{"id":25938,"date":"2022-12-20T11:27:28","date_gmt":"2022-12-20T11:27:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/?p=25938"},"modified":"2023-02-02T12:13:01","modified_gmt":"2023-02-02T12:13:01","slug":"his-dark-materials-how-the-small-screen-adaptation-deals-with-the-novels-big-ideas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/2022\/12\/20\/his-dark-materials-how-the-small-screen-adaptation-deals-with-the-novels-big-ideas\/","title":{"rendered":"His Dark Materials: how the small-screen adaptation deals with the novel\u2019s big ideas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In its concluding season, the BBC adaptation of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/m000b1v2\">His Dark Materials<\/a>\u00a0approaches a moment of danger. A story that began with the intimate world building of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.condenast.co.uk\/cookie-notice\/\">parallel Oxfords<\/a>\u00a0must now take on the fate of the entire multiverse.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"His Dark Materials Series 3 EXTENDED Trailer - BBC\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tHDsA34FFT4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Season three begins with our protagonist Lyra (Dafne Keen) lying in a stupor, drugged by her mother, Marisa Coulter (Ruth Wilson). She is in the eye of a storm of cosmic proportions, as the Magisterium (authoritarian representatives of a false divinity) try to track her down before her friend Will (Amir Wilson) can. And before her father, Lord Asriel (James McAvoy), incites a dimension-spanning revolution.<\/p>\n<p>How will the small screen deal with the big ideas that come to the fore as we approach the cosmic showdown?<\/p>\n<p>The problem stems from Philip Pullman\u2019s decision to cast his trilogy as an epic.<\/p>\n<p>Drawing on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bl.uk\/restoration-18th-century-literature\/articles\/philip-pullmans-introduction-to-paradise-lost\">John Milton\u2019s Paradise Lost,<\/a>\u00a0His Dark Materials pits brave, imaginative (and not always truthful) children against an oppressive religious establishment. One that wants to sever them from their souls in a bid to eliminate \u201cdust\u201d \u2013 a cosmic force associated with consciousness or, as the clerics would have it, original sin.<\/p>\n<p>This story works as an allegory of Pullman\u2019s guiding belief in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/2013\/aug\/23\/philip-pullman-dark-materials-children\">the power of story<\/a>\u00a0to liberate the imagination from the shackles of dogma or\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/chapter\/10.1057\/9780230523777_7\">ideology<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But it also embroils him in metaphysical squabbles that threaten to overburden the lightness and openness of the story. And this danger is greatest in the final instalment as these grand concepts move centre stage.<\/p>\n<h3>Visual storytelling<\/h3>\n<p>Pullman\u2019s storytelling deals with this by foregrounding\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/pdf\/29533971.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Ad278efc02b5a1b9cae6043030e426fbd&amp;ab_segments=&amp;origin=&amp;acceptTC=1\">visual representation<\/a>\u00a0and cleaving to one of the founding principles of children\u2019s literature criticism: show, don\u2019t tell.<\/p>\n<p>Before it is an idea, dust is a shimmer in Asriel\u2019s magic lantern show, or the force that powers\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/hisdarkmaterials.fandom.com\/wiki\/Lyra_Silvertongue%27s_alethiometer\">Lyra\u2019s alethiometer<\/a>\u00a0(an exquisitely crafted brass instrument of symbols and dials that point to truth).<\/p>\n<p>Pullman uses\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/chapter\/10.1007\/978-1-349-25934-2_1\">defamiliarisation<\/a>, a technique that Russian Formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky described as unsettling our conventional perception by introducing us to objects from unfamiliar angles, without naming them.<\/p>\n<p>He deposits us in an alternative,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.taylorfrancis.com\/chapters\/edit\/10.4324\/9781315147529-2\/great-change-human-history-brett-carol-young\">steampunk<\/a>\u00a0Oxford of \u201cexperimental theologians\u201d and \u201canbaric power\u201d, where everyone is accompanied by a \u201cdaemon\u201d, as if we already knew what these things are.<\/p>\n<p>They are, respectively, physicists, electricity and an externalised aspect of the soul that takes the form of an animal (usually of the opposite sex). But none of this is explained. We are left to piece together our own ideas of these things by inference.<\/p>\n<p>The story is, however, committed to a climax in which the fate of the universe will be decided. And this also means that the meaning of dust is in the process of being fixed, potentially losing at least some of the constructive ambiguity that made it a gift to readerly freedom.<\/p>\n<h3>Challenges for the small screen<\/h3>\n<p>So how does the small screen deal with all of this? The first two series handled the visuals of Pullman\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/book\/10.1057\/9780230113138\">world-building<\/a>\u00a0well, with nicely designed gadgets and decent effects. But they also depended on the spirited performances of Dafne Keen and Amir Wilson to carry some flat dialogue and sluggish editing.