News about the His Dark Materials movie

[tarigwaemir]

Lowell House, on the Feast of Our Lady of Loretto

All right, so some background for friends who are not in fandom: a few days (or was it more?) ago, a fanfic writer wrote something about the transgressive nature of slash (blah, blah, blah) and how professional writing could benefit from the slash mentality (which is perhaps oversimplifying the whole situation, but meta is pretty repetitive and I'm sure you can get lost in all the pseudoacademic arguments via links from someone, somwhere), and then Teresa Nielsen Hayden (I actually have no idea who she is, but she is a famous blogger and apparently a published author who gets quoted by Neil Gaiman every so often) linked to that LJ post. And then somehow professional writers who blog picked up on it, and the major point of this story is that I mostly overlooked the meta-writing discussions and went straight to: "Oh my gosh! [insert favorite writer] has an LJ?! I must friend them right away!"

Er, yes, anyway, the above paragraph is mostly total digression and nominally an explanation for why I've stumbled across ellen_kushner.

So, main substance of post: Kushner just linked to this BBC article about the upcoming movie based on Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Which I considered to be fabulous and possibly Pullman's real magnum opus. Apparently, they are going to "tone down" the anti-religious message of the trilogy because they are afraid that it might be offensive. Pullman has diplomatically said that his books are more about anti-authoritarianism than about anti-religiosity.

To take the anti-religious message out of His Dark Materials is equivalent to taking Christian theology out of Perelandra. A story will still be there, but it simply won't function. And Mr. Pullman, I've just lost some of my respect for you. You write something so defiantly in support of atheism--not agnosticism, but atheism--and insist not only that a god does not exist but that humanity will be better, more moral without one, then retreat to making such compromising statements! What happened to your courage?

As you may or may not know, I do consider myself to be religiously devout. (Whether a conservative orthodox Catholic may also consider me to be religiously devout is irrelevant at the moment.) I found His Dark Materials to be shocking and deeply disturbing on a spiritual level. That is why I liked it. (I don't think that His Dark Materials specifically attacks Catholicism--I know that a lot of my devout Protestant friends use this excuse to explain why they liked it--but I do believe that it rejects religion, and specifically religion, as a whole. Which is why I found it bold and challenging and, well, exciting.) Chaim Potok begins one of his books (was it Asher Lev or The Promise) with a quote about how good books are those that cause violent upheavals in our lives: books that we hate passionately, books that upset us intensely, books that refuse to tell us what we want to hear. I definitely agree because when I first think of my favorite books, I realize that for more than half of them, I disagree with the author on almost every level. The act of reading literature is initiating dialogue, as every English teacher says, and it is the intensely jarring debates that I remember. I had no answer to the question that Pullman posed in His Dark Materials (in some ways, I am still looking for an answer), and I admired Pullman for pushing me that far.

I'm reminded of that anecdote Terry Pratchett told about how a studio bought the film rights to Mort and then a few months later asked him to take Death out of the script because it was too morbid. Um. I think you can just tell by the very title how utterly that missed the point.

A brief tangent: I think that there are many different sorts of faith. If your faith happens to be a dogmatic and unyielding wall, I think it's a very immature and adolescent version of faith, but such rigidity will not be moved by any sort of challenge and will have nothing to fear from Pullman's writing. If your faith happens to be a schizophrenic sine curve (like mine), it's probably better for it to be emotionally challenged by opposing arguments in order to prevent you from getting complacent. If your faith happens to be a weathervane that will accept any strong, dominating sort of opinion, Pullman's brand of strict, principled anti-religion will go right over your head, and you'll probably end up converting to some random cult anyway. If your faith is a flimsy house of cards that must be protected from any sort of dangerous influence for fear it will topple...it's not really faith.

Well, Tom Stoppard is writing the screenplay (or so I heard, last I looked up any news about the His Dark Materials movie), so hopefully the integrity of the books will not be compromised but simply made subtle enough that it will pass over people's heads.

::sighs:: I meant to note down some recent epiphanies about flaws in my kendo but I got sidetracked by the Pullman news and now I'm too sleepy (and haven't done one iota of work either). I think I shall look over that paper I meant to read this afternoon and go to sleep. Or just go to sleep and get up early to catch up on my to-do list.

Yours &c.

