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Dec. 9th, 2006 09:52 pmVia ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
musingsylph: The Golden Compass movie website, newly arrived on the Internet, provides a working alethiometer. (No direct link; click on the button marked "alethiometer" on the page.)
Apparently, one of the meanings of "bread" is "Christ." Obviously, asbookelfe pointed out when I started discussing the site with her, bread is connected to Christ through the communion wafer. It interests me that the website designers chose to put Christ in their symbol reader. They're clearly invoking the theological underpinnings of His Dark Materials, and yet they're also rewriting His Dark Materials. Pullman's allegorical structure notably lacks a Christ-figure; the role of God is played by a senile being who may once have been God-the-Father and by his regent, the angel Metatron. I've found myself wondering whether the Consistorial Church of Lyra's universe is Christian at all.
In any case, the decision to include theology in the website to a mass-market movie based on a remarkably anticlerical sequence of books pleases me. I have hopes that Pullman's allegories do not all get wiped away in the conversion process.
ETA: One of the crocodile's meanings is "America." Dear programmers, I know that some of the people working on this website have examined Pullman's world maps. I suppose those weren't the people working on the alethiometer.
musingsylph: The Golden Compass movie website, newly arrived on the Internet, provides a working alethiometer. (No direct link; click on the button marked "alethiometer" on the page.)Apparently, one of the meanings of "bread" is "Christ." Obviously, as
bookelfe pointed out when I started discussing the site with her, bread is connected to Christ through the communion wafer. It interests me that the website designers chose to put Christ in their symbol reader. They're clearly invoking the theological underpinnings of His Dark Materials, and yet they're also rewriting His Dark Materials. Pullman's allegorical structure notably lacks a Christ-figure; the role of God is played by a senile being who may once have been God-the-Father and by his regent, the angel Metatron. I've found myself wondering whether the Consistorial Church of Lyra's universe is Christian at all.In any case, the decision to include theology in the website to a mass-market movie based on a remarkably anticlerical sequence of books pleases me. I have hopes that Pullman's allegories do not all get wiped away in the conversion process.
ETA: One of the crocodile's meanings is "America." Dear programmers, I know that some of the people working on this website have examined Pullman's world maps. I suppose those weren't the people working on the alethiometer.
