When we ask what is nature let us think of animals in terms of how they were portrayed in My Book and Heart Shall Never Part. We learned from the movie that kids and animals resemble each other, while animals disguise human weakness and dramatize pitiless morals. We also gleaned that, according to Aesop, "Love can tame the wildest". Also, a child is "an aged philosopher focused on dreamlike creatures performing what it means to be human." Finally, we were told that reading about animals is reading about the uneasiness of the human condition. We know that daemons resemble their humans, and vice versa. You can even take a test to see what your daemon would be (click here to take the test!) When they are cut off from one another they cease to exist and each feels the pain of the other. Lyra disguises Pantalaimon's weakness and he her's. These animals, like Pan, do perform what it means to be human, while I think the child performs what it mean to be an animal (as in adapted to civilization as the adults, or magesterium, see fit). And the powers of love are evident in His Dark Materials, when we are witness to the strong bonds between daemon and human (as well as the respected boundaries that you may not touch another daemon). Philip Pullman had said of the Chronicles of Narnia that, if it is supposed to be a religious book, it is void of the single most important Christian value: love.
As far as authorship goes, I never really like to see what the author of the book looks likes. It somehow ruins it for me. Imagining the author is a big part of imagining the book and with all of Pullman's imput, he has grown a little didactic himself, it would seem. J.K. Rowling has always maintained a distance from her readers but Philip is, at least from my experience, interruping his own work by telling me what it is about. Well, that's the equivalent of Lewis Carroll providing us with the actual answer to the raven and writing desk riddle. Something is taken away, its one less thing for me to have the pleasure of imagining. So thank you, Phil Pullman, for doing the thing to me which you have vowed so strongly never to do: leave little or nothing to the imagination. Why did you let them make a movie, especially if it isn't even as good as the book? How can we imagine what you've written if we can watch it, only further depreciating the value of an education which you so highly esteem? It seems like Phil is not doing this purely for alturistic reasons, and even he said so himself "I write a book for myself." If this is the case, why does he feel the need to explain himself to everyone?
1 comment:
if the book is as good as everyone says and thinks it is, then the movie can do the book and what it has to communicate no harm....at least that is what i think
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