PZ Myers. 2005 Dec 05. Narnia as an inoculation. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/narnia_as_an_inoculation/>. Accessed 2008 Dec 04.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Monday, December 05, 2005
Narnia as an inoculation
When I was in fifth grade, I read C.S. Lewis's Narnia books. I had a teacher who raved about them and assigned The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as class reading, and since I hated to leave anything unread, I also polished off the rest of the series.
I didn't like them.
I didn't get the religious allegory at all—it wasn't until I was in high school that someone mentioned it to me, and then suddenly all was clear—but it was the peculiar stuffed-shirt elitism that put me off, what with all these odd characters that were treated with hushed and unquestioning reverence by a bunch of annoying prigs. Lacking the religious connection, too, the story made little sense; a lion tortured and dying and coming back to life? What the heck? It simply wasn't a very good story.
Now we have this new Disney movie of the books coming out. I'll probably see it; I'm sure the religious in my little town will be demanding that our theater show it, and I'm pretty religious about seeing every movie shown there (small town theaters are a treasure, and I just like the ambience, even if the movie stinks). Neil Saunders passed along this Guardian review, 'Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion', and now I may also have to see it just because it'll feed my distaste.
There's at least one bit of Britain I envy.
Disney may come to regret this alliance with Christians, at least on this side of the Atlantic. For all the enthusiasm of the churches, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ bombed in Britain and warehouses are stuffed with unsold DVDs of that stomach-churner. There are too few practising Christians in the empty pews of this most secular nation to pack cinemas. So there has been a queasy ambivalence about how to sell the Narnia film here. Its director, Andrew Adamson (of Shrek fame), says the movie's Christian themes are "open to the audience to interpret". One soundtrack album of the film has been released with religious music, the other with secular pop.
I think The Passion of the Christ did very well here in Morris—it was held over for weeks, to my annoyance. Since we only have one theater with one screen, it meant better movies were displaced for far too long.
Oh, but this review goes on in a way I find positively heartwarming. Here's a sample:
Over the years, others have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. Philip Pullman - he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials - has called Narnia "one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read".
Why? Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right. I once heard the famous preacher Norman Vincent Peel in New York expound a sermon that reassured his wealthy congregation that they were made rich by God because they deserved it. The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis's view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis's earth.
Even though I read the books while I was still a little regular church-goer, maybe the reason I never caught on to the religious symbolism was that it was the gilded version of Christianity—the Christianity of the self-satisfied, the wealthy, the grasping; the kind of Christianity that sequesters itself in crystal cathedrals and is represented by televangelists who demand that the poor sacrifice more and more and more to their ministries. I couldn't identify with that.
I could easily discard such a Supreme Overlord of Self-Righteousness, though. I do remember feeling this in a vague way that I could not express:
Children are supposed to fall in love with the hypnotic Aslan, though he is not a character: he is pure, raw, awesome power. He is an emblem for everything an atheist objects to in religion. His divine presence is a way to avoid humans taking responsibility for everything here and now on earth, where no one is watching, no one is guiding, no one is judging and there is no other place yet to come. Without an Aslan, there is no one here but ourselves to suffer for our sins, no one to redeem us but ourselves: we are obliged to settle our own disputes and do what we can. We need no holy guide books, only a very human moral compass. Everyone needs ghosts, spirits, marvels and poetic imaginings, but we can do well without an Aslan.
Now I wonder if the Chronicles of Narnia was an early seed that contributed to my later abandonment of all matters religious. The review mentions that Lewis wanted the books to "make it easier for children to accept Christianity when they met it later in life", yet all they instilled in me was a mild distaste that made it easier to reject Christianity. Maybe the new Narnia movie will also help some of today's children cast off the shackles of sanctimonious superstition.
More likely, though, they'll just see it and say, "eh," as I did after reading those tedious books.
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Oddly enough, as big a fan of SF/Fantasy as I was during my teen years and early adulthood (and still am, although not as passionately), I never got around to reading The Chronicles of Narnia</a>, even though I read almost every other "classic" fantasy series there was 25 years ago. It looks as though I didn't miss much.
As an aside, to show how much I persevere reading these series, I actually managed to get through the first 8 books of Robert Jordan's <i>Wheel of Time series before giving up. It started out strong, with the first three or four books being the best heroic fantasy I had read in many years, but rapidly went downhill to the point where it was a struggle to finish the last couple of books. The only reason I bring this up is that, had I started the Narnia books, I almost certainly would have read them all. - Oops. I see I messed up the HTML tags. Guess that's what I get for typing too fast and not previewing...
- Lewis is no Tolkien, that's for sure.
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I wasn't aware of the Christian allegory in Narnia when I read the first book, but I caught onto it pretty quickly. I was still a believing Christian at the time and I have to admit that I found a lot of the symbolism confusing based on what I'd been taught Jesus was supposed to be like. I never got past the first book.
I and my family will be going to see the film next week mainly because we're getting in for free thanks to a friend who has some complimentary tickets. It's been awhile since we've seen a movie of any kind in the theater and you can't argue with free. Plus it does look like the production values are pretty good. -
Apparently, there's four different trailers for Narnia - one that plays to the religious aspects, one that plays up the action/war angle for the boys, one that plays up the fantasy world angle for the Tolkien-fans, and one that sets up like Magical Pretty Princess Fairyland for the young girls.
This suggests to me, they've realised they don't know exactly who they've made this film for.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 08:25 AM - I've always loved the narnian chronicles. ever since I was a kid. I've re-read them every year since second grade and I'm 43 now. It's odd, because I became an athiest in my early 20s and still the books are magical to me. But, now as I read your posts I realize that my love of the books had more to do with the fantasy aspects, entering a world through a closet, meeting fauns, etc. was what always impressed me most, not the allegory. The voyage of the dawn treader was always my most favorite. I guess I'll have to give them up now!
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I guess I'll be the first person on this thread to note that I actually did like the Narnia books. I was a rote-believing Christian at the time, too; this was well before I started to really pay attention to what I was being taught. My opinion of them at the time (around sixth or seventh grade, I guess) was similar to Orac's description of Wheel of Time above; I loved the first few books, but it went quickly downhill near the end of the series.
As a further data point, I also adore Pullman's His Dark Materials, as does my father, a believing Anglican. I don't know if you've read that trilogy, PZ, but I suspect you'd like it. -
This suggests to me, they've realised they don't know exactly who they've made this film for.
well, being interested in fantasy, particularly Tolkien's stuff, i was going to see LWW. alas, Disney's pandering to churches and the religious sentiment turns me off to no end, especially in the context of the public mood and discourse presently in the States. so, i'll pass, more out of protest than anything else. maybe i'll see Harry Potter again instead.
the NVP sermon mentioned above, where the rich are told they're rich because they're living the right kind of life is pandering of another sort. it is an old, old theme in the Bible that often evil people grow like weeds and prosper, and many the good and humble remain poor. that Christianity has grown a streak where this theme is denied shows how it has adapted to assure its own financial success and pursued the religion of Paul instead of the religion of Jesus and James.
Tolkien was unabashedly religious and conservative, but apart from the absence of important roles for women in his books, his love of monarchies, and his implicit distaste for things democratic, it's hard to tell. -
Actually I would say that the best of the series is also one of the least allegorical- The Horse and his Boy. It also features perhaps the most enterprising female character in the series, Aravis, who in addition is shown in a very positive light despite being Calormanian. So overall you get more of the adventure with less of the preaching, sexism and racism in that one.
