(no subject)

[rymenhild]

Many of you know that London's Royal National Theatre produced a stageplay of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

I just discovered that the RNT production has an elaborate webpage, including video interviews, basic links to some of Pullman's background reading, and video clips from an actual performance of the play. The clips are aesthetically pleasing, even if the dialogue of the play appears to clank like Iorek Byrnison's armor when it hasn't been greased in years. I recommend watching the scene in which Lyra and Will meet the Boatman who ferries people into the land of the dead. (Yes, there are spoilers.)

Also, I finally parsed the symbolism in the final scenes of The Amber Spyglass, and I am furious.

In His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman rewrites Paradise Lost. The last scenes of Amber Spyglass recapitulate the last books of PL. Lyra (that is, Eve) and Will (Adam), having tasted from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, get kicked out of Eden (the land of the mulefa) to toil with their hands and till the ground (building the Republic of Heaven). Lyra and Will must go to their separate universes to perform this work. They will never see each other alive again, and they will not return to Eden until they die.

By this point in the narrative, Lyra and Will have already killed God, and Lord Asriel (Satan) has helped destroy the angel Metatron. There is no Authority. The being who forces Adam and Eve out of Eden is a rebel angel (i.e. a demon involved in the rebellion against God). If one accepts Pullman's basic principles (A highly oversimplified version: God=bad, sin=good, kingship=bad, democracy=good), what right does a rebel angel have to impose any action upon human beings? Why is it necessary to reenact Adam and Eve's punishment, when there is no God to enforce it upon them?

I should note here that I do not endorse Pullman's theology (antitheology?) at all. I'm not arguing that one set of Pullman's principles is correct; I'm just suggesting that Pullman's theology is irritatingly inconsistent.

By the way, there are people who might be interested in the dozens of 100x100 pixel images of Lyra and Will I now have on my computer. I'm just sayin'.

Comments

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

I really loved Northern Lights, liked The Subtle Knife somewhat less, and made myself finish The Amber Spyglass. Overall I liked the whole trilogy (mainly because of the whle "OMG! Theology! In an adventure story!" aspect - like many others in my dept), but I did go through major bouts of eye-rolling in the third book.

If Pullman had been able to control himself his theology would have been both more consistent and less self-consciously hair-pulling. And I wish more people knew his source material!

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

There are beautiful moments in Amber Spyglass. I love the land of the dead for its terrific hideousness. I love the Dantean moment when Lyra, Will and the dead emerge to see the stars. I enjoy watching Lyra and Will develop and change, and I rather like Dr. Mary Malone.

I could do without the ending.

In what way do you think Pullman could have controlled himself? I'm curious about what you would change.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

I think he let his hatred of both organised Christianity and CS Lewis override the story at parts. I have no idea if the gay angels were meant to be offensive (they didn't offend me, but I can see they'd offend a lot of people) - after all, speculation on angelic sexuality is a fine old tradition, but coupled with the portrayal of an absolutely impotent Authority, a self-serving Coup in Heaven and the general tone of Pullman's statements in interviews, I suspect he was overindulging himself. (I'm also annoyed - probably totally irrationally! - that one of them was Enoch)

I'm also annoyed with his use of the Eden story -- why have Will and Lyra go into "Eden" at all, only to be expelled? And why is the expulsion apparently unproblematically linked with a view of sexuality as the Fall? (If Will and Lyra do in fact have some sort of sexual activity there - I'm also not keen on such young children having any sort of sex, for that matter).

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I agree that Lyra and Will are too young for sex -- but I can't think of another way to interpret that fade to black that makes any kind of sense. The multiverse is still waiting for something to happen even after L and W eat the Fruit.

I rather like the gay rebel angels, I confess.

The expulsion from Eden is the part that really enrages me. I simply don't see why it's necessary.

[ajodasso.livejournal.com]

The ending just makes you heartsick, and twice so when you realize how unnecessary it is. Haven't we had enough of angst-ridden endings just for the sake of angst? I'm waiting for more people to figure out that you can have endings with an impact that aren't total downers.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Haven't we had enough of angst-ridden endings just for the sake of angst?

