Why does the only alien with screen time wear human clothes?
Beyond dramatic climaxes and character arcs, many stories have a message to deliver. This message might be a statement on human nature, a cautionary tale about environmental damage, a call for social justice, or anything else you can imagine. Sometimes a message isn’t even intentional, but it shines through nonetheless.
Ideally, a story should be focused around its message. After all, it’s usually the message that gives a story longevity. But this isn’t always the case. In fact, sometimes a story will actively sabotage its own message. This is rarely on purpose, but it happens anyway. Details of character and plot contradict what the story is trying to say, and the audience’s experience suffers.
1. Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman is a good film, certainly the best film DC has produced in years, but its message is confused. Ostensibly, this is a film about defeating war. Sometimes war is manifested by Ares, the literal God of War, and sometimes it’s represented by humanity’s innately destructive tendencies.
With that message in mind, it makes sense that the film is set in World War One. That conflict is almost completely devoid of a moral justification to modern Americans.* Setting the film in World War Two wouldn’t have worked. In that conflict, the problem was Nazis, not war. But the Great War is perfect, because it was mostly waged due to a complicated web of treaties and one nationalist shooting an archduke.
Unfortunately, the film flounders in actually portraying the war as morally ambiguous. Wonder Woman spends most of the film in the company of the Allies, who are set up as the good guys. We are clearly encouraged to cheer when she defeats Germans, making them the bad guys. The Germans attack Themyscira without provocation, they murder civilians, and it’s to them Ares goes with his diabolical weapons. The Allies display no such behavior, and if Ares ever gave them horrific weapons, the film doesn’t show it.
If the Germans are the villains in this conflict, then war itself isn’t really the problem; Germans are the problem. Wonder Woman should probably devote her considerable power to defeating them as quickly as possible. The message is further confused at the end when Wonder Woman decides not to give in to her rage and kill a major villain. This is supposed to be Wonder Woman taking a stand against the evils of war, but it’s a bit late since just a few seconds ago she went berserk and slaughtered a whole group of rank-and-file soldiers. Did those soldiers need to die more than the villain, who was largely responsible for Germany’s use of horrific poison gas?
The film tries to balance this out by showing some German commanders who want peace before they’re killed by General Ludendorff, but it’s not enough. The message is further weakened when the film reveals that Ares himself is behind the upcoming armistice to end the war, which implies that peace is bad and war is good, but the God of War is bad. Sure.
2. Star Trek: The Outcast
Star Trek has a long history of blatant messaging, but one area it’s constantly lagged behind is queer representation. For much of its history, Trek pretended LGBT people didn’t exist, despite promises from Roddenberry that The Next Generation would have a gay character. Then, in season five, everything changed, though not for the better.
The Outcast is an episode that attempts to parallel the struggle for gay rights but uses aliens as a stand in. In a vacuum, that’s not a bad idea. It would allow the writers to explore the issue without the disheartening message that homophobia has survived into the 24th century. Unfortunately, the episode’s actual message was a disaster.
First, no gay people exist in this episode paralleling gay rights. We see several couples holding hands in Ten Forward, but all of them are made up of a woman and a man. Then, when Riker explains human sexuality to his alien romantic interest, he does so in purely heterosexual terms.*
Then, we get to the aliens who are supposed to parallel the struggle for gay rights. In short, they are a monogendered culture that violently suppresses anyone who express a desire to present as either male or female. Soren, Riker’s romantic interest, is a victim of such suppression. Soren identifies as a woman and lives in secret until someone notices her dalliance with the Enterprise’s first officer.
Soren is then put on trial for wanting to be heterosexual. The aliens are all played by women, which makes the whole thing read like a planet of lesbians trying to oppress the one straight woman. This is what’s known as a “simple reversal,” similar to creating a world where men are the target of sexism in exactly the same way women are in real life. Simple reversals rarely work, because they cast a disenfranchised group in the role of villain. While they might provoke some people to consider real-life oppression, simple reversals are just as likely to make an audience think “whew, glad we don’t live in a world where those people are empowered.”
