'The Secret Commonwealth'
Jul. 24th, 2020 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yours_trulyA draft of this has been sitting in the Notes app on my phone for about two months, so I decided to just clean it up and post it here so I can delete it. (Not x-posted to Tumblr.) (TW: rape)
~*~*~
There are some narrative properties/franchises that are so important to me that I completely isolate the main story from any sequels, spin-offs, etc. Harry Potter is an example. I have not read The Cursed Child and I’ve never seen the Fantastic Beasts movies. I never will. I don’t need or want them, and I have a feeling they would significantly affect my enjoyment of HP, which JKR has already done her best to trash. Avatar: the Last Airbender is another. I watched, I think, the first season of Korra and decided it interfered. Never saw the movie. Dropped the comics after like one issue. It’s so important to me that I don’t touch anything else.
Some things--like Star Wars, Star Trek, of The X-Files--I am happy to consume every piece of it. I don't LIKE or RESPECT all of it, but for some reason a crappy Trek film or the shitty XF reboot finale just don't have any bearing on how I feel about the rest of it. They don't threaten it.
The His Dark Materials saga has never fit neatly into either of these categories, but rather takes up its own strange liminal space. I won't see the show or film not because of opinions about quality but because I am so devoted to the voices and images of the characters that already exist in my head. But I do read all of the additional books Philip Pullman has released, unlike HP or ATLA. Until recently, I had never regretted this.
About a third of the way into The Secret Commonwealth, I made a bad decision. It started out innocently. I was actually enjoying the book much more than La Belle Sauvage, you see, and I was curious if others felt the same. Not that I didn’t like La Belle Sauvage. But Vol II of The Book of Dust trilogy felt much more like home to me. Having Lyra back in a starring role made me sigh and say, “Ah, yes. I remember this.”
So I read some reviews. Both professional and from average readers. I understood the risk of spoilers and I did it anyway. “I’m not in it for the plot or the twists and turns,” I told myself. “I’m here for the themes. The characters. The message.”
To my deep dismay, I read in several places not only about the weird and utterly unnecessary love interest from Dr Polstead (twelve years Lyra's senior, known her since infancy, at one time her teacher) but also about the “ATTEMPTED SEXUAL ASSAULT” against Lyra towards the end of the novel.
With a heavy heart, determined to compartmentalize like hell, I finished the book.
Two things: First of all, there is nothing “attempted” about the assault. Textually.
"...[Lyra] felt other hands--two men's hands--on her wrist, up inside her skirt, fumbling at her underwear, gripping it, tearing it aside, and thrusting fingers at her, and other hands on the stick, twisting it, tearing it out of her fingers..." (page 636)
Pullman wrote a gang rape scene and wants to avoid it by the technically of a two letter preposition. No. Just because he wrote “at” instead of “in” doesn’t let him off the hook. The professional reviewers in particular should be ashamed for getting this wrong and/or glossing over it. Moreover, this is not what sexual assault often looks like particularly in England where Pullman is from, and whose culture and politics he is usually commenting on. It’s not strangers on a train. It’s family members. It’s friends and partners. It’s coworkers and bosses. Why did he move Lyra to the fictional world's equivalent of the Middle East to make it happen, in this particular way, and then have another character suggest she wear niqab?
Let me be clear: What kind of orientalist, colonialist, misogynist horse shit? This review from Vox is the only one I found that gave this crap more than a sentence. That is neglect. Be better at your jobs. I don’t care that Pullman is usually perceived as some nu-atheist (and therefore leftist) big thinker. He’s a white man. He can and will fuck up. He did here, in a manner significant enough to be commented on. Particularly with the prevalence of Islamophobia among big name atheists, this deserved attention.
Second of all... well, this is the personal part. Lyra is a character I have loved and followed since I was nine years old, and I am 32 now. I identified with her. I admired her. I know this is the case for thousands of women and girls. The His Dark Materials trilogy is not an obscure text. In the era before Harry Potter truly exploded, this was a MASSIVE young adult fantasy series, for what that meant at the time.
We, as fans and readers, didn’t need to be reminded that women can be raped at any time, any place. We didn’t need another female Chosen One, of whom we get so so very few, to be raped. (Pouring one out for Buffy Summers.) This simply isn’t something that any of your male Fantasy Savior characters ever has to deal with. WHY DOES SHE NEED TO BE RAPED? Why are you raping and killing and destroying the girls we identify with?? Stop it.
Mr Pullman, this added nothing to your world building. It said nothing about your themes or your blasted theological and political ~Points. It said and did nothing, except harm your female readers that care about this character. Which is very nearly absolutely always the case with men writing the rape of lead female characters.