<\/p>\n<p>These drawbacks did not seem to bode well for a narrative that must now carry us across universes, through battles and theological debates and even into the land of the dead.<\/p>\n<p>On the whole, however, the new season thrives on its expanded canvas. This involves liberal use of aerial shots panning over mountain ranges and boundless plains, as handsomely done as the wildernesses through which another BBC star,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vLACGFhDOp0\">Brian Cox<\/a>, strides in his documentaries.<\/p>\n<p>Occasionally, the action movie elements are a little brash. I\u2019m not sure I was ready to see Asriel\u2019s daemon co-piloting a light aircraft, barking: \u201cWe\u2019ve lost the rear oscillator!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There are some lengthy bouts of exposition in the bowels of the Magisterium, albeit enlivened by some nice gadgetry in the form of Father Gomez\u2019s mechanical beetle drone.<\/p>\n<p>But there are also moments of intimacy in the vastness of the landscape, as when Mrs Coulter picks up a deaf girl on a deserted beach and is briefly undone by her trusting embrace.<\/p>\n<h3>Epic migrations<\/h3>\n<p>The real triumph of the third series is the imagining of Will and Lyra\u2019s journey towards the land of the dead.<\/p>\n<p>We are led through a bewildering landscape of holding areas and waiting rooms \u2013 all washed-out grey-green tiles and backlit frosted windows \u2013 in which groups of dazed people queue, or mill, or sit.<\/p>\n<p>The feel is by turns abandoned warehouse, nightmare bus station or migrant detention facility.<\/p>\n<p>These scenes reminded me of an idea floated by the Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh in his literary response to climate change,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/press.uchicago.edu\/ucp\/books\/book\/chicago\/G\/bo22265507.html\">The Great Derangement<\/a>: that the epic genre may be better equipped than the realist novel to provide story forms equal to the scale of the coming emergency.<\/p>\n<p>It may seem a strain to burden His Dark Materials with yet another big idea. But\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/voices\/comment\/if-i-were-prime-minister-every-privatised-corner-of-the-nhs-would-be-taken-back-into-public-ownership-10015388.html\">climate change<\/a>\u00a0has certainly been a growing concern for Pullman. And\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.euppublishing.com\/doi\/full\/10.3366\/ircl.2021.0399\">critics<\/a>\u00a0have started to pick up on its influence for his later forays into Lyra\u2019s world, notably in Serpentine (2020). Jack Thorne, writer of the BBC adaptation, has likened Lyra to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nme.com\/news\/lyra-his-dark-materials-jack-thorne-greta-thunberg-2557557\">Greta Thunberg<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The TV adaptation certainly does not preach on the topic any more than Pullman\u2019s novels did. But it plays its part in a more diffuse need to find ways of imagining a world in flux \u2013 a world on the edge.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reading.ac.uk\/english-literature\/our-staff\/stephen-thomson\">Dr Stephen Thomson<\/a> is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Reading.<\/p>\n<p>This article is republished from <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/his-dark-materials-how-the-small-screen-adaptation-deals-with-the-novels-big-ideas-196745\">The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons License.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In its concluding season, the BBC adaptation of\u00a0His Dark Materials\u00a0approaches a moment of danger. A story that began with the intimate world building of\u00a0parallel Oxfords\u00a0must now take on the fate&#8230;<a class=\"read-more\" href=\"&#104;&#116;&#116;&#112;&#115;&#58;&#47;&#47;&#114;&#101;&#115;&#101;&#97;&#114;&#99;&#104;&#46;&#114;&#101;&#97;&#100;&#105;&#110;&#103;&#46;&#97;&#99;&#46;&#117;&#107;&#47;&#114;&#101;&#115;&#101;&#97;&#114;&#99;&#104;&#45;&#98;&#108;&#111;&#103;&#47;&#50;&#48;&#50;&#50;&#47;&#49;&#50;&#47;&#50;&#48;&#47;&#104;&#105;&#115;&#45;&#100;&#97;&#114;&#107;&#45;&#109;&#97;&#116;&#101;&#114;&#105;&#97;&#108;&#115;&#45;&#104;&#111;&#119;&#45;&#116;&#104;&#101;&#45;&#115;&#109;&#97;&#108;&#108;&#45;&#115;&#99;&#114;&#101;&#101;&#110;&#45;&#97;&#100;&#97;&#112;&#116;&#97;&#116;&#105;&#111;&#110;&#45;&#100;&#101;&#97;&#108;&#115;&#45;&#119;&#105;&#116;&#104;&#45;&#116;&#104;&#101;&#45;&#110;&#111;&#118;&#101;&#108;&#115;&#45;&#98;&#105;&#103;&#45;&#105;&#100;&#101;&#97;&#115;&#47;\">Read More ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":693,"featured_media":26456,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[2253,102,2254],"class_list":["post-25938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-heritage-creativity","tag-adaptation","tag-bbc","tag-fantasy"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>His Dark Materials: how the small-screen adaptation deals with the novel\u2019s big ideas - Connecting Research<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The TV adaptation certainly does not preach on the topic any more than Pullman\u2019s novels did. 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