Taken together, the lack of gay humans and the evil gay aliens leaves The Outcast’s message in tatters. It was a half hearted, poorly thought out attempt, and it had predictable results.
3. District 9
Based on the short film Alive in Johannesburg, District 9 is a story of alien refugees arriving in South Africa, only to be forced into a walled-off district and treated like garbage. The film is a clear parallel to apartheid and racism in general. It uses aliens to showcase the horrible ways humans are often treated. At least it tries to.
The first place District 9 stumbles is in its portrayal of the aliens. As you’d expect, they suffer from a number of stereotypes put on them by humans. The aliens are widely believed to be of low intelligence and incapable of taking care of themselves, similar to the way racial minorities are often called lazy and stupid. The problem is that as far as the film shows us, the stereotypes are true.
We don’t actually spend a lot of time with the aliens, but most of what the film shows us revolves around their trading advanced technology for cheap cat food. Keep in mind that by the time the film starts, the aliens have been on Earth for nearly 30 years, and yet they’re still willing to trade laser guns for a few dollars worth of canned tuna. The only alien we see who acts intelligent is the supporting protagonist, who has a human name and wears human clothes. This was probably a visual trick to help distinguish him, but it still sends the message that the more admirable aliens are those that best resemble their oppressors.
But at least the aliens don’t really exist. Worse is the film’s treatment of actual humans. In this film about racism set in South Africa, the protagonist is a white human man. The film focuses on his character arc above all things. So not only did the film makers pass up an obvious opportunity to cast an actor of color, but they focused their story on the oppressor rather than the oppressed.
And then there are the Nigerians. One of the film’s secondary antagonists is a gang of Nigerian smugglers, and they are… problematic. Their base is full of stereotypical “darkest Africa” style decorations, and they have a witch doctor on staff that they consult for important decisions. If that wasn’t enough, their leader is convinced he can gain the aliens’ power by consuming their flesh. Their entire portrayal comes across as animalistic, and they make up most of the film’s black cast. That might undermine the anti-racist message just a bit.
4. His Dark Materials
This cross dimensional steampunk fantasy series is well known as an atheist takedown of Catholicism. The big bads are the Church and God,* both of whom want to control and subjugate humanity. On the other side, Lord Asriel builds an army to challenge Heaven and win freedom for all. Heck, the book even reveals that God didn’t create the universe, he just found it and declared himself ruler. Can’t get much clearer than that.
But things get a lot muddier when you examine the specifics. You see, Lord Asriel’s story is that he leaves his home dimension to wage war against God, but it never explains how he knew God was real. There’s no divine magic in his world, no oracles who speak to the Almighty. There’s exactly as much evidence that God exists in Asriel’s world as there is in ours. Ironically, Asriel takes the existence of God completely on faith, which goes against a core principle of atheism.
The issue is further confused because as the book goes on, it’s revealed that while God does exist in this setting, he doesn’t actively interfere in the lives of mortals. He just sits in his own dimension, presumably laughing at human attempts to reconcile free will with a deterministic universe. The only reason Asriel has anyone to fight is that in a complete coincidence, the angel Metatron has recently seized control of Heaven and is planning to start actively meddling with humans. That’s fortunate for Asriel, because otherwise things would have been really awkward. “I’m here to fight you, God!” “Why? I’m just up here playing solitaire.”
At the end, it’s even revealed that Metatron imprisoned God in a magic cage. So in this story of rebelling against God, the villain is also someone who rebelled against God? Is rebelling against God good or bad? I’m so confused!
But all of this pales in comparison to the fact that Lord Asriel, the big atheist hero, is a child murderer. That’s not metaphorical, at the end of book one he literally kills a child in order to open a dimensional portal so he can go fight God. At the time this actually made perfect sense, because in the first book Lord Asriel was a secondary antagonist. It’s only in books two and three that the author decided he was an amazing hero that no one could stop praising. In the first book, Asriel wasn’t even trying to fight God. That motivation was retconned in over his original plans to destroy death itself.
