Via Kevin Drum, the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee examines the Christian imagery in those C.S. Lewis books Disney’s made a movie out of:
“Tolkien hated Narnia: the two dons may have shared the same love of unquestioning feudal power, with worlds of obedient plebs and inferior folk eager to bend at the knee to any passing superior white persons - even children; both their fantasy worlds and their Christianity assumes that rigid hierarchy of power - lord of lords, king of kings, prince of peace to be worshipped and adored. But Tolkien disliked Lewis’s bully-pulpit.
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.
Does any of this matter? Not really. Most children will never notice. But adults who wince at the worst elements of Christian belief may need a sickbag handy for the most religiose scenes. The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw gives the film five stars and says, “There is no need for anyone to get into a PC huff about its Christian allegory.” Well, here’s my huff.”
I don’t have much to say myself about a movie I will not see, based on books I did not read, that may have some allegorical allusions to a religion I do not adhere to. But it’s an interesting read nonetheless. On the other hand, I have stronger opinions on this piece in the London Review of Books on Brett Easton Ellis, via Dum Pendebat Filius
“Ellis’s characters come after Balzac’s in the sense that they are already inordinately wealthy – many have both inherited money and made considerable amounts of it – and are already stranded by their inordinate success, or the success of their parents. Ellis wants to show us what happens to people when they are successful by the standards of their culture, when they have got what they are supposed to want (wealth, fame, glamour and sex); when, that is, they have to live without any compelling forms of resistance to the prevailing ideology; when all they have got to protect themselves are anaesthetics. If you can’t bear what you can see you can close your eyes; but every time you close your eyes you are reminded that what you can’t see is still there. Ellis, a very remarkable writer who is in some ways as underrated by his fans as by his critics, gives us a picture of what happens to morality when there is no political life, when capitalism without optimism and without question takes hold, when inattention is the last resort.”
I’m fairly sympathetic to the notion that Ellis is underrated as an author, even by his fans. He falls victim to the tendency of many to dismiss him due to the discomfort his work provokes, and likewise many of his fans embrace that discomfort for its own sake, neither of them contemplating that discomfort, nor even looking at the broader picture, just either attracted to or repulsed by that giant pink elephant in the room of sex, violence, and misogyny. And since there is often, like in American Psycho, a seemingly obvious and shallow satire to latch onto and dismiss, it becomes easy to do so, without noticing the subtlies that mark his talent and separate Ellis’s work from the bulk of the novels you’ll find at a Barnes and Noble. Anyway, it’s an interesting review, and well worth the time spent reading it.
And just for kicks, check out this piece entitled Death to Bright Eyes. Making fun of Conor Oberst is a literal guilty pleasure of mine, in the sense that I feel legit guilt for doing it, but yet it’s also so very pleasurable. I really hate the sort of person who gets cheap glee out of ridiculing the creative efforts of others, no matter how bad it is, without respecting the effort that went into it. That of course does not apply to mersh, but there’s no fair way to characterize Bright Eyes as mersh. And I guess it’s not Conor’s fault that every dopey kid who loves Donnie Darko has thrust him into the spotlight; putting that awful trembling wail, that now and then reaches a yodel, before our jaded, critical eyes. But he’s just that bad. And suppressing that bubbling hate his precious warbling provokes, just cannot be healthy.
To compare Bright Eyes to Bob Dylan or Nick Drake, as I believe some journalists have been doing, is truly criminal. Bob Dylan writes good lyrics and Nick Drake played guitar beautifully. He is like them only in that he would like to be like them, only in that he does very badly what they do well.
Let us proceed calmly to make our case, point by point. First of all, he is unbelievably pretentious. The very name of his band is insufferable, whether taken as vanity or unctuous flattery, as is the title of his most recent album, “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning� and the monologue it opens with, about two people seated next to each other on a plane who nonetheless are unable to connect emotionally. Then, surprise, the plane crashes.
Second, his voice is incredibly annoying, as he mewls over hackneyed bar band changes and country-western musical hash still cold in the shape of the can. When Emmylou Harris is piped in to fill things out, the contrast is highly unflattering; only one person is singing.
Third, his songs are mere sketches and unoriginal. He plucks his guitar idly like a ukelele through ponderously slow tempos and old melodies lifted from the radio. Glorious Noise suggests “Lua” is stolen from “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” SF Weekly thinks it’s the Replacements. Step right up, reader, name that tune and win a prize.
