I often wonder about this too Bets. Fiction aka myth can be a great teaching medium, especially for stuff that's not easily communicated in simple language, or which requires us to suspend our disbelief.

Trouble is most of my reading of that sort was before spiritual perspectives started to open up for me.

I didn't read the book, but thought the Golden Compass film contained quite a very nice play on the issues of ego and higher self, and on the risks of trying to rule a society solely from a rationalist/materialist/objective reality/ego driven perspective, especially when technologies confer potentially highly destructive powers.

Quite a nice take on what is probably the core issue of our times - right down to the way the latter cannot appreciate the power of and the need for intuitive knowing - wisdom and compassion....

Thought the recent Dark Knight Batman movie was pretty deep as well, and dealt with another central and related issue of our times.

The seeming 'baddie' the Joker besides being incredibly well acted (to the point that he was very moving) actually had an almost Zen like depth of  view of the reality of people's behaviours, and what's more was playing in a very knowing (but amoral - as a result of his upbringing) way with people's and the Batman's reaction's to his actions.

The Batman 'goodie' meanwhile was also being driven by his upbringing and by people's expectations following the Joker's actions - but he was role playing (living the delusion) - the hero model demanded by poulations seeking protection.

He ran head on into the essential fact that this sort of dualistic approach does not work - finding that violence  creates violence, and consequently never solves the problems of our societies.

The Joker had a much better grip on reality, but wasn't driven by love; the Batman thought he was acting out of love, but was actually living a deluded cliche not grounded in reality. (one that's popular in the US and other cultures though - that the use of force can be a power good).

The point perhaps being that they were feeding off each other and actually making things worse - that to truly do good we must realise  both compassion (loving intention) and wisdom (true seeing and skillful means) . All these qualities emanate from the higher self/heart, and not the intellect and ego - which brings us back to the theme of the Golden Compass again.

Both you could even say were on some sort of journey to finding this and themselves....  

Given my orientation I probably read far too much into it Bets - there's a classic super hero adventure story running in parallel to this   theme too.

Here's a clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKYtGLOz0Cw Some background: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZuPhCE7WQI&feature=related

For me there was something very deep about the vibe surrounding Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker. Could be it won't play that way for you. Could be too it wasn't done in an entirely knowing way, but it's possible too that whatever mind state resulted in the performance was not unrelated to his death.

He died of an OD, but maybe he was using drugs to access states, or for relief - maybe it was some sort of underlying despair or acceptance that came through in the performance.

Maybe even he was somehow at the dark night (note the pun vs. the movie title) stage of awakening where you open to the uncompromising nastiness of the world shorn of all the rationalised excuses we usually paper it over with, but where you have not yet accessed the joy that follows from letting go of all resistance to it.....