With this change of direction, the author turned a child-murdering villain into an atheist hero. Considering how religious extremists love to paint atheists as child murders in real life, this wasn’t a good move.
5. Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carrol’s surrealist fantasy story has been remade and adapted countless times, but never has it featured a message as blatant as Tim Burton’s version: Alice must stand up for herself and not do what others tell her to do. You see, at the beginning, Alice is engaged to marry a man she has no interest in. She’s told she must do this for the good of her family’s finances. From there, she falls into Wonderland and goes on an adventure that empowers her to assert herself and claim what she wants. Except not.
When Alice arrives in Wonderland, she’s told that because of an ancient prophesy, she’s destined to slay the Jabberwocky and end the Queen of Hearts’ evil reign.* Just one problem: Alice doesn’t want to kill the Jabberwocky. Strange as it may seem, this protagonist of a fantasy film isn’t interested in killing another sapient being. But the residents of Wonderland are persistent, telling her that she must put aside her personal feelings and act for the greater good. Hmm, why does that sound familiar?
Worse, we later find out that despite her status as the chosen instrument of destiny, Alice isn’t actually that important to the process. It turns out the Vorpal Sword will do all the work, she just has to hold onto it. At one point, the Jabberwocky even mocks her as an “insignificant bearer.” So not only does she have no choice in the process, but she’s also a completely passive entity.
If you’re expecting the film to pull a sudden twist where Alice rejects her destiny and doesn’t kill the Jabberwocky, you’re not alone. I couldn’t believe the filmmakers would be so obtuse, but it turned out they were. Alice kills the Jabberwocky like everyone expects, or at least she holds onto the Vorpal Sword while it kills the Jabberwocky. Then she returns to her own world and acts as if her experience has somehow empowered her to reject the arranged marriage, even though everything she learned taught her the exact opposite.
Alice’s problem at the start of the film is that she’s expected to put aside her own desires and do what’s best for others. Then her adventure in Wonderland is all about her putting aside her own desires to do what’s best for others. But somehow at the end, she pulls an about face and rejects what others want from her in favor of her own happiness. The message isn’t just undermined, it’s completely contradicted. The fact that both her arranged marriage and fighting the Jabberwocky involve her passively accepting a phallic symbol just makes the whole thing a little grosser.
A story’s message is what gives it staying power. Writing styles and dramatic conventions change quickly, but a strong message can last for centuries. That’s why it’s so important not to undermine the messages in your own work. A confused message is less likely to resonate with the audience, and so the story will be quickly forgotten. But if a story supports a good message, it can go far indeed.
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I actually wonder if any story that uses fantastic racism as an allegory has this problem to some degree. Even ones that do a better job than District 9, like Zootopia or Mass Effect, still have this problem. In short it is that any such story equates judging by species as racist, which is at least partially accurate in nearly every case.
In Mass Effect, a krogan is far more likely to be aggressive than a salarian, not to mention that an untrained salarian is no threat to anyone, while literally every krogan is extremely strong and dangerous. In Zootopia, the ZPD and organized crime figures are generally predators, while a bunny is easily squashed by an elephant.
This comparison is actually one uses by racists to some extent, in which it is often thought that African Americans are naturally more athletic and less intellectual, while Asian-Americans are often thought to naturally fit the nerd stereotype. Whatever observed differences that do exist are almost entirely cultural, with biology playing almost no role. But in a fantastic setting, it really does play a role in addition to culture.
For a non-racial example as alluded to in last week’s post, the X-men have the similar problem in that unlike any real group they are a genuine threat to others in ways often not easily countered by normal means. It certainly doesn’t justify outright killing them, but allowing the government to now who they are and what exactly their abilities are doesn’t seem unreasonable. In a way it is almost more like an argument about gun control than it is about oppression.
I totally agree with your point here.