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NPR had an interesting take on Lewis and Narnia this weekend. They were interviewing an author who has just done a biography of Lewis (I believe, memory is going.)
It appears that Lewis himself did not set out to make Narnia a christian allegory. He realized it after writing it, but really intended it more to be a fantasy. In addition the author who did the biography felt that Lewis would be somewhat wary using the books, and espicially a movie as a method of conversion.
Having read some of Lewis' other works, I feel this is probably true. He was religious, but he did not believe in blind faith as it were.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 09:09 AM -
Hey, maybe if Narnia does well, they'll follow up with the Out of the Silent Planet series, Lewis' tribute to H. G. Wells-ish fiction. The second book (Perelandra) features Ransom (a messianic kind of hero, get it, ransom?) following an evil tempter dude to the planet Venus, where the evil tempter tries to seduce an innocent Eve figure into sinning against a righteous universal ruler. Ransom can't figure out how to stop the evil tempter, until finally he gets a bright idea: why not just pound the bastard into a bloody pulp!
Good stuff.#: Posted by Mark Nutter on 12/05 at 09:10 AM -
Personally, I'm curious what is going to be done when the filmmakers come to the Narnia book "A Horse and his Boy". In case you haven't read that one (or have forgotten it), that's the nasty one set in the pseudo-Islamic land of Calormen where evil men are dark-skinned, wear turbans and beards, fight with scimitars, and of course worship Tash, who is of course none other than Satan himself. That's sure to help us win trust in Iraq.
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Or how will they handle the big confrontation in The Silver Chair, where the hero and heroine defeat the evil witch by insisting that they believe in things that they have no evidence for, because... er, because the imaginary things are nice, basically.
Or The Last Battle, where the foolish atheists are so foolish that they refuse to see heaven, even when its all around them (how that fits with the previous argument I've no idea), and thinking about boys and make-up and icky stuff like that is enough to get a girl barred from heaven.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 09:21 AM -
I remember liking The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe enough to look up the rest of the series. I liked some of the rest, like The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, but reading the last book just turned me off the whole thing. It was like being suddenly mugged by a friend. I even tried re-reading it in case I was missing something, which I was, of course, since I didn't know that it was an allegory of anything.
The imagery of the whole of Narnia being wiped out by Aslan was quite striking, but the afterlife of Narnia seemed a very poor replacement fantasy for the fantasy that was in the books, and it didn't make a lot of sense. I mean, replacing a fantasy with another fantasy? I couldn't figure out what Lewis was up to. Eh, I was quite young at the time.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 09:22 AM - I dunno--having only seen the poster, I have to say I'd be willing to put up with a lot of dreck if the payoff was that I got to ride around in a chariot pulled by polar bears.
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I'm an atheist and have been since a pretty young age. I also love the Narnia books - they enthused me with a great passion for reading. I think the current anti Narnia comments going around in elements of the atheistic community really are a fuss about nothing.
Are some atheists so afraid, so worried about the power of our arguments, that they attack a simplistic book with a religious theme? Its thoroughly depressing.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 09:27 AM -
I don't know if you've read Lewis' apologetics, but the boy's school anglicanism of the books tracks his religious views pretty closely.
He was apparently equally narrow and rigid in his personal life, until he met the lady he later married despite it being against the rules.
Tolkein apparently never spoke to him again after that, whether because he was disturbed by the hypocrisy or the apostasy I could never tell.#: Posted by julia Hendricks on 12/05 at 09:30 AM -
I remember picking up 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' right after I finished reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I was looking for other literary works of fantasy coz I'd liked LOTR so much. I'd just read about the inklings while reading up on Tolkien, and Lewis appeared to be a safe bet.
To say that I was underwhelmed would be an understatement. I found the book so crappy, and the Christian allusions so simplistic and overt, that I didn't touch any other books in the Narnia series. - Conversely, I really liked the books... then again I was 8 or so at the time, I didn't get the Christian allegories... we'll see how it goes. A lot of us in our godless circle are looking forward to the movie, poor representation of Christianity or not. Though it could be biased childhood remembrances...
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Hold it: my anti-Narnia sentiments have nothing to do with the religion. As I said above, I disliked the books when I first read them, when I was both a church-goer/sunday school kid/acolyte, and while failing to recognize the religious messages.
It's not as if boycotts are being organized. Some of us are just saying we didn't think much of the books and we're not too enthusiastic about the movie. -
C.S. Lewis as a facilitator of atheism? I'll have to wrestle w/ that one for a while.
I read some of the books as a child, and hardly remember them at all. I made two tries at reading them to my daughter, but she was obviously bored by them. I may have another crack at them myself--or not; I don't see much urgency here.
I may be alone in the world in thinking that Lewis's best book is his ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, a volume of the Oxford History of English Literature. You realize upon perusing it that Lewis read EVERYTHING written in English in the sixteenth century, as well as being at home in Latin, Ancient Greek, French, and Italian. Upon rereading it years later, I decided that he was too prone to a kind of glib, clever phrase-making in place of real criticism; but his enthusiasm for what he read was, and is, infectious. His chapter on Spenser made me sit down and read a good chunk of Spenser (not enough to get through the Faerie Queene; but I decided then, and still believe that Spenser's Epithalamium is simply the most beautiful poem ever written about getting married). The point of this lengthy digression? Forget Lewis the tedious, 2nd-rate Christian apologist. He should be remembered as one of the greatest literary historians of the twentieth century.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 09:42 AM -
"Are some atheists so afraid, so worried about the power of our arguments, that they attack a simplistic book with a religious theme?"
Why would you think fear is a motivation? You're sounding trollish.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 09:43 AM -
In my (pre-Christian) childhood I loved the Narnia books. It wasn't until after my teen-age conversion that I realized the Christian allegory. I think I re-read them for that a couple of times -- then left them alone for about 25 years. I recently (post-apostasy) re-read them, and had a mixed reaction: nostalgia for my uncomplicated childhood enjoyment of them, along with annoyance at the moralizing preachiness, and a realization of the dramatic "thinness" of some of it (particularly TLTW&TW, where all the action seems to happen within about 48 hours, flat). Kid-lit that's really only enjoyable to kids (unlike eg. _The Hobbit_ or the Pullman series. The latter, while not without its weaknesses, is a better, richer story).
I will certainly see the TLTW&TW movie, just for the sake of a book I once loved, and enjoy it or not on its cinematic merits. Yes, I know the fundies will be making a big deal over it -- but then look what they said about "March of the Penguins": anything is grist for that mill. I will be interested to see just how prominent the religious message is. Having seen the ad for the video game, I'm not so sure this is going to be the evangelistic phenomenom some are hoping for. And anything that becomes the subject of MacDonald's kids toys, has descended to the ridiculous (gosh, even I find that objectionable).
Concerning some of the criticisms of the Narnia oeuvre, eg. Pullman's: I think they're taking things way too seriously. Yes, they are sexist -- unusually so for their time? And racist, in a way that pushes too many buttons in our current circumstances -- but again, in the context of the time of writing? (For that matter, so are Tolkien's Southrons). All regrettable, of course -- but I have a tough time seeing them as the mind-warping propaganda Pullman et al deplore them as.
