The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

[snugglekitty]

I haven't read the Narnia books since I was a kid. Once I saw the Christian undertones, I found them a little hard to take. (Not because I object to Christianity, but because I don't like children's books that are thinly veiled moral lessons. Adult literature of that nature we call propaganda, and I think it's demeaning to kids that we expect them to swallow such things without noticing they're there.)

The movie was quite true to the book. It was indeed full of thinly veiled symbolism and morality, but they can't be blamed for that. I thought it was well-acted. And then there was Tilda Swinton... OMG. Now I want to be the White Witch when I grow up. Which is kind of cool, since I was already on the "wrong side." It works out.



About the only thing I didn't like about it was the ending. Not, you know, Lucy trying to get back into the wardrobe. But Aslan walking down the beach. I saw that, and I moaned into starkeymonster's ear, "Not the footprints! Anything but the footprints, please!" but my prayers were not to be answered. *sigh* Of course, this got her started with, "One night a man had a dream that he was walking on the beach with the Lord..." and then the hellishness was complete.



Anyhow. To anyone who has seen or is planning to see the movie, or enjoyed the books, I strongly recommend Neil Gaiman's recent Narnia retelling, "The Problem of Susan." It's amazing and creepy and makes you think. You can find it in the new fantasy anthology Flights. I own a copy, so leave a comment if you want to borrow it.

Comments

it's kinda funny

[cyclothemia.livejournal.com]

my girly and i were discussing LW&W...(she's been studying myth, folklore and legend) and, well, we came to the same conclusion- Christianity is, after all, thinly veiled Paganism. The Lion is all over Sun God, what with his gifts related to the Sun God (bows and aroows, firewater, etc), and the Sun God "dies" or is banished, Winter falls over the land (ok, so they made the Holly King a chick- that helps establish some "the devil is a woman" misogyny of Xians) and then... with the help of the people, the Sun returns to the land, bringing Spring with him.
sounds pretty freakin' Pagan to me. how convieniant of the Christians to have the foresight to steal a lot of that imagry from us!

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

i'd love to borrow "flights", but i should probably see if coraline has it in-house first :)

[katkt.livejournal.com]

I would love to borrow Flights if we manage to run into each other before I go off and buy it myself. I heard of "The Problem of Susan" a couple weeks ago and I've really wanted to see it.

I don't have as big a problem with the Christian imagery as you, I think, but when I saw the end the groan "Oh, no, not the footsteps," filtered through my head as well. Happily no one taunted me with it.

Not because I object to Christianity, but because I don't like children's books that are thinly veiled moral lessons. Adult literature of that nature we call propaganda,

Consider, if you will, Earthsea. Earthsea is not thinly veiled Christianity, or thinly veiled anything. But it definitely carries a strong moral lesson and hits the reader over the head with it just as much as Narnia. It's just that Earthsea's "lesson" is more nuanced and complete. The religious iconography in Narnia irritates me (when I notice it - there's definitely some that I miss) by its presence, but the simplified Christian moral messages only irritate me because of their over-simplification.

So, I guess I don't think Narnia's moral message is veiled at all, and I don't object to literature with open moral messages. It's the veiled Christianity (both the imagery and of the message) that irritates me.

Re: it's kinda funny

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

how convieniant of the Christians to have the foresight to steal a lot of that imagry from us!

Agreed. Ms. Anemone's rant earlier was a wonderful testimony to that.

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

i remember loving the narnia books as a child and being disappointed to hear and then see (when i reread them in a college class) that they were intended as christian allegory.

but the wording of your objection has me rethinking mine. in my experience most adult fiction and nearly all children's fiction bears deliberate moral messages. and when someone takes an existing myth and reworks it we usually call that writing, and judge it by the creativity and effectiveness of the reworking.

i guess some fault can be laid at the feet of packaging: if the narnia books' covers had said "an enchanting christian fable" or some such i probably would have been less likely to read them but would have come away with a more positive impression of the idea of christian fiction if i had.

thinking of them as "propaganda" is indeed what gave me that sad, loss-of-innocence feeling. but i'm not sure they were very good propaganda. the main moral lesson i remember drawing from them was that it's a bad idea to dismiss the words of children out of hand simply because they're children. but this point is made in other children's stories.

but maybe being ineffective at its specific aim is exactly what's disappointing about propaganda. i felt similarly (disappointed, though i went into that with open eyes) about atlas shrugged.

