A Couple of Items
So there’s this creationist ‘Zoo Farm’ place in Somerset.
A donkey was led in and the presenter traced a marking on its back. Did we know that the domesticated donkey has a dark cross marked on its back, he asked us casually, whereas the wild donkey doesn’t? Did the cross not remind us that the donkey carried Jesus? In retrospect, I was intrigued by my shock at this mild evangelical interjection, a reaction that reflects a more general antipathy towards creationism. Anthony Bush hopes “to give people permission to believe in God”, by disputing the truth of Darwin’s theories. However, the prospect of a religious world-view having any authority fills non-believers with dread.
Well exactly. And that’s not just some random weird reaction, some vague distaste, some reflex dislike. Non-believers have every reason to be filled with dread at the prospect of a religious world-view having any authority. Because authority is just exactly the very thing that a religious world-view should not have. That’s the heart of the issue, isn’t it. Yes, people are at liberty to believe anything they feel like believing, but no, it does not follow that they therefore have the right to force their belief on anyone else. If religious world-views have authority, that means they are – necessarily – being forced on everyone else. And that just won’t do. You can’t demand that other people believe things for which you can give no other grounds than ‘faith’. You can believe it yourself, but you can’t enforce it on others. To do that, you have to have better grounds than mere ‘faith’ or belief – you have to have evidence. Non-believers do indeed dread world-views that disregard or distort and misrepresent (or outright falsify) evidence in order to coerce people into subscribing to said world-views. There is something in us that profoundly resents that, and experiences it as an insult and intrusion and presumption. That’s because it is.
And so there’s Philip Pullman.
His books have been likened to those of J. R. R. Tolkien, another alumnus, but he scoffs at the notion of any resemblance. “ ‘The Lord of the Rings’ is fundamentally an infantile work,” he said. “Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other. He’s interested in maps and plans and languages and codes.”
Yup. Infantile. Very like The Wind in the Willows in a lot of ways, only not as good.
When it comes to “The Chronicles of Narnia,” by C. S. Lewis, Pullman’s antipathy is even more pronounced. Although he likes Lewis’s criticism and quotes it surprisingly often, he considers the fantasy series “morally loathsome.” In a 1998 essay for the Guardian, entitled “The Dark Side of Narnia,” he condemned “the misogyny, the racism, the sado-masochistic relish for violence that permeates the whole cycle.”
I like Lewis’s criticism too, and don’t find it particularly surprising that Pullman quotes it often. It’s too bad Lewis didn’t stick to what he did best.
BBC World Service had an encounter with Pullman on a few days ago, I think it was the Xmas weekend. The religious business came up a bit. I think it was one of the children in the audience who asked something like whether Pullman had a problem with god. He said he couldn’t very well have a problem with a god in whose existence he doesn’t believe, and, under the laugh that got, added something about maybe god having a problem with those who don’t believe in him.
I’m a big sci fi fan. I’ll have to check Pullman out. I don’t mind the “children’s book” thing, even (Lemony Snickets is very cute, for instance).
Oh, I love children’s books. Seriously. Don’t love Harry Potter, but love children’s books if they’re good.
His Dark Materials is pretty uneven (the last book, in particular, is a mess, although an affecting mess), but the first volume is definitely worth a look. Interesting take on both Milton and Blake, too.
I agree with chrisPer, actually (it does happen). Wasn’t the Lord of the Rings written during WWII-when the future of civilization was indeed dire. I don’t see the books as infantile in the least.
Which brings me to Philip Pullman.
I loved his conceptions of the daemon, the ideas he built his story around and the implementation of parallel worlds.
I found the venom in his image of the church jarring and excessive. Compare with the view of 16th-century Catholics in James Clavell’s Shogun for instance, which was realistically genocidal but he did not burden the viewer with the moralising loathing that Pullman does.
You get the feeling that in his mind execution is way too good for churchmen, and no doubt whatever that he means his condemnation in this world not the imaginary one.
Overall: A brilliant series, suffers from conception fatigue by volume three, suffers from author’s pathological detestation of Christianity.
ChrisPer – Tolkein was motivated by a desperate, unquenchable desire to ‘re-create’ a vanished English language lexicon of Myth and Legend, to match the great Norse, German and Icelandic stories – his mission was to envisage an ‘British’ mythology which he felt had been allowed – encouraged – to die over centuries by successive careless monarchies. His motivation was primarily a linguistic one, as a professor of English, and his ambition was collossal; he only partly succeded. Regarding infantilisation he abolutley abhored the hippies of the late sixties who flocked to his country house, and who believed him to have given them some psychedelic disneyland to play with. He believed in those attributes you mentioned; and as G Tingey observes, had seen combat in the trenchces in WW1, which affected him significantly. But, perhaps I feel less strongly than you. I view his books for entertainment and escapism in the same way as I view sport (at its very best) for these things… stirring.
