NarniaBlog

On the Toleration of Tolerance

2007-06-30T00:20:00.000-07:00

Tolerance, so named, is one of the most popular of the modern political vices. Along with following one's heart, and giving peace a chance, it is one of the most tired of exhortations. Yet few things are more galling than a certain variety of tolerance.
Of course, there is a real virtue of tolerance. It is a branch of justice. It states that people are allowed differences of opinion and one shouldn't use force to change them. Christianity takes pagan tolerance a step further, and commands its followers to love their enemies.
Modern tolerance asks us to do neither. It says something more to the effect of "the things we disagree on are not worth arguing over, so there should be no conflict." Not even sports fans would hold with this. What devotee of the Red Sox would not proclaim from the rooftops that they are emphatically right!!! (they are not in fact, the Angels are best), And that the Yankees are of the devil. And this policy of tolerance tends to be applied to religion. It is offensive because it takes what people hold dear and sacred and holds it to be of less value than the latest economic plan to end world hunger (none of the last million have worked yet, but who knows!).
One can be angered by someone with whom you disagree, but at least the person who thinks you are wrong thinks the question is important. It is hard to tolerate the person who merely tolerates your ideas, and very presence. People aren't meant to be merely tolerated by their fellow man. They are to be loved, and if loved, then their ideas, even their wrong ones, are worth arguing over. We move upon the face of the earth because the earth resists our movements. We cannot move in the tolerant and yielding medium of space.

Assorted Thoughts

2006-08-22T21:23:00.000-07:00

It seems now inevitable that Prince Caspian will wait till at least summer 2008. It is not that I am at all impatient; I am merely worried that by the time they get to Dawn Treader, Lucy will have trouble navigating her walker onboard ship. I can almost see the cruel businessman looking down upon the helpless masses from his vast and dimly lit office. I can hear his maniacal laugh as he pushes the release date ever further back. There seems no hint of them filming several movies at once. The time scale is going to get interesting if they insist on making each movie one at a time with a two to three year gap in between.

Just a thought on the first movie, I find it interesting the way Aslan puts things in order for the rule of the children. Aslan assembles the army and then teaches Peter so that Peter can lead the army. He kills the White Witch and gives the children the job of rebuilding Narnia. He atones for Edmund’s betrayal and crowns the four children. He knows the job better than the children and I am quite sure could do it better, yet he wants them to be able to do it. He does everything the children can't do and then allows them to try their best. I rather wonder how that would relate back to the Christian understanding of the work God gives us. It would seem to be that God helps us with what we cannot handle, but then wants us to strike out on our own.

Loch Ness Monster vs. Dracula

2006-08-15T16:23:00.000-07:00

Greetings! I am L.D. Reynolds and my Father has graciously allowed me to post on this blog. At my house we have many lengthy debates of military senarios that might well become matters of national, or even global importance. We have discussed such conundrums as whether Chip could defeat Dale (Chip was the universal favorite, far more serious and clear headed despite Dales extrordinary luck), whether Jafar could triumph over Malificent (Obviously Malificent, the dragon trumps the giant snake and she has a cooler pet bird), but we are continually grapling though, with one issue of such momentous difficulty that it has stirred great strife and dispute among all asked. Who would win, the Loch Ness Monster or Dracula?

My poor decieved brother has sadly taken the part of the lake monster and is willing to assert his opinion with foam swords to all dissenters. I however have taken the time to condense a what might be a books worth of information into a short article for the sake of the illumination of the general public to show that indeed Dracula would triumph over all such water lizards.

In the first place it is often asserted by the Nessieites (as I will call them) that the Loch Ness monster would win be sheer mass. In response I will appeal to that genius writer Bram Stoker who chronicled the exploits of that renowned vampire Count Dracula. In his account Mr. Harker slams a shovle down on Dracula's face making only a slight red scar across the forehead. This is only one of many accounts of the durability of Vampires. Could Nessie muster sufficient force to destroy Dracula? I don't know. Further would such destruction profit the monster? Vampires are recorded to have the ability to almost teleport seemingly pulling the matter for their bodies out of the air. Further Dr. Van Helsing does not list to the best of my knowledge that Dracula could be destroyed by such means as the Nessieites propose. And lastly even if the monster could lift his body out of the water to slam the vampire, this would almost surly be a long process which ought to be easy to dodge.

The powers of water to unmake a vampire are also often appealed to. Dracula is a creature of air whose home is in the mountains, Nessie is a creature of water. Let us suppose they battled in Dracula's home not at Nessie's. Even my brother would not hold out that Nessie could win fighting on the mountin crags of Transylvania. My brother argues it needs to be fought by the lake side, and for the sake of arguement I will acquiesce. Now the possibility of Nessie using water to his advantage rests on the assumption that the snake like neck of Nessie can move with greater swiftness than Dracula. Vampires are said to move faster than the speed of human sight so a see little reason to believe this.

Next we will observe the powers of vampire to control the minds of animals. It is usually claimed that the Loch Ness monster is a kind of Plesiosaur. This would seem to place the monster well within the realm of normal animals. My brother claims that St. Columba who tamed a serpent in a Scottish Lake using the eucharist. He says the monster was sanctified and thus immune to mind powers. Even if we assume this dubious staement is true, it is very unlikly that that particular serpent is still alive all these hundreds of years later. It is reasonable to assume that the monster is a descendent of the old serpent. Would any immunity still remain? I don't think so.

Thus using mind powers and super agility and strength Dracula would defeat Nessie. Now that you have learnt the truth go out and evangelize for the just perception of vampire, witness to the decieved Nessieites, change the world.

New Writer!

2006-08-15T14:48:00.000-07:00

My son, L.D., is the best young man and brightest lad I know. He is also a true son of Narnia. . . he will be writing on this blog from this point on!

John Mark Reynolds

Narnia rules again

2005-12-22T17:20:00.000-08:00

Narnia rules again.

However, briefly the best family movie of the year was number one yesterday again! Kong has been slipping every day (so much for the vaunted word of mouth) and the new releases could not catch Narnia which has shown small growth this week.

I think we know what we needed to know. There is a hungry market for high quality religion-friendly films. Will the studios feed it?

Order in Narnia

2005-12-19T14:02:00.000-08:00

One of the best things about Narnia is that it defends hierarchy. Peter and the children recognize their betters, including the Lord of Narnia Aslan, but do not feel demeaned by it. In fact, they are able to be thankful and have appropriate desires because they know their place. We cannot hear this term without thinking of demeaning demands for submission from those who have no right to demand it. However, we now infected with the opposite disease.

We frequently fantasize that we are the equals of the leaders of different fields of cultural endeavors. As a native of West Virginia, I have great respect for the common man and for folk culture. The folk, my folk, are very strong and are the backbone of the nation. However, we need not fantasize that the home made quilt is the artistic equal of the Renaissance painting to enjoy its homely beauty. In fact, we demean it by making the unfair comparison. As a member of the commons, I delight that there exist the wealthy, the powerful, and the very gifted.

I am happy blogging gives power to the folk, but do not expect (or even hope to see) the end of all elites. Natural elites based on God given gifts are to be celebrated and not resented. They are (after all) my betters in role and abilities, but they are not better men! Sainthood is, after all, the one great role open to all!

Americans frequently confuse our equality of personhood with equality of function. As the Declaration makes plain, building on the Biblical world-view, all men (persons) are created equal. There are some rights that one has simply as a human being because God has given them to every person. The Declaration lists the right to life, liberty, and the ownership of private property.

This does not imply that all persons have the same roles. My bishop has no greater right to life than I, but in the order of Christendom he is a better man. I owe him my allegiance on issues ecclesiastical. Without being his inferior (as a man), I bow the need to him as my superior in the church. In the same way, if the President were to come to Torrey, I would have to recognize his superior status. I must honor him as President because in the order of American politics, he is my better. Even for him to speak to me is an act of condescension.