Note re The Horse and His Boy: Don't recall where I read this (maybe the BBC website), but they are only making five Narnia films. TH&HB and The Magician's Nephew will be omitted (but don't trust me too much on that).#: Posted by on 12/05 at 09:49 AM -
Norman Vincent Peale. Fargin' Grauniad.
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I read and loved the Narnia books when I was young. I tried re-reading them a few years ago and could barely get through The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe because of its sexism. Interesting to read your and others' takes here, because it's validating. I was excited to see the Narnia movie, but I'd had no idea it was made by Disney. Ick.
PZ, I especially appreciate your take on class in the Narnia books.
I recently read two other series from my childhood that I would highly recommend: the Earthsea series by Ursula K. Le Guin (don't let that bad Sci Fi Channel miniseries put you off) and Robin McKinley's two books The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword. I truly found them wonderful, and I always love Le Guin's take on gender and race.
Also, about the Wheel of Time series: I managed to force myself through all the series and am about an hour away from finishing #11. While books 6-10 were pretty bad, I would recommend reading some synopses of those books (you can find them at Dragonmount) so that you can read #11. It's Jordan writing well again -- and only one book away from the end of the series. In the end, it was worth it because I'm really enjoying #11.
And now I want that Phil Pullman series several people have mentioned... -
What an irony it is that at work I'm dealing with the history of the later ancient Roman period, what with the Colliseum and the gut-wrenching "passion" that went on there (I love the Greek and Egyptians, but I abhor the Romans), and then seeing all these programs about Rome on the History channel about how the Romans loved violence, and then to think about Mel Gibson's "The Passion." Our "Christian" nation practices virtual human sacrifice every day with our crap movies and video games, and Gibson took that to its logical conclusion with his guilt-trip "don't-it-make-ya-wanna-pray" porno film. Once persecuted by the Romans, the Christians are the new Romans today. Little ten-year-olds were dropped off by SUVs in my neighborhood to flyer each house for that yucky film, which they themsleves could not see! Whenever anyone asks me if I saw "The Passion," I reply: "Nope--I read the book."
I never had to read any of the Chronicles of Narnia books, fortunately.#: Posted by Kristine Harley on 12/05 at 09:54 AM -
Well I have fond memories of the "Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe" because it was the first novel I ever finished myself as a kid. At the time, being very young, I knew almost nothing about Christian theology so I didn't see any of the Christian themes at all. It seemed like a pretty good story overall and I picked up the rest of the series - which was very "hit-or-miss". I remember liking most of "The Silver Chair" and "Voyage of the Dawn Treader". Other than that I found the other ones pretty boring so I never finished most of them.
I can thank CS Lewis, however, for helping to pave the way to reading "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings".
I doubt I'll see the movie though, I'm just not very interested.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 09:54 AM -
I remember enjoying some of the books as a child, particularly the Dawn Treader. But really, I always had somewhat of a soft spot for the series as I grew up because the fundies in my town were so vocally against the series: magic, witchcraft and devil-worship!
The irony was delicious.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 10:08 AM -
The Earthsea books are terrific...except for Tehanu. She should really have left well enough alone, and not returned to it with that dreary, preachy bore of a book.
As for the SciFi Channel abomination: I hated it before I saw it. Hated it even more afterwards.
As long as we're talking fantasy series, I'll mention George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire. Good, well-written, but self-indulgently overlong. What is it with fantasy writers and this tendency to bloat their stories into epics? -
Can't say I felt strongly either way about The Lion... when I read it, but I did enjoy The Young Ones piss-take of it when Vivian hides in a cupboard.
As for Lewis in general, The Discarded Image is a wonderful introductory insight into the mediaeval mindset and essential reading for any English student.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 10:10 AM -
I was given all 7 Narnia books as a child. Since I was not raised Christian, it wasn't obvious to me at first what the symbolism was about. (I did get it later) I also made the mistake of reading them in the "chronological" order, rather than the order of them being written, which it seems how most people read them. I didn't find them nearly as good as Tolkien's stuff, though part of that was trying to get my head around the "magical realism" aspect of The Magician's Nephew. Funny how I have no problem with ridiculous technology in the "real world" but have always tripped on "real world" magic. (Is this a refutation of A. C. Clarke's dictum?
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In retrospect, actually, there is one aspect of the series I do like for some reason, that there is more to the "universe" than "here" and "there". The "wood between the worlds" and all that in TMN is actually kind of nifty. Whatever happened to that guinea pig?#: Posted by Keith Douglas on 12/05 at 10:26 AM - Counterpoint Here
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re #52058--
Lewis became a religious seeker at some point, and he and Tolkien spent a great deal of time together, with Tolkien trying to persuade Lewis towards Catholicism. He was deeply disappointed when Lewis decided to become Anglican. That was probably the foundation of the rift.
As for Narnia, I quite liked those books when I was about 10. I didn't get the religious references, although I was a churchgoer at the time. There are bits and pieces I still remember quite fondly, especially "Voyage of the Dawn Treader," and the bit where one of the honest and decent Southerners is told by Aslan that whenever he did something decent in service of Tash, he was actually serving him instead; and evil done in the name of Aslan is actually done in the service of Tash. Righteousness, that is, is in deeds, not words. That seems like the kind of thing certain soi-disant Christians in this country could stand to be reminded of.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 10:28 AM -
I read Narnia several times growing up, and enjoyed most of them greatly (The Magician's Nephew was my favorite.) I was a big fan of British children's fantasy in general (which is why I find is so annoying that there are "Americanized" versions of the Harry Potter books, as if kids aren't smart enough to handle a few minor British terms.) They certainly didn't instill an acceptance of Christianity; I was raised in a nonreligious household, and while I've since had more exposure to churchgoing friends, it's never had much appeal.
Anyway, I enjoyed them all except the last one, which is just awful (and probably not coincidentally, the heaviest Christian allegory other than the sacrifice-and-rebirth element in the first.) I expect I'd find them a bit thin if I re-read them now, but probably no more so than a lot of stuff I read at that age. -
I had already been told about the Christian allegory when I read the Narnia books, so I can't be sure I would have figured it out on my own. I later read the overtly religious space trilogy and the Screwtape Letters. I think I had read all this by the time I was 13 or so, but I don't fully recall. I was raised Catholic, so there was nothing particular loathsome to me about the idea of reading religious allegory. Lewis was a close colleague of Tolkien and I was interested in finding as much reading material as possible. I read them and must have got something out of it, but back then my reading was motivated by more of the challenge of getting through something than any judgment about whether the story was especially engaging.
My main observation at the time was that Lewis's fantasy looks very sloppy compared to Tolkien's, but I think just about everyone else's does too. Tolkien is kind of an exceptional case among writers for fanatically building up a world bottom up.
If you really want to see Lewis's vision in synch with the most fanatical Christian rightwingers, you should skip to the third part of the space trilogy, That Hideous Strength. I recall that as a major slog to get through at age 13 (at the time I liked the 2nd part Perelandra). It's been years, and I doubt I understood more than a third of what he was getting at, but I remember it as a genuinely paranoid take on the "secular humanist conspiracy", probably inspired by fears of communism and western liberalism.
