It is as unsubtle as has been said, but worse, it bored the piss out of me. I am, at best, agnostic so I take no offense at the anti-Christian message. But it seemed to me to simply be a vehicle for Pullman to vent his view - and bore the piss out me while doing it. I would say take a pass (if I were asked.)
I also thought there were gnostic elements in HDM, though Pullman celebrates reather than rejects the material Universe. IIRC Pullman shows religion and God as cutting us off from our true spiritual selves, as symbolized by the dust. Pullman may be an agnostic in real life, but HDM is both spiritual and anti-theist. I’m astonished there isn’t an even bigger uproar.
YMMV, but yes. 15. I am a parent, of a 14 year old. I don’t think he’s quite ready for this. And in fact, he did read the first book (before I did), but got overwhelmed and stopped reading about 3/4 of the way through the second. I trust him to know his limits, and he’s fairly representative of most kids his age when it comes to reading. I probably could have handled His Dark Materials around 12, but I was not representative of most kids when it came to reading. It all boils down to knowing your kid.
Lord of the Flies is appropriate for most young teens. It might be disturbing to adults, but it’s not so much to kids, as I remember. We grown-ups like to pretend its portrayals of childhood savagery are hyperbole. Kids know it’s just as bad in the cafeteria.
Again, I think placing *His Dark Materials *in the children’s section at all was a mistake. They should be over with Wally Lamb and Khalil Gibran: adult books that a few precocious youngsters might be able to handle.
Quoting Khadaji, above:
“It is as unsubtle as has been said, but worse, it bored the piss out of me. I am, at best, agnostic so I take no offense at the anti-Christian message. But it seemed to me to simply be a vehicle for Pullman to vent his view - and bore the piss out me while doing it. I would say take a pass (if I were asked.)”
Oh my Gosh, the is EXACTLY how I felt! and I was beginning to think I was the only one. Thank you, Khadaji.
oh and the “Daemon” thing irritated the hell out of me and Lyra was a know it all and oh how I hated this book. ending my rant and hijack now…
Heh. Actually, I’d say that this is precisely why I found it a horribly disturbing book at thirteen, whereas HDM is very clearly fantasy. It’s always seemed to me that SF and fantasy are precisely the genres where kids can handle the most dark stuff. Since the fictional situations are so far removed from their own experiences, it’s kind of a safe space.
I don’t know whether this would be true for most kids or teenagers, though, since I have only my own experience to generalize from.
I felt the same way reading book three. It bothered me quite a bit, considering I’m not at all fond of religion, and I finished them thinking, “This is a kids’ book?!”
But in the books, there is no GOD actually. This God character is the closest thing there is to one- thus, he’s the de facto “God”.
I don’t think* Star Trek V* had any controversy about its “God” getting killed (by Spock). I guess that was a simpler more innocent time…
This is true, but I also wanted to add another point that for some reason rarely gets mentioned in these discussions. I’ve heard some people try to play down the anti-Catholic message by disputing that the Magisterium is supposed to be a direct analogue to the Catholic Church. Fair enough; that’s a matter of individual interpretation. However, as the plot progresses in the second and third books, it becomes clear that the Magisterium is just one arm of an evil and corrupt religion that spans every world, specifically including ours. So the question of whether Pullman’s attacks on the Magisterium equate to attacks on the real-world Catholic Church is ultimately moot.
Slight difference, I think. The critter they ran up against in ST: V was certainly not any kind of God, and didn’t leave the viewer with the impression there never had been any God all along - only that the Enterprise crew had run up against another ET faker. I’ve not read HDM, but from what I’ve read about it Pullman’s thrust is much more “There is no God, only this snivelling old fogey”.
I always thought that God in the HDM books had been surplanted by upstart angels who used their stolen position to control the believers.
Well in case my two cents are worth anything I read the books when I was 12-13 and loved them. I don’t really understand what anyone could consider controversial about them.
They’ve probably been my favourite books ever since then. I do remember being slightly irritated at the soppy stuff between Lyra and Will at the end 
but re-reading them now I’m older it really tugs at my heart strings.
