The Golden Compass--not sure why the shouting

[catsittingstill]

Prompted by all the buzz about _The Golden Compass_, and especially by what I hear about moves by various religious groups to boycott or ban the movie, or caution parents about allowing children to read the books, I reread the book myself.

I don't get it. At least in the first book, I don't see what is prompting the concern.

Yeah, the church is an ominous villian moving in the shadows--the threat of a renewed Inquisition is something the grownups are concerned about (along with any reader even vaguely familiar with Western History), while the General Oblation Board is a much more up close and personal danger to Our Heroes.

But I don't understand what the problem is--the evils that the GOBblers are doing, while certainly evil and frightening, are frankly considerably milder than evils that churches have done to totally innocent people as a matter of historical record. Were the people objecting to this book planning to keep the Inquisition secret from their kids? That doesn't seem practical--when I got curious about it (my one brief flirtation with horror--and it was quite horrible enough to cure me of it) I found out the bulk of what I learned from nonfiction books in the history section of my own school library.

Furthermore, while the church in the book is at least infested with evils, there's no mention of a similar problem with God. In fact, God is invoked respectfully by at least one character in the book who is wise and good, suggesting that God is perceived in that society as a defender.

Or are they bent out of shape over the last chapter or so in the book when the characters are speculating (a la "Great Chain of Being") over the allegorical nature of a newly discovered phenomenon that they think may be a physical representation of, or be attracted to, a theological construct? Or the part at the end where our plucky heroine decides they may be wrong about the moral nature of that phenomenon? Perhaps the objectors aren't familiar with the concept that 1) it's pretend, 2) in the pretend, the author may be having the speculating characters be mistaken 3) in the pretend, the author may be having the plucky heroine be mistaken?

Or maybe it's not the first book they're having a problem with--even though it's the first book they're mentioning. I should probably read the other two--they're around the house somewhere, I'm pretty sure.

Anyway--read it all in one sitting (so to speak) last night. The start of it reminds me a little of Alice In Wonderland--weirdness without much emotional attachment--which may be why some readers have a hard time getting into it. It has emotional attachment later, though. I really enjoyed it a lot, and some of the nuances I'd missed the first time intrigued me. What is up with those rare people whose daemons are the same gender they are--are they gay? If being gay is illegal in this time and place, do people know they are gay when they see their daemons, or do most people not know what that means?

This is the first paper book I have read in a while. It felt odd to be having to hold the pages open.

Comments

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

A lot of the upsetting metaphysics is in books two and three, but even so, the Church of the first is pretty upsetting to Christian authoritarians; in that history John Calvin become pope. Now, Calvin was one of the founders of Protestantism, and a great critic of Catholicism. Protestant authoritarians hate the Papacy, while Catholic authoritarians hate Calvin, so it's a slap in the face to both groups. And then it gets worse. Interesting question as to whether the characters with opposite-sex daemons are gay or transsexual. The sex-of-daemons is lifted from Jung; in Jungian belief, the inner self is the opposite sex of the external self. (Hey, it's Jung, he's weird.) I love Pullman, but it's not for philosophical clarity...

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

Were the people objecting to this book planning to keep the Inquisition secret from their kids?

Seems to me, they have religious objections to the Inquisition itself being seen as a bad thing. Kind of like how certain other people object on principle to any and all taxes, in that it's not practical for them right at this time to actually reveal how far they want to go, so they tone it down a bit. As far as I can tell, they really do want to go back to killing people for disobedience to their perceived God.

And the movie has just about none of what you just described (I saw the movie, and am just now partway into the book). They cut it out of the adaptation, hoping thereby not to offend anyone. And, yes, from the content of the movie, it's not on the top 200 list of films with ideas incompatible with Christianity. The Magisterium might as well be a fascist secret-police government as a "church". But the neo-Calvinists are screaming their heads off anyhow. For the same reasons they scream their heads off about Harry Potter the Satanist, and not being able to force all others to say "Christmas" instead of any other name for December festivities.

[tradarcher.livejournal.com]

Sigh!
It looks like the same old argument about Harry Potter, D&D, dancing, and anything else the church does not like. "Sinful" you know. "Going to hell", in a hand basket.
I will see the movie soon, just as soon as I stop dancing in my D&D game.

So I must be going to hell with my basket.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I noticed the Pope John Calvin part, but wasn't sure enough of the dates to be sure that was really *the* Calvin.

I generally like the daemons, even though I'm not quite sure what they are. A soul? Daemons don't exactly die--when their human dies they disappear. But it is possible to kill a human by causing serious damage to their daemon.

And the taboo against touching someone else's daemon is interesting. I wonder if the reason some of the bad guys didn't experience it was that their own daemons had been torn away?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Well, I suppose it's possible that some people might think the Inquisition was a good thing... I would expect such people to be pretty rare, though. At least, I hope they are rare.

One of my friends saw the movie and she thought it was pretty good--I'd really like to see how they handle the daemons. She said it wasn't very far into the movie before she started getting a distinctly uneasy feeling anytime there was a human onscreen and zir daemon wasn't immediately apparent, so I guess they managed to get the human-daemon link across pretty well.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

My books in my basket, I wander so free,
I dance and I dice, and I play D&D.
As all of my neighbors are happy to tell,
Me and my basket, we're going to hell.

BTW--my husband says I should work smurfs and Scooby Doo into it, but I can't figure out how. :-)

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

[corrected version]

The final authority on daemons, of course, is Pullman and he never really does explain. In any event, the word is Greek and Socrates (cited by Plato and Xenophon) used it when speaking of an advising spirit which had an animal form. But the idea probably owes a great deal to Jung's anima/animus (I just looked it up). Jung used this pair of terms to describe a kind of gateway to the collective human unconscious, an image of an idealized soul; always of the opposite sex as the person themself. My sense is that touching a daemon is undue intimacy in most circumstances. Hence, Mrs. Coulter's (I have to keep reminding myself not to write Ann Coulter) daemon has a form with hands; Mrs. Coulter is manipulative person (Pullman is very fond of bitch-mothers as characters; they occur in other books of his.) BTW, Lord Asriel's name is probably a reference to Azrael, who is the angel of death in Judaism and Islam, but it's also a biblical name, though not commonly given by English-speakers.

BTW, there was not a single papal inquisition, and not all inquisitions were as horrible as the Spanish. There were secular elements in the Spanish Inquisition and anti-Catholicism plays some role in the various inquisitions's reputation; Protestant countries also had brutal religious repression in those times, but this is often glossed over in predominantly Protestant countries like the USA.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

The first book was fairly tame; it's not until later in the series that they get into serious blasphemy, with God being a fraud. So I'm not sure if the real upset is because they've read ahead and they know what's coming (in the books that the movie will make more people read, even if they edit it all out of the movies), or just the fact that, as I understand it (haven't actually seen the movie -- I never see movies; I can't make myself pay that much money and subject myself to that much spam to go to the theater, and I don't have a TV to watch them at home on either TV or DVD), even in the movie the church is cast as the villain.

From what I've heard people say about the story in the movie, there's certainly more real reason for the religious censors to get exercised than there ever was in the Harry Potter series, even though the first movie is way tame compared to the third book. I was frankly amazed that a mainstream publisher was willing to print the books, especially as children's lit -- it's about the most extremely anti-organized-Christianity fiction I think I've ever read. I kind of suspect it mostly flew under the radar until the movie, but the movie coming out is going to make a lot more parents read the books than would have before, and the more churchy ones are going to choke and scream when the read it.