Read on to see what Colin Meloy of the Decembrists has to say.
71 Responses to “Time To Reach For The Old Revolver”
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Words cannot express my indie-love for Colin Meloy - seriously - but he’s not really one to talk about someone’s voice being “irritating.” It doesn’t irritate me, but it’s the number one knock against him by some critics. Still, he’s right. (And in the full interview, the interviewer plays him a Neutral Milk Hotel song, and he tells the guy to get out of his house. Pretty funny.)
As for Lewis, having read much of his nonfiction, I pretty much disagree with the take here, but that’s fine. I think the kids being named kings and queens is the meek inheriting the earth - if I don’t have my allegory mixed up, Aslan’s victory is meant to represent the final victory of the meek but told in the fantasy-battle milieu.
This is not ironic: I *like* the idea that being a vaguely pretentious wuss can be a subculture or a fandom now. It would have been manna to me in high school.
God, that’s a great review. I despise Bright Eyes.
“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.”
So four kids going up against a centuries-old witch is “might makes right”? Or (SPOILER!) when Aslan voluntarily lets the Witch slit his throat?
Did she even read the books?
Actually, I think it’s much more common for British writers (like Pullman and Toynbee) to hate the Narnia books than it is for Americans. I think there’s a lot of class-based stuff that comes across for them that we just don’t understand over here, so it’s easier for us to like them. We aren’t constantly thinking, “Lewis, you insufferable upper-class twit!”
I knew Colin Meloy was a champion. For one, the Bright Eyes diss. For two, he recorded a Morrissey covers EP. And there’s nothing wrong with that, whatsoever.
i think your characterization of Donnie Darko fans is unfair. first off, the movie is made about a thousand times better by viewing the director’s cut, since the studio or whoever was more interested in promoting it like a Final Destination-type teen horror flick, but it’s really more of a coming-of-age story.
Secondly, Bright Eyes fucking blows. honestly, he makes me angry, and it’s because he’s famous despite the fact that he sucks, and while i know my own stuff is about eleventy threeve times better than his, i sit in my bedroom playing guitar to my hamster. and the hamster thinks it’s funny and ironic to hold up his lighter and request “Freebird.”
haha on the hamster mil0. I actually like Donnie Darko, but at the same time, I loathe myself for doing so. And the directors cut really made me think I liked it despite itself.
I can’t speak to Narnia, because I got totally bored half-way through The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and stopped reading, but I don’t think Pullman’s objection has to do with class. It has to do with sexuality. He says that Lewis was obsessed with childhood innocence, by which he meant mostly childhood sexual innocence. He thought that kids became corrupted as they grew up and gained knowledge, particularly sexual knowledge. Pullman thinks that adult sexuality is a good and cool thing and that it’s nice, and not a tragedy, when kids grow up and become ready for it. He thinks that Narnia is bad because it romanticizes childhood and stigmitizes adulthood and adult sexuality.
I’m with Mnemosyne on this: I think the reviewer is missing the point of the Narnia books. Lewis is hardly a democrat (or a republican), but he isn’t a fascist either, and the triumph of Aslan and the children is the triumph over a cruel despot. And of course, although both Lewis and Tolkien were conservative (especially by the average Pandagonian’s standard), you can still enjoy their books on the merit of the stories. The politics or religious views of the writers don’t have to enter into it at all.
Frankly, I find Pullman irritating (Kyra’s parents are both evil bastards, but we’re supposed to admire them in the end, and who can believe that the sex act between the teenage protagonists is actually what saves the multiverse?) even though his politics are far more in line with my own than either Lewis’ or Tolkien’s.
I don’t like the Narnia hatred so much. There’s nothing Republican about Narnia. Narnia is all about forgiveness, loyalty to humanity, etc. Yes, the way that Aslan forgives Edmund could be troubling to a secular humanist (an actual secular humanist, not a Falwell/Robertson/Santorum straw-secular humanist), but it’s still forgiveness and redemption, and Edmund still has to take responsibility for his abhorrent actions by fighting in the battle to overthrow the White Witch. Also, in The Last Battle (the last of the Chronicles of Narnia), Aslan accepts people of all faiths who did good into paradise. It’s quite ecumenical, something I think we can all agree is very anti-Republican.