I think a solution to this is something akin to “Let that be your Last Battlefield” (The Star Trek TOS episode) where aliens of the same species hate each other over what half of their face is white and what half of their face is black. There are some problems with the episode, but this is not one of them. It is clearly shown that they are the same and their hatred is nonsensical. In this case, it even goes so far as to be hard for the other characters (and the viewers) to even notice this difference that the bigoted characters care so much about.
Similarly, instead of having parallels where agressive and muscular orcs are stereotyped (accurately) and the delicate yet cerebral elves rule (bonus points if they’re white while the orcs are black or black-coded…), maybe it would be better to have the blue orcs discriminate against the green orcs even though there really is no basis for the stereotypes (or have the elves discriminate each other based on the length of their ears etc etc).
Although there is a place to tell a story about “Yes, we are different, but that doesn’t mean that one is better than the other or that oppression or segregation are justified, instead diversity strengthens society”. In this case it can be tricky to not have it seem like the different animal/fantasy/alien species represent groups of humans who really are all one species.
The message is further weakened when the film reveals that Ares himself is behind the upcoming armistice to end the war, which implies that peace is bad and war is good, but the God of War is bad. Sure.
Well, no, it implies that he’s setting the armistice up to fail, so that the peace – which will inevitably come sooner or later – won’t last. More than implies really, he directly says it.
Simple reversals rarely work, because they cast a disenfranchised group in the role of villain.
They also tend to focus on the most extreme ends of predudices, pretending the whole ubiquitous spectrum up until that doesn’t exist.
The fact that both her arranged marriage and fighting the Jabberwocky involve her passively accepting a phallic symbol just makes the whole thing a little grosser.
That what comes of the director only really being interested in the Mad Hatter, I suppose.
I’m hesitant to give the makers of the story the benefit of the doubt on this, considering how historically ignorant they are about everything else in the movie, but if you remember what happened as a result the armistice and the treaty of Versailles that followed, you may get an idea as to what Ares’ plan was.
I considered that the implication might be that Ares is setting up the Treaty of Versailles, and thus WWII, but that doesn’t hold up. It’s generally accepted that the extreme punishment of Germany in the treaty was a major cause of WWII, while Ares seems to be pushing for a much more amicable peace.
Now it’s always possible that the film makers think WWII happened because Germany wasn’t punished *more* at the end of WWI, but if so then their understanding of history is poor indeed.
Mm, I saw him as “pushing” for a more amicable peace, while *actually* pushing (that whispering in ears he tends to do) for a much harsher one.
If Ares was trying to be super sneaky about setting up a harsher treaty with Germany, I saw no sign of it, but more importantly, he has no reason to be duplicitous about it. Anti-German feeling was at all time highs in the Allied governments, if he’d just said “let’s punish Germany with this treaty so that they can never make war again,” everyone would have gone along with it easily, except maybe POTUS Wilson.
By publicly pushing for a fair peace, he was just making life harder for himself if his goal was indeed to create the Treaty of Versailles that happened in real life and contributed to the Nazi rise.
What while Ares is the god of war, he (in this version) actually promotes war because it’s his evidence of humanity’s inadequacy. By ostensibly – but ineffectually – pushing for a fairer peace, he gets to say the better option was there, but the Allied governments didn’t take it.
Sorry, not meaning to be a dick, but as a writer i would love to know, what would you kill a jabberwocky with that isnt phallic?
Poison? A really huge boulder? A magical spell (since we’re talking fantasy here)? A very vicious limmerick (since it’s the weird wonderland we’re talking about)?
I think everyone misses the point of District 9. Xenophobia is a huge problem in South Africa. Every now and then we have a small war where a number of foreigners are killed by locals. All because of stereotypes. I think THAT is what the movie is really about. And that’s why it shows these blatant stereotypes. White people are racist. Indians are sneaky. Nigerians are drug lords etc. It’s satire based on exaggeration.
Not to mention the ahe alien protagonist was a Queen. Africa has never had good luck dealing with alien monarchies.
