social foo: The Golden Compass

[alpharaposa]

A lovely fascist fable, just in time for Christmas

The heart of this is the question, how much of this is just entertainment, and how much is worth worrying over?

But hard on its heels is another question, that of how much of this stuff do we have to have surround us before we get tired of it?

I remember, as a kid, watching the very paganized animated accounts of Santa Claus, and my dad turning the TV off. When I asked why, he said that he didn't like those pagan retellings. At the time, I thought he was being stuffy. It was harmless storytelling stuff, after all. It was only later that I realized that he probably objected on the grounds that it was unimaginative and poorly done, and there was enough of it around that it had become tiresome.

There are a lot of other things that look neat and seem neat the first time or two, before you realize that they're really the same thing that turned you off before wrapped up in new packaging.

Comments

[copperwolf.livejournal.com]

Have you read it?
Have you read all three?
What did you think, yourself?

I have the trilogy. I skimmed through, was a bit put off by the treatment of the Church, re-read the first more thoroughly, and found nothing very objectionable in it. From what I remember, the premise didn't hold much water; but I've read a lot of fluff fantasy and I still plan to re-read the last two books more carefully.

[yechezkiel.livejournal.com]

Pullman's attempt to be the "anti-C.S. Lewis" is so heavy-handed that he actually ruins his own book in The Amber Spyglass. I found it kind of distasteful and boring when it was released.

Best line in it?

[yechezkiel.livejournal.com]

"Catholics used to complain that anti-Catholicism was the Antisemitism of the intellectuals, but this was before the intellectuals went back to antisemitism."