now I have the literary rage
2004-12-30

I usually have no time for fans who have a problem with what their object of worship is doing. If you are one of those people who feel that J.K. Rowling has betrayed you personally because she didn't have Harry and Draco toying with each others' broomsticks in her last book, or if you are huddling in a corner crying because you saw a picture of Clay Aiken touching a girl's breast, well, you're crazy. There may be many other people out there like you, but you know what? They're crazy too. Most of the time, somebody who takes the time and effort to put a creative work out into the world should have the power to do with it what they like. After all, they're the ones who put in the blood, sweat, and tears, and really shouldn't have to change their own personal vision because Reader #1,353,546 thinks that Character X and Character Y would be really HAWT together. Readers and viewers need to know that just because a work doesn't conform to their own desires, the author doesn't despise them and want to wreck their lives (although some of these people - well, J.K. Rowling, you have my deepest sympathies.)

Once in a while, though, somebody comes along with a statement about their works so bone-stupid that I really do have to think that they have a problem with their own readers. Such is the case with Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy.

To bring everybody up to date, Pullman sold the film rights to his novels to New Line. The original scriptwriter was Tom Stoppard. Tom Stoppard was then rejected in favor of the guy who did the American Pie movies, who was to write the script and direct. (He was also in Chuck and Buck, by the way, as the one who wasn't a demented manchild.) Weitz then quit the director's chair, citing stress as the reason. This right after it was revealed that the movie adaptation of the books would cut all references to God as it was feared that the movie would be too offensive to be shown in America.

By the way, if you haven't read the books, here's the basic plot: Kids fight nasty Church that kidnaps children, they kill God, humans are freed from religious tyranny. It's pretty God-centric, to say the least. That's what you get when you base the plot off of Paradise Lost.

Not surprisingly, some people were a bit pissed off by this and responded in kind. Pullman didn't respond to these folks outright but did respond to an article in the Times that implied that he valued the money over the artistic integrity of his novels. Unfortunately for Pullman, he goes a little too far in defending himself from the charges. Poor Pullman, it must be hard to be such a crusader for human bravery, when everyone from your own readers to the British press is against you.

I have a problem with Pullman because he acts as if he's quite the Wild Rebel of Children's Literature but really, he's pretty similar to the dreaded C.S. Lewis who is so horribly racist and sexist. Basically Pullman allows his characters to get to first base, unlike those of Lewis (although Lyra and Will certainly don't get away with a happy ending). All right, so we're no longer in the sexually retarded "girls, ugh" universe of Lewis but is that really such a great step? Note that Lewis often used the same kind of character as a villain - the sexually appealing woman who is also a Narsty Evil Bitch - such as the White Witch, the White Witch pre-Narnia, and that chick who lived underground in a cave and tried to make everyone forget about Aslan. Who's the baddest, worst character in Pullman's series? Mrs. Coulter, who of course happens to be - a hot woman who uses her charms for Teh Evil! She's only redeemed once she bites the dust it in defense of her daughter. The character is fun but I don't want to hear Pullman blathering on about how Narnia was sexist propaganda when he's drawing water from the same well, so to speak.

Plus all the servants in Pullman's world have the souls of dogs, and you can argue that the depiction of the Church is part of a long tradition of English anti-Catholicism. Have you ever read a Victorian-era novel where the characters expound at great length on their own tolerance, then turn around and spit out something about "the blinding ignorance of the "Church of Rome?" Yeah, I'm talking about that. Less obvious in a fantasy novel, of course, but you could say that Pullman is drawing on a particularly unpleasant literary tradition here.

(Lewis had many flaws. He is terribly racist and conservative in an annoying jolly-old-England sort of way. These are valid points. But attacking Lewis for deluding children on the nature of disease? That's close to the "playing-a-videogame-will-make-you-kill" argument in that it assumes that children have absolutely no way to tell the real from the unreal. You know, I was disappointed that I couldn't move a piece of chalk using only my brainpower, but I didn't go off and rage at Roald Dahl because Matilda was A LIE. Pullman needs to get over himself.)

That's just my personal bitch. What rankles here is that when you set up a universe in which the aim of the protagonists is to overthrow organized religion and also make it explicit that the books' view is also your personal point of view, you can't suddenly draw back and say, Oh hey, my books aren't about religion at all, they are about um, democracy. And stuff.

Translation: New Line can't do the books in their original form because it would piss off literalists, and I'm perfectly happy to carp on fundies all day long EXCEPT when it comes to my cut of the deal. Sorry!

The best part is that Pullman goes so far to criticize his own disappointed readers, who in their anger over having a beloved story bowdlerized to fit the needs of a specific religious group, apparently are on the same anti-artistic path as, say, the Taliban. This from a man who wrote that the U.S. was in danger of turning into a theocracy, specifically one under the very Protestant literalists that New Line would ostensibly like to cater to. (He also criticized President Bush - for reading
My Pet Goat. Hey, at least he finished the damn thing before dealing with 9/11, showing an admirable devotion to the written word. Cut the guy some slack.)

Pullman, people won't criticize you just because they're cowardly or mocking, it's because you made a fortune off your very public opposition to organized religion, but when confronted with the issue in real life, backtracked with a bunch of hems and haws and and basically said that it's really quite all right for artistic expression to be dictated by religious belief. (Oh, and yes, it's truly terrible that the press took a swing at you, it's right on the level of a woman being beat to death in Afghanistan for daring to show her face in public. Excuse me while I go off in the corner and have a little cry for you. OK, now I'm back!)

At least C.S. Lewis had the dignity to spend his his post-Narnia days maundering about his dead wife and not being a nuisance to anyone but that stupid wardrobe. You, on the other hand, seem determined to dig your own hole with your own hands right out in public. More power to Pullman, but perhaps he should reconsider Christianity, at least the part where Jesus talks about a beam in your own eye.