The old word condescension has only bad meanings today. We think of it as what a snob does, but it did not always mean only this. It is also a useful word for when a person who really is superior (functionally) graces a lesser person with undeserved favor. When Dr. Cook speaks kindly to a faculty member at a party where he is acting as President of the University, this is a gracious act of condescension.

During a Super Bowl party, I once had a chance to meet Bart Starr, the great quarterback on the championship Packers teams of the sixties. Now in the world of football it would be impossible to find a lower ranking person than I. It would be hard to find a greater individual than the Hall of Fame quarterback that I desired to meet. There was certainly nothing about my role or status that should have led me to expect kindness and personal attention from Mr. Starr. Of course, he owed my common human dignity, but he did not owe me a conversation or an autograph. He gave me both and I was thrilled with his condescension. To speak to me was to lower himself (functionally) and to elevate (for a moment) me by his attention. I was grateful for his attention for it was not owed, but freely given by a man who turned out not to be just a great football player, but a gentleman.

How much we miss in our culture by failing to understand this distinction! As a dad, I am not better than my children as a person. They have the right to always be treated with the dignity due every human. On the other hand, as their dad, I will always be entitled to a certain respect and honor. Of course, the age of obedience soon passes, but there will always remain the role of aging patriarch which my own Father now fills. May he continue to fill it for many years! When Dad condescends to share his wisdom with me in a kindly way, I am blessed. When he gives me good gifts, I am thankful. He owes me nothing at this point and all that he gives me is a super-abundance of blessing.

I think we fail to enjoy so many blessings, because this confusion makes us view all of these blessings as our right. We demand and so are not able to enjoy what is, after all, merely our due. The man who knows he does not deserve what he is given can rejoice in it, but though a man is glad to get his wages he is not thankful for them. He deserves his pay, receives it, but nobody is thrilled with mere virtue!

The divine condescension of the manger is the best example, of course, of the undeserved gift. We did not deserve what God did for us and yet He did it. We can only enjoy it when the full glory of being able to commune with God hits us. He speaks to us, reveals Himself to us, and allows us to know things about the Unknowable! Glory! It is greater condescension than if the President were to become a worm to reveal the glories of Western civilization to those that live burrowing in the earth.

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

A Letter to My Secular Friend

2005-12-18T18:39:00.000-08:00

Here is a continuation of my letters to friends about Narnia inspired by Hugh’s question. The following is a letter to a friend who is a secularist. (I do have such friends!) Yesterday, I wrote to my religious friend.

Dear Edmund,

You just finished Narnia and I admire your being open minded enough to see the film. It is the sort of thing that irritates you a bit; the way a paean to atheism can ruin an otherwise fun night out for me. You end up wanting to argue with the movie and talking back to the screen simply ruins any date!

Christmas must make the USA seem like a god-centered culture. I know “Merry Christmas” must grate on your nerves the way the “God bless America” closing of a President’s speech does. You have to put up with hymns to our God, disguised as holiday cheer, on your favorite political shows. The easy assumption of all your friends (eighty-five percent of us!) that everyone is religious is also tough. I have been in “tiny minority” situations so I know how it feels. Good cross-cultural manners taught me to accept my minority cultural status, when in Mongolia act like a Mongolian and not the “ugly American,” and that is one thing I have never understood about you.

You are a sensible guy. You know that most Americans are religious, have always been religious, and are likely to stay that way. Yet for some reason the fact that you have chosen to reject majority American culture means that the rest of us must change in order to become what you wish us to be. I don’t expect the Buddhists of Ulan Bataar to wish me a merry Christmas, but you seem offended if the Baptists of Alabama wish you one. That is odd, I think, and may have more to do with your personal pain than the best side of your personality.

Of course, my strong disagreement with your position often strains our friendship. I would argue that best evidence suggests that if society adopts your views it will ruin our culture (or it least make it extinct in short order) and damn our souls. There are plenty of people who are wrong, but Christians believe you to be perniciously wrong. You often return the favor by viewing us as the Taliban or a group of theocrats.

The problem, however, seems to me to be simple. You really do want America to be secular, more like Sweden than it is now, while I don’t want it to be a theocracy. No Christian I now wants the kind of religious rule found in Iran, for example. We are opposed to your actual position, while I feel that sometimes your Internet friends are opposed to a cartoon version of ours. Thank you for not making that mistake about your Christian friends!

Of course, I know you are smart. Your position is not stupid and there are good arguments for it. Heaven knows we can be annoying (or at least I can be annoying!) in our seemingly smug surety that we are right. However, please forgive us for that and realize that we too (at our best) are on a dialectical journey. I believe Christianity is true at some personal cost because I believe best reason and best experience demand it. It is not always what I wish were true, but it is what my intellect and my heart unite in demanding of my better self.

Christianity has problems, of course, like the problem of natural evil that are very difficult. I feel the force of them and sometimes think you might be right. Sadly, that old demon logic keeps forcing me back to traditional Christianity. But enough of that . . . philosophical argument can be endless! I will quote Plantinga and then you will quote Flew . . . at least the earlier Flew! I will get my favorite IVP book and you will lug out your Prometheus titles. We are not going to make much progress that way.

What does this have to do with the Narnia film? I think that the problem with your world-view is that it is fundamentally without beauty. It is not ugly since your world view cannot allow for a real beautiful.  If we struggle with the problem of evil, it is because we rejoice in being able to see goodness that is not subjective or merely an arbitrary label placed on reality by our own prejudices. Christianity can lead to ugliness, but it can explain that ugliness with resources from within. We don’t expect humans to be perfect and can account for forgiveness.

The story of Narnia, which is very much a Christian story, contrasts so strongly with the story of secularism. Ours is the world view of Aquinas, the founding of the Universities, medicine, modern science, the Renaissance, and most of the great art of the West, but we are also the religion of the fairy tale. Now I know you have been taught to be view fairy tales as childish nothings . . . myths by which you mean merely false stories.

But isn’t it obvious from a film like Narnia that some stories strike very deep? Themes of redemption and divine love may be overdone in our Western culture, but they are overdone because they still have the power to make men and women weep. Aslan dies for Edmund. That makes no sense by the calculus of atoms and scales that will not allow for the personal, but makes perfect, logical sense to a cosmos full of personality. Narnia is a grand romance and it is not an accident that secularists are not able to tell good fairy tales, but must rely on those old Oxford dons, Tolkien and Lewis, to do it for them. Your great truths cannot be found in myth for you have reduced romance to nothingness in a university without personality.

It is personality and romance that is missing from your universe. When your best thinkers tell me that my love for my wife is one set of selfish genes looking for another set, then I think that he has never read Trollope or Shakespeare or been in love. This is not soft sentimentality, but a set of facts that must be taken into account. Your worldview explains them away by reducing them to some fog floating off matter and energy in mindless motion. My worldview recognizes that we are more sure of love and passion than we are of the existence of that matter and energy themselves. Christians do not explain love away . . . they account for it in the Divine Mind.

Can secularism produce beauty or must it always be parasitic on it? If it is true that religion has produced horrors like the Inquisition, but we have also produced the Renaissance and the great cathedrals of Europe. Can a world-view that believes at bottom that life is meaningless (finding meaning only in the creation of meaning by the individual) inspire the sacrifice necessary for great art? There is no evidence that it can.

Narnia stands for the small against the strong. It stands for the importance of even the animals against the barren and bleak efficiency of an all powerful state. Christianity cannot tolerate the abuse of the individual by either big government or big business and as Narnia demonstrates provides a basis for the nobility of the common. Every sentient being is created in the Image of God and has value. Every voice must be heard and in that universe a hierarchy of gifts can be recognized without fear for basic human rights are secured by who were are and not what we can do.