I haven't read any of these recently enough to know what to expect from a film adaptation. Disney isn't going to give you a post-Enlightenment worldview regardless. Power is all about bloodlines and predestination (e.g. Lion King or Snow White). I wouldn't worry about Narnia too much, and if it's turned into the equivalent of going to church, that will just discourage part of the audience. It'll be interesting to see how it all pans out. I don't get a lot of chances to see new movies anyway, and I'll wait for the DVD.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 10:35 AM -
Have not heard of Narnia until fairly recently - I guess they did not translate it into Serbian...
<i>Duncton Wood</a> is a book I have read as a child and liked a lot and, only decades later, realized it had a strong Christian theme. I hear that other books by the same author (Horwood?) are much more obviously Christian.
Earthsea is a TRILOGY! Remember that and you will do yourself a great favor. This means: three books. Not four. Three. And those three are some of the best fantasy ever written (and, I argue, the model/template for Harry Potter, although everyone thinks Rowlings was copying Tolkien and Lewis). -
I liked the Guardian writer's take. But I have to confess I did like some of the Narnia books, LW&W included. I think Lewis does a brilliant job of conveying for what the Christian mythos is supposed to provide its believers: a magical reassurance that everything will be alright.
On the other hand, he also comes off as a school-boy prig: The kid who will self-righteously turn anyone in for any infraction of the rules, who always sides with the headmaster no matter how tyrannical or abusive, who's response to power misused is always to repeat the mantra "Well, he's right you know."
It's like the eager love of established authority that I see in Alito's record, as his uglier opinions come to light: He seems to fear that any restraint on authority will lead to chaos, and he's always ready to suck up to tyrany with slippery words and dubious rationalizations.
Later in the Narnia series one of the sisters (Susan?) loses her faith. She doesn't make it to heaven, as Lewis makes very explicit in the last book. Anyone who finds that acceptable (let alone the 'eternity in conscious torment' stuff) will back torture in the secular world too. These guys are a bad bunch, no doubt about it.#: Posted by Bryson Brown on 12/05 at 10:41 AM -
I certainly can't recommend Pullman. Although his trilogy does include some remarkably powerful conceits, the writing quickly degenerates around the middle of the second book into a kind of clumsy, pseudo-Blakean screed against religion that sounds like a New Age medium channeling an O'Hair diatribe. It's still better than, say, the "Left Behind" series, but that's a low bar to set.
Pace NPR's take on the series (noted by sceptre1067 above), I can't believe that Lewis didn't deliberately write a Christian allegory in "Narnia," though I do doubt Lewis would have considered the trilogy a conversion tool as such. The metaphors in LWW are too carefully constructed, often to the detriment of the pacing and plot, to not be deliberate. (The way Lewis contorts his plot to keep talking animals in a story about anthropocentric salvation is a cautionary tale about trying to shoehorn opposite conceits into a single story.)
But quite beyond the literary demerits of LWW, I also find the theology objectionable. Alsan is a pretty miserable Christ figure; remote, alien, and the personification of power, he's the exact opposite of the person who cried comfort for the poor and mourning in the Beatitudes -- though I suppose he's the kind of angry warrior figure Ted Haggard evangelicals like to worship. Plus Lewis had a beastly attitude towards women, at least at that stage in his life.
All in all, I'd have preferred that the effort spent marketing LWW to and by churches be spent on a more worthy cause, like the documentary on Bonhoeffer that was released a few years back. But Bonhoeffer was a real man facing real moral crises, and such complexities seem out of place in the cartoon churches of today.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 11:02 AM -
I find it fascinating that so many people list "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" as their favorite of the books. It was mine, too, but I hadn't realized it was a common opinion.
For those interested in Susan's being denied her place in Narnia heaven, I recommend Neil Gaiman's recent story "The Problem of Susan" (it can be found in David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer's Year's Best Fantasy 5). It's a great story, though I don't think it'd mean a thing to anyone who hasn't read the Narnia books.#: Posted by Stephen Frug on 12/05 at 11:14 AM -
Growing up in an agnostic household, I read the "Narnia" books when I was a little kid (seven or eight, maybe). The Christian allegory went right over my head, so I was wholly baffled by the absence of Susan in the last book. At the time, I loved them, especially the first four. I'm not sure how well they'd stand up if I went back to re-read them; not very well is my guess. Of course, most fantasy leaves me cold these days, even Lord of the Rings.
I mean come on. How long should it take to tell the story "Wingus and Dingus Visit the Volcano?" Not that long, that's how long.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 11:15 AM - That's not the review. This is the review. It gives 5 out 5. That's a special report (opinion column) in the Religion section.
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Here's a somewhat different attempt at "religious innoculation":
Erotic moments from Bible..
(Reuters) - A German Protestant youth group has put together a 2006 calendar with 12 staged photos depicting erotic scenes from the Bible, including a bare-breasted Delilah cutting Samson's hair and a nude Eve offering an apple.
...
#: Posted by on 12/05 at 11:35 AM -
Over the years, I've read the books, seen all the movie versions in their various incarnations, and listened to the BBC booktapes. My favorite medium? The booktapes, hands down, because the voices are so well done. But I haven't read The Last Battle since I was small, nor listened to it since I first received the tapes. It's simply too much, the allegory stretched too thin, and the message so self-hating and negative that I ended up feeling horribly sorry for C.S. Lewis the first time I read it and have never quite recovered. Admittedly, I've always frankly ignored the Christian allegory in favor of the fun details, choosing magic over message. The "old boys' oxodian network" evidenced in the sexism is almost endearingly funny - you can tell Lewis had not even the slightest ideas of "what women were like", and created stiff caricatures based on stereotypes. And so the boys got all the moral depth and complexity while the women got magic cordials or demonic snakeskin flesh.
The His Dark Materials series fell apart for me somewhere in the third book - I'm not much of a Milton fan, I suppose. While overly simplistic in their "good vs. evil" message, I've always rather enjoyed the Diane Duane "So You Want to be a Wizard" series - it was a good way to feed the hope of magic in everyday life, as well as a more egalitarian approach to personal empowerment and social responsibility.
I'm not sure how I feel about the Narnia movie. I worry every time there's a story I love told in film, because it will forever alter my perception of the narrative, often tragically. Especially when Disney gets involved. Sigh. -
By the way the Guardian's actual film review, by Peter Bradshaw, gave the film 5/5 stars. This was a feature by regular columnist Polly Toynbee.
#: Posted by on 12/05 at 11:38 AM
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It seems Saunders was reading a different book. The whole point of the allegory (not an analogy- as Lewis pointed out many times, and being a literature professor he knew the difference- it's not a point to point correlation, but rather a general revealing of deeper thought) is that the lamb and the lion are the same. That Aslan doesn't win the day through might, but through death. Sorry if I'm giving it away for anyone, but it's pretty well known how the storyline goes. He willingly dies. Without killing someone. But Lewis was also making the point that he's not just a meek and mild lamb, as some would have; nor just a powerful lion. He's both- and always not a tame lion- not one we can control. George Bush certainly does have it wrong, in his desire to fight with might and power- for in his worldview, he thinks he can control God. God/Aslan can not be controlled, and is not under the thumb of one man.
And while Christians are certainly called to a path without violence, I think again, this is allegory- Lewis played with the story to make it an exciting fantasy. The Jesus story has a lot less fighting and display and no killing of the witch. But there is a whole lot more death to self and searching for peace and mercy in Narnia than there ever was in Tolkein- much as I love the latter as well. And much as Lewis and Tolkein loved each other.#: Posted by Jedidiah Palosaari on 12/05 at 11:41 AM -
"Are some atheists so afraid, so worried about the power of OUR arguments, that they attack a simplistic book with a religious theme?"