[coraline]

FWIW it wasn't apparently intended as christian allegory. c.s. lewis says that he wrote them without that in mind, as just plain kid's books. this of course doesn't mean that they're NOT that sort of allegory (there's "authorial intent is dead" and there "subconscious authorial intent" and there's also "possibly he was lying when he said he didn't mean it.")

not that has much effect on an anything but i thought it was interesting.

Re: it's kinda funny

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Not to mention the whole sheathing the sword in the earth thing...

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

Okay. If she doesn't, you're first on the list. Let me know. :)

[arachne8x.livejournal.com]

Many of the resources I have recently read, and they may be wrong, have all sugggested that it was very intentional and point to letters of his written to other members of his family, and other writings as backup for this. For example, an article had this to say on the subject "In 1954, Lewis was asked to explain the Aslan-Christ parallel to some fifth graders in Maryland. He replied: "I did not say to myself 'Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia'; I said 'Let us suppose that there were land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as he became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen". (Lewis, 1954, 1998)", http://cslewis.drzeus.net/papers/lionwitchallegory.html . Specifically what a lot of the resources say is that Lewis had a very specific definition of allegory, and that it was this specific concept that he objected was not his intent "Lewis insisted the Narnia books were not allegory — where things are meant to represent something else — but were a supposal of how it might have gone if Christ had come to a world of talking animals and become one of them. The distinction is worthy of the tweedy Oxford professor Lewis was." http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051206/ENT01/51206016/1005/ENT

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

So, I guess I don't think Narnia's moral message is veiled at all, and I don't object to literature with open moral messages. It's the veiled Christianity (both the imagery and of the message) that irritates me.

*nod* Your comments about Earthsea were well-taken. Having thought about it a little bit more, I think it's not when a book discusses morality or makes you think about morality. It's the idea of morality as a didactic lesson that can be taught. "Here's the right answer, and I'll tell it to you. Except I don't have the courage to just say, 'This is what I think,' so I'm pretending this is fiction."

Do you know what I mean?

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

but maybe being ineffective at its specific aim is exactly what's disappointing about propaganda.

I think it might be. When a work of fiction or piece of art convinces us totally of something, we're probably less likely to think it's propaganda. Part of what I object to about the Narnia books is the way they hit you over the head with their message.

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this, it was interesting to read.

oh, and also

[lady-anemone.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about the packaging. If it just said, "I'm a Christian fable" on the front cover or something, it wouldn't have bugged me.

[arachne8x.livejournal.com]

Your welcome, I seem to be posting this same snippet to a lot of blogs these days. :)

[katkt.livejournal.com]

I think so. But I don't think I agree with you that he was just pretending it was fiction, and I don't think it is unique in attempting to teach a specific lesson, either.

Lewis' stated (after the fact) goal was to expose children to the themes and ideas and values of Christianity. To shape their worldview so they would accept Christianity when they encountered it when they were older. Narnia isn't a thinly fictionalized retelling of any of the bible stories. It is a brand new fictional story that uses many of the same themes and some of the same imagery. And it's a good story.

As for being didactit; all the good children's literature I can think of is didactic. Pooh, Earthsea, Prydain being the closest to the front on my bookshelf at the moment. Earthsea, for example, openly starts with it's central moral statement, "Only in silence the word/Only in dark the light/Only in dying life/Bright the hawk's flight/On an empty sky" and then illustrates it. And talks about some other things as it goes.

That said, there is something about Narnia that irritates me too. I'm just not able to quantify it in a way that I find satisfactory. I think, maybe, what bothers me is how obviously the story is shaped by Christian theology. I don't mind the morality, I mind the contrivances to create parrallels with bible stories. Which might be what you actually meant, come to think of it...

[coraline]

interesting! i'm going to bookmark that to toss it at the next person who claims it wasn't intentional (i had always assumed it was, but multiple people have claimed to me that it wasn't in the past month. i wonder where that report is coming from -- good to have some counter-evidence.)

[arachne8x.livejournal.com]

I think people misunderstood him when he said it wasn't meant to be allegory, what he meant by that was that it wasn't a complete retelling, not that he didn't realize what he was writing. Also another point is that he does mention that he started by creating the universe and thinking of the mythological aspects first, but it definitely wasn't unintentional :)