The mindless consumption of the unfettered pursuit of wealth, living for self, and not for others can never be made consistent with the religious mind. The jollification of Christmas can be commercialized but only destroyed in doing so. A feast day is about human values and can be enjoyed as well by the poor as by the great and mighty. Religion can account for this, but secularism cannot. Where is the value of the small man in the world where personhood is reduced to DNA? If merit can be measure and worth is based on merit, I fear that is mere sentiment on your part (or a residual Christianity) that prevents debasing the average in favor of the great god of the famous and the powerful. Heaven knows that this is a great enough temptation for Christians, even with our example of the humble Virgin and the crucified Lord, what will happen when our role models come not from the martyrs, but only from the “successful?”

I love free markets, but do not worship them and where they break the dignity of the human person and the laws of God, and then I can limit them. Where shall you find your limits to the desires of the brightest and the best in the meritocracy that you would create?

Can secularism even produce children let alone children’s literature? Children are difficult and they get in the way. They seem a bother and secularists, who proclaim that they are only a Darwinian vehicle for making babies, seem very chary about actually having them. I understand that feeling and Lewis himself, steeped in the comfortable atheism of his intellectual class, missed any chance to have his own children. Surely it is no accident; however, that he began to write stories for children, got married, and became something of a step-father in his later years as he became more thoroughly a Christian? He had a basis in an immortal soul and in eternity to think that present selfishness would be judged as bleak and worthy. Exactly what does a secularist need children for and if secularism itself causes its proponents to stop making babies then how is its embrace of Darwinian fitness coherent?

The world of Narnia on the other hand knows nothing of Darwin or of men and women too selfish to “sacrifice” their present happiness for eternity. This is a world where Peter must fight, because it is his duty to fight. It is a world where children are not just called to stern duties, but an entire world rallies to save them from the secular modern who would stamp out all children to preserve her reign for all eternity. It is the essence of Christianity that the old human order changes and gives way to the new. This is not merely sad, but part of the very fabric of the world, and the sorrow is mitigated by our future hopes. Secularism has no such future hopes and so must try to botox what it has to preserve it in the face of change.

And oddly enough this allows Christians to face the world that way it is, full of death and suffering caused by our evils, and still find joy.

The Narnia film calls for jollification! It opposes a world where it is always bleak winter and never Christmas. Pardon me, but that looks a great deal like your world, old friend. The great philosopher W.V. Quine once said that he preferred ontological deserts . . . he wanted a universe with as few things in it as possible. Pardon me, but some of us, for good reason it seems to me, prefer the fecundity of the Narnian spring to the barren “purity” of the Narnian winter.

All things being equal, and surely you must concede that there good arguments on our side as there are on yours  . . . why shouldn’t we prefer to believe in a world where real goodness, real truth, and real beauty are possible?

“God rest you merry, gentleman.” That is the first line of an old carol. It bids busy men, worldly men like the two of us, to retreat from despair. Why? Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day! The fact that it is an old story and a beautiful one does not make it any less true. The fact that it has profound philosophical defenses does not make it any less beautiful. It is the old story that is at once rational and moving. It unites head and heart by worshipping a divine Logic made flesh.

The Narnia film shows that all the old religions had a fore taste of that great truth. Christianity need not be dour or Puritanical. It has been, and still can be, the basis for science . . . which we both know was the product of the Christian West. It has been, and still can be, the basis for a Bach, Mozart, and Michelangelo. Bluntly, it seems to me that you worldview cannot have both. Where are your fairy stories? Where is your beauty? Where is an adequate basis for the life of self-sacrifice, almost monastic self-sacrifice, which high science demands? As religion fades in this land or in Western Europe, I see more sterility in the culture and more death. I see more despair and bluntly more drugs and less jollification.

At least consider that this children’s story might point to a better way!

Merry Christmas my friend,

John Mark

A Letter to a Religious Friend

2005-12-16T11:51:00.000-08:00

Dear Peter,

You told me that you were going to see the Narnia film and asked my thoughts about it.

Of course, I am not a professional film reviewer. I loved the movie, but then the books made such an impact on me as a child that it is safe to say that just the sight of Lucy meeting Tumnus (the faun in the woods) was going to put a smile on my face for the rest of the Holidays. You have not read the books so you are wondering who Tumnus is and if I have lost my mind. How does someone with a doctorate in philosophy from an analytic department end up raving about a modern fairy tale?

Oddly enough to the modern mind what the world needs now is a good fairy tale. Now sadly most people have been taught that “fairy tale” or the better word “myth” just means false stories people make up to explain things when they don’t have science. We both know (thank goodness) that this wrong. A myth, the way Plato or Lewis would use it, is a big story used to make sense out reality. It explains the facts as best it can. It is likely, but can never be known (for sure) to be true. In this sense, all of “big science” is a myth.

Of course, some myths are better than others. When not infected with secularist assumptions modern science is one of the best myths ever developed. It explains a great many facts and does so in a way that uncovers many other important things. However, modern the modern scientific myth has limited itself from exploring the personal and final causes in the cosmos. This is not the place to ask whether that is a good idea. That is the way it is at the moment, but this means science (despite the pretensions of some scientists) cannot explain a big chunk of reality. Amazingly it cannot explain the very bit of reality that must persons (since they are persons) find most interesting.

Personal causes exist. Narnia was written by a person and is not the product of chance. The work of C.S. Lewis or Shakespeare or Isaac Asimov for that matter cannot be reduced (so far as anyone knows) to the impersonal. No little atoms colliding with each other could produce the character of Aslan, Hamlet, or Mule. Narnia, like much of the best literature from Trollope to Tolstoy is partly an attempt to tell a story that explains (without explaining away) these personal facts. Why do people act as they do? What is meaning of sacrifice and of duty? What is honor? These are not questions the modern scientific story even attempts to answer. Narnia provides provisional answers to a few of these questions that is satisfying to both children and to adults.

Of course, this sort of myth-making, or fairy tale, has its limits. Lewis is not trying to explain how the cosmos goes, but he is telling a counter-factual story (an alternative cosmos) to illuminate who the personal agents in the cosmos go! Narnia is not anti-science (fairy tales versus science) as some silly reviewers might say, but an attempt (and only a rudimentary and partial one) to complete our modern view of reality. Dante could write both best science (of his day) and best poetry (dealing with the personal) at the same time. We have limited ourselves to doing one at a time (to our loss I think), but Lewis is trying to fill the gaps of our scientific education.

At the same time, you will notice how wholesome this is for education. Lewis is not placing fairy tales against reason or science. He is for science and for logic. He just not simple enough to believe that poetry is merely feelings-based while what we call science is merely factual. Both poetry and the most technical of scientific papers are parts of a whole description of the truth of the world. Our fairy tales must account for our science just as our science should account for the truths found in our fairy tales. Scientists who complain about ethical limits to their investigations have not learned the first lesson of what it is to be human . . . and so they repeat the mistake of the wizard in Aladdin and assume that knowledge or power is its own justification. At the same time, the typical Hollywood fairy tale (so unlike Narnia) wants us to follow only our hearts against our best reason. The importance of Narnia is that it will urge you to account for both your head and your heart!

Never confuse reason with bad news.  That is a prejudice of our times. Sometimes my friends who are secularists will have certain doomed nobility about them. They think it brave that they have decided that goodness, truth, and beauty do not exist and I suppose if that is what best reason taught us then they would be right. But surely it has not come to that! There are many good reasons to believe in a real and personal good. Analytic philosophy has been undergoing a revival of the most traditional sorts of theism which, by the way, never died in any case. Just because the news is good: there is a God and He loves us, does not mean we have to reject it. In fact, all things being equal good news should be believed over bad news if one is healthy.

Narnia, even the film which is simpler than the book, is a wholesome vision of reality in an alternative world. One thing to keep in mind, despite what you read in the press: Narnia is not a Christian allegory. Aslan is not Jesus. His death on the stone table is like the death of Jesus Christ, but also different.

Your experience with science fiction should help understand the difference. Narnia is a thought experiment, a bit of what-ifery. We both like the sort of book that asks, “What if Lenin had not taken the German train to Russian?” or “What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo?” Such experiments in the counter-factual often illuminate important events or ideas in history.

