Flattering, but unsurprising ....
Nov. 22nd, 2007 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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I'm teaching The Golden Compass right now, which makes the upcoming adaptation and the nicely built website into a timely bonus: the other day, we were discussing the application of the daemons in class. In some ways, I think Pullman uses the daemons much as Lewis used race (both "race" as ethnicity/nationality and "race" as species): it's a handy shorthand for the kinds of values that he wants us to associate with certain characters. This can be problematic, especially in terms of class (all servants have dog daemons? except for the one throwaway reference to the maid with a hen? really? c'mon, Pullman, tell us how you really feel about the "serving classes"). But for young readers, it can also be incredibly appealing, especially in the identity-formation-in-flux kind of a way.
My freshman year of college, one of my instructors assigned us a brief writing exercise: to choose and describe our favorite color, and our favorite animal.
I'm teaching The Golden Compass right now, which makes the upcoming adaptation and the nicely built website into a timely bonus: the other day, we were discussing the application of the daemons in class. In some ways, I think Pullman uses the daemons much as Lewis used race (both "race" as ethnicity/nationality and "race" as species): it's a handy shorthand for the kinds of values that he wants us to associate with certain characters. This can be problematic, especially in terms of class (all servants have dog daemons? except for the one throwaway reference to the maid with a hen? really? c'mon, Pullman, tell us how you really feel about the "serving classes"). But for young readers, it can also be incredibly appealing, especially in the identity-formation-in-flux kind of a way.
My freshman year of college, one of my instructors assigned us a brief writing exercise: to choose and describe our favorite color, and our favorite animal.
For those of you with any experience in armchair psychology, this one might be familiar: the color is how you see yourself, and the animal is how others see you. Unfortunately, she didn't tell us about that before she had us read our selections out to the rest of the class: I chose blue because it was soothing and restful and the color of the intellect, and cats for their elegance and arrogance and aloofness. D'oh ... not inaccurate, I suppose, from what others have told me over the years, but a bit discomfiting.
This seems to have a similar degree of self-selection built in, but, nevertheless, it's fun, and, better yet for my students, given the turn-around time on adaptations, likely to still be up when they're in the classroom trying to get their students into the texts ....![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2007-11-24 07:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-24 07:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-24 07:18 am (UTC)