His Dark Materials

[AllGoodDogs]

New BBC adaptation, looks so good, can't wait trailer here -

m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10162256439035553&id=683285552&sfnsn=mo

I'd love to see Boreal as Dominic Medina in a TV adaptation of the Three Hostages (would also wind up the "it's PC gorn mad" lot a treat wink).

OMG! There must be some sort of prize for this comment. I’ve never met or conversed with a single other human being who’s even aware of The Three Hostages, never mind secretly casting the adaptation.

You’re right @BarbaraStrozzi - he could play Medina very well (now we’re all completely over Andrew Scott as every bad man...).

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Certainly more fun than the humungous regression analysis I'm doing at the moment.

I realised talking to a friend this morning that while I agree that boriel is very good, he should be white. And I don't say that because I'm white etc but because I feel like he has aristocratic white male privilege. I've never felt strongly about a character's ethnicity before.

I don’t think he’s not white enough for the role at all. I think he’s not old enough though!

Perhaps people can suspend belief and imagine that in this alternative universe black people could also have aristocratic privilege...

I think he's amazing in the role. But then I really can't imaging getting het up about anyone 'the wrong race' being cast in a role unless it's absolutely fundamental to the character (eg a white Martin Luther).

I feel like he has aristocratic white male privilege.

Agree with this, particularly since he needs that in our world as well otherwise it would have been difficult to establish himself because we are a racist country, even if Lyra's world is less so. I'm enjoying his portrayal though and that's despite having to stop DD1 watching it last night, she has only read NL and then there's the big plot reveal that Boreal is coming to our world regularly. Have to decide what to do now with her watching it.

I like the idea of Lin Manuel Miranda playing Lee Scoresby, Texas was originally a Spanish colony and then was part of Mexico and about 40% of the population of Texas are Hispanic or Latino. Makes complete sense to me that Lee couldbe Latino.

I do find it odd that it bothers me. I think perhaps because in the subtle knife in Will's Oxford he exudes that rich, white privilege, especially when he says to them that nobody would believe their word over his. Perhaps because in our world it is those from BAME backgrounds that are not supported by authorities, that do not wield the power. In Lyra's world things are different but he also wields that power as Sir Charles in Will's Oxford.

It's difficult to comment on this without running the risk of being accused of racism.

The increase in representation of ethnic minorities in film and TV is obviously a Good Thing. However, it does raise some interesting questions. Because in some ways we expect film/TV to depict a world which is the same/similar to the world we live in - which is obviously full of racial inequality (and sex inequality and all the rest). So in the real world a privileged, powerful character would be a white man. But we can't just have white male actors playing those characters so we have women and black men. If we were "colourblind" it wouldn't matter at all but in reality we do notice skin colour. And it can change our perception of the characters and the dynamics between them. I'm not saying that's wrong, just interesting.

One point though. This show is absolutely full of men. All the male-dominated institutions are still male-dominated. No one decided to change that in the interests of more balanced gender representation.

We can make characters whatever race we want but we can't turn male characters into female ones, it seems.

Emma I think you've been more eloquent than me.

And yes to changing race not sex.

I have enjoyed seeing different representations. The master of Jordan, different races among the gyptains, there is a gyptain with short arms too.

A lot of people complained about a black Hermione with the Cursed Child on stage. I don't care. I just find that this particular character carried white privilege as a central component of his place in the world, that's all.

One point though. This show is absolutely full of men. All the male-dominated institutions are still male-dominated. No one decided to change that in the interests of more balanced gender representation.

The lack of race-bias might be deliberate to heighten the gender bias?

Without going into spoilers, it is 100% important that Lyra is female, with all being female represents to the church.

The books didn't portray any sort of race issues in Lyra's world, but Pullman did write a book called The Broken Bridge about a young black girl that examined identity and representation. So unlike JK Rowling, for whom it was so obviously an afterthought, I think it's unlikely that there was any 'unshown/unspoken' racism in Pullman's world.

Of course it's important that Lyra is female!

It's less important for all the other characters (apart from Mrs Coulter) to be male.

It's not actually the main point of the story (unlike in Handmaid's Tale for example) so in the interests of more balanced representation you could make some of the male characters female.

But people are much less interested in doing that than in casting an ethnically diverse mix of actors.

Two episodes in and I'm now totally on board with this being it's own, fresh adaptation and interpretation. To expect it to be a slave to the books would make viewing very miserable. I'm now quite excited as to how this telling will unfold.

I do have one gripe - in ep1, when Pan says "Lyra, your uncle is here", surely should have been "Lyra, our uncle is here"! They are one and the same!

It's less important for all the other characters (apart from Mrs Coulter) to be male.