If all of that made sense, then you can see that a modern worry is removed by Narnia. Some foolish Christians, aided and abetted by anti-religious types, have acted as if the truth of Christianity meant that our world’s story must be the only story to be told. Now I do not know if there is life in the rest of the Universe. As a neo-Platonist, I think there might be. On top of that, I have no reason to think that this reality is the only one. For some reason, whenever people here that there might be another world they imagine a secular one or one that cannot account for the Divine events (the birth of Jesus Christ) that happened on this planet, but this is just a failure of imagination or better a conditioning of the imagination by hundreds of films and science fiction stories written by folk hostile to Christianity.

Since we have no idea what life is like on any other world or reality there are many possibilities. However, the only world with life on it of which we are aware (our own) is the most reasonable guide to what we will find. If the evidence points to the truth of Christianity here, then that evidence would not change on Mars or Vulcan or any other reality. The Christian God is not some local tribal deity. He rules as Creator over all things . . . which would include any other planet of reality. If this is so, and philosophical arguments for His existence do not depend in any way on the parochial notion that this is the only reality, then it is most sensible to think of those worlds in Christian terms and not secular ones.

In short, we are likely to find other worlds (if we are allowed to find them) either in a sinless state (in which case I hope we don’t go there as their own Satan introducing our evil) or going through their own process of redemption. Since God is rational and the Incarnation has happened, I would assume that process of redemption would be like ours but also take into account the facts that occurred at the first Christmas. Why not?

You should view Narnia as a baptism for your imagination. When I mention the idea that “other worlds” (if found) may confirm not deny the truth of the Gospel, most people are shocked, but they have no good reason for such unbelief. The arguments for the divinity of Christ do not depend on His having no other flock on other worlds. If they are good arguments, then they are not bound by space or time! The fact that the world of Narnia, where our myths are real, seems shocking to you is an indication of the effectiveness of secular propaganda. They pretend to know something (what other worlds will be like) that they do not know or they imagine (as we do not) that what we have learned on this world will have no bearing on the worlds we shall find.

Both of us understand that atheism or secularism is too simplistic to account for the world. Such folk are good hearted, but they try to explain too much with too little. Simple answers are better only if they explain all the facts otherwise they become simplistic. Goodness, truth, and beauty are at least as real as atoms, cars, and trees. I am much more sure that a “self” exists than that “things” exist. Maybe ideas can be reduced to matter, but it seems more likely that “matter” can be reduced to ideas. Better still is the Christian answer (the answer of Narnia) that both exist!

Narnia reminds us that reason and faith are related and not in opposition. You are never asked to believe anything despite your experience, but you are asked (as the children are reminded by the Professor) not to dismiss your experience or some other person’s just because it does not fit your simple secularist picture of reality!

You have often asked me how I can believe that Christianity is the “answer” when there are some many other world religions. What about Zeus or other gods?

Narnia is a very clever man’s partial answer to that question. Lewis believed, and I think he was right, that all the world’s religions (the great ones) have seized on truths. These truths, to the extent that they are truths, must be part of a sane world view. When Lewis has Bacchus, the pagan god of wine, appear in Narnia it is not because he is partly a pagan. It is because he saw the appeal in Bacchus. He knew the jolly times one can have with good wine and merry company, but also the corruption that came of worship of Bacchus. The strength of the Christian myth and Narnia shows this, is that it can account for Bacchus and get the good of him without turning him into God. Bacchus is too small for God and his pleasures too little.

Of course this is not the silly idea that all religions are equally true. Lewis rightly saw and argued that Christianity was the fullest account of the truths of religion. This was not arrogance, but the product of careful examination. One need not dismiss all other religious as utterly false to say that Christianity is the largest truth nor can one merely assume that only the bigot thinks he is right. I believe that other religions contain dangerous falsehoods, but I feel no desire to persecute them (how contrary to the Law of Love!) or deny the great truths within them. On the other hand, I have never found any great truth in another religion that is not more fully (and nobly) expressed in the traditional Christian faith. Either that is right or wrong, but let’s not be silly enough to simply yelp about intolerance before examining carefully whether or not this is correct.

We live in a world in dire need of a good solid Narnian word: jollification. The Narnia film is cheerful, but realistic. There are real dangers in the woods . . . in a past 9/11 world we know there are real wolves in the woods. Some of our friends will sell us out to the wolves for a bit of personal peace. However, one need not despair or become intolerant. One can simply do one’s duty while enjoying a bit of Christmas. It is the totalitarians (on the right and left) who are always serious. We know how limited is our power and how little our dreams of utopia would match reality in this age! As a result, we can stop in the midst of even the most serious war and have some toast (with jam!) and wait for our gifts from Father Christmas. Our opponents on the secular lefts can never tell jokes . . . they can only deal in sarcasm and irony. They never feast for they fear too greatly dying to enjoy feast foods. Real Christianity is jolly without being unserious.

I hope this Christmas brings some jollification your way.

Under the Mercy,

John Mark

More Narnia Reaction

2005-12-15T14:03:00.000-08:00

The reaction to the Chronicles of Narnia movie as compared to the reaction to Brokeback Mountain or King Kong has been culturally illuminating. Movie reviewers are culturally liberal as a group, whatever their politics. This need not be and in fact liberal may be the wrong term for the bias. The media is not so much out of step in terms of liberal politics, but socially and culturally. It is secular and libertine when much of the nation (if not almost all of it) is religious and moralistic.

But as a recent blog entry at National Review On-Line pointed out reviewers also live in a strange world. Most go to many movies a week. Most of us do not. Many reviewers crave something new while many of us got to movies as entertainment hoping for something our entire family can enjoy. Even Christian film buffs are not immune to this. At a Christian college it is perfectly predictable that a certain sort of student will hate (as a matter of first principle) any film most Christian’s like. They are so upset with the Christian sub-culture (often for just reasons) that their logic, to paraphrase Sarek, is uncertain when it comes to Christian films. Secular film reviewers, who seem to fear that any ticket for Narnia will lead to the Christian Taliban ruling America, are even more conflicted.

King Kong may be a great movie that breaks all records. However, surely someone could point out that it is a bizarre title to release at Christmas and that remakes do not always fare well. This looks like a great summer film put out at the wrong time. However, most sites looked as if they could not wait to get Narnia off their front pages; some never put it there, and put Kong in its place. My bet is that (in the end) Narnia makes more money over the Holidays than Kong. Even if I am wrong about the numbers, the unequal treatment given the two may speak to this media bias.

One of the most bizarre reviews of Narnia was at www.boxofficemojo.com. To be fair to the reviewer he seems generally cranky and he hated Kong. However, a quick Google search of his writings shows him to be a secular libertarian of the “religion is bad” school. From the title forward, it is plain that he has not even tried to shelve his ideology in reviewing the film. Of course, he has a right to do this, but it just means that the ninety percent or so of Americans who do not share his views must take his opinions with a grain of salt. It is a common tactic of secularists to try to divide the religious by labels and name callings. Most Americans don’t like fundamentalism of any kind given the way it has been portrayed to them by the media so mainstream Christians (who share the views of the Pope or Billy Graham) are painted as weird religious extremists. Since most of us have no desire to be on the fringe we separate ourselves from these groups and in those way the tiny secularists minority can cling to the power it has in our republic.

My comments are in italics.

Scott Holleran

Disney's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, based on the first in a series of children's books by C.S. Lewis, puts its religious ideas—faith, sacrifice, selflessness—to graphic images of death, supernaturalism and stark terror, making it inappropriate for young children.

This is a judgment that may or may not be reasonable. One can compare the reviewers take on the Harry Potter movies to see if this is a fair conclusion. However, one will not the complaint about “supernaturalism” in the list of things inappropriate for children. Does the author mean that God-talk can damage a young mind? Such a complaint would be impossible to prove, so one can only hope that he meant something else. If not, then we have the first hint of an irrational bias against religion.