Who's "our"? You start off the post claiming to be an atheist.
Rookie mistake. You get an "F" in Trolling 101.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 11:41 AM -
Earthsea is a TRILOGY! Remember that and you will do yourself a great favor. This means: three books. Not four. Three.
Bad news: five, now. All I can say about The Other Wind is that it's not quite as tedious as Tehanu.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 11:51 AM -
Someone mentioned Lewis and Tolkien not talking after a certain point. The main reason was that Lewis was virulently anti-catholic after his conversion. Irish catholics weren't a popular bunch in England at the time and Lewis was apparently fairly liberal with putting Tolkien down.
For folks who are interested in readin the triumvirate go to Charles Williams. A total crackpot who was in with Tolkien and Lewis.
Also, if you're in to this age group Susan Cooper smokes both Pullman and Lewis. She's a better writer and her books are more interesting. She's probably on par with LeGuin's first Earthsea books.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 11:54 AM -
I read the Narnia books as a teenager, and also found them to be at best a let-down. The Christian allegories were more than obvious to me in a few places, including the creation and Aslan's excecution, but for the most part they seemed just mediocre fantasy.
Tolkien could invent very beautiful and fascinating places. The Lord of the Rings seemed to me less than interesting as an epic, than as a series of vignettes that were interesting on their own. Lewis, on the other hand, neither weaves a good epic, nor are his places or events of much interest, at least to teenagers and above (IMO).
I suppose the stuffy elitism was part of it, plus the effected "cuteness". I expect the failure of imagination had more to do with its inability to convince, however. Maybe it's okay for kids, I don't know, but even for children it can hardly compare with the Hobbit (which mostly was a good story, unlike the Rings epic).
Lewis is overly Platonic and overly literal (not a Bible literalist, no, more an academic one). He lacks the subtlety needed for good writing, even his "philosophical writings". This is probably because he is relying upon his "Platonic certainties" to order his thoughts, his life, and really has not developed the fluid mind which should be the writer's trademark. Like ID, though, it sells rather more than does a lot of better writings.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 11:57 AM -
I loved the Narnia books as a child too, and by the time I heard much later that they were supposed to be religious, it was too late. The fantasy was so well done that I saw Aslan/God as a fantasy figure, no more real than the rest of the imaginary creatures in the books. A witch makes it always winter? Fine. Aslan comes back from the dead? Okay, sure. Whatever. I doubt that's what CS Lewis intended, but it put any religious message he might have had completely into the realm of fantasy for me.
#: Posted by on 12/05 at 12:00 PM
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I got a boxed set of Narnia books when I was about seven or eight, and read them all within a year. And ... I liked them a lot. Most of them. As other people have pointed out, some were far better than others. My copy of Voyage of the Dawntreader (my favourite too, by far) is falling apart now, because I've read it so many times. I can honestly say that I didn't notice the overt Christianity in them until I read the last one, but the only message I took from it was from the scene where the Calormene soldier, who has worshipped Tash (aka Satan) all his life, meets Aslan and realizes he has been worshipping the wrong god, and is terrified. But Aslan isn't pissed. Aslan basically tells the soldier that, even though he participated in the wrong rituals and said the wrong names when he was praying, he was seeking goodness and therefore was really worshipping the true god. It struck me as a pretty nice argument for religious pluralism.
I think I just ignored the parts that didn't sit well with my own beliefs. Now that I've officially given up religion, I get a little bit more squirmy, but still the one thing that bothers me the most is the part in the Silver Chair where they make a burn dressing for Puddleglum's foot out of butter and salad oil. Don't they know that'll just make it worse?!#: Posted by on 12/05 at 12:12 PM -
I'm seeing a number of inaccuracies in the postings above. Which kind of bothers me. I am a Christian, and also an evolutionist- to lay the cards on the table.
One, Tolkien became a Christian <u>through<u> Lewis. And they were really good friends after that. But there's a more disturbing inaccuracy I'm seeing above.
Lewis didn't have a problem with communism and western liberalism. He had a problem with philosophical materialism. And he knew how to make the distinction- much to the chagrin of countless later generations of fundamentalists. But more to the point, he had no problem with evolution. (Not that he was that interested in the whole subject of evolution in general- but his reasoning does dwell on those paths on occassion.) He didn't see Genesis as literal- he read it as an allegory as well. He claimed to know what he was talking about because he was a professor of literature and he knew how to recognize it when he saw it. He came out so strongly on this that literal creationists have had to come up with arguements to explain away Lewis' writings, much as they do with Gould and others, twisting their words- "Yes, this is what it sounds like he said, but what he really said was..." If we attack him too much, we end up losing a warrior on <u>our<u> side of the fight! I think as many people as possible should go see this movie. Fall in love with Narnia. Start reading Lewis. Start seeing how he argued that Christian theology supports evolution!#: Posted by Jedidiah Palosaari on 12/05 at 12:13 PM -
Tolkien's Middle Earth was a far more carefully constructed, and detailed fantasy world than Narnia. This can be seen by how much Tolkien has been copied and borrowed from by other fantasy authors. The Narnia series are good childrens books but if I read them again I'm sure I wouldn't enjoy them. Hell, I didn't like most of the series even as a kid.
#: Posted by on 12/05 at 12:16 PM
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I don't remember anything about this "Tash" fellow at all from the books.
#: Posted by on 12/05 at 12:21 PM
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I liked Lewis and Tolkien well enough when I was young, but I vastly preferred Madeline L'Engle. I reread A Wind In the Door recently and found it just delightful. (Mitochondria! Cherubim! Squee!) Her Christian overtones are much easier to take, from my (atheist) perspective at least.
A Wrinkle in Time was my favorite book for a very long time.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 12:27 PM -
First, "Tash" was the god of Calormen, he/it appears in "The Last Battle" near the end. Wings, head of a vulture, walks upright, that sort of thing (been years since I've read the books so you might want to fact check that one).
Second, Jedidiah Palosaari's: If memory serves Lewis also subscribed to the "Liar, Lunatic or Lord" argument. It's how he was coverted from Atheism to believer. The god of the bible is either a Liar, Lunatic or Lord - he went for the Lord option (I'd choose one of the others). -
Actually, I think LOTR is pretty bad, too. First, it's not that well-written; even the first two books, which I liked at first, I found too loaded with archaisms to my taste. If you can't make a book work without writing in a way people might actually be speaking, you shouldn't be in the writing business. Second, especially in the third book, the feudalism is nauseating: Aragorn has a natural right to rule because his grand-grand-grand-...-grandfather was king, all orcs are irredeemably evil, learning about evil will make you join it, you must fight even when the odds are overwhelmingly against you because help will come right at the last moment, and so on.
