His Dark Materials; pretending to know what I’m doing.

Aside: Do understand that reviews are essentially an individual taking his opinion, physically manifesting it into the form of a delightful animal of achingly cute cuddliness, and then launching it – at extreme speeds – into your face. A review appears to be innocuous by definition, but understand that the moment you read it, or open yourself up to it, it will affect you. Should you agree with the reviewer, the review will simply reinforce and strengthen your position, thereby making it that much more difficult to engage your mind in any other avenue of interpretation. Good? Bad? You can decide that, but do understand that Jesus Camp operates in this manner. Fanatical Christians surround themselves with those of like mind, and this, in turn, fuels their stupidosity.

Should you, on the other hand, disagree with my review in a similarly stubborn manner, and therefore decide to ravage and devour the kidneys of all disagreeable reviewers, please do so on the grounds of the review itself. My opinion is simply my opinion; it is neither more valid, nor less valid, than your own. If you get ulcers because I don’t agree with what I believe, please let me know, so that I can point, then giggle at you.

I ask that you take my review with many grains of salt. All individuals understand and interpret books in many different manners, simply due to the fact that we were raised in different settings with different customs. If I’m being illogical, then punch my firstborn child; but if it appears I’m being a rational person you simply don’t agree with, then en guarde! Engage me, and I will disembowel you with my handsomeness.

His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman.

When I was reading the books (over the course of a few days), I originally noted that they were relatively shocking in theme. You have to understand that I mean shocking in context. I walked into this vaguely expecting something of a children’s novel. I had watched the movie (rated PG-13) and from what I had seen, it felt like a happy little story of animals, like Narnia, but with freakin’ sweet Polar Bears. Thus, when I opened the book and discovered, to my delight, a young 12 year old girl smoking, I wobbled.

Understand that I wobbled not because I believe this will subvert all of our children into smoking. When I lived out in the boondocks, I had a nine year old acquaintance that would traverse our school yard and smoke used cigarette butts. Nay, I did not wobble because, frothing at the mouth, I screamed ‘normal children don’t do this!’ at the book, nor did I wobble because I thought that this book could brainwash said ‘normal children’. I wobbled simply because I had an accepted notion of what specific books could, and could not, speak of.

Aside: By the way, parents who blame video games, movies, television or books for ‘brainwashing’ their children’ are stupid. It is, ultimately, up to the parent to teach their children the difference between reality and imagination, as well as the consequences of our choices. If you should decide to become a parent, the criteria for being a ‘good parent’ is not dependent upon how much you want to have a kid (as much as some may believe), but it’s how well you can teach your child and your ability to guide their adolescent years. Raising children is not a laissez faire type of engagement, where you simply keep band-aids and food handy and let them sort themselves out (this is often a hit or miss). Nor is a child like balancing fifty plates on a stick on your chin while standing on a rubber ball; constantly correcting and touching and coddling and beating will destroy their will. A child is a plant; you water them (sometimes) you help them stay rooted and straight (sometimes) and (very rarely), you speak to them to help them along.

Then you eat their tomatoes.

Anywho, I was surprised simply because Phillip Pullman had created some very real children. Good parents and ignorant parents alike may disagree with this, because their children don’t act like this, but you’ve got to understand that Lyra and friends are uneducated, stubborn creatures with copious amounts of confidence and swagger. They have simply been set down in an environment and then left completely alone to raise themselves with the slight guidance of their elders. The way in which Lyra acts; occasionally selfish, usually in very stupid ways, and often with an extreme stubbornness, is the result of her environment, and, to me, strikes me as extremely authentic. What I wasn’t expecting was, in all honesty, an author who would be unafraid to represent his character in this way.

Almost always, authors try to make their characters as endearing as possible. They act heroically, logically, rationally, and in very ‘good’ ways. Lyra, on the other hand, is stupid a brat with lots of hypothetical ‘balls,’ and Phillip Pullman wanted to achieve this. This book was created to challenge the norms of a Christian society, and some of these norms have been internalized within our minds. The themes that Pullman deals with; sexuality, death, life, heaven, god, adolescence and maturity, are shocking because our society implicitly avoids speaking of these topics, especially if it’s a children’s book. Not only that, but if we do talk of any of these subjects, we create beautiful euphemisms that make us feel fine and dandy inside.

Phillip Pullman shocked me because he defied these norms and tried his hardest to represent these themes untouched by our Christian theology. Death is simply death, blood is blood. If someone is shot in the neck with an arrow, there is no puffing away of his cuddly animal to represent death; he’s going to bleed. A lot.

In reality, that’s what this book is about. Pullman might have set his characters into a fantastic world, but he’s actually trying to represent society and people in a truer form than how we view ourselves.

But did I like it?

I’ll be honest, I actually didn’t like it when I read it. I love the themes of it, and the idea of it, but in an entertaining sense, there’s too much happening, too quickly. I hated Lyra, but Pullman managed to create her well enough that I ended up thoroughly liking her. The pace of the story, however, just zipped along. It felt a lot like Pullman was standing there with a checklist, ticking off the things he needed to get done. I thought that the movie moved entirely too fast, but I attributed that to the concept of book to movie transformations. In reality, it seems as though the book is simply written in this manner. While I really did end up enjoying the series, I’d have to say that its largest glaring weakness is its depth, or lack thereof. Fix this, and I will grant you my firstborn child.

P.S. NATALIE PORTMAN AND SCARLETT JOHANSSON IN A MOVIE. TOGETHER. LESBIANS. NOT REALLY, BUT THE POTENTIALITY DRAWS ME LIKE A FLY TO A FLAME.