This fanciful Christian propaganda opens with the bombing of London as a mother and her four children run for their lives. Dad's at war when the bombs start falling and middle child Edmund (Skandar Keynes) runs back to grab his father's photograph, prompting older brother Peter (William Moseley) to admonish him for being selfish. The self must be denied, Narnia warns, for the sake of others. Or else.

The director of the film is not a Christian. I see no evidence that the Disney Company is overrun with Christians. There were Christians involved in making this film, but since eighty some percent of the nation is Christian that is not surprising. In what way is this Christian propaganda? If it does support world-view than is Brokeback Mountain libertine propaganda?
Evidently the notion of self-denial really bothers the reviewer. That is his right, but of course one could ask his qualifications as a film reviewer to make such statements. It is also an odd time to make this criticism. He seems to feel that at the Holidays most children are in danger of thinking too much of their nation or of others. Has he ever had children or visited a mall? I don’t see little tykes overrun with monastic abhorrence of the things of this world. Perhaps a small reminder of duty, honor, country and living for others might help make them less narcissistic and more, well, jolly?
As for the “or else”, apparently the reviewer has never read Plato and discovered that selfishness and tyranny in the soul harms it. Being selfish makes you unlovable both to others and yourself. The “or else” is natural consequence of your behavior.

What an else. But first, we meet the kids when they are sent by their mother to live in the country with an old professor. He lives in a big house with acres of empty rooms and closets and nothing for kids to do. The plot is relatively simple for a time, as the family dynamic takes shape. The youngest child, Lucy (Georgie Henley), represents pure faith and there's a responsible older sister, Susan (Anna Popplewell), and Peter, who is in charge. Selfish Edmund is the demon seed in need of redemption.

Lucy (whose name means light) does not represent pure faith. She is the one “who sees.” Peter and Susan both act by faith (in the traditional Christian sense) but do not see as well due to their lack of logic (as the Professor points out). They have been blinded by an educational system that does not teach an open philosophy of knowledge, but places secularist blinders on them. Now this may be wrong, Lewis would be happy for a good argument, but it is not what the reviewer seems to think it is.
If by faith one means (with Dante whose bust is prominent in the Professor’s mansion and ideas in Lewis’ writings): assenting to the most reasonable idea about which one still has doubts, then Lucy does have “faith.” If one means belief in the absurd or despite the evidence, then this is a concept that the Narnia books (and to a lesser extent the film) and Lewis rejected.
When a game of hide and seek leads Lucy into the imposing wardrobe, she steps into Narnia, a fantasy world with fauns, centaurs and an evil white witch (Tilda Swinton, dripping with contempt for children like she eats them for breakfast). Up until now, Lucy is a nice kid, but, like the movie, she grows less benign as she personifies the self-abnegation theme.

Evidently the reviewer thinks giving of self for the sake of others a fearful and evil idea. Of course, “self-sacrifice” may be false and not genuine. Lewis himself pointed out that some people do “give of themselves” in a controlling and manipulating manner. However, we would have to believe with a tiny secularist minority, against our experience (by irrational “faith”?) that all such actions are false and hypocritical. All the hospitals, charities, and community service done by self-denying people would be the problem. We should live (I suppose) in a Darwinian world where everyone lives for self. This sort of person delights in picking holes in folk like Mother Theresa or self-sacrificing public servants. There is a sort of brutal appearance of honesty to this, but if everyone who is afraid their kids will become like Mother Theresa instead of Ayn Rand does not go to this film I doubt it dents the box office. Bluntly, it is a world view that is ugly and not particularly rational.
The other children follow Lucy through the gateway to snowy Narnia—the prerequisite is faith—

This is simply false. Edmund finds Narnia, because it is there, when he is deeply skeptical about it. He goes into the Wardrobe to mock Lucy and finds Narnia. Peter and Susan also find Narnia by accident not because they have “faith.”
and the conflict takes shape, with Edmund willing to sell his family to the witch, Narnia's dictator who has outlawed humans. Director Andrew Adamson (Shrek) makes the most of Lewis' characters in visual terms, though he doesn't linger for longer than a few seconds. Who can blame him? With preachy beavers, a two-faced fox and wolves, who sound like they smoke two packs a day, it would all seem a little ridiculous if kept on too long.

Lewis has written a fairy tale. A fairy tale is not a Dickens novel and is not dependent of deeply drawn characters. Instead a fairy tale is about place and deep archetypical lessons. The reviewer may find fairy tales absurd, but I am fairly assured the genre will out last him.

In fact, it does, with Narnia looking fake, though Adamson keeps it relatively convincing by moving things along at a brisk pace.

This is an odd sentence. What is it for a fantasy world to look “fake?”

The story remains intact, such as it is, with Narnians prattling on about a prophecy and someone named Aslan, a lion king (voiced by Liam Neeson) who uses mystical powers only after most of Narnia has already dropped dead. Rock bottom is reached when Santa Claus drops in looking like something the reindeer dragged in and sounding more like Oprah than a jolly old elf.

We now know the reviewer does not like prophecy in his fairy tales. He also (it appears) would only wish to believe in a god who keeps bad things from happening . . . an unfortunate position for a libertarian. Apparently, God would have to save us all from the consequences of all our choices in order to pass muster with this reviewer. Of course, it is Father Christmas and not Santa Claus who drops in, but knowledge of what he is reviewing does not appear a strong suit.
Bad Edmund gets what he has coming (by the movie's morality), which means he is undeservedly forgiven in the next instant, this being a Christian picture. Like religion, this winter wonderland is arbitrary but, on its own terms, the fantasy falls apart.

Religion and forgiveness are arbitrary? How? The moral universe in Narnia, as in the real world, operates in a law-like manner. Sin and you are harmed by it as is everyone else around you. You pay a price and so does the community. Sometimes a great act of self-sacrifice can redeem the situation. This is not just a Christian notion, but is the result of centuries of human experience. Forgiveness is a mighty act that can help heal the worst situations.

Non-Christians should pause as they read this review. Most people in the USA don’t like Christianity because they are afraid it leads to an overly rigid morality. But is only a religion that knows the law, the deep magic of the movie, which can forgive. Secularists invent their own morality and transgressing that morality carries “rehabilitation” (which sounds so much more cheerful than punishment!) that only ends when the secularist is satisfied. Laws can be broken and mercy can be given in a rational universe with a Law Giver. Everything else, which looks at first like freedom, is simply substituting a Creator who gives us rights (as the Declaration states) with men who allow us rights.
Dependable Peter leads his family into harm's way because a couple of beavers told him it's his duty to help others, which makes it still harder to accept nebulous Narnia as worth the lives of four children.

This is bizarrely the opposite of the film. . . Peter struggles through the entire film (too long in my opinion) to decide if saving Narnia is worth the danger. He bases his final decision not just on the “word of the beavers,” but his experience with the dangers that the free folk of that world face. Like any good Englishman in World War II, he is willing to run risk that others might be free.
The freedom of an entire country is in peril, the children might be able to save it, and they place the needs of the many (not at all nebulous creatures but real sentient beings they come to love) over their own needs. Like our brave soldiers in Iraq, they sense that it is the duty of free men and women to protect those that cannot protect themselves. The reviewer may think that such sacrifice is worthless, but I am glad that the veterans of the first two World Wars (Lewis was one) did not agree.

The faun who befriended Lucy wanted to turn her in, the centaur had a tough time taking a liking to Peter, who's been designated the future king, and all Aslan seems to do is negotiate with the enemy and sacrifice himself.

Much of this is called character development in a film the reviewer likes. Some of it is just false.
The faun is selfish and a quisling. He puts his own needs over that of his fellow Narnians and works for the secret police. Of course, failing to do this and acting as a patriot would require self-sacrifice so perhaps the reviewer is upset that the faun eventually saves Lucy to his own peril. He wants to turn Lucy in before he knows what a human is. When he gets to know a human he sees that his species-ism is wrong-headed. He has learned to love someone different than himself at great cost to himself.