I can't make a full rebuttal of this without more signifcant spoilers, but to me it's very, VERY clear that the church characters and male-composition of the church AND their obsession with Lyra is highly important to the resolution of the trilogy.

I have read the books.
But I realise there are others on the thread who haven't.
Perhaps my memory has failed me (it usually does) but I really don't think the key themes of the book absolutely rest on quite so many characters being male.
I'm going to have to re read them all aren't I

I'm the one from upthread who cheated by accidentally re-reading them just before this started .

I think you could make a decent case for gender swapping Will's parents or Lee Scoresby!

@AnotherEmma who says they have "changed" the race of certain characters? There is nothing mentioned in the books about characters' race (whilst there is about gender). You are clearly coming at this from your own position viewing white as the normative presumed default.

Secondly, yes the gender thing is imperative (most particularly of the masters and the magisterium characters, and later Mary Malone) due to the central thread of the story beginning with E. No spoilers here...

There is nothing mentioned in the books about characters' race (whilst there is about gender).

I'm not certain about that. The geographical boundaries of countries are messed with creatively, and there are mentions of people looking like 'Tartars' etc and standing out, and African characters with traditional Nigerian names etc.

It's implied if not spelled out. Mind you, I can't remember off the top of my head if Pullman did do the typical 'white author' thing of mentioning skin colour descriptively exclusively when non-whites appear? Or just leaving us to fill the imaginative gaps that King Ogunwe from Africa is black?

(JK Rowling was awful for this - I really wish she'd just held her hands up and said, 'yup, I imagined everyone as white unless I said they were otherwise' - it could have been an honest discourse on her own writing improvements.)

I don't know if anyone else noticed when they read the books that Pullman was virtually incapable of ending a chapter or scene without Lyra falling asleep. Kid could nap fucking anywhere.

AnotherEmma has summed it up well. There is a point where Lord Boreal, explicitly utilises his privilaged position in our world (not Lyra's), which when talking about old monied, aristocratic influence does tend to infer being white. I imagined him older (middle aged, well established with self confidence broaching into arrogence) too for reasons of interactions between characters.
The actor is doing a good job of playing him now I've had a couple of episodes to settle in, but I found it was surprising casting on my first impression based on my understanding of the trilogy (I was surprised to see him introduced in ep1 anyway).

There is a lot more space for artistic license with the gyptians who have their own distinct culture (and the introduction of the dæmon settling/ ring ceremony set a tone on that). Farder Coram is presented as being infirm due to old age, but the descriptions of his dæmon allude to the type of character he was in his youth.

I think the magisterum has to be very heavily masculine. It has an affect on the existence of organisations like the General Oblation Board.
There was a reason why the Catholic Church was less than enthused about these books... for some reason it was taken a little personally

I suspect Ma Costa will have a more prominant role through the series than in the books where she was vetoed, which is probably one reason for a younger, edgier casting choice than the older, more buxom type of character that a few of us visualised.

It is so tough creating a TV/ film version of a well-loved book when the book has been visualised in so many parallel universes of the readers' minds.

Casting Harry Potter films had the benefit of the books being less established by the casting of the first film and many people being introduced to the films then the books. Viewers were a lot less entrenched in the vision that they had held from childhood into adulthood... that would be different if they were remade now.

I assumed the 'maleness' of the books is due to the Magisterium/Oxford college setting. There's no way the Magisterium would be such a statement if it had women in it.
(Disclaimer: I haven't read the books for years, don't anybody tell me now that it has women in it!)

I thought that Mrs C couldn't gain power through the church by becoming a priest as she was a woman, which is why she did the studying/exploring/setting up the GOB. She made herself useful to the church, so they gave her power in a way they wouldn't to other women.

You can contrast this against other female academics (who Lyra is very snobby about), and Ma Costa who has much more power in a different section of society.

On the subject of race, I thought it interesting that the TV Gyptians didn’t seem to have one common one. In all honesty It did come across as a bit PC. They clearly from all different races and even classes and the accents were all different. I found it all quite jarring because I had imagined the gyptians as being a very strong close knit community with an ancient history. So when I heard John Faa’s Nigerian accent then all I could think about was Nigerian culture rather than Gyptian, which in my mind I had imagined to be “water gypsies Of the fens” type of culture, class and accent.

YY

Was annoyed about Lord Boreal and the window, can't see a reason to introduce this so early, and I don't think the actor is right for this part. Also the alethiometer is quite definitely round, not square as depicted, such a pointless change.

I agree about the Gyptians, they seemed more like new age travellers, not an old traditional cultural group with lore and traditions.

Yes, I thought that Curly. It wouldn't have bothered me how they looked, but I expected them to be more obviously one people.