I'm not going to bother with Narnia, especially if it's like LOTR, only worse. -
from the Guardian, quoted by PZ above:
Disney may come to regret this alliance with Christians, at least on this side of the Atlantic.
from PaulCDisney isn't going to give you a post-Enlightenment worldview regardless.
and from Kate... I'd had no idea it was made by Disney. Ick.
well, my opposition to seeing LWW is not about the book or the film, as i wrote. it's about the kind of business Disney should or shouldn't be doing. m'wife and i have a relationship with Disney, so we care. i very much think they could do a better business and a service if they went back to the kind of pro-adventure and science presentations Disney himself had in venues like The Wonderful World of Disney, even if their biology was heavily censored.
those shows, Sputnik, and my Dad all are what convinced me science and engineering were the place to be. Disney seems to try to make a buck out of the trend and medium of the day. i guess i see their approach and attitude as a symptom and indicator of United States culture less than it is a determiner of it.
but enough, this is supposed to be about Narnia. discussions about Disney can be had here and here. -
On the subject of more modern fantasies, I just finished re-reading today Neil Gaiman's American Gods. I wish I was enough of a critic to say something smart about it, but all I can say is that I enjoyed it immensely.
In the story the new gods of America (Media, the Men in Black, the Internet, etc) and the old, imported gods (the ones that came over with the Egyptians, the Vikings, the Basques, and later immigrants) are getting ready to fight for the soul of America.
Strangely enough, there's no Christianity in the book at all, although there is a kind of Norse crucifixion scene. Having been brought up atheistically, I can't tell if maybe the Norse imagery is standing in for Christianity somehow.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 12:44 PM -
Someone mentioned Lewis and Tolkien not talking after a certain point. The main reason was that Lewis was virulently anti-catholic after his conversion. Irish catholics weren't a popular bunch in England at the time and Lewis was apparently fairly liberal with putting Tolkien down.
That strikes me as bizarre in the extreme, and quite at odds with what Lewis himself has written. (I don't know whether Tolkien ever wrote anything about his relationship with Lewis.)
Whether or not Irish catholics would have been popular in England at the time is irrelevant. For Lewis was not English; he was an Irishman.
Now it's true that Irish protestants, especially those from Ulster as Lewis was, sometimes find their RC countrymen even less congenial than Gideon S. tells us the English of that time did. However, Lewis was far from a typical northern orangeman. His father's family had come from Wales and had little connection to traditional 'orange' culture. His mother's family were southern Irish protestants (rather grand ones) who were, unusually, sympathetic to home rule (i.e., they sided with the mostly RC nationalists against the mostly protestant unionists).
Far from ending his friendship with Tolkien, Lewis's conversion (or, really, reversion) to Christianity deepened it. Though they were of differing camps (and it's safe to think Tolkien would have been happier had Lewis become a catholic), it was in large measure Tolkien's influence that led to that conversion. Lewis later wrote affectionately that people in Belfast had always warned him never to trust papists, and his fellow literary historians had always warned him never to trust philologists (we'd call them linguists today, I think), and yet there he was, finding that one of his closest friends was both.
If there was a rift between the two later, I suspect its cause would have been the one I saw suggested somewhere else today: late in his life, Lewis fell in love with and later married an American divorcée. (Remarriage after divorce would have been a big no-no to a diehard old-school RC like Tolkien.) Tolkien's would seem to be the minority view on the matter. By all accounts Lewis's marriage (which, sadly, was brief, his wife dying of cancer not long afterwards) humanised the man greatly.#: Posted by Mrs Tilton on 12/05 at 12:49 PM -
aa- I agree. Though I think he was using that argument more specifically to refer to Jesus. (Who is of course in Lewis' (and my) thinking the same as the God of the Bible.) And I think he was the first to come up with that argument. Which is diferent in it being repeated so often since then. He was sharing his own personal experience and how he thought through things.
#: Posted by Jedidiah Palosaari on 12/05 at 12:53 PM
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Having been brought up atheistically, I can't tell if maybe the Norse imagery is standing in for Christianity somehow.
yeah, it's interesting how folks who don't come from a Christian background don't get some of the many references to specifically Christian stories or images in media art. i was raised Catholic, but married Jewish women (divorced once) and converted (to Judaism) in-between. sometimes things we saw went right passed them, leaving me to explain.
i know some students take comparative religion courses because, although Christian, they don't get their grandparents Buddhist or Hindu or Taoist world views and want to.
then again, until recently United States public education omitted much about the rest of the world. Disney's storyline in Spaceship Earth at Epcot (another link) continues the myth of the Dark Ages, skipping the flourishing Islamic and other cultures to the south and east. it was originally devised by AT&T but was recently adopted by Siemens who doesn't want to change it much. -
I read the first book, as a school assignment. While I at the time didn't quite get some of the allegory in it, something just seemed... wrong about it. Though, I admit that the Change Winds series from Jack L. Chalker, or worse Her Majesty's Wizard by Christopher Stasheff (which is too bad, since, other than some of the odd communist/anarchist stuff in his Warlock series, I think I could get along with those people pretty well.) are probably far more offensive to me now. Not sexist, but so drenched in predestination that every supposed choice made is effectively a lie and nothing you can do will ever truely change the course of your life. Things like ousting one dictator will warp you into something as bad or worse, since your not the *true heir*, for example, in the Her Majesty's Wizard one. Made me want to kick the Angel Michael's ass when he shows up and started babbling that in the second book. lol
I mean how dare you tell someone what they *must* become, just because I am not some inbred blue blood, instead of someone simply trying to do the right thing? The concept just flat out stinks. Not to mention that if this is their idea of a perfect universe, or worse, some insane version of how they think our own actually works, then they need to explain why in this one all the 'true' heirs are usually the ones that become corrupted and start useless wars throughout history... What? No explaination? Didn't think so. lol I am somewhat amazed really how Stasheff can write simultaniously moderate and reasonable sane Christian fantasy *and* blatantely stupid fundimentalist insanity. In some ways its a bit creepy.
In any case. Narnia would probably now offend me less than it did when I didn't understand why I distrusted its message. Though, the whole Susan thing I wasn't aware of until now, having only read the first one.... Something just felt "wrong" about it, even back then, when I had some vague belief in Christianity. -
... Lewis fell in love with and later married an American divorcée. (Remarriage after divorce would have been a big no-no to a diehard old-school RC like Tolkien.) Tolkien's would seem to be the minority view on the matter.
possibly, but Tolkien also felt, according to some of his other writings, especially his personal letters, that relationships between men and women needed to be highly stylized and not particularly important. i think the idea of overturning a commitment "merely" for marriage would have been repugnant to him.
recall Tolkien's statement that The Devil is endlessly ingenious and sex is his favorite subject. he also wrote that men and women could never be friends.
taken in context, these are more statements about Tolkien than anything else. he saw his internal world fractured, hopelessly beyond repair, possibly because of his experiences during the Great War. i think a lot of the tremendous energy with which he pursued the construction of Middle Earth and his beloved languages was redirected sexual energy.
in any case, the repression of sexual references in Tolkien's books wasn't faithful at all to the real origins of England, even of Christian England. it was and is a habit Christianity emphasized after the Reformation, IMO. -
Alon, I was most entertained to find you saying that you like the first 2 books. Their usually the ones people run past as fast as possible because they're a bit slow and boring. Then once the party gets split up the real action starts. I once read that Tolkein had wanted to do the entire story at the speed of the first book, i.e. pretty slowly, but fortunately sense prevailed.
What do you mean if you cant make a book work the way people might actually be speaking? That misses the entire point of LOTR, which is to remake myth. In many of the old mythological tales I have read, albeit usually in translation, they never speak normally.