Lord Asriel as described sounds like a Maltheist Hero, not an Atheist Hero. Atheism is the belief in God’s Nonexistence (Tho Adeism would be a better term, but that’s a topic for another day). Maltheism is the belief that god is not Benevolent, and may even be Malevolent. Taking God’s existence on faith does go against Atheism, but not Maltheism. An Atheist wouldn’t believe there was a god to even fight. A Maltheist would
I haven’t read the books myself, so for all I know the books are the ones Declaring Lord Asriel an atheist, rather than a maltheist. Just wanted to dip in and share a bit of extra terminology
Excellent points. My only counter would be that more people know what an Atheist is than a Maltheist. The Pathfinder book, “Death’s Heretic” also has a Maltheist but the word is rarely used because it’s not as familiar to the average reader. Ironically it’s overall easier to argue for Maltheism than Atheism. One argument could go, “Are you going to believe a god who told his highest follower to slaughter civilian and take sex slaves is going to reward your worship. What kind of credibility does that god have?”
There’s also Misotheism, which is hatred of god/s, which many fundamentalist theists accuse atheists of.
The biggest problem with Wonderwoman is that she and the amazons presented as somehow being able to save humanity from the flaws that make it so violent when they are repeatedly shown to have all of those flaws (xenophobia, vengeance, stereotyping of others) themselves. In fact, because they’re so naive and isolated they actually have these traits worse than normal humans do.
Well, with stories like Alice in Wonderland, it’s much less about the story as it is the spectacle. Plus, I thought the moral of the story was less about “standing up for what you want” as it was about “being creative, not letting people tell you what’s possible and what’s not”.
Thanks for this great analysis. One more annoying thing about TNG’s “The Outcast” is the impoverished representation of a society without gender dualism. The Jenai are an unattractive group in nearly all respects, from their authoritarian politics to their bad haircuts. Of course the audience will identify with Soren and hope for her liberation – she’s the only sympathetic character on the whole planet.
We thought it was about sexual liberation, really it was about liberation from bad haircuts! ;)
I really liked Wonder Woman but remember my eyebrows going up as she slaughtered the German soldiers. Wait – was this okay because they were proto-Nazis?
Also I remember Jonathan Frakes saying that ‘The Outcast’ could have been more ground breaking (for its time) if Soren leaned towards the male end of the spectrum. I think Frakes was willing to go there, but the producers chickened out.
As Catholic I have to argue that cosmology of “His dark materials” does not sound like Christian one. Several core tenets are different.
1. Authority is demiurge of limited power, God is omnipotent creator.
2. Authority wants to control everybody, God wants everybody to be free. If He wanted absolute mind control, there would be nothing stoping Him.
3. Afterlife looks more like bleaker Greek underworld than anything Christian.
Could someone correct me if I am wrong? And can someone explain exactly why books cosmology is compared to Christian one?
Sorry for errors, its my second languege.
The books make a lot of references to original sin, Adam and Eve, Kingdom of Heaven etc, as though they are part of the story world. Certainly Pullman is putting his own spin on things, but those kinds of reference communicate pretty clearly that he is using a strange form of Christian cosmology, even if it’s different from what real world Christians believe or practice.
That explains controversy and why some people are against those books. Changing parts of our cosmology is for us horrible transgression. And thats reason why so many Christians ask writers to respect things that are holy to us and to not use them as fantasy. Sadly, debate often shifts into quarrel, because all sides have to many unintelectual or rude members. Pitty, because matter is serious.
But being against mixing theology and storytelling aside, Oren has spotted very serious contradiction. We have misotheist and child murderer, who rebels against forces, which might not even exist and that guy is called atheist hero. Guy who belives that:
1. End justifies the means enough to kill child.
2. Belivies that there is evil divine force to fight against.
These two things disqualify him as 1. hero 2. atheist.
I didnt get the impression he was a hero (maybe in the ancient Greek style). But, I’m sure he did not believe in a creator GOD, but believed “God” aka the Authority, to be a false god.