It is fashionable to condemn Tolkien’s writings as infantile. In my view this shows a certain narrow mindedness. One thing that is clear is that they were very much influenced by events in Europe in the first half of the 20th century, especially but not solely the First World War. See the following books for useful discussion:
John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth (Houghton Mifflin, 2003)
Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (Houghton Mifflin, 2001)
“It is fashionable to condemn Tolkien’s writings as infantile.”
Is it? More fashionable than it is to refrain from condemning them as infantile? I’d have thought Tolkers was pretty fashionable right now, what with one thing and another. And then, even if it is fashionable, it can also be a considered judgment. And then, even if it is fashionable, there have been critics saying The Lord of the Rings is infantile ever since it was first published.
I think it’s infantile because of the evil empire stuff, and the near-complete absence of women (that’s always a bit of a giveaway, frankly), and the toe-curling Frodo-Sam relationship. It was toe-curling enough when Dickens did it in Martin Chuzzlewit; for Tolkien to do it that late in the 20th century is truly – well, infantile.
“Yes, in a world where kitchen-born values of fear and emotional coddling have sterilised the males of the species. In a society with reason to fight for survival, males have values that are appropriate: exhalting strength, valour, sacrifice, vision and leadership.”
Yes – which is one of the many reasons it is such a good thing not to live in a society like that. (That ‘kitchen-born’ is a bit revealing, by the way.)
Yes critics have been saying The Lord of the Rings is infantile ever since it was first published. It doesn’t follow that they’re right. They’ve said other dubious things, e.g. that it’s impact is not going to last. See Shippey for some good discussion of these narrow-minded critics.
No, I know it doesn’t follow that they’re right, my point was that it’s not particularly fashionable, since people have been saying it all along.
OB: “(That ‘kitchen-born’ is a bit revealing, by the way.)”
Its intended to be provocative. I ascribe some aspects of our society’s unheathy overemphasis on risk avoidance to an imbalanced strength of ‘feminine’ values as opposed to outdated ‘masculinist’ ideals.
The ideas are only gendered to the extent they come along as baggage with the feminist and pacifist packages.
ChrisPer: maybe if more “males” were “feminized,” they would be less likely to go all “Hoo-Rah” at the beck and call of every military leader, religious thug, or political party?
Your view of pacifism and feminism is a little iffy to me. I would argue that the main defenders of “masculinist” values today (outside the goofy “Men’s Movement” doofuses) are people like “Dr.” James “Beat My Daschund because he does not obey my patriarchal authority” Dobson. A far scarier gang of people to be associated than “faminists.”
Yes, I get that, Chris. So when you say
“In a society with reason to fight for survival, males have values that are appropriate: exhalting strength, valour, sacrifice, vision and leadership”
what’s your point? That such values and such a society are desirable?
In a society where it rains heavily 24 hours a day, people with umbrellas growing out of their heads would be “appropriate” too. So what?
OB “In a society where it rains heavily 24 hours a day, people with umbrellas growing out of their heads would be “appropriate” too. So what?”
So there is no ID.
There is no ID – but there is human intelligence. If values are hampering your society, changing them would seem appropriate.
Yes OB I consider such values and such a society appropriate AS A MODEL of options against needs.
For instance, A society of metrosexual male values is great when there is no interruption to the supply of latte, but in some parts of that society there is still a need for heroism, still a need to train the people that make heroes. Perhaps a reactionary sector (retrosexual values?) would come in useful!
As for the hoo-rah at the beck and call of EVERY god-botherer, military leader and political party – well, yes, thats what people are; but no, its also a strawman picture of human reality.
ChrisPer,
you seem to be taking a rather either/or position on societal values. Metrosexuality, as far as I can gather (hasn’t really made much of an impact in rural Northumberland), involves being ‘grooming aware’ and unconcerned about revealing one’s cultured/sensitive aspects. No need for that to militate against ‘exhalting strength, valour, sacrifice, vision and leadership’. Consider the Greeks. Latte does not disolve heroism. Frappacino, now …
Besides, the masculine, heroic aspects you refer to seem rather contrived. My parent’s generation who fought in WW2 seldom speak of valour, vision and leadership but of a long slog and a competent officer being valued far more than a visionary leader. Much the same peace time values which saw them through a lifetime of work in the mines or shipyards. while in the kitchens of the time the women lolled about devising soft feminine values…
Of course, there are times and places where ‘exhalting strength, valour, sacrifice, vision and leadership’ is the dominant value. I’m sure you can think of a few.
To echo don, the “mythical” samurai ideal certainly contained, in addition to its duty and warrior ethos, a very refined cultural sense. Plus, the stereotypical metrosexual is very physically fit and often takes martial arts. Verus the more typical American manlay man, 50 pounds overwieght and slovenly.
Don and Brian you do expose my stereotyp-os nicely! I think the WW2 experience quoted is especially beneficial; contrasting real competence as a value with the airy stuff I posited as relevant to that time. The idea of heroic values is not irrelevant to that time, though; such values reflect how the public saw and vicariously shared the experiences of those competent ones. The speeches of Churchill in the aftermath of Dunkirk were about
And I point out again: Tolkein is not infantile. Frodo actually seems to act in line with the competence described by Don.