But anyway, I see where your coming from.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 01:29 PM -
well, my opposition to seeing LWW is not about the book or the film, as i wrote. it's about the kind of business Disney should or shouldn't be doing. m'wife and i have a relationship with Disney, so we care. i very much think they could do a better business and a service if they went back to the kind of pro-adventure and science presentations Disney himself had in venues like The Wonderful World of Disney, even if their biology was heavily censored.
Like deliberately setting up a made up scenario where lemmings were made to look like they ran off cliffs en masse to commit suicide? :D#: Posted by Joseph ODonnell on 12/05 at 01:30 PM -
“One, Tolkien became a Christian <u>through<u> Lewis. And they were really good fiends after that.”
Where on earth did you get that from?
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien#Childhood
“His mother converted to Roman Catholicism in 1900, despite vehement protests by her Baptist family. She died of diabetes in 1904, when Tolkien was twelve, at Fern Cottage, Rednal, which they were then renting. For the rest of his life, Tolkien felt that she had become a martyr for her faith; this had a profound effect on his own Catholic beliefs. Tolkien's devout faith was significant in the conversion of C. S. Lewis to Anglicanism.
“ -
I never had much use for the 'Tales of Smarmia,' as I called it, but, as a kid, I really got into L'Engle''s 'Wrinkle in Time' - even though I still didn't get the religious symbolism.
#: Posted by on 12/05 at 01:42 PM
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Their usually the ones people run past as fast as possible because they're a bit slow and boring
I this the first book is the best of them all. I especially like the early chapters where the whole history of the ring is being revealed. I really hated the parts of the 2nd and 3rd book about Sam and Frodo in Mordor, I found those parts so boring and slow.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 01:44 PM -
I was 11 or 12 and reading NarnChron for the third time when I realized it was Christian allegory. Of course, I immediately shared this discovery with a good friend and fellow Narnia fan who was also reading the books for the third time. He refused to believe that they were Christian books, for the simple reason that he (my friend) was Jewish. In retrospect, it must have been a fairly uncomfortable revelation (no pun intended) for him.
However, even then, I had absolutely no patience with people who refuse to accept new knowledge in the light of compelling evidence. We had a big fight, and our friendship never recovered. So the books always make me feel a bit sad. -
I started reading them after seeing the BBC adaptation of LWW on the telly when I was small. I therefore have a total association between Narnia and hot buttered crumpets. Narnia = crumpets.
I found out about the Christian allegory in the books when I was 20. I had a conversation with a friend (non-fundie, just beumsed that I could have missed it) which went:
Her: But Aslan came back from the dead! Didn't that make you think of Jesus?
Me: No, it made me think of Orpheus.
Ah, the wonders of a Classical education
#: Posted by on 12/05 at 01:52 PM -
Where on earth did you get that from?
Yeah, especially the part about them being "really good fiends". I mean, I realize some folks here don't like their religion much, but that's going a bit far.....
Seriously, though: I'm amazed at some of the sheer biographical nonsense that's being posted about Lewis and Tolkien -- who converted whom, whether they were friends afterwards, Lewis' attitude to RCism (Hostile? You're joking -- there's even some opinion he got gradually more Catholic as he got older. See Van Auken's (admittedly biassed) Under The Mercy). Would it be too much to ask people to provide some kind of cite, however flimsy, for these sorts of claims?#: Posted by on 12/05 at 01:54 PM -
I am a Christian, and also an evolutionist- to lay the cards on the table.
Sorry, but your claim to be an "evolutionist" suggests to me that you are anything but.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 01:55 PM -
Jedidiah, your statement, "Tolkien became a Christian <u>through<u> Lewis," is contradicted by Lewis in a 1931 letter. "I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ — in Christianity.... My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it." But then, I frequently type it's when it should be its, and flip their/they're, because I know better.
Narnia and Lewis' apologetics was discussed for pages and pages in this pharyngula comments thread back in June. Be sure and find the great design for a "Narnian Apostate" T-shirt.
A Bay Area former Franciscan Priest hosts a quite unashamedly liberal political talk show on KGO at night, still a Catholic who has spent hours railing against creationists and IDiocy. I spoke a couple of weeks ago on his Sunday "God Talk" show about how I credit Lewis for my rejection of literalism, which he thought was wonderful. A story needn't be merely documentary to be enthralling, meaningful and worthwhile. The sickening realization (for an 8 yr. old) that I'd never visit Narnia was the giftwrap on the perception that the Bible had to be filed under fantasy/mythology also.
Watergate Criminal Cal Thomas, who owes his prison conversion to Christianity to Lewis' assinine apologetics, seems to think that a successful Narnia flick will evangelize better than Mel Gibson's Passion. At least he thinks encouraging Disney to make more such films is a better strategy than boycotting them or unleashing a Patwa on Disney for hosting Gay Days.
Thomas thinks it's the (Christian-branded) good v. evil that will sell it, but I think that it will owe its success to being a spectacular vehicle for bespoke visual effects. That people expect a fantasy flick to promote religious conversions in the lobby seems as absurd as people viewing Buckaroo Banzai as reinforcing their worldview. I have to go with PZ over Thomas; it's more likely to innoculate than evangelize.
Disney isn't going to ruin the story either. The story is quite safe in the book, no matter what anybody does to illustrate it, and FX houses from all over the globe are doing their best work. Adamson, the director of Shrek, should do a fine job.
Ezkept, I share your disappointment in what Disney could have been. I'm three months older than the park, and grew up as a park brat, eventually working both in Feature Animation and also as an Imagineer animating on their first Virtual Reality project. Eisner and Katzenberg and Wells would sign deals with Baby Bells in our lab, the most backstage of the backstage tours. Wells spent his last Christmas eve on our project, learning every arcane thing he could about what we were doing back in 1993.
One of the perks was spending afternoons with people like Ward Kimball, one of the best animators the studio ever saw. He directed the Disneyland TV shows (out on DVD) that Disney intended as the basis for the story telling in Tomorrowland. Kimball was assigned the projects because he happened to have a book on UFOs by Adamski when Disney stopped by, and was assigned "all that science stuff".
To Disney, science was just another genre that needed to be exploited in his park and his TV show, akin to westerns, adventure, fantasy. But when Werner Von Braun was hired as a consultant on the Man in Space series, he did his first calculations on what it would take to achieve delta V for a round trip to the moon, on Disney's dime.
NelC, I enjoyed American Gods, but not nearly as much as Gaiman's most recent Anansi Boys, which fits well in that universe. Pullman is too much like the flip side of Lewis. His Dark Materials is some flavor or other of the Gnostic Heresy, with God as some gibbering idiot undone by his minions. For all its invention and page turning action, Pullman's world is remarkably humorless. Gaiman can pull dark slasher/splatter scenes like the darkest horror writer, but he's whimsical in a way far too few know how to be. Gaiman's theism is far more palatable than most.
So, Terry Pratchett's Discworld is the one I can't get enough of. -
Completely missed the Christian allegory the first time I read the books... up until the last battle (hard to miss that!)
Silver Chair will always be one of my favourite books, but the rest have faded from memory.... what sticks out now is Lewis's sexism, dislike of Arab culture, and how annoying Aslan got to be. -
Two series with ostensibly Christian themes: Narnia and Lord of the Rings. The latter is enthralling and the former is a shallow bore. My kids agreed, too.