Post-script: And I should really, really write that drabble for chain_of_fics. I have a couple of ideas, but I need to actually write them out to see if they are feasible. Shall do that tomorrow afternoon, perhaps as post-kendo relaxation.

Comments

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

How can HDM attack Catholicism when John Calvin was alter-pope? In some ways, though, the fact that Pullman essentially does a turn to Gnosticism (IIRC), sort of does make it mystical and not really completely anti-religious. He is more against the idea of institutional theocratic authority rather than religion, so I assume this might account for the idea that he is anti-Catholic rather than anti-Christianity. (Or perhaps you could say the perspective is of extremely radical Protestantism where all structures other than the individual believer are bad. But a lot of modern Protestantism doesn't follow this.) I come from the perspective of a secularist, though, so that might account for my differing perspective.

Well, as disappointing as this news is, at least it probably won't sink to the level of the adaptations of Alan Moore's work.

[troisroyaumes]

I agree that HDM doesn't really attack Catholicism, but the default image of corrupt religious authority is the Catholic church, and it's a conclusion that many people jump to. I have a few Protestant friends who read the books casually and told me that of course it didn't disturb them because it wasn't about Christianity, it was just about the corruption of the Catholic church. (They don't quite approve of my denomination.) I disagreed with their reading, but I can see why they may jump to that conclusion, especially if it allows them to continue liking the books without feeling that it challenges their faith.

Upon further thought, I see your point about Gnosticism/mysticism and so perhaps I should revise my assessment of the books as being adamantly atheist. I do however still think he's anti-religious. Maybe that's because I define religion as being communal. If we had to draw a line between religion and personal philosophy somewhere, I think that the community issue would be it. That's why I don't really classify Taoism as a religion and why I think of Buddhism as religion only in relation to the monastery/temple system. If I simply believed in the skeleton of the Catholic doctrine but did not participate in the church community, I wouldn't really call myself religious, although I would call myself faithful. And I suppose why I found Pullman shocking and daring was that while many people argue that you don't require religion to be moral, Pullman asserts that religion--at least the sort of communal faith that relies on rituals and systems of authority to hold itself together--is deeply immoral. Heh, as always though, it's all just a matter of semantics, and personal semantics as that. ^_^;;

And I suppose the Alan Moore work you're referring to is League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Haven't watched the movie or read the comic, but my friends tell me that the film adaptation was a travesty. >_< ::sighs:: Sometimes it seems that while Hollywood can tolerate certain concepts or philosophies Not-Approved-By-Protestant-America and call it revolutionary filmmaking, there are others that it feels required to dumb down and/or pervert beyond recognition. I wonder if there's a consistent distinction between the two or not.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Part of it might also be that Pullman is so writing against C.S. Lewis, so that might be assumed, but when I read Lewis I didn't catch anything specifically Catholic as opposed to generally Christian. I guess it depends what sort of Protestants they are (wow, I am shocked to hear that there is still Catholic vs. Protestant battling going on, considering the authoritarian behavior of certain Protestant churches).

Hmm, I would feel that for me what designates religion vs. philosophy is the presence of supernatural/divine elements, and ritual and worship. But IIRC there are Taoist priests, aren't they? I have heard many people who don't follow an organized religion say that they are "spiritual" and not "religious," but I tend to always mentally refer to all people who believe in divine beings as "religious," whether they are organizing it or whether they're the only ones who have such a belief. Personally I didn't really find Pullman to be too shocking there, because for me what makes "religion" potentially dangerous is not ritual, but following it as blind ideology, and dangerous ideologies can be secular as well. (Result of too many people playing the Stalin card during online discussions)

The Jack the Ripper one as well.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

C.S. Lewis was Anglican in his belief system, though he did try to be write as a general Christian apologist. It was J.R.R. Tolkien who was a Roman Catholic.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Argh. For some reason I started mixing him up with T.S. Eliot. >_< Mea culpa.