Aslan frees Edmund from the White Witch, does not place himself above the law, and kills the White Witch. What else should he have done?
The humans are not much better; Susan, the smart sister, abandons reason,

Instead, Susan opens her mind to the fact that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in a secularist philosophy. She is, in fact, encouraged to embrace reason by the professor.
Peter is hell-bent on risking the family for Narnia and, by now, Lucy is grating on the nerves. It seems poor Edmund, imprisoned by the witch, only wanted some candy.

Peter spends two-thirds of the film trying to get his family home. This statement is false and almost perversely so. We are not told what is grating about Lucy who is a favorite of almost every other reviewer of this film. Edmund’s love of Turkish Delight was a symptom for his self-centered desire to be “king of Narnia” and lord it over his siblings. He is willing to betray them for his own desires. Like many a selfish person, he discovers that getting what he wants means that he does not get what he wants!

The big battle, with mixed match-ups and acts of valor that make no sense, is a bust. Narnia's greatest asset—Swinton as the white witch—is undone by overproduced fight photography, engaging her sword against a child in slow motion, forced to waste her best efforts at wickedness in a few moments that make her look like she's Tina Turner from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome auditioning for Madonna's Vogue video.

I don’t agree with this, but at least it has to do with the film and not the writer’s world view.
None of it is pretty, even when it's supposed to be, let alone exalted. Despite Adamson's mitigating efforts, Narnia stands for death, destruction and renunciation of self in a poorly disguised Christian fairy tale.

Narnia stands for life over death. It understands that a life lived for self where one lives as long as possible at the expense of duty, honor, and country ends up being long, but miserable. It understands that in the light of eternity such a choice is even more foolish.

Narnia is for the destruction of tyranny and the establishment of liberty under law.

Narnia believes that one finds the best self in the denial of selfish desires and in embracing love.

Narnia is a Christian fairy tale. One might want to compare secularist’s fairy tales and their dystopias to Narnia and decide which worldview has the better ideals. In any case, one should also beware getting worldview from a film reviewer with no qualifications!

Narnia Doing Better Than Hoped?

2005-12-14T14:20:00.000-08:00

Narnia Doing Better than Expectations?

Whose expectations? Let’s assume that film reviewers are a fair minded bunch. Let us also assume the bulk of them are to the left of the average voter in 2004. Does anyone believe Bush carried the film reviewer demographic?

I will acknowledge that my opinions on the Narnia films may be slanted because I am a Christian and love C.S. Lewis. Can’t we also acknowledge that if you really, really dislike Christianity and traditional values that it may also slant your notions of the film? After all, if Narnia does well, then there will be more “religious community friendly” films. You can count on it.

Granted any one review may not be biased in itself and Narnia is not Citizen Kane. But how else can we explain reviews (many reviews) that spend as much time dealing with religious “controversy” (in a country where eighty-five percent are Christians) as with the film itself. Doesn’t this impact reviews, especially on the web? Remember if only a quarter of the reviewers are harder on Narnia for being based on the book of a Christian author, then that will impact any composite score of critics (normally a good measure of a film’s value). Does anyone doubt that Brokeback Mountain benefits by its cultural politics while Narnia suffers from it?

A sane example, I will review the insane example at www.boxofficemojo.com later, is at the www.the-numbers.com.

Here under the expectations for the film we read:

Name: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the WardrobeStudio: DisneyOfficial Site: Narnia.comRelease Date: December 9th, 2005 MPAA Rating: Rated PG for battle sequences and frightening moments. Source: Based on a BookMajor Genre: FantasyGenres: Animated Characters Production Budget: $150 million Box Office Potential: $225 million Notes: Just to get this out of the way, there is no organized boycott of this movie by secular groups, despite what some people are trying to report. If you do a search for "The Chronicles of Narnia" and "Boycott" all you'll find is some groups are dropping their boycott of Disney, partially because of this film. As for the movie itself, every time I see the trailer I think, "Meh. Lord of the Rings did it better." The reason for the comparison is obvious; the same company did the creature effects for both movies. This comparison will hurt the film at the box office, but not by enough to keep the film from showing a profit and getting a sequel or two. In fact, it might do well enough worldwide that the next two or three are given the go ahead and filmed simultaneously. Those movies, on the other hand, won't be success, as this is the only book in the series that is easily adapted into a mainstream movie.

In a one paragraph film summary about one-third is taken up with quashing a rumor that nobody in my religious community has heard. Remember accusation of bias is not the same as “boycott.” The argument about the film (which the reviewer now concedes understated the film’s success) concludes by saying that the other books in the series cannot be made into mainstream movies.
Why? What is “mainstream?” Prince Caspian (the next film) has a battle scene and a climactic sword fight. In fact, it centers on a band of rebels against an evil tyrant. That plot has worked well in a few movies I could name. It has the brave and knightly “talking mouse” Reepicheep, the single best character in the books. All kids can relate at a deep level to the main theme: the conflict between an aging monarch and his younger heir.
To go further, The Horse and His Boy or Voyage of the Dawntreader strikes me as more mainstream than Narnia if “mainstream” means less overtly Christian. They also have plots that are easy to summarize and some big action sequences. This is particularly true of Dawntreader which has sea monsters, pirates, mystical/magical encounters, and comic relief (Dufflepods anyone?). Has the reviewer actually read these books? In any case, Narnia’s expectations were all about problems with the franchise and not about potential. Religion is viewed as a problem, not as a way to tap the largest single group in America (and the world). There are more than one billion Christians on the planet after all and Christians are the most rapidly growing group on the planet. We are, after all, the one’s making babies so family films better start to cater to us (or to the religious in general).

Narnia A Magnificent Jollification

2005-12-12T14:52:00.000-08:00

Narnia: A Magnificent Jollification
Remember the first time you saw a movie that was so stirring, so beautiful that you wanted to see it again? Right after the movie ended?
Remember films that impacted you physically they were so enjoyable?
I remember watching Star Wars for the first time and noticing after the film that I had grooves in my hands from flying Luke's X-Wing for him.I remember when Bambi's mother died and the Wicked Queen in Snow White transformed before my eyes.My job has me use film in the classroom. Some films are smart. Other films entertain. A few do both well reaching a wide audience. It's A Wonderful Life. Fantasia.How rare it is when something entertaining is also profound!And now, I have returned from the first night of a new holiday classic Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to report a miracle. They got this film right. If you loved the book, and you understand a movie is not a book, then you will love the film. It has the essential message exactly as it should.If you don't know the book, don't worry. The film stands on its own. Narnia is no fan boy film unwatchable by any but the faithful. If you can understand a fairy tale, then you will understand this movie. And yet there is so much visually and intellectually beyond the simple story that you will be able to watch this movie many times. I went with an eight year old who watched the whole thing without flinching. (She has still not seen Lord of the Rings or Star Wars.) She loved it. My fifteen year old son loved it. My thirteen year daughter loved it. My wife, no fan of fantasy movies, loved it. And toughest of all my eleven year old son thought it cool. What other movie can do that?Forget ideological whining by reviewers who confuse their hatred of traditional Western values with thought.If you think the wolves in the wood should never be fought, then you will hate this film. If you think evil does not exist, you will be uncomfortable. If you believe forgiveness is cheap and bad behavior has no cost, then this film will make you furious. But if you are like most of us, then this film will make you shout for joy.Tonight for the first time in a long time I watched a film that made my heart ache with the beauty of the scenes, made me cry, stirred my passions, and made me think. (All those neo-Platonisms! Surrounded as I was by Torrey students all of whom have read the Timaeus, we were the only audience in the world to burst into applause when Aslan asked, "Where is the fourth?")The child actors are a miracle . . . especially Lucy who is actually a child . . . the first we have seen in a Disney film in forever. The White Witch is fierce some and has the best fighting moves seen Matrix. My son says that centaurs are awesome warriors . . . and there is Aslan now far and away the lion king.Some films soar (think of the Rings Trilogy). Other films are jolly (like a holiday with Mary). Narnia does both. It is a magnificent jollification and what more can one ask for on this Holy Day God's greatest holiday.Who do we thank for this film? How can we make sure Disney and Walden make more? See this film. See it again. Write letters. Read the book. Rejoice that the DVD will be out by next Christmas!At the end of the film I kept hearing people gloating that they could spend their next seven holidays watching the sequels.Just do it Disney. Now while the children are the right ages.Merry Christmas to the film makers. You have given us a present to last our life times.