Actually, I'd sooner read The Screwtape Letters than Narnia, altho probably not to kids.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 02:11 PM -
I feel pretty much the same way about the Narnia books. I liked the first one well enough when I read it (in kindergarten, when I had no grasp whatsoever of the Christian angle). But the rest of 'em - which I didn't get around to reading 'til fifth grade - left me cold. "Stuffy" and "elitist" are fair words, I think. But mostly I just had a sense of alien creepiness...the same one I got from televangelists, Mormons, and Amway. Not fair, probably, but there it is.
On the other hand, I loved Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time in fifth grade, and when I re-read it as an adult it seemed to me to be an utterly embarassing piece of maudlin, empty-headed Christian drivel.
And I don't reject books on the basis of religious content, by any means. Most of my favorite writers and artists are religious people who deal with religious themes implicitly or explicitly. But there's something about veiled proselytizing to children that's unpleasant, and Lewis is a particularly noxious example of it. -
Alon, I was most entertained to find you saying that you like the first 2 books. Their usually the ones people run past as fast as possible because they're a bit slow and boring. Then once the party gets split up the real action starts. I once read that Tolkein had wanted to do the entire story at the speed of the first book, i.e. pretty slowly, but fortunately sense prevailed.
Some parts of the first book are boring, but I don't think they disturbed me to the degree the third book did. The second book was okay; the action scene was just the right length, I think, and it's a pity that the movie stretched it to half an hour.
What do you mean if you cant make a book work the way people might actually be speaking? That misses the entire point of LOTR, which is to remake myth. In many of the old mythological tales I have read, albeit usually in translation, they never speak normally.
They speak normally for the time the writer lived in. The language used in the Hebrew Bible, for example, isn't particualrly acrolectic or unusual for ancient Hebrew. The English translations make it a lot more mystical and high-sounding than it should be; for instance, the language of the Ten Commandments is not "You shall not," but "Do not": "Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal...". Some English translators like to translate mythology into something that is closer to Shakespearian English than to Modern English because they think that this will rescue a bad plot or bad writing. It's like how the Romans would spice up their meat to disguise the fact that it was spoiled. -
Seriously, though: I'm amazed at some of the sheer biographical nonsense that's being posted about Lewis and Tolkien
Indeed. However, I fear you are wise to suspect Van Auken of bias.
I once read a rather snarky comment about (religiously-motivated) Lewis fans, to the effect that these tend to be either Roman Catholics or evangelicals, each wanting to claim Lewis for their own, but each secretly worried by what they saw as his 'dark secret': the catholics, that he liked sex; the evangelicals, that he liked a drink. And I have heard RC Lewis fans speculating, in all seriousness, that Lewis was 'really' a catholic, but that the prejudices of his Belfast boyhood kept him from formally joining the RC church!
I find it's usually best to take people at their word; and Lewis's was that he was simply (quoting from memory here) 'a very plain layman of the Church of England, neither very high nor very low'.#: Posted by Mrs Tilton on 12/05 at 02:20 PM -
I think Lewis was a plain and simple Protestant.
He clearly wasn't a Catholic and I find it quite funny that even make a case for him.#: Posted by on 12/05 at 02:32 PM -
They speak normally for the time the writer lived in. The language used in the Hebrew Bible, for example, isn't particualrly acrolectic or unusual for ancient Hebrew. The English translations make it a lot more mystical and high-sounding than it should be; for instance, the language of the Ten Commandments is not "You shall not," but "Do not": "Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal...". Some English translators like to translate mythology into something that is closer to Shakespearian English than to Modern English because they think that this will rescue a bad plot or bad writing. It's like how the Romans would spice up their meat to disguise the fact that it was spoiled.
yeah, but failing to do the kingly rendition produces a text that doesn't sell well. this was a problem in the various projects to render excerpts gender neutral, for prayers, or Everett Fox's project. for instance, the famous Exodus 15:11-12 is renderedWho is like You, O LORD, among the celestials; Who is like You, majestic in holiness, Awesome in splendor, working wonders! You put out Your right hand, The earth swallowed them.
the cues are taken, rightly or wrongly, from the King James Bible, as the "definitive" version. what that means is its words are familiar and resonate emotionally with folks. Fox's project was an attempt to translate to English in a form as close to the original Hebrew. so, 15:11-12 by him says:Who is like you among the gods, O YHWH! who is like you, majestic among the holy-ones, Feared-One of praises, Doer of Wonders! You stretched out your right-hand, the Underworld swallowed them.
it's fine, indeed interesting, with references to other gods, multiple "holy-ones", and an Underworld. but it's not familiar. -
If there's a good side to all of this, remember that The Passion of the Christ didn't last long in theaters, either. It was released in what critics refer to as the "January-February Sargasso", where films that couldn't stand up to serious competition go to die, and it was beaten out of the top spot in ticket sales by the remake of Dawn of the Dead. (Of the last, I found this strangely appropriate, seeing as how the message of both films was "This is my body; take of it and eat." However, as much as the people of Dallas may wish otherwise, Dawn was a better documentary about the people of my fair city than Passion ever would be.)
#: Posted by Paul Riddell on 12/05 at 02:40 PM
- excellent post, thank you
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I think the best way to translate these two verses is,
"11 Who among the gods is like you, Yahweh; who is as majestic in holiness, has as much awe of praise, does wonders as you? 12 When you waved your right hand, the earth swallowed them."
The "awe of praise" part is the difficult one; Hebrew renders the three phrases in 25:11's second clause in exactly the same way because its distinction between nouns, adjectives, and present-tense verbs is fuzzy (e.g. it renders "I kill/I'm killing" and "I'm a killer" the same way, and similarly, "I'm thinking" and "I'm a thinker" are identical in Hebrew). It's tempting to use the same constructions in English as were used in Hebrew, but in fact Hebrew didn't have the system of punctuation, parallel constructions, and conjunctions that English does today, so saying "X and Y and Z and W are abominations to me" is not so good as saying "X, Y, Z, and W are abominations to me." -
The only thing I liked about the Narnia books was Puddleglum, the Marsh Wiggle - introduced in the Siver Chair, which was the first Narnia book I read. When I went back to read the entire series, even at age 8 or 9 (even then an incipient atheist), I found the first and the last book to be overly christianized and disliked them... but the middle books of the series weren't too bad. I haven't read them again in the last 20+ years, so I have no idea how I'll find them as an adult and atheist.
#: Posted by on 12/05 at 03:13 PM
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The only thing I liked about the Narnia books was Puddleglum, the Marsh Wiggle - introduced in the Siver Chair, which was the first Narnia book I read. When I went back to read the entire series, even at age 8 or 9 (even then an incipient atheist), I found the first and the last book to be overly christianized and disliked them... but the middle books of the series weren't too bad. I haven't read them again in the last 20+ years, so I have no idea how I'll find them as an adult and confirmed atheist.
#: Posted by on 12/05 at 03:14 PM
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I loved the books, except for 'Prince Caspian'. But the trailers for the movie look nothing like the books I remember. So I expect to be disappointed by the movie, if I ever get around to seeing it. I think I'll probably re-read the book, instead.
I sure hope film makers don't wreck the 'His Dark Materials' series (Phillip Pullman). I heard someone (Jackson, maybe) bought the rights. -
Oops - double post by mistake.
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