Whynot Did your son mention anything in particular about why he didn’t want to read it any further?
Yes, I would agree that it’s made quite clear that religion in our world is specifically included. I’ve been wondering for years when someone would notice them!
I liked the first two books, but I was very disappointed by the third. It was so muddled and heavy-handed, and I think he ruined his own story by warping it to serve his agenda. I’m a Christian myself, and I knew Pullman’s politics before I started (and quite honestly it’s a bad habit of his to let his agenda take over in spots in other books too), but even so I was surprised to see how much he let himself turn the whole thing into a rant.
BTW I would like to add in a detail about the afterlife in HDM; at first, when we see the underworld, it’s not just that everyone is in this dull place, existing forever, like Hades–they are also constantly tormented by harpies. So Lyra and Will get rid of the harpies and release everyone into blissful nonexistence. I thought is was pretty bizarre.
I guess I should try to make my position clear about these books: I’m a Christian. I am not offended by the existence of these books, except insofar as I’m very unhappy about how badly the third volume is done. I liked the books until I read the third one, and I was so disappointed I haven’t read them since. They sit on my bookshelf like a toothache.
Indeed, from a religious POV, why should I be offended? IMO Pullman failed; he set himself to write an atheist Paradise Lost and he screwed it up badly. I don’t think the universe stands up, nor does his message. So there’s not a lot for me to be offended about, except on a literary level. I’m offended about that.
The trouble is that the argument of the trilogy is incoherent.
OK, in the trilogy we have this evil church that serves an evil deity. But what’s the point of that? Surely Pullman doesn’t think that the evil that theists do is because an evil deity ordered them to do it. No, theists do evil selfish things because they are mortal men who are evil and selfish. And they imagine that what they are doing is approved by their deity in order to justify their actions. They don’t do evil because they are acting under the orders of an evil diety, rather they create that deity in their own image.
So what exactly does it prove if you show an evil church that does evil in the name of a literally existing evil deity? You’re analogizing to the existing churches that do evil, except postulating that an evil deity is behind it all is missing the point. There is no such evil deity, just human beings. Human souls aren’t enslaved by an evil supernatural organization, rather by other human beings.
So imagining an evil deity is the silliest thing imaginable if you want to explore the question of why human beings do evil. I suppose if you really believed in God, and really thought God was evil, then such a book would make sense. But Pullman doesn’t believe in God, or gods. So what exactly does making up an evil deity that seems to have some points of correspondence to what Christians believe about God prove? It doesn’t prove anything.
I suppose the point is supposed to be that if what Christians really believe about God were true, then God would be evil and Christians are evil for worshipping that evil deity. Except the books are totally ineffective in making this point, because the Magisterium and The Authority aren’t really anything like what real-life Christians think God is like.
To push an analogy, suppose I wanted to write a book showing what an asshole Donald Trump was, and showing what assholes people who look up to Donald Trump are. Something like what Orson Welles did with William Randolph Hearst in “Citizen Kane”. And I create a character Monald Mump that’s a thinly veiled reference to Donald Trump. And to show how evil Monald Mump is, I have him molest children, vivisect puppies, and dump botulism into the water supplies of small towns. Now, have I really created an effective attack on Donald Trump? If I want to show what an asshole Donald Trump is, don’t I have to show him doing the sorts of things Donald Trump actually does that make him an asshole? A person who looks like Donald Trump doing evil things that aren’t anything like the evil things Donald Trump actually does is pointless, if what I want to do is critique Donald Trump and the culture that allows Donald Trump to get away with the evil things he does.
Such a book might make some sort of point, but it isn’t about why Donald Trump is an asshole anymore, and it isn’t about why a culture that allows Donald Trump to get away with his assholery is an asshole culture. The real life Donald Trump isn’t an asshole because he molests children and vivisects puppies, he’s an asshole because he’s a blowhard vulgarian bully.
