Update on Golden Compass

I just read this interesting article / interview by Hanna Rosen about The Golden Compass and author Phillip Pullman from The Atlantic, on the question of whether or not the books and film are or are not about killing God and I wanted to update my post of Dec 19. See what they say.

Says Rosen:

When pressed, Pullman grants that he’s not really trying to kill God, but rather the outdated idea of God as an old guy with a beard in the sky. In his novels, he replaces the idea of God with “Dust,” made up of invisible particles that begin to cluster around people when they hit puberty. The Church believes Dust to be the physical evidence of original sin and hopes to eradicate it. But over the course of the series, Pullman reveals it to be the opposite: evidence of human consciousness, a kind of godlike energy that surrounds everyone. People accumulate Dust by “thinking and feeling and reflecting, by gaining wisdom and passing it on.” It starts to build up around puberty because, for Pullman, sexual awakening triggers the beginning of self-knowledge and intellectual curiosity. To him, the loss of sexual innocence is not a tragedy; it’s the springboard to a productive and virtuous adulthood.

So maybe protesters are jumping the gun or painting a broad brush. Not using a "subtle knife" to make a joke. Nevertheless, I stick by my original assessment that the film lacks a sense of love and compassion, and that I did not find the heroine Lyra to be likable.