COMPASS & LOTR comparison

[Aiwendil]

Lalwende wrote:

It's Eru's very omnipotence which causes the issue. He creates everything, including Melkor, free will and the whole caboodle - therefore Eru must logically also create the potential for evil if nothing can exist without his having created it.

All right - if this is the charge against Eru, then I think it makes perfect sense. It also should be noted that the charge applies generally to omnipotent deities. I was merely pointing out that there is a worse charge made by some (most relavantly, by Pullman) against the God of Abraham - namely, that he is petty, ill-tempered, jealous, and vengeful.

That's why people in our society getting so worked up about HDM having caused them 'offence' puzzle me. The Magisterium is a literary creation, at worst an analogy of things in our own world, and so drawn colourfully.

Yet the thrust of the analogy is very clear. I have to say that I am not at all surprised at the outrage; that the Magisterium is a metaphor for the Catholic Church (or Christian Church, as this is a world without the Reformation) is fairly transparent. And if the metaphor is dealt with subtly in The Golden Compass, it is not so in the second and third books. This is not intended in any way as a criticism. On the contrary, I am very much in sympathy with Pullman on the matter of organized religion (though I certainly do have other criticisms for HDM). But if one considers the degree of 'offence' taken at, for instance, The Life of Brian, one will not be shocked at an outcry over a series of books in which . . . well, I won't say it, as I don't wish to spoil The Amber Spyglass for anyone - but consider the Authority as portrayed in that book.

And yet, as you pointed out earlier, Pullman does not, in the end, come across as anti-religion in HDM. Anti-Islamo-Judeo-Christianity, even anti-organized religion, yes, but anti-religion no. And I suspect that for many Christians of the less extreme sort, the Dust comes closer to their conception of God than does the Authority. Whether this is a virtue or a flaw in HDM is another matter, of course.

[davem]

Well, it looks like TGC has fallen to number 3 in the US charts & will struggle to make back its production budget, so there probably won't be any sequels. I wonder why? I haven't been able to see it, so I don't know if its a bad movie or if its because people don't like the message - or even if they've gone along with the boycott.

Whatever, it seems like the LotR movies have won this one. I wonder if this is because if the 'message' is removed (& it has been apparently) the story itself simply isn't enough to sustain interest - remove the whole 'wicked Church'/death of God stuff & you have animal 'spirits' & armoured polar bears knocking seven bells out of each other & that doesn't seem all that attractive to movie goers. Yet LotR, for all the claims of religious symbolism running through it, is basically an entertaining story.

So what I'm asking is, is HDM really a good, entertaining story (as Pullman likes to claim) or is it actually an average/poor story which relies on a controversial message to attract readers?

[Sauron the White]

This from Deadline Hollywood site on COMPASS revenue.

And in only its second weekend in release, the bottom fell out of costly domestic flop The Golden Compass from New Line, which forked over $200+ million to make it. I know, I know, the pic is doing OK overseas after earning $50.9 mil from 27 territories December 7th-9th. But the fantasy epic is so lost domestically it earned only an anemic $2.6 million Friday and $3.7 million Saturday from 3,528 nearly empty runs for 3rd place and a new cume of just $40.5 mil. I hear studio topper Bob Shaye once again is blaming everyone but himself -- including the movie's director Chris Weitz, and also New Line's own prez of production Toby Emmerich.

That type of dropoff is extremely severe. Remember what happened with the RINGS movies? They managed to be the top film for several weeks running and the films stayed in the theaters for over two months. COMPASS is officially dead after only ten days in the theaters.

I have not seen it and probably will not until its on cable down the road. For what its worth, I have a six year old grandson who is just head over heels in love with the LOTR movies. Go figure. Earlier I had shown him trailers for COMPASS and the only thing he was even mildly interested in was the bears. When the film came out i offered to take him but he would much rather sit here and watch the LOTR films. If that is any indication, they simply are not reaching an audience.

I wonder how long the act of Bob Shaye can keep going like this? He bombed with his own film earlier this year and now the big series they had bet the farm on is not going anywhere - anywhere good that is. If this does not put pressure on New Line to come to a quick agreement with Jackson on the HOBBIT I really do not know what will.

[Thenamir]

Originally Posted by davem

Well, it looks like TGC has fallen to number 3 in the US charts & will struggle to make back its production budget, so there probably won't be any sequels. I wonder why?