So, take the scene where Lyra’s in the prison camp for children, and they’re severing the children’s daemons. If found that section frightening and disturbing…not because I thought it was analgous to what the Christian Church does, teaching children nonsense and separating them from their true spiritual selves, but simply because it was horrifying. It’s a great passage, but not because it’s a critique of Christianity, or any sort of religion. It has nothing to do with religion, for crying out loud, and the people doing the severing weren’t doing it for religious reasons, and it didn’t work as an analogy to the indoctrination of children with nonsense, but rather as an analogy to Nazi medical experiments.
Considering only the controversy about the movie–
http://www.usccb.org/movies/g/thegoldencompass.shtml
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops rated it A-II adults and adolescents.
I find USCCB reviewers consistent with my reaction to movies.
James Bowman didn’t even bother to review it yet.
My dd’s 5th grade Girl Scout troop chose it as an alternate for their December movie and shopping fun trip. 16 of the girls picked Enchanted, and 8 picked Golden Compass. The troop leader advised parents it was controversial, and had parents sign the “sensitive nature” box on the permission slip.
I read up on it, it doesn’t sound thrilling. I will be interested in her reaction. She had zero interest in Harry Potter, including the movies. She reads easily and at an advanced level, and I’ve never been able to get her to start on Narnia.
Besides the whole “destroy the Church, kill God” bit in the books, there are a few items that freak out the more fundamental (with the emphasis on mental) protesters (I’ll spoiler this for the ones who haven’t read the books or who plan on seeing the movie(s):
[spoiler]
- Witches as heroes
- Gay angels
- References to sexual mutilations
- Lyra is the product of an adulterous affair
- A scientist turns out to be a former nun who lost her faith
- The people who are trying to destroy The Authority have no qualms about killing children in order to reach that end.
- His Dark Materials, as in the opposite of the Light of God a.k.a. Satanism[/spoiler]
My 15 YO son had the books (he never got around to reading them) and I never thought about them until I saw the first trailer for it months ago. I had never heard anything about the stories and was thinking it would be similar to a LOTR or Harry Potter universe. I picked up the books and started reading them and was surprised at the blatant atheist message. Most kids wouldn’t get the religious tone of Narnia but HDM was as subtle as Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ. Change the target of the hate to be a minority and it could have been a recruiting tool for the Klan. My son has since read the books and agreed that the message was heavy handed. Our basic gripe with the books, though, was we didn’t like his writing style as compared to the Potter or Artemis Fowl books.
I don’t mind a rip on religion (I love Life of Brian, Dogma and Meaning of Life) but Pullman was over the top, especially considering the age of his audience. I may go see the movie just to piss of my fundamentalist friends, though!
He said, “It got boring,” which is his way of saying anything from it got boring to he started having nightmares about it. He’s not real forthcoming on his emotional state, so I asked a few questions, got nowhere fast, and decided to drop it. Either it was over his head intellectually or emotionally, and I’m not going to force him to finish it in either case.
A few weeks later, I read it myself to try and get some insight, and decided that my impression still stood: it could have been either an intellectual boredom/confusion or emotional upset. I did mention to him that I didn’t really think they were kids’ books, and he wholeheartedly agreed with me, with more than a little relief in his tone. So the story I tell myself about that is that it was too much emotionally and theologically for him (he was, at the time, at the Jonathan Livingston Seagull stage of his spiritual development), but I can’t be certain.
dangermom, I absolutely agree about the heavy-handedness of the third book. I did not know anything about the author when I read the trilogy, but in reading the third book, I was made uncomfortably aware that the author had an agenda and a strong point of view that seemed out of place, or at least didn’t arise naturally from the narrative. And it really stood out in contrast to the first two books, which were much more subtle (and, IMHO, effective because of that.)
This film critic’s blog article, titled “It’s not anti-Catholic, because it’s Gnostic,” discusses the Gnostic angle, and includes quotes from the film’s director.
Well, Narnia never mentions Jesus, Christianity, God, or religion as such. Its allegorical elements are subtle enough that some readers have missed them completely (though others have found them incredibly obvious).