So, Philip Pullman, as someone who holds the His Dark Materials trilogy to be of incalculable personal significance: go fuck yourself.
~*~*~
There are some narrative properties/franchises that are so important to me that I completely isolate the main story from any sequels, spin-offs, etc. Harry Potter is an example. I have not read The Cursed Child and I’ve never seen the Fantastic Beasts movies. I never will. I don’t need or want them, and I have a feeling they would significantly affect my enjoyment of HP, which JKR has already done her best to trash. Avatar: the Last Airbender is another. I watched, I think, the first season of Korra and decided it interfered. Never saw the movie. Dropped the comics after like one issue. It’s so important to me that I don’t touch anything else.
Some things--like Star Wars, Star Trek, of The X-Files--I am happy to consume every piece of it. I don't LIKE or RESPECT all of it, but for some reason a crappy Trek film or the shitty XF reboot finale just don't have any bearing on how I feel about the rest of it. They don't threaten it.
The His Dark Materials saga has never fit neatly into either of these categories, but rather takes up its own strange liminal space. I won't see the show or film not because of opinions about quality but because I am so devoted to the voices and images of the characters that already exist in my head. But I do read all of the additional books Philip Pullman has released, unlike HP or ATLA. Until recently, I had never regretted this.
About a third of the way into The Secret Commonwealth, I made a bad decision. It started out innocently. I was actually enjoying the book much more than La Belle Sauvage, you see, and I was curious if others felt the same. Not that I didn’t like La Belle Sauvage. But Vol II of The Book of Dust trilogy felt much more like home to me. Having Lyra back in a starring role made me sigh and say, “Ah, yes. I remember this.”
So I read some reviews. Both professional and from average readers. I understood the risk of spoilers and I did it anyway. “I’m not in it for the plot or the twists and turns,” I told myself. “I’m here for the themes. The characters. The message.”
To my deep dismay, I read in several places not only about the weird and utterly unnecessary love interest from Dr Polstead (twelve years Lyra's senior, known her since infancy, at one time her teacher) but also about the “ATTEMPTED SEXUAL ASSAULT” against Lyra towards the end of the novel.
With a heavy heart, determined to compartmentalize like hell, I finished the book.
Two things: First of all, there is nothing “attempted” about the assault. Textually.
"...[Lyra] felt other hands--two men's hands--on her wrist, up inside her skirt, fumbling at her underwear, gripping it, tearing it aside, and thrusting fingers at her, and other hands on the stick, twisting it, tearing it out of her fingers..." (page 636)
Pullman wrote a gang rape scene and wants to avoid it by the technically of a two letter preposition. No. Just because he wrote “at” instead of “in” doesn’t let him off the hook. The professional reviewers in particular should be ashamed for getting this wrong and/or glossing over it. Moreover, this is not what sexual assault often looks like particularly in England where Pullman is from, and whose culture and politics he is usually commenting on. It’s not strangers on a train. It’s family members. It’s friends and partners. It’s coworkers and bosses. Why did he move Lyra to the fictional world's equivalent of the Middle East to make it happen, in this particular way, and then have another character suggest she wear niqab?
Let me be clear: What kind of orientalist, colonialist, misogynist horse shit? This review from Vox is the only one I found that gave this crap more than a sentence. That is neglect. Be better at your jobs. I don’t care that Pullman is usually perceived as some nu-atheist (and therefore leftist) big thinker. He’s a white man. He can and will fuck up. He did here, in a manner significant enough to be commented on. Particularly with the prevalence of Islamophobia among big name atheists, this deserved attention.
Second of all... well, this is the personal part. Lyra is a character I have loved and followed since I was nine years old, and I am 32 now. I identified with her. I admired her. I know this is the case for thousands of women and girls. The His Dark Materials trilogy is not an obscure text. In the era before Harry Potter truly exploded, this was a MASSIVE young adult fantasy series, for what that meant at the time.
We, as fans and readers, didn’t need to be reminded that women can be raped at any time, any place. We didn’t need another female Chosen One, of whom we get so so very few, to be raped. (Pouring one out for Buffy Summers.) This simply isn’t something that any of your male Fantasy Savior characters ever has to deal with. WHY DOES SHE NEED TO BE RAPED? Why are you raping and killing and destroying the girls we identify with?? Stop it.
Mr Pullman, this added nothing to your world building. It said nothing about your themes or your blasted theological and political ~Points. It said and did nothing, except harm your female readers that care about this character. Which is very nearly absolutely always the case with men writing the rape of lead female characters.
So, Philip Pullman, as someone who holds the His Dark Materials trilogy to be of incalculable personal significance: go fuck yourself.
