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Yay, Golden Compass! It’s cool they went to see it, and it’s coolthe series is being discussed here.

I hope the recent bad press does not prevent those who would normally be interested from checking into it. I am in the camp of those who love Narnia, Middle Earth, HP Wizard World, AND the Parallel worlds of His Dark Materials. I even agree with some of the issues Pullman has with Narnia, but am not bothered enough by them to drop them from the special place they have for me in my reading history and imagination.

The problems with “Establishment Power Abuse” brought out in this series are very real problems all peoples of the real world face today. ANY institutio or idea, religious or secular, that allows no criticism is lethal to our actualization as individuals as well as human beings in general.

Beyond the ideological aspects, though, there is the incredible originality of Pullman’s imagination manifesting in the creatures, cultures and phenomena of the various parallel worlds explored.

I hope the film gets LOTS of support from the HP community by those who have not taken offense to it. In my view, as long as the movie makers have done their job well, The Golden Compass deserves as good a box office response as HP movies.

gh-

Personally, I loved all the HDM books, especially the third one. I am Catholic myself…And I wasn’t offended by any of it. I just saw it as truly excellent writing. I think (and this is not refering to your comments, but the people who seemed quite aghast at the religious content) that the people who read it should not take it so personally. Just because the author believes something, does not make it true and does not mean you should take it as a personal blow. For lack of a better description, people should “suck it up” a little.

Of course, people’s religions are often very important to them (like mine is to me), but there are other beliefs out there and when reading a book it seems best to just be open to it, even if you disagree with it.

As for Philip Pullman being “jealous” of JKR and C.S. Lewis, I believe (correct me if I’m wrong) that he wrote his books or at least one of them before JKR did hers. And really, you can’t know that he was. Either way, I believe that he is a great author in that he could write such an in-depth book so well.

I’m sorry if I sound like I’m trying to argue, I just love the books very much.

Juli, you are correct that Pullman began publishing before HP. In fact, his first two books were out before HP became huge. Of course, this doesn’t mean that he’s not jealous of JKR. He’s definitely not jealous of Lewis. In interviews he has been very critical of Lewis – especially criticizing his religious overtones. Funny, Pullman can criticize writers for religious symbolism but you’re not supposed to criticize him for anti-religious symbolism. And for the record, he has an odd reaction whenever Tolkein comes up. He doesn’t like their works compared…

I wonder how he feels about the HP series now that JKR herself has referred to Harry as Messiah-like. Can you make an extended metaphor that Hogwarts represents organized religion and the Death-Eaters science? Dunno.

I WANNA SEE THAT MOVIE SO FREAKIN BADLY!!!!! I LOVED the books almost as much as Harry Potter and I hope the movie did the book justice! And of course, nothing gets better than this…Evanna+Harry Potter+His Dark Materials=Unbelievable awesomness!

One thing that really strikes me—when there is a good polite discussion like this one on Leaky—is that the HP fans who post here are (mostly) extremely well read, at least in fiction. Ain’t that wonderful!

A second thing that really strikes me, and leaves me baffled: there is a lot of confusion about the broad umbrella term “Christian”. Please forgive me if I get some of the following details incorrect, but I know I have the gist right: One poster in this thread described herself as christian but raised baptist, her husband raised Catholic, someone else as methodist. And in another thread, someone asked if “Calvinistics” are really Christian! Folks, there are many many varieties of Christianity, and always have been. Catholic and Orthodox, Calvinist, Lutheran, Baptist, methodists, and yes even the members of the Church of the Latter Day Saints are all Christian. While they all share some fundemental beliefs in common, there are a lot of theological differences that keep them apart, plus the development of each separate variation as ‘a church’ over the years. I am really baffled (and even a bit terrified) by the trend toward people saying “I am one, and you are not”. (in fairness I should add there are as many divisions and movements within Judaism, Islam and Hinduism as well…there is no such thing as a monolithic religion)

At the risk of being called patronizing again, there is one key ingredient to Pullman’s novels that hasn’t been mentioned in previous posts. Pullman is playing with a watered down version of Fredrich Nietzsche’s famously misunderstood line “God is Dead”. In context Nietzsche meant two different things. First that when he was writing at the end of the 19th century, many people he observed were going through the motions of demonstrating they were devote and religious (going to church and other public acts), but in reality they were preoccupied with money, power and other worldly, selfish concerns. In short, they were simply hypocrites. That was the major meaning behind Nietzsche’s line “God is Dead”. But behind that he had something else in mind. Nietzsche (and others writing at the time) called for a critical approach to ethical behavior. He believed that we should look at our ethical norms and criticize them, in an effort to move beyond the ethical guidelines we are taught in order to create better guidelines.

A side note, the other idea in Pullman, regarding Dark Matter, has gotten a fair amount of scientific and popular discussion in recent years. But the concept actually goes back to the mid-nineteenth century, its only recently that the scientific world has accepted it as true. There is an idea of dark matter in physics that actually underlies a lot of Neitzsche’s thinking as well.

What a good discussion thread this one was, tho!

My personal opinion on Pullman’s books? I’ve read worse, and consider JKR a far better writer. The climatic scenes in Pullman seemed chaotic to me (and unfortunately some of the same can be found in the last battle scene in DH—JKR tried to cram too much into as few pages as possible, I think!), and the Dark Materials plot predictable, including the ending. But, hey, I read all three to the end….