[troisroyaumes]

Actually I think T.S. Eliot was Anglican too. Or rather converted to it later in life. ^_^;; (Have been meaning to write a reply to your comment, but argh, today's been insanely busy. But this is shaping up to be a fun discussion. XD)

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Whoops, an Anglo-Catholic. I think. >_

[troisroyaumes]

It's not so much Catholic vs. Protestant battling as a generally held belief among many Protestant denominations that Catholics aren't true Christians and will get damned to hell along with all the atheists. Also, some of my...er...less educated Protestant acquaintances subscribe to the absurd belief that "Catholics persecuted Christians didn't they? I mean, they're called the Roman Catholic church." ::facepalms:: They are the main reason why I usually try to avoid religious discussions in real life. >_< And I mean, that being said, I also have many Protestant friends who may disapprove of my denomination to varying degrees but are for the most part quite tolerant and open about it. I really shouldn't generalize so much. ^_^;;

Well, I guess my position is that superstition or belief in the divine is still "philosophy" in the sense that it articulates an interpretation about the metaphysics of the universe. But practicing that belief in a communal context, in terms of action and ritual instead of at a cerebral level, makes it religion. (Although I do see your point, and there is a clear difference between philosophy as a discipline of thought, which excludes theology and superstition, and the fuzzier use of philosophy as general nonquantitative statements about how to live life and what the universe is like.)

Also, I don't think Taoist priests are exactly community authority figures, not like priests or ministers or rabbis or shamans. I've always thought of them as more like the equivalent of magicians in the Frazer sense--please do correct me if I'm wrong.

I think Pullman isn't so shocking to a secularist because what he is arguing seems to be for this sort of humanist spirituality that is very much, I think, in line with secularism, but then again, it's not the secularists' sensibilities that were potentially offended in the first place. ^_^ I wasn't offended by the books but they did raise some questions that I, as a religious person, found very challenging. I'm having trouble explaining it, but when I read the books I thought they were more than a simple criticism of organized religion (if they were, I would have found them tiresome, not interesting), but an argument for faith/spirituality that ought to be entirely individualistic. I suppose one way to put it is that he presented a conception of spiritual experience that was very attractive to me, and I was forced to ask why, then, should I call myself Catholic? What was there for me in religion (as a community experience that is) that provided anything better? A question which I'm still trying to answer, in some ways. I felt that to change that aspect of the book in the movie would remove the part of it that had been most essential in my reading experience.

Perhaps I was too hasty and self-projected my interpretation onto the books since it seems that very few people seem to share it (at least among the people who have commented)...^_^;; Still, I do find HDM to be very anti-religious, and more specifically about religion rather than any source of authority. Ah well. As for ideologies, I definitely agree with you, and unfortunately religious ideology is more blinding than most. >_

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

I had no idea that hostility towards Catholics was so widespread among younger believers. 0_o The last thing I heard was that they were saying that the Mormons weren't really "Christians," (but I thought a Christian was someone who believes in the divinity of Christ?) Although, I have heard of some people who are so ignorant that they think that Catholics are a sort of Protestant. [I get all this understanding of Catholic vs. Protestant from reading French history of the Wars of Religion, which explains why I'm so dodgy on the Anglican thing. I thought all of that died centuries ago. Do they actually believe in predestination and all that jazz? Good works vs. faith theory?]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Pullman posit that another being, not the evil Authority (Demiurge) figure is the real God? So that would make him (well, as far as we can say that the narrator=Pullman) not atheist, but instead a Gnostic humanist with Deist leanings.

I still maintain that religion doesn't necessarily imply organized, although this is a totally wanky semantic argument, but why would we use the word "organized religion" if we thought that organization was implicit in the term "religion?" I think sometimes religion means "organized religion" and sometimes it means "theist," but in any argument talking about belief vs. non-belief, it frequently takes on the meaning of "theist." But I definitely agree that Pullman is attacking organized religion here (given his position, I think what he's really attacking is the established Anglican Church, which puts him sort of between Protestant and Catholic.)

I guess when I meant "not shocking" I meant that I have seen this attack on organized religion before. Isn't this pretty much what Voltaire said in Candide, without the Gnostic glosses and fantasy genre trappings?

[BTW, have you ever read Umberto Eco's the Name of the Rose? Not really much to do with this topic except tangentially.]

[troisroyaumes]

I'm pretty sure Calvinism is pretty much dead in modern Protestantism, but I think there's a strong streak towards faith rather than good works even now. Well, that may just be me being biased. >_< And yes, Christian should mean someone who believes in the divinity of Christ. >_< I don't understand the reasoning behind the comment either, but I've been told very condescendingly (by decent people too!) that "Catholics aren't Christians."

