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[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

[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.