Silly Reviews

2005-12-12T14:09:00.000-08:00

Narnia Rules, but Brings Out Bizarre Reviews

The Washington Post review is typical. It has to admit that Narnia is a great film, but it can hardly stand to do so. It after all is Christian, which somehow now means “controversial.” One will note that this adjective is not applied to a tedious film about gay cowboys playing to insular audiences in major media centers.

My comments are in italics as usual.

A Winter WonderlandThose Who Don't Believe in Fantasy Will Thaw at 'Chronicles of Narnia'
By Stephen HunterWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, December 9, 2005; C01
Rule, "Narnia," "Narnia" rule the waves -- and it certainly will, or at least the waves of over stimulated children and grateful parents whose tidal rush breaks upon the nation's multiplexes during the holidays. As a destination, it should please members of both generations.
So far so good, though this is not just a children’s movie it is good for children.
Andrew Adamson's sterling version of "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," the perdurable C.S. Lewis classic of children's fantasy, is well told, handsome, stirring and loads of fun.
It's also, for mordant ironists, a rich vein of psychological ore revelatory of the beloved "Jack" Lewis, as he nicknamed himself, who wrote children's classics by night, taught and lectured on medieval English lit at Oxford and Cambridge by day and, by very late of night, dreamed of spanking various ladies of his acquaintance.
Lewis himself hated the intellectual posturing that assumes, without argument, that one could tell a great deal about the psychology of a person from their writings. Such guesses have the benefit of (usually) being incapable of falsification so operate as the perfect foil for the intellectualism that passes for education in modern times. Our sexually obsessed and dysfunctional era loves to make this sort of airy speculation about sex. Why is the factoid in the review? What does it tell us about the movie? Out of the thousands of facts about Lewis’ life, including the fact that all of his books are still in print, that he married happily late in life, and that he had a long friendship with Tolkien somehow what was most important to the reviewer was the sexual temptations of the young Lewis.
Let’s be clear. The young Lewis was no saint and neither was the older Lewis. He wrote frankly about his failings in his private writings which he viewed as failings. As he grew older he grew in grace and his failings and temptations also grew less.   The only imaginable point of this “revelation” about Lewis is to try to “pull him down” and show him to be no better than the rest of us. Well, yes, if by that one means that he was a sinner, but not if one means that he was content to wallow in his sin or to publish private information in a major newspaper in the sort of review likely to be read by children.
Well, we shall speak no more of that little quirk. Taken at face value, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" decodes into a kind of dashing view of colonialism for the pre-pubescent set, an empire-and-faith fable set in a fantasy world whose relation to the real one will be, for adults, its most fascinating element.
“Taken at face value” the film is nothing of the sort. Lewis was no fan of colonialism and this “decoding” (a word indicating that even the reviewer knows that one cannot find colonialism in the film if one takes it at “face value”) is absurd. Later Narnia books deal with an imperial power which is utterly evil, and argue for the freedom of little nations over against this expansionist empire.
For kids, the pleasure will be in some of the best special effects of the year. And for both, the overarching endearment will be a narrative that speeds through its two-hour-plus running time.
At last actual comments on the film.
The movie has attracted some pre-release pub because it is famously a "Christian allegory."
Well, no it is not an allegory, famously or otherwise. An allegory is a book like Pilgrim’s Progress where the faithful character is called Faithful. Narnia is an exercise in what-ifery. What if God created a world like Narnia? What would it be like? Lewis dislike allegories for the most part and always denied he wrote one. Our film reviewer has moved from cheap psychoanalysis to literary analysis while managing to say almost nothing about the film.
And yes, it's true, Lewis was a well-known adult convert to Anglicanism (from the intellectual's fashionable atheism) who wrote much about his faith in God. Maybe too much; some find him a bully on the subject.
Let’s guess the reviewers opinion. Who finds him a “bully?” How does writing a book arguing for a topic count as being a bully? Are atheists so sensitive that they cannot abide losing arguments?
Of course, that is true if internet atheism is any indication. Google atheism and take a look at the sights. Humorless and dour they assume that all Christians are stupid and that all smart people are atheists. Christians know by experience, as Lewis surely did, that many clever folk are atheists and that there are good arguments against Christian theism. Such Christians, Lewis included, simply prefer the arguments for Christianity which they think better.
Whatever, it is true that the plot he engineered for the first of his seven "Chronicles of Narnia" reenacts the march to Golgotha, the ugliness enacted thereupon, and the good news three days hence, when someone powerful arises and gives hope to a death-haunted world. However, in the role of Jesus Christ is a lion named Aslan who, no matter how holy he may be, is still a lion, and when he paws an enemy to the ground, he then bites its head off. That's pure big carnivore and a long way from Christ's admonition to turn the other cheek.
Just as secularists produce what-if stories for their world view (“What if aging, bald white men from France could go around the universe in a star ship making it so?”), so Christians ask what-if questions assuming their views are true. That may be hard for the reviewer to imagine as he has an oddly stunted view of Jesus and of Christianity.
There is a left wing version of Christianity, light years from historical Christianity, that has somehow become the only version in the minds of writers at the Post. In this version, the Christian God is much like a senile Santa patting everyone on the head and handing out presents.
The Bible describes our God as a God of war. The Christian God employees archangels like Michael whose only job seems to be creating havoc amongst the forces of darkness. Jesus Christ cleared the temple of his day with a whip and called his enemies “old fox” and “white washed tombs full of dead men’s bones.” He was “the Lion of Judah” as well as the Lamb of God. In fact, it is the very power of the Man that made his sacrifice so great. He could have called legions of Angels to His defense, but did not. He was a strong man who chose to die for the sins of mankind.
Christ advocated “turning the other cheek.” In context, most Christians at most places at most times (leaving aside an odd pacifist fringe) have understood this to mean that personal vendettas and revenge are out, but that a robust defense of others is a positive good. We invented chivalry and knighthood after all! As a Christian, I cannot hate my enemy nor seek personal retribution. I must forgive. On the other hand, the government “does not bear the sword in vain” and can act to defend the powerless and weak.
The fantasy seems just as, if not more, plumped up with symbols of that other modern religion, the state. You can feel Lewis the professional writer cleverly pandering to his readership of patriotic, well-educated middle-class English adolescents of the '50s.
Where? How?
It's a veddy British Isles kind of thing, with a lord of all being the majestic lion, symbol of Britain on the royal shield, along with the unicorn, the heraldic symbol of Scotland, and then the unicorn shows up as a steed upon which a valiant young knight charges into battle.
If the film had been set in an African land, then the film’s use of cultural symbols of that place would be applauded as good. Why is the fact that a British author wrote a book set in Britain using British culture worth comment? Is Anglo-Saxon culture now so evil that parent’s must be warned of its existence?
Second, the reviewer gets the book and films symbolism wrong in any case. He confuses symbols added by the movie makers (Peter’s steed) with those found in the book which he shows no signs of having read.
Lewis was a classically trained scholar with a fascination with the symbols of the Middle Ages. He uses the language of heraldry all through the book. The reviewer apparently once saw the British coat of arms on a whirl wind tour of England and assumes that Lewis, the Oxford don, must have drawn his sources from the same simplistic set of images that seem to exist in the reviewer’s mind. Orthodox Christians beware! If he sees the Eagle on a Saint John the Divine icon, he will think you are pushing the Bush war agenda! (“Plainly the use by Saint Michael Church of the icon of Saint John the Divine with its plain imperialistic symbols, including a very American eagle, in this era of war is meant to reinforce the not-so-subtle pro-Republican message of the liturgy.”)
