![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
His Dark Materials, Revisited
Dec. 30th, 2019 05:09 amI've been sick this week. It's the third cold in as many months, which is very frustrating, but what can you do? Turns out the answer is sleep. I have slept for about four days. I guess I needed it.
When I came home with a bad cold last year, I discovered the tremendous practical use of television: It is sufficiently interesting to keep me in bed doing nothing, i.e. resting, without requiring as much cognitive effort as reading, which is often beyond my decongestant-fogged brain. Last year I imbibed The Terror; this year I indulged the opportunity to catch up on the BBC's new rendition of the first part of Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials.
I remember when the first book came out. It was at the crest of the wave of post-Harry Potter YA Fantasy. I listened to the audiobook back in those days when I had a tape deck at my desk but not a computer. It wasn't notably satisfying and left me a bit hollow, but was a fun dark adventure that kept me on task, and was better than a lot of the YA fantasy audiobooks I was listening to around that time. Eventually I consumed the other two in the series, but the last one put me off. Pullman was the YA Fantasy representative of the secular humanist cabal making a lot of noise post-9/11 (Richard Dawkins being the loudest) and his books were blatantly trying to be the anti-Narnia for a new, enlightened, Godless generation. This was fine as a premise for the series, but by the third book he had managed to get more evangelical than C.S. Lewis ever was. The preachiness of the last book rather soured my taste for the whole series and I didn't read (or listen to) it again.
My curiosity was piqued by the new TV adaptation, which aired shortly after I left for my Antarctic adventure. I was pleased to find it was still available on the iPlayer when I got back to the UK, so I watched it between naps as I tried to sleep off this cold. It has been probably fifteen years since I was familiar with the books, so I cannot comment as to the faithfulness of the adaptation, but it held on to what little I remember both in storyline and atmosphere, and it was a thoroughly admirable production on all fronts even if the approach to polar architecture broke my suspension of disbelief. Despite the excellent performances and wonderfully executed production, though, I was still left with that empty feeling – it was a grand adventure, but nothing much stayed with me, and in marked contrast to The Terror, even in my susceptible state I didn't much care about any of the characters. Why was such an obstensibly philosophical story so devoid of lasting impact?
It seems to have percolated a bit in my sleep since finishing it, and I woke this morning feeling like I'd figured something out.
In order to understand what I'm getting at, you need to be at least passingly familiar with the premise and basic storyline of The Northern Lights, first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy:
( A Story Rundown with Necessary Spoilers )
( And so, what I think is missing ... )
So once again I find I have been spoiled by Terry Pratchett, who is much better both at storytelling and proselytising for secular humanism, in part because he knows how to show, not tell, and abstains from lecturing the reader. Pullman can't even make the defence that he's writing for children, because one of Pratchett's best deconstructions of organised religion is the Bromeliad trilogy, which is openly aimed at younger readers. The sneaky thing about Terry Pratchett is that, in the midst of tearing down codified belief systems, he nevertheless provides worldly wisdom and teaches the reader how to be a better person, something Philip Pullman leaves hanging. Will there ever be a high-value TV miniseries adaptation of a Pratchett book, that takes itself as seriously as His Dark Materials? There have been a few attempts, but the essence tends to get lost in translation. Someday, maybe. We can but hope.
When I came home with a bad cold last year, I discovered the tremendous practical use of television: It is sufficiently interesting to keep me in bed doing nothing, i.e. resting, without requiring as much cognitive effort as reading, which is often beyond my decongestant-fogged brain. Last year I imbibed The Terror; this year I indulged the opportunity to catch up on the BBC's new rendition of the first part of Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials.
I remember when the first book came out. It was at the crest of the wave of post-Harry Potter YA Fantasy. I listened to the audiobook back in those days when I had a tape deck at my desk but not a computer. It wasn't notably satisfying and left me a bit hollow, but was a fun dark adventure that kept me on task, and was better than a lot of the YA fantasy audiobooks I was listening to around that time. Eventually I consumed the other two in the series, but the last one put me off. Pullman was the YA Fantasy representative of the secular humanist cabal making a lot of noise post-9/11 (Richard Dawkins being the loudest) and his books were blatantly trying to be the anti-Narnia for a new, enlightened, Godless generation. This was fine as a premise for the series, but by the third book he had managed to get more evangelical than C.S. Lewis ever was. The preachiness of the last book rather soured my taste for the whole series and I didn't read (or listen to) it again.
My curiosity was piqued by the new TV adaptation, which aired shortly after I left for my Antarctic adventure. I was pleased to find it was still available on the iPlayer when I got back to the UK, so I watched it between naps as I tried to sleep off this cold. It has been probably fifteen years since I was familiar with the books, so I cannot comment as to the faithfulness of the adaptation, but it held on to what little I remember both in storyline and atmosphere, and it was a thoroughly admirable production on all fronts even if the approach to polar architecture broke my suspension of disbelief. Despite the excellent performances and wonderfully executed production, though, I was still left with that empty feeling – it was a grand adventure, but nothing much stayed with me, and in marked contrast to The Terror, even in my susceptible state I didn't much care about any of the characters. Why was such an obstensibly philosophical story so devoid of lasting impact?
It seems to have percolated a bit in my sleep since finishing it, and I woke this morning feeling like I'd figured something out.
In order to understand what I'm getting at, you need to be at least passingly familiar with the premise and basic storyline of The Northern Lights, first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy:
( A Story Rundown with Necessary Spoilers )
( And so, what I think is missing ... )
So once again I find I have been spoiled by Terry Pratchett, who is much better both at storytelling and proselytising for secular humanism, in part because he knows how to show, not tell, and abstains from lecturing the reader. Pullman can't even make the defence that he's writing for children, because one of Pratchett's best deconstructions of organised religion is the Bromeliad trilogy, which is openly aimed at younger readers. The sneaky thing about Terry Pratchett is that, in the midst of tearing down codified belief systems, he nevertheless provides worldly wisdom and teaches the reader how to be a better person, something Philip Pullman leaves hanging. Will there ever be a high-value TV miniseries adaptation of a Pratchett book, that takes itself as seriously as His Dark Materials? There have been a few attempts, but the essence tends to get lost in translation. Someday, maybe. We can but hope.