<cackles with glee>

I am not a movie producer, director, or even a hack grip, and I don't play any of them on television. However, it seems to me that perhaps Pullman isn't quite as "loved" or "revered" an author as JRRT or C. S. Lewis, and probably for the reasons given earlier:

Originally Posted by davem

I enjoyed the first volume & liked the next two less & less & by the end I just didn't care because I just felt Pullman had stopped telling me a story & was just ranting at me.

Now Tolkien paints his stories in painstaking detail, Lewis in broader strokes and more primary colors (colours for you non-USian folks ) but neither forgets that the tale is the real focus. Don't know if Lewis meant his stories to be overtly and primarily a tool for proselytization, but from all my sources (I have not yet read HDM, so all my info is second-hand) it appears that davem is hardly alone in his assessments -- Pullman's focus seems to be less on the tale, and more on his not-so-subtly-hidden ideas and ideals.

My main point, at which I am only now arriving via a circuitous path, is that Pullman's readers just don't care as much about HDM as do the readers of LOTR or Narnia. In fact, the fans of Tolkien and Lewis are so keen to see the movies based on their favorite works that they are willing to put up with what the more pedantic ones would view as grievous errors in the print-to-screen translation. Pullman might have been read by many, but it didn't affect them as deeply or as strongly, and not in such a way that they seem to care much about seeing it onscreen.

Either that, or the movie was so badly made that it deserves its fate. I will defer that judgment to those who care to plunk down the cash to see it. As I said earlier, having seen neither book nor flick, I am certainly open to correction.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Sauron The White

If this does not put pressure on New Line to come to a quick agreement with Jackson on the HOBBIT I really do not know what will.

If that is indeed the case, then The Golden Compass might actually have a redeeming quality!

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

All right - if this is the charge against Eru, then I think it makes perfect sense. It also should be noted that the charge applies generally to omnipotent deities. I was merely pointing out that there is a worse charge made by some (most relavantly, by Pullman) against the God of Abraham - namely, that he is petty, ill-tempered, jealous, and vengeful.

Indeed, for some Christians, that kind of God is the God they have, so Pullman's justified in that criticism as it's a type of God in the Real World anyway. And in this day and age of religion-driven hatred and violence it's a very pertinent point to make as some wish to hasten the end of the world because of what they perceive God to be. In that respect, Pullman is doing a wonderful thing by raising such difficult questions.

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

Yet the thrust of the analogy is very clear. I have to say that I am not at all surprised at the outrage; that the Magisterium is a metaphor for the Catholic Church (or Christian Church, as this is a world without the Reformation) is fairly transparent. And if the metaphor is dealt with subtly in The Golden Compass, it is not so in the second and third books. This is not intended in any way as a criticism. On the contrary, I am very much in sympathy with Pullman on the matter of organized religion (though I certainly do have other criticisms for HDM). But if one considers the degree of 'offence' taken at, for instance, The Life of Brian, one will not be shocked at an outcry over a series of books in which . . . well, I won't say it, as I don't wish to spoil The Amber Spyglass for anyone - but consider the Authority as portrayed in that book.

And yet, as you pointed out earlier, Pullman does not, in the end, come across as anti-religion in HDM. Anti-Islamo-Judeo-Christianity, even anti-organized religion, yes, but anti-religion no. And I suspect that for many Christians of the less extreme sort, the Dust comes closer to their conception of God than does the Authority. Whether this is a virtue or a flaw in HDM is another matter, of course.

Yes, and there is the quite beautiful thing about His Dark Materials - that in the end God is to be found in the very fabric of existence, not merely in the anthropomorphic figure of an aged man. This where davem's derided Republic of Heaven comes in - it is a state of existence which all share, not just those who have paid the subscription fees - and that in itself is yet another message from these stories, that God cannot simply be accessed by putting your cash onto a brass dish; the Magisterium is also a symbol of money and how it has done and very much still does corrupt churches.

The only way anyone can honestly form a criticism of these books is to go out and read them - and read them a couple of times as they are incredibly complex and ambitious and draw on so much more than mere criticisms of religions (they draw on philosophy, poetry, psychology, science, myth, art and literature amongst other things).