I don't quite remember the ending in precise detail, but what I recollect is that Megatron was running heaven as the Authority and the real "god" was sort of locked away and helpless. Will and Lyra free him in the end and he sort of dissipates. I suppose why I initially thought of Pullman as being atheist was because the "god" at the end wasn't much of a god and disappeared quickly, but I do think now that you're right and he is definitely more Gnostic than anything else.

Heh, I guess you're right that it would be redundant to specify "religon" as being "organized religion" instead of more broadly as just "theist". It's just that I think there are a lot of people who believe in God but are not religious--Deism, for example, is still theism in my book--which is probably why I first started making the distinction.

I've seen attacks on organized religion too, but I've always found them rather irritating--I mean, people are human, and any system of authority is prone to corruption. Religion when involved in politics, as the Church was for most of European history, is inevitably going to end up hypocritical and abusive of their power. I've always felt that most of the criticism against organized religion ultimately boiled down to the issue of religion becoming politicized. And actually for the first two books, I thought that Pullman's argument didn't really go beyond that, but when I read the third book, I felt he was saying something more troubling: that one can't achieve spirituality in the context of organized religion (which is very different from simply saying that organized religion often ends up as being devoid of spirituality because it is easily corrupted). I suppose Voltaire may have said something similar, but I read Candide when I was too young to appreciate it, while I read HDM when I was exactly the right age. ^_^;;

I've wanted to read Eco for the longest time, but have never gotten around to it. >_< Is The Name of the Rose a good book to start with? Or would you recommend Foucault's Pendulum first? (Well, I know they aren't in the same series or anything, but in terms of encountering an author's style for the first time. ^_^)

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

I don't really get that whole strain either. But not being a extremist Protestant, I suppose that isn's surprising.

What, the Decepticons invaded Heaven? I totally missed that part. (jk, jk). But even if it's sort of a watchmaker, absent god, I figure putting in god-figure that is real in the book makes the world of the book non-atheist. But I suppose theoretically you could have a group of organized Deists, who just gather to discuss Deist philosophy and promote Deism.

Much of the criticism of organized religion does come from an anthropological, political perspective. I myself didn't really get the idea in the Amber Spyglass that Pullman was critiquing organized religion as inherently unspiritual (but I am sure some radical Protestants have made this argument.) Voltaire ends up with the same solution as Pullman, that essentially everyone should be their own priest, but his perspective is more political. Not that you can really blame him, considering the time period.

I would definitely recommend Name of the Rose to start over Foucault's Pendulum, which is denser and deliberately obscure at points. Name of the Rose is sort of a philosophical book in the guise of a mystery novel about a series of murders in a monastery with a mysterious library in medieval Italy. It works well as a historical book (of a more romantic kind), a philosophical novel, and as a mystery.

[tryogeru.livejournal.com]

Er..I know you told me about this book, I haven't read it, but I really really like Tom Stoppard. Really really like. Really. Love. Woo~

O.o

[troisroyaumes]

Why am I still up? But yes, Tom Stoppard is <3 and I really need to see a live performance of R&G someday.

::pokes:: Look, Ellen Kushner (Swordspoint author) has an LJ! Did you miss that part? XD

[tryogeru.livejournal.com]

I know. I was reading her LJ.

Why am I up too?

O.o

[tryogeru.livejournal.com]

Oh, and you know her most recent entry, about that Henry VIII thing? Unless she is talking about another thing, I wanted to watch that too! It had all these really good British actors in it. ::sigh:: Well, maybe it was for the best that I couldn't watch it because it was on Sunday and I usually am doing homework then (and I don't have any tapes to record it...;_;)

O.o

[tryogeru.livejournal.com]

Gah, and I swear I will stop commenting here.

She lives in Boston?!?!?!

Wow.

O.o

[solidark.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should say anything about this since I don't like any of the His Dark Materials books (and yes, I read them anyway but I really hated Lyra) but actually, I can't see the big problem here. Sure, the church are the 'bad guys' but why this fact causes all that uproar is beyond me. Many fantasy books deal with that topic, with religion and oppression by the clergy (or rather, they deal with Christianism because, let's face it - in Western literature Buddhism or Taoism or Hinduism don't get portrained in fantasy books that often) but I can't see why it's so much worse in his books (I mean, there are loads of books that deal with an alternate version of the church and other religious institutions, my favourites among them the Angel books by Sharon Shinn, the Windrose and the Darwath books by Barbara Hambly and Tad William's Dragonbone Chair) . Maybe people feel stronger about it here because His Dark Materials are supposed to be children's books?

