Phillip Pullman gets it

[NewlyGranny]

I know it's an adaptation, but tonight...

Pantalaimon: I don't think I'm ready for changes.
Lyra: I don't think anyone is ever ready for changes.

Children have struggled or been helped through adolescence since forever. Better to find new and more effective ways of helping those who need help than to enable them to avoid it altogether and switch them onto the medicalisation track of drugs for life and even surgery when there is no physical illness or defect to be treated.

He doesn't on Twitter unfortunately 😔 he's been a massive coward.

Pullman should get it, but doesn't. Puberty in HDM is such a powerful event that stopping it, by severing a child from its daemon, creates a hole in the world.

Sadly, no he fucking doesn’t, he is a total MRA.

I think he does actually get it, but he's happy to play the "ohhh I'm such a confused old man, why can't the nasty women just be nice" game, because it's easier for him and he's clearly a massive coward who cares little for the female sex.

Pullman pretends to get it, then pretends not to. Then gives the faux "oh, what have I said wrong now, I'm just a simple man" schtick when he gets any criticism. It's all very tedious.

...And puberty is a central thread in the books (and bbc adaptation) which, at a very basic level, is a coming of age story that follows Lyra's journey from pre-pubescance to young adulthood.

I watch Dark Materials and often wonder how somebody could write something so clearly about male/female power play and then be the absolute idiot about it Twitter. I can only think he thinks his core audience are woke 17 year olds who liked his book (in my house my 17 yo who loved his books refuses to watch it).

@Jackabobbo

I think he does actually get it, but he's happy to play the "ohhh I'm such a confused old man, why can't the nasty women just be nice" game, because it's easier for him and he's clearly a massive coward who cares little for the female sex.

Cross-posted, sorry.

VictoriaLucas102
I watch Dark Materials and often wonder how somebody could write something so clearly about male/female power play and then be the absolute idiot about it Twitter.

Paging Margaret Atwood. I don't buy for a moment any of these writers, philosophers, scientists, etc. are as gobsmackingly dumb as pretend to be on social media. They're just cowards.

I'm a bit done with Pullman. He very clearly does get it, but is too scared to piss people off.

His cowardice is shameful, & JKR (as an example) is worth ten of him.

Also, I devoured the HDM trilogy but he's been terribly boring since, to be honest. I've been meaning to re-read them but he keeps getting shunted down my priority list: nowt to do with whatever views he holds, just time constraints & him not producing anything new that's exciting.

When it all comes out at the scandal it is, he will peddle back and say he was confused.

OP, I thought that tonight too

Have you read the more recent books?
The secret commonwealth is most odd. The message I kind of took from it was that people can be persuaded not to believe something even if it is right before their eyes and something they have always known to be true...

I don't think he gets it - if you look into what he says about his own books they are off the mark in a lot of ways as well.

I'm trying to remember, but I'm not sure he fully gets the banality of evil.

From my fuzzy recollection all the antagonists in HDM weren't very three-dimensional. It was all faceless bureaucracies, authoritarian religions, nasty people pretending to be nice, and "end justifies the means". It was all bad people doing things everyone knew was bad, so they hid it, but they justified it. Not people thinking they were doing good, and doing so publicly and being cheered on for it.

I don't think he could have invented something like Mermaids, although they could have existed quite happily in Lyra's world, maybe a couple of decades after the first experiments in Northern Lights. Susie Green would fit in perfectly, extolling the virtues of the procedure her child underwent.

Regardless, whether a writer "gets it" or not, there's a huge difference between writing about being a hero or standing up to authority and actually doing it.

How can you reasonably expect a writer to be able to do such things any more than you'd expect them to do any other things their characters might do? (Same for actors.)

Knowing how to do something or even just knowing that something is done is not the same as being able to do it, or even wanting to do it. (Good or bad). Their skills are writing or acting - that doesn't directly translate to any other real life skill they might portray.

I really like the books, but think we shouldn't give too much credence to Phillip Pullman as a social commentator.
What a writer intends to creates is not necessarily what a reader will take from it.

Very good points, necessary. On occasion writers' books are a form of wish fulfilment, too, so to think a writers' characters reflect their actions in real life would be a mistake. (I know lots of writers).

I loved HDM and I’m enjoying the TV adaptation, but Pullman’s Twitter crap has put me off re-reading the books as it’s undermined my feelings about them.

I think he’s more unconcerned than uninformed. He doesn’t care because it doesn’t affect him. Pretending to be vague about things and vacillating is the way he’s chosen to protect his book sales IMO.

Being vague is fine.

Throwing in against Rachel Rooney and then pretending that he hadn't is, for me, unforgivable.

I have zero, absolutely zero, tolerance for people joining in bullying and then pretending that they didn't pick a side.

Yes, that was inexcusable because it left no room for doubt. It was that that tainted the books for me.

I have zero, absolutely zero, tolerance for people joining in bullying and then pretending that they didn't pick a side.

Yes. He crossed the line there. Regardless of my "don't expect too much of writers" diatribe above, there's no excuse for just being a dick.

The closest thing to an excuse is ignorance, but FFS, you don't just join in with a mob not knowing anything about the target.

And then pretend you weren't joining in with a mob.

Nope he is an arse.

He gets it. He couldn't write the way he does otherwise. And I'm hooked on his absolutely compelling writing, and am an enormous fan.

As a man, not so much. His denials on Twitter, his disingenuousness, and as a PP points out his participation in bulling and then backtracking and more denial.

He's a major disappointment. Pity.

Yep. Having opinions of one's own is fine. He could spend his time arguing that transwomen are women and I wouldn't particularly care. Plenty of people say that (including RL friends on FB).

He spent that day poking and prodding twitter to get people riled up, and ordinarily that would be his choice. He wants to troll people under his real name? Crack on.

But it's not fair for an internationally renowned author (whose books have been adapted for film and for TV!) to use someone like Rachel to get things going. All she has ever done is to write body-positive poetry for children.

If he wants to enrage people on the internet, he should pick on someone his own size for it. Go argue with the Archbishop of Canterbury or something.

I don't think he could have invented something like Mermaids, although they could have existed quite happily in Lyra's world, maybe a couple of decades after the first experiments in Northern Lights. Susie Green would fit in perfectly, extolling the virtues of the procedure her child underwent.
This made me shiver a bit.. you’re right: Mermaids is the corporatised Bolvanger.

I’m coping with the conflict between author voice /public voice by embracing cognitive dissonance-I refuse to accept that the person who wroteHDM, and makes me weep every time I read them (even cried last night over Lee and Hester on tv..) is the same person as the facile MRA-lite on twitter.