When I first saw “The Outcast” on TNG’s initial run, I took it as being an allegory for TRANS issues. After all the main character Soren has issues because their GENDER doesn’t match the expectations of J’naii society. Also at the time I was still in the closet, partly due to a deep seated fear that I might be institutionalized should I come out as trans. And of course at the end of the episode that’s exactly what happens to Soren. Of course the nasty ending is a bit like the ending of the first season episode SYMBIOSIS.- the fact that there wasn’t a neat and happy ending was the point.
I was surprised to later find that most people assumed it was primarily representing GAY issues, and hadn’t even CONSIDERED a trans parallel. Of course a modern interpretation makes it more of a QUEER representation, but the fact that your analysis doesn’t even consider either a trans or queer reading, suggests that things haven’t changed much, regardless of QUILTBAGing et cetera.
A similar problem exists with the TNG episode THE HOST. From my perspective that was an allegory of a TRANS story, paralleling some trans narratives from the period. Beverly falls in love with Odan and becomes familiar with him in a particular physical version. After the existing host dies and Ryker becomes Odan’s temporary host, Beverly can still cope with that because Ryker is at least still male, but the permanent host host – Kareel – is female, and she can’t. Likewise, there were stories of “married men” transitioning and while their wives could cope with the early stages of that, some couldn’t after various hormonal and surgical treatments had their effect.
In both cases there’s a heteronormative assumption made on the relationship, Back then transgender wasn’t used that much as a term (even though it’d been coined in the late 1960s by a clinician), and transsexual vs transvestite was a common dichotomy. In story terms Ryker was in the “transvestite stage” and Kareel was a “transsexual stage”. Hopefully we’ve got past that by now.
Yup, ignoring the obvious (anti-)trans issues in this episode is a pet peeve of mine as well. A lot of people conflate gender and sexuality issues (stereotyping gay men as feminine and lesbian women as masculine etc while pretending that’s somehow bad) and of course those issues can be related. But they aren’t always related. Some people can only figure out their sexual orientation and gender together and can’t see them seperately, while a lot of people don’t see or feel a connection between their gender identity and their sexual orientation.
What I hate so much about the episode is that 1) it shows nonbinary/agender society as evil oppressors who brainwash the poor cisses (and makes all the mistakes common to persecution flip stories), 2) it conflates being agender with being asexual and aromantic, 3) it thinks agender/aromantic/asexual aliens are a good allegory for gay humans which only makes sense if you don’t consider being agender/aromantic/asexual an actual real experience real humans have, and 4) it implies (at least that’s how I understood it) that the alien love interest figured out that she was actually a woman because she fell in love with Riker (a man). It really seemed like “I love a man, therefore I must be a woman”. Can’t really get any more cisheteronormative than that…
Anyway, I super super hate it.
(Even if I’m wrong about 4) and it’s not supposed to be that way, the other points are still there and it is the worst and among the most hurtful episodes for me personally, apart from just being infuriatingly bad storytelling*.)
I also hated how in Offspring, Lal is told that to be agender (“neuter”) would be unacceptable. What. They have met aliens without gender binaries before! But Lal the android has to chose between female and male. Urgh.
*and haircuts
I haven’t seen Wonder Woman, but assuming you’re accurately representing Ares role as initiator of both war and peace, then this might be a case of someone actually knowing their Greek mythology. Ares had to be propitiated at both the start of war, AND the start of peace negotiations in ancient Greece.
I’d like to submit Hotel Transylvania 2 to this list.
Dracula spends a lot of the movie learning that his hopes for his grandchild are based solely on a false narrative of vampiric superiority and that he feels the new generation is somehow lost or pampered, and in the end, he accepts his grandchild as human and in need of love and care rather than the violent abuse he suffered when he was young.
Then the movie pitches that out the window, shows us abuse is a good thing, and turns the baby into a vampire superhero just like Dracula wanted all along.