Originally Posted by davem

So what I'm asking is, is HDM really a good, entertaining story (as Pullman likes to claim) or is it actually an average/poor story which relies on a controversial message to attract readers?

Well I read them when they were very much 'just books' and hadn't heard of any of the controversy. I just saw them in a bookshop, noticed they had won several of the literary prizes and thought they looked interesting. I found I was deeply moved by them, fascinated by the new ideas (and these are very hard to come by in fantasy, how often do you think "Oh yawn, another sword wielding village boy?! Another Dark Lord?!") and have to say that I found it completely refreshing that they had a girl as the lead character, and not only that, but a girl who wasn't stereotyped and who was admirable.

[davem]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

Yes, and there is the quite beautiful thing about His Dark Materials - that in the end God is to be found in the very fabric of existence, not merely in the anthropomorphic figure of an aged man. This where davem's derided Republic of Heaven comes in - it is a state of existence which all share, not just those who have paid the subscription fees - and that in itself is yet another message from these stories, that God cannot simply be accessed by putting your cash onto a brass dish; the Magisterium is also a symbol of money and how it has done and very much still does corrupt churches.

.

But is Dust an actual physical thing (a form of matter) or is it a metaphor for imagination/love? Can't really be both - unless Pullman is actually writing a parable & not a story at all. Pullman seems to be doing a Humpty Dumpty, & having Dust mean whatever he wants it to mean at any particular point in the story. Is this 'Divine' Dust a physical thing - in which case it can't be something as abstract & metaphysical as love or imagination, or is it simply a floating metaphor for 'nice' things - in which case how can its presence be registered on machines, or anything be done with it at all?

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by davem

But is Dust an actual physical thing (a form of matter) or is it a metaphor for imagination/love? Can't really be both - unless Pullman is actually writing a parable & not a story at all. Pullman seems to be doing a Humpty Dumpty, & having Dust mean whatever he wants it to mean at any particular point in the story. Is this 'Divine' Dust a physical thing - in which case it can't be something as abstract & metaphysical as love or imagination, or is it simply a floating metaphor for 'nice' things - in which case how can its presence be registered on machines, or anything be done with it at all?

The inspiration comes from a few things including Dark Matter, Dante and Genesis:

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return

Dust is very much a real thing in Pullman's creation - it is a lot like Dark Matter in appearance and as an idea in that it's quite a mysterious substance sought after by scientists. But it's also conscious, and is attracted to conscious beings - it exists in a symbiotic relationship, needing conscious beings to survive itself, and the conscious beings needing it in order to have imagination and knowledge (i.e. consciousness!).

Dust can be a metaphor for things in our world because unless Pullman is cleverer than all the clever people in the world put together then I doubt Dust is the answer to our own existence and is just a 'thing in a book'. So of course it can be a metaphor.

[Thenamir]

Darn it, now I'm going to have to actually read HDM so I can see what you guys are talking about and write a thorough refutation.

-- Thenamir The Gadfly

[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Thenamir

Darn it, now I'm going to have to actually read HDM so I can see what you guys are talking about and write a thorough refutation.

-- Thenamir The Gadfly

You might find you like it

And some more on Dust...It falls, in Lyra's world, on those who have got a fixed Daemon, as opposed to children who have shifting Daemons - so it must be linked to what the Daemon 'is'. Which cannot be firmly defined, but we can guess that the Daemon is part of the human which feels, which thinks, which learns, judging by what has happened to the nurses at Bolvangar who have undergone intercission as adults:

she would be able to stitch a wound or change a bandage, but never tell a story

Adults also make even more Dust:

by thinking and feeling and reflecting, by gaining wisdom and passing it on

So aside from the notion that teachers must be Dust-y old things that tells us that in many ways Dust is indeed divine, is just like Tolkien's own notions of the importance of Imagination and Art. Love is also a part of what Dust is about as when children grow old enough to have a crush on someone (or something) they tend also to become adults and the Dust settles on them - so Love too is linked with Art; this has to be something Pullman gleaned from Blake.

[Thenamir]

As I noted to someone in PM, my delay in approaching HDM is not from protest of any sort (I have read and thoroughly enjoyed most of the Harry Potter books), but rather of time and the fact that I'd never heard of it until a couple of years ago. I have to admit it's not high on my to-read list even now, but if this row keeps up for much longer, I'll have to up the priority on it.