very seriously unless they have a public meltdown in which they insult all their fans a la Poppy Z Brite.

Now, I don’t like Pullman much as a person but that’s not because he’s an atheist. It’s because he keeps coming off as such an arrogant jerk. The two things do not have to go together. He could claim to have all sorts of faith and I bet he’d just be an arrogant believer instead. I may disagree with his dislike of Narnia but he has the right not to like it. Narnia is not sacred and neither is C.S Lewis-I know plenty of Christians who don't like it either.

It also makes me uncomfortable when I see someone crowing about the book’s atheist message- “he’s the author atheists have been praying for, if atheists prayed” because it makes atheists sound like they’ve been waiting, salivating with glee over finally getting their very own heavy handed, preachy, agenda heavy “answer” to Narnia. And I’m sure they’re not, because people who can rouse themselves to admit they read fantasy novels are there looking for a fantasy too, not to have said fantasy ruined by some jerk’s politics, whatever the politics may be. Really, does any fantasy fan pick up a book from the fantasy section of the bookstore and go "Oh I hope this one doesn't have any magic or supernatural beings!" They want to be entertained, and if they don't actually believe in "that stuff" that's okay too because it is fantasy. If people only read stories about stuff they actually believed in...imagine what a horrible, horrible world we'd live in. Imagine a world where the only choice is...ugh! Literary fiction!

Plus, The Chronicles of Narnia ended in the 1950s, what kind of a sad case…who waits half their life to revenge themselves against a children's book series? For the most part, the atheist reaction to the His Dark Materials trilogy was more in the vein of “Eh…” (especially if they also happen to be feminists) and most people regardless of belief tend to take whatever message they want from the books provided someone doesn’t start whispering in their ear about how they should take it. Feminists are annoyed, and children are confused and bored, it’s the kind of book everyone says you need to read and in the end, you always end up disliking it even if you started out liking it. He wants the series to show people that it's important to think, but once you actually start thinking hard about the story, you become a lot less impressed.

I found a post on a feminist analysis of the series-it's here.
And this post from an atheist explaining how this is not an atheist book series

(as to whether or not "atheist literature" exists, of course it does! Plenty of it. Seems strange that someone would think it didn't. It's just that truly atheist *fantasy* is rare, usually written by people who don't believe they're writing "fantasy" but clearly are (Terry Goodkind types, really) and are writing it to explain to their readers that their readers are stupid for believing in magic. Not true fantasy then, and true fantasy fans don't take kindly to it. That doesn't describe "His Dark Materials" at all. HDM kills God at the end, but God is still something that exists in the series, the supernatural in this series is more present than I think even some believers would like it to be. That was one of the other points- that institutionalized religion confines us and tells us there is *less* than there really is. It is a heresy in the eyes of the Magisterium to claim that there are other worlds, none of the characters take "the Dust" seriously enough until it all blows up in their faces.

In a book that endeavors to explain "His Dark Materials", Pullman is interviewed. He says that he is an "atheist Anglican, I do the rituals, I go to church, I just don't believe in God."

The original post on Christians received three replies. The first two were people admitting that they totally agreed with the OP but they hadn’t read the books, and the third reply was me getting snippy. The post is gone now.

Speaking of religion and film. What happened to Walden Media?

Narnia was incredible.
Nativity Story was…classy and historically fascinating, and full of pretty imagery if not perhaps as awe inspiring as it should have been.

But after that, the movies put out by Walden Media seem to be getting worse and worse. They’re a religious company but oddly enough, this fact has nothing to do with the increasing bad quality of their films. They’re not pushy about their faith- even Nativity Story wasn’t pushy. So it’s not that. It’s that the film makers suddenly started making really stupid choices. Disney obviously had a big hand in “Bridge to”, Walden Media can’t take all the blame for that one. But why choose “The Dark is Rising”?

Did they decide to produce “The Dark is Rising” as a Christian counterpoint to either “The Golden Compass” or “Harry Potter”? There are problems with that. First, technically speaking, Harry Potter is the "Christian" version of Harry Potter, and second, “The Dark is Rising” is not a Christian story. It is also clear that the film makers didn’t try to make it one. That, at least, would have made some sense though if they had. It would explain the rush to get the film into theaters before “The Golden Compass” arrived. Instead, the movie is full of lame, puzzling, infuriating choices that seem like a parody of When Bad Filmmakers Happen to Great British Novels. It’s like they didn’t care at all, like they insisted on making this movie no matter what went wrong and no matter how stupid it got. For what purpose? That’s the puzzling part.

They might have been trying to compete with Harry Potter. But all evidence shows that they kept doing the opposite- deleting or changing anything that even hinted that it might remind people of Harry Potter. They did not craft Christian themes around the story-they basically ruin whatever spiritual message was in the original (this is something no amount of money can fix- the old 1980s Wonderworks “Narnia” movies had pathetic budgets and yet still managed to maintain the spirit of the books even while you could clearly see that the talking animals were guys in costumes). They released it too early to compete with "The Golden Compass" anyway, months too early.

Some people have complained that “Beowulf” is anti Christian, or anti Pagan, or both at the same time. Neil Gaiman is neither Christian, nor Pagan, so he’s not actually delving into the tug of war between those two groups. He’s Jewish. Also, he actually said he didn’t mean for the film to be perceived that way. Meanwhile, the women over at The Hathor Legacy posted an essay stating that “Beowulf” wasn’t nearly as sexist as they’d expected (and the author knows her stuff).

Myself, I can’t comment since I haven’t seen the film. But you know what I’d love to see some time?

My adopted extra belief system has its own “Beowulf” like story- a story so old and so archetypal that it is reckoned one of the first stories to be written down in the language of that culture. And it’s so incredible because it’s a story that turns the hyper masculinity of the “Hero’s Journey/Beowulf” style mythology on its head. AND it's older than "Beowulf" by a couple thousand years at least.

It's called "The Descent of Inanna" and no one has ever filmed it.