Or maybe I should get over my dislike for his main character and re-read them ^^;;

[troisroyaumes]

Well, I liked the books, and I don't think of them as controversial simply because they talk about the oppression of the Church--I'm personally fed up with arguments about that and would have thrown the books away in disgust if I did. And most fantasy books don't make religion the focus of their underlying message--well, not the ones I've read so far--and I think that HDM, despite all the people who disagree with me, is still clearly about religion, not just authority in general.

I found the books disturbing (in a good way!) because what Pullman is saying is not simply that organized religion is corrupt but that the source of spirituality should be entirely human and individual; that faith via community and doctrinal strictures is by its very nature somehow antispiritual. Or at least that's how I understood the ending of the third book.

On the other hand, of course, this is hardly worth censoring, and I think that people should think of it as an anti-religious text and actually try to think about the questions it raises because they are very important questions to someone who is religious.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Teresa Nielsen Hayden is an editor at Tor Books, and has made quite a name for herself for stylish essays on politics and the contemporary fannish and mainstream culture scene. Her blog, Making Light, is really worth reading for its own sake.

[troisroyaumes]

Ah, thank you for the information! I feel slightly embarrassed now, especially since I read so many Tor books. ^_^;;

[phoebs.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I never really saw HDM as anti-religious or pro-atheism. I thought it certainly attacked the corruption of organized religion, but there's a very deep spirituality that runs throughout the protagonists' philosophy (for lack of a better word). Especially in the freeing of the dead, the intense joy/relief of the dead as they passsed through...it's a private, personal sort of spirituality. So when you say the books are so strongly in support of atheism... no, I'd have to disagree with that. As Pullman said, his story is anti-authority -- specifically, anti-religious!authority. Toning down the religion aspect in the movies will alter things, of course, but I don't see why the central message of the books will be lost.

And I don't see why you've lost respect for Pullman. Okay, so the people who ONLY see the movies will be missing something, but if they're worth anything as thinking human beings, they'll then go on to read the books. And he's not censoring those.

Honestly, this country is taking a ridiculously conservative tone right now. It's a little frightening. I can't say I blame Pullman for playing it safe.

[troisroyaumes]

Well, all right, again we're having a mixup of semantics--and in retrospect I think my choice of the word atheism wasn't quite correct. I do agree that the books are spiritual--I don't think I ever said otherwise and certainly never intended to--but I still do think they are very anti-religious. I think there is a basic distinction between faith and religion, and I tend to use the latter to define a faith that depends on a community structure instead of being individualistic (and I think you'd agree that Pullman definitely falls strongly for the latter). Also, I think you misinterpreted my use of "atheism": I didn't mean it as "nonspiritual" but simply disbelief in God; I see Pullman as someone who believes that the source of spirituality is entirely internal to us which makes him a humanist, in the best sense of the word, and your counterexample doesn't actually show that he acknowledges the existence of a deity. In fact, the way I interpreted the message of the books was that belief in an omnipotent/omniscient god actually hinders human spirituality by preventing it from understanding the individual's own capacity for spiritual transcendence without the intercession of anything greater--that the individual itself is large enough. (But thinking back on the books, some other things remind me that Pullman's position isn't really atheistic.) In short: atheism point you're probably right, spirituality point was probably a misunderstanding, and anti-religion point...I'm afraid I still have to disagree. He thinks that faith practiced within the structure of communal rules and rituals isn't faith at all--that is definitely a rejection of religion, and to me, on a personal level, a disturbing one.

Furthermore, the books may be more largely about anti-authority, but the overall metaphors/imagery are definitely religious, and Pullman himself has said that the books were written as his response to what he felt was the stifling Anglicanism by which he was raised.

And sorry, I have lost respect for him. I don't think he's a bad human being or anything but you can't write a marvelous, moving trilogy of books about defying systems of authority that abuse their power and looking for a personal source of spirituality, and then be conciliatory. Of course I can understand his position, but it's not exactly a sterling act of integrity either.