To Create more Worlds

Cornelia Parker
Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View 1991
Tate

Reading literature has saved my life multiple times through (my) ages. Books were always my shelter. And a kind of a safe place when feeling threatened, dispaired or lonely — in fact, it is because of literature that I was never afraid of loneliness. Since I was a girl I have been always carrying a book with me wherever and whenever. I now carry everywhere my kindle. (I'm obsessed with my kindle, it is one of the greatest things in my vie quotidiennne.) Whatever may happen I can always read.

At home, we read a lot. By ourselves and together sometimes. Although my son was an eager reader since a very early age, me and my loved one like to read to him once a day. I read to him in greek, his father in english.

We currently read the greek translation of The Lord of the Rings and they read His Dark Materials.

They are both magnificent books for a young child. Full of wild symbolism and big ideals, an excellent initiation to the perplexities of the world but also to the simplicity of some basic truths regarding the good and the evil, anthropocentrism, Nature and the human impact οn Her. I really enjoy discussing with him Tolkien’s world or use it as a paradigm sometimes.

I haven’t yet read His Dark Materials.

Recently though, we watched two different film/TV adaptations of its first book. The first one, a Disney movie, The Golden Compass (2007), was created 14 years ago, the second one is a BBC series, His Dark Materials (2019-) that is still on.

In His Dark Materials (1995-2000), the author Philip Pulman has created an extraordinary universe where he discusses issues that surprisingly —or not— approach every current problem of humanity. Patriarchy, discrimination, corrupted authority, science and religion, humanism and ecology along with parenting, coming of age, courage, friendship and solidarity. There are corrupted patriarchal authoritarian powers that seek to deprive people of fundamental knowledge and scientific truths, women guerilla communities with earthly “magical” forces who are fighting for autonomy, nature and against injustices and patriarchy, nomadic people travelling in the margin of the formal social structures and the natural flow itself, a Bergsonian ‘elan vital’, a material-non material but conscious state from which everything is made and everything derives in the form of quantum phenomena, dust or “angels”. There is an old man-ruled and a new different world divided into multiple universes along with a (paradoxically indeed) deterministic notion of salvation that will come through two young heroes and a multiplicity of characters that recall archetypical figures from fairytales and mythologies including the lovely idea of animals-daemons existing as human consciences. It is an exciting and beautiful reading far ahead of any other contemporary young fiction saga regarding notions and vision (I could only compare it in the power of its ideas with the Earthsea Saga, another favourite I am looking forward to reading with my son).

Its film adaptations are phantasmagoric. Disney movie is an expensive impressive production fairly faithful to the first book, but especially the series is absolutely astonishing despite its “shortening” of the huge and complex anyhow story (well a book adaptation can never reach the magic of the book). What really amazed me though, in those two productions that have a 12 years gap between them, is the great difference regarding diversity in the cast.

In Disney’s Golden Compass, there is not even one non-white person in the cast. Even the Gyptians, a nomadic community compiled of boat travellers, marginalized people that abstractly refer to Gypsies (Egyptians) are all white. On the contrary, in BBC’s His Dark Materials series, the cast is admiringly multi-raced in every aspect, from the Magisterium committee to the Witches and Gyptians making it thus so much more interesting, contemporary and visionary than the sterilized and old fashion perception of the film.

To be fair. I haven't (yet) read the book and I don’t know about the actual references considering the colours and races of its characters. But that justifies nothing. A contemporary production that has any ambition to create a vision for the youth (it is a young adults saga after all) is obliged to be inclusive and diverse. And I also feel that despite the awful things that have been happening worldwide in these first decades of our century, many ideas, notions and expectations have changed (for the better) regarding our own perception and anticipation of pop culture, as a conscious audience. Or at least for a lot of us.

It bothers me watching films like the Golden Compass. 20 years ago I may not have noticed (and I am now deeply ashamed of that) but now it bothers me. As it bothers me also the whiteness in the Lord of the Rings that is a trilogy (books and films) that I absolutely adore since my youth. However, now I look at it with scepticism. Having full awareness of the phantasy, mythologies and fairytales that have been Tolkien’s sources, the fact that he was definitely not a racist and his apparent Victorian influences, nevertheless, a world divided into beautiful tall white —heavenly and perfect, “aristocratic”— creatures, short and ugly or underneath the earth ones and black orks and goblins daemonic beings, a world that could be saved with an only-men fellowship, seems not such a fair example for a contemporary utopia.

Stories get old. We can always keep their core and build our new vision around it.

In any case, there is a new series —prequel kind of— adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings that is also coming out this year. It is now 14 years since the release of The Return of the King. Hopefully, there will be new equilibriums that will reflect new worlds’ spectrums, more inclusive and more diverse.

Pulman’s trilogy title His Dark Materials is borrowed from John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, a verse speaking about God using His dark materials to create more Worlds

Well, I cannot tell about God, her existence or intentions; what I can discuss though, is that culture could be a fine first material for making new worlds to believe in and fight for.

And that we unquestionably need culture to do so.