I certainly have.

[alemara.livejournal.com]

By the way, there are people who might be interested in the dozens of 100x100 pixel images of Lyra and Will I now have on my computer. I'm just sayin'.

Like me!

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Yes, you were at the top of my list. I'll upload the pictures tonight sometime.

[alemara.livejournal.com]

Yay icon-sized images! Someone needs to do a photoshoot with Dominic Cooper, darn it. I like my icons to be pretty.

[cataptromancer.livejournal.com]

Dang. I guess this means I should read the other two books.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

They're entertaining, in the way that a Blunt Symbolic Object applied to the head is entertaining. I really do like the books, but they have their moments.

[justbeast.livejournal.com]

Arrrrgh, I have to agree with you there.

There was NO REASON to separate the two like that, to punish them randomly and cruelly. No plot reason, no aesthetic or ethical one. That one thing almost spoiled the whole trilogy for me.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Your icon precisely expresses my feelings on the matter.

[watersword]

I...couldn't finish even the second book in the trilogy. I had to force myself through the last fifty pages of the first, when everything started getting symbolic. If I want symbolism, I'll reread Lewis. Whom I love.

And I could not make sense of Pullman's theology, so I gave up. At least Narnia was a straight-out allegory. I can cope with that. Le sigh.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I thought the theology made a certain degree of sense until about midway through the last book. Part of the illogic in The Golden Compass, I think, is that Lord Asriel makes the false claim that he is working against Dust. If we accept that he's lying there, and that he's actually working for Dust, the story makes more sense. It doesn't make maximum sense, but it makes some sense.

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. Though -- isn't this what we've been saying ever since reading the ending? Is it any more unreasonable and unncessary just because it turns out it was Eden they were in? I just want to make sure I'm not missing something.

He says there are more books, so maybe he'll rewrite Paradise Regain'd; it would be interesting to see what he does with that. And I would love to see if Pullman's Rebel Angel is able to do what Satan of Milton's Paradise Lost never managed, by setting up a God and Heaven that lives up to its hype. Though considering what we have seen of Ms. Rebel Angel (i.e., unnecessary angst-filled ending), I would be very surprised if that happened.

Another thing that just occured to me. Part of Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden is that they were expelled together. Considering everything, I continue to really have no idea why Pullman needed to separate them beyond the bizarre Church-of-Lyra's-land-ish need for life to be a vale of tears, pain, and suffering with only transient, mostly unimportant moments of joy for relief.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Ms. Rebel Angel isn't just the bringer of unnecessary angst. In fact, she's entirely unnecessary. Who is Xaphania? Why does she have so much power? How does she fit into Lord Asriel's rebellion? We know nothing about her at all, except that she shows up as a dea ex machina well after Pullman claims that the machine is empty.

I wonder if we could read Xaphania against the grain of the text. Perhaps she's a power-hungry being who always wanted to replace Metatron and the Authority, and who is seizing the power vacuum left by the end of Lord Asriel's revolt to take over Heaven. She knows that Will and Lyra would be a threat to her, so she forces them back into their own worlds.

Now I want to write that.

(If Pullman must have a top-level female rebel angel, why can't he use some of that nice rich angelic/demonic Hebrew backstory and call her Lilith?)

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

I wonder if we could read Xaphania against the grain of the text.

*grins* That is what you've been doing, since you finished the book the first time and speculated that Pullman had accidentally set up Xaphania as the next Tyrannical God.

Maybe that can be next summer's project, anyway.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Did I really say that?

I'd completely forgotten.

I'm so glad I have you around to remember these things for me.

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

*bows*

Yes, and now you know that you react consistently to books.

[tovaks.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Now I need to go reread the trilogy, starting . . . now.

And while I'm at it, I may as well just reread *Paradise Lost* and several books of the Bible, too (followed by Isaac Asimov's commentaries thereof).

Now I'll *never* get any work done.

:)

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Isaac Asimov wrote commentaries on the Bible?