But even a moment’s thought suggests many different possibilities more in tune with the message of the book than “lion as England.” We might begin with Lewis’ friend Charles Williams and his image of the lion. We could quickly move on to basic fairy tale conventions. The lion is the king of the beasts. What other animal could be king of the talking beasts of Narnia . . .  a lemming, a hedgehog, a fox? We could then think about the Biblical image of Christ as the “lion of Judah.” Both these ideas seem more plausible than the simplistic “colonialism” image when we remember that Lewis’ was not doing British what-ifery, but Anglican what-ifery.
Lions and unicorns, oh my! There are so many other Britishisms it's almost unsporting (and certainly dull) to list them all, from landscape to culture to gear to weather. It climaxes in a giant, linchpin-of-history battle so familiar to the Brits, as they rarely lost one (the Spanish Armada, Trafalgar, Waterloo, Battle of Britain). But more important, there's a kind of empire assumption underlying it all.
No. There is not. The Queen of Narnia, statist to the max, is overthrown. The government that replaces hers is almost not a government at all. People are left alone and justice is done. The state becomes smaller not larger in Narnia. I would assume (if anyone cares) that taxes go down under High King Peter, who can lay off all the wolves.
The movie is really another in a long line of unquestioning colonial morale-raisers, so necessary for the maintenance of empire, circa 1950, when the book was published: It's about the arrival in a troubled land (Narnia, in whose syllables may be heard a faint echo of "Britannia") of white Britons of noble visage, pale beauty and steely bearing in the middle of a war of darker creatures. Our boys and girls immediately move to center stage -- indeed, it turns out that their coming has been foretold -- and they are quickly appointed to leadership positions.
Of course, this just may have more to do with Fairy Tale conventions than with British colonialism. Is Jack the hero of Jack and the Beanstalk to support the British empire? Could it be that children like reading books about, well children?
The absurd comparison of the sound of “Narnia” to “Britannia” could be extended endlessly to fit almost any thesis the reviewer had proposed. For comparison imagine a reviewer who decided Lewis was attacking colonialism by writing his book. Then the same sort of facts could be used to support this thesis. (Narnia is small. Narnia sounds like Britannia.)Here is a novel thought: Narnia is more likely to have gotten into the classically trained Lewis’ mind through the Roman town of that name than through vague associations with Britannia. Such speculation is endless and proves nothing.
As to the “whiteness” of the children, it seems to escape the notice of the reviewer that in 1950 most children in Britain were white. Is this bad?
The boys get to be knights, the girls princesses, every British boy and girl's fantasy.
Has the reviewer been to Disneyland lately? There are a great many princesses and sword bearing young men there. Are they all British? Was the reviewer ever a child?
Thus elevated, they lead the darker masses in battle to victory, and stay behind to rule magnificently and justly. Talk about Kipling's White Man's burden!
Of course, at this point the reviewer forgets that they achieve their “white man’s” victory over the White Witch. Her reign of snow and winter and bland whiteness is ended and Narnia begins a springtime of color.
Of course, the race of beavers has long escaped me, but fortunately for me the Post reviewer has told me the truth. Now I know that beavers are actually people of color. But wait, hasn’t this Washington Post reviewer just compared “dark masses” to the talking animals that make up the bulk of Peter’s army? This seems a bit racist to me. I have to admit that I never think of people of color when I see animals, talking or otherwise, but I guess the reviewer does.
But Lewis gets his little redcoats into Narnia by the most lamely imagined conduit. It's a simple wardrobe, a storage cabinet for out-of-season clothes. He couldn't take the kids through a looking glass, a wishing well, a magic door, a diamond facet? Nah. When Lucy Pevensie (adorable Georgie Henley) finds refuge in the big box on the upper floor of an ornate mansion where she and her three siblings are waiting out the Blitz, she finds herself suddenly in Narnia. No explanation given, no explanation needed.
That is why it is called a fairy tale. The reviewer might note that a “magic door” is in fact a door. That a looking glass is just as workman-like as a wardrobe in most houses. In fact, it is making magic the common place that is so wonderful in the best fairy tales.
Jack gets to the cloud land by a bean stalk. Now this is never explained and in fact it is impossible to climb to the clouds on a bean stalk! However, the story is likely to survive this revelation.
Lucy wanders about, running into the faun Mr. Tumnus (part James McAvoy, part computer illustration) and learning it's eternally snowy in Narnia because the White Witch Jadis (the fabulous Tilda Swinton) has taken over, declared eternal winter and outlawed Christmas. Only the legendary lion king Aslan can stop her, with a little help from Santa Claus. The last touch may be a bit much (Lewis's Oxford buddy J.R.R. Tolkien thought so) and you may wonder, where where where is Tiny Tim?
Of course it is Father Christmas and not Santa Claus, but the reviewer has already indicated that though he may have the right prejudices about British colonialism he knows nothing about fairy tales and mythic literature.
Lucy returns to reality, and after some hemming and hawing gets her three siblings -- treacherous Edmund (Skandar Keynes), noble Peter (William Moseley) and timid Susan (Anna Popplewell) to join her. The first thing they notice -- after the gas lamp in the forest -- is the talking beaver. And that is the signal technical excellence of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe": the beaver.
Director Andrew Adamson came up through special-effects discipline, reaching the apotheosis of that craft in movies that were all effects all the time: the "Shrek" films. In "Narnia" he has brilliantly supervised the nearly impossible: supple, expressive animal faces. That is, actual performances from the masses of hard-drive-accumulated electrons (or whatever the hell they are) that represent the creatures: It's all here, the whole human spectrum, from the sparkle in an eye to the heft of a jowl or the twitch of a nostril, the lick of a lip, all those little nuances of expression that are completely beyond the reach of actual animals. Even Aslan himself (voiced by Liam Neeson) isn't just an MGM or a royal lion or even, really, a Lion King: He's more, a subtly hued study of wisdom, courage and fire undercut with Christ's most appealing human characteristic, his doubt. He knows where he's going to end up.
We note that when the reviewer writes about film, his area of specialization, he writes interesting and thoughtful commentary.
The human performers are not far behind the animated ones. The four children are convincing, particularly the young Henley, and Keynes is close behind as Edmund, tormented by his attraction to the witch, willing at first to sell out siblings and beavers all. And you believe it, too, because of Swinton's cruel, chilly witch, with frosted hair and the demeanor of a Vogue editor accidentally abandoned in a fish market who then becomes a superb warrior queen in the battle sequence, almost carrying the field with her steel chariot and samurai sword moves. Her evil disdain and high style are perfect, and she makes you feel the charisma of evil and why it could attract the troubled odd-boy-out Edmund. At the same time, Jadis is not as comically overwrought, as, say, Glenn Close's Cruella De Vil in the Disney live-action variants on "101 Dalmatians." Her Jadis is just thoroughly mean and unpleasant, every schoolchild's sneering, domineering, perfect teacher.
I should say that the movie rides its PG rating right to the very edge; its evocation of animal death and battlefield mayhem and jeopardy to children is extremely powerful, and some kids may find it disturbing. Parents should be warned that the movie is far more explicit than the book and consider carefully before taking their younger children. Most disturbing of all is the scene that replicates the Crucifixion, the actual death of a Christ-figure before his Resurrection. There's no blood, but in all these sequences there are spasms of pain, the plain view of piercing and stabbing, and the final surrender to stillness. Finally, a fleet of wolves serves as the White Witch's secret police, and they too are disturbing creatures, full of menace and intensity.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (140 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG and contains intense, if bloodless, violence and death.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company

So here we see a review that is good when talking about the film, but a mix of prejudice and ignorance when not doing so. How did the reviewer get away with this analysis? It is about conservative Christianity, which most of his fellow employees cannot help him with.

Discussions of All Things Narnian

2005-02-22T21:43:00.000-08:00

The discussion begins today.