I agree. Just as he’s standing up to his own father, saying that it’s perfectly fine for his grandson to be a human, the kid turns into a vampire, even mastering all of the different abilities it should have to learn at once. I always thought it would have been better to leave Dennis as a human – he does have a protector in Winnie, after all.
Oh, that TNG episode is probably my least favourite Star Trek episode ever. It might have solidified my desire to write the characters I want to see in stories, which is what I did and continue to do instead of uselessly writing an angry letter.
I’m intrigued by your analysis of Alice in Wonderland, and I want more! :D
well as luck would have it I currently have another post where I talk about that particular film, so that should drop in a few weeks.
So, the issue with your point about Asriel is that that he is definitely intended to be a bad person in the books.
Sure, the resistance against the authority IS seen as a good – or at least a justified – force within the books, but Asriel as a person is never declared to be good beyond his role in the resistance, and even then he’s used really really bad means to get that far. Asriel is not venerated by the narrative. His role in the story is not that of an athiest hero. His final act in the narrative is good not because he is a good person (or even because what he believes is right) but because his principles and goals happened to align with destroying a genuinely horrible force in the universe.
That’s a bit of a theme in His Dark Materials; good actions happening less because they were intended to be good or because the person who did it is inclined to do good, but because chance and fate conspired to put a person into a position where they’d be inclined to do an act that does ultimately benefit the rest of the world.
I get the bit about how the heck Asriel KNEW for sure the Authority existed. He just kinda knows. Fair point there.
Yeah, Metatron taking over just so happens to provide an obvious antagonist for the rebellion to fight against, that’s fair, but I think even if Metatron hadn’t taken over Asriel and the rebellion still would have fought the Authority and everyone who enforced his power because they believed no one should reign over others like that. The fact Metatron overthrew God doesn’t instantly make him on the same side as Asriel because Metatron overthrew God in order to gain more power over others. Yes, it’s a bit confusing as to whether or not God is a bad guy – Asriel puts all the evil the church has done in his world on God, but later we find out Metatron is really the one in charge and has been for a while, so is God really eeeviiil in these books? Metatron is shown to be the one responsible for the evils of the church in every world.
So then, it’s not that God is inherently evil in the world of the books, it’s that the institutions of power that rose up around him are corrupt and oppressing people, and he himself has long since become obsolete.
That’s it. That’s the message here. I got that when I was a kid reading it, even if I couldn’t articulate it.
…It’s almost like all this confusing writing is getting at a theme a lot more nuanced than ‘God is bad’.
Anyway, since Asriel’s issue with God was that he and his angels only existed to rule over others and oppress them, it would made perfect sense for him to want to kill Metatron, as Metatron represents the worst of the church to Asriel.
Anyway, I don’t really agree with Pullman’s ideology, this is just a general overview of how I understand Asriel’s character and his role within the books.
The series came to me at the right time and place and definitely left an impression on me, so it’s very close to my heart. As a result of that, I really care that the criticism of his work is based in the real flaws in the books (of which there are many) and not in a misunderstanding of his themes and writing.
Then again, how well did he actually communicate those themes if they’re so easily misunderstood?
Anyway, TLDR; Asriel is definitely not meant to be a perfect virtuous hero, he’s written as a complicated dude whose questionable principles happen to align with doing something good-ish. His clash with Metatron makes sense because Metatron is the essence of everything bad placed onto the Authority in the books. The fact Metatron rebelled against God doesn’t instantly make him on the same side as Asriel because it was Metatron and his angels who oppressed people. It’s not that God is inherently evil in the world of the books, it’s that the institutions of power that rose up around him are corrupt and oppressing people and God himself has long since become obsolete in the world of the books.
Phew. I repeated myself a bit there, but hopefully it isn’t total mush.
You didn’t bother to think it through. You were presented with something that didn’t immediately make sense and assumed it was an error. That frustrates me because there are so many other genuine issues you could have pointed to, but you didn’t. You didn’t bother to think it through.