[watersword]

Oh, yeah. Pretty decent ones. I think it's titled issac Asimov's Guide to the Bible, even though he fought against that title, since he's not a theologian.

[natika.livejournal.com]

The ending annoyed me less for the theology, rather for the "let's wrap this up by putting everyone back where they started and pretending, as far as possible, that none of this ever happened. You'll all grow out of it."

I saw both parts of the play in one day with a different cast to the one on the website. I think it was inevitable some parts ended up a little clunky. Certain parts worked and others didn't - the second part was evidently much harder work; same as the books, really.

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

The ending annoyed me less for the theology, rather for the "let's wrap this up by putting everyone back where they started and pretending, as far as possible, that none of this ever happened. You'll all grow out of it."

In that way, HDM is rather like The Dark is Rising. I wonder why so many works of children's literature and fantasy literature have that desire to bring everything to zero at the end. I've never met any reader who approved of these authorial decisions.

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

I have many ideas about why this happens, none of which I am about to start trying to put into words at 11:52 at night. Dude. I need to go to bed.

[grene-gome.livejournal.com]

Dude. Go to bed.

Yes, I am posting from this journal intentionally. Also because I am lazy.

[muchabstracted.livejournal.com]

Very well put.

[eagan-bryhtm.livejournal.com]

See, this, this is why we need to get that club started. I believe the ball is currently in my court, and there it shall lie for a week more or so.

Is it Xaphania who forces Lyra and Will out of Eden? If I'm remembering right Xaphania serves less as a deus ex machina and more of an expositor ex machina -- informing Will and Lyra of the inevitability of their breakup, as the Dust has to fall back into its natural order and so people have to stop cutting holes in everything.

Isn't the frustration of the ending about "restoring the natural order of the universe(s)", as the order imposed by God had deteriorated and was doing more harm than good? And are we to read "order" as "moral/ethical order", as I think the antitheology demands, in order to find a new "democratic" ethics in the absence of an obsolete God/Church (the Republic of Heaven blah blah blah)? THAT being said, reading Xaphania (or any remaining element of the world at the end of the book) against the grain might expose inconsistencies in the utopia being suggested...

What I would say is that the "imposed" action is done in the interest (and according to the will) of the majority (this is a Democracy, after all) -- they are all willing, however depressed. And everyone is made unhappy through that system, because they believe that this new system of *self*-restraint, of the powerful-but-moral restraining their actions to protect the weak (that is, Will has the power to choose to keep the knife and see Lyra periodically, but opts not to for the greater good, right?) will prevent oppressive power hierarchies from forming in the future.

Perhaps an against-the-grain reading exposes Asriel's error, his enacting a system of Democratic ethics which allows the majority to impose upon *themselves* a "natural order" (the order demands, through the Dust through Mary Malone, that the expulsion of Paradise Lost be reenacted -- this is perhaps the Dust protecting its own interests?). Because despite Pullman's symbolism, his multiverse, which includes not only the Dust and the various worlds but the inevitable tendency of ambitions humans to transgress and disturb the order of nature, is anarchic and quite chaotic and demands a still more flexible morality. I don't know where to go from there, and I certainly haven't the time this morning to go back and edit for clarity -- apologies.

I bet the stage version sucks. I'm still gonna look at the website though.

This is why..

[the-paper-nun.livejournal.com]

I didn't finish the last book. I'm with you on how cool the gay rebel angels were, but I could see that Pullman was pulling away from the creations he had created so delicately in the first two books in favor of thrashing god. By the time he's had the kid's making like rabbits, he realizes he's gone too far. If Lyra and Will stay together, they will continue their conjugal relations, making everyone squirm. Parting the two will save everyone the yuck factor of seeing Lyra, our young defiant rabble-rouser, barefoot and pregnant. Neither of the two children's universes would probably take kindly two the underage couple, well, at least not Will's. We would probably agree. This way we get to bitch and moan about the injustice of the world, which is the feeling that Pullman wishes us to feel. Nobody wants to fight the Man after reading a romance novel.

Just my two cents.