Also, ditto Bacfarc.
“Also, in The Last Battle (the last of the Chronicles of Narnia), Aslan accepts people of all faiths who did good into paradise.”
Well, you do have to ignore the fact that the god Tash resembles a Hindu deity quite closely, and is identified with the devil, but I agree that Lewis ends up embracing the idea that all good people are ultimately saved, even if they belong to the “wrong” religion. Lewis himself never fully got over being a pagan (read “Til We Have Faces”, arguably his best novel—it’s about Cupid and Psyche).
Nobody else has said it–or mentioned this part of the post–so I’ll stick my neck out for the inevitable slam. I don’t think Ellis can possibly be underrated. I find him practically unreadable, and it has nothing to do with his subject matter. It has to do with his writing–I find it pompous and arrogant (which is the poor writer’s version of confident). No thanks.
I read the full “Narnia” recently, after not being able to slog through it as a kid (and I read a ton of stuff as a kid). I was really annoyed by the sheer inelegance of the religious allegories they contain. Apparently, his idea of allegory is a great big sledgehammer with which he repeatedly whacks the reader over the head. I mean, you’d have to be an imbecile (or, I guess, a sheltered child) not to “get” it. That was at best a distraction from the story, and at worst a force that made me want to throw the tome across the room into a fireplace I do not possess.
I’ll go see the movie anyway, because I enjoy spectacles, but I may have to make myself a t-shirt that says “Tolkien was right” or “Happy Atheist” to wear.
Well, Lewis was still a conservative Christian, as you point out, so it stands to reason that he’s not going to portray non-Christian deities in the greatest light. Not an excuse for the lack of cultural/religious tolerance, but an explanation. But the willingness to admit that those of other faiths (or presumably no faith) can be saved is still more than Toynbee seems to want to give him credit for, and is antithetical to anything fundamentalist Christians believe.
Yes, the Christian symbolism is impossible to miss, but I think it adds to the story. Of course, I was raised a Christian and still maintain the identity to an extent, so maybe I’m skewed in my views a bit.
He thinks that Narnia is bad because it romanticizes childhood and stigmitizes adulthood and adult sexuality.
Pullman really thinks that Lewis, a guy writing in the 1940s who didn’t even marry until he was well into middle-age, should have been writing groundbreaking books about teenage sexuality?
Pullman’s even more of an idiot than I thought, then.
The Narnia books were very formative for me, though I wouldn’t call myself specifically Christian. When you’re a kid, the notion that you can do anything — including selling out your family and God himself for some candy — and still be forgiven is a very comforting thing to read.
I read the Narnia books as a kid, and it’s one of the few books (or series, rather) that I never bothered to finish. I remember a rather visceral dislike of the characters that I couldn’t have described at the time. That being said, I never knew it was supposed to be this big Christian allegory, and I grew up in a very religious home. From what I’ve seen from others commenting around the web, I’m not alone in this. PZ had the same memory, and I don’t think we’re imbeciles, although I was probably only in second grade at the time, so maybe the “subtlety” of it didn’t come through for me.
As for Pullman, I appreciate his politics, but the last book of His Dark Materials sucked balls.
Pullman really thinks that Lewis, a guy writing in the 1940s who didn’t even marry until he was well into middle-age, should have been writing groundbreaking books about teenage sexuality?
Um, no. You don’t have to write “groundbreaking books about teenaged sexuality” to avoid banishing female characters because they become trashy sluts when they decide they like lipstick.
When you’re a kid, the notion that you can do anything — including selling out your family and God himself for some candy — and still be forgiven is a very comforting thing to read.
Hee hee. And true.
I think we’re all forgetting something: What does that master of fantasy as allegory, Theodore Beale, have to say?
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.
Dude. Seriously, I haven’t really read these books since I was 8, but I remember that part.
Most of what I like about these Narnia movies (besides it letting this happen) is that Narnia theology is basically the total antithesis of Left Behind/Purpose Driven Life/wishy-washy middle America Evangelical theology. Jesus isn’t going to find your fat ass a parking space or help you quit snorting Oxycontin, because he’s a lion. He shows up when he feels like it, and then wanders away for big chunks of the story. He’s nobody’s co-pilot. You can’t just mix mideast war and Israel and The International Jewry together in a pot and say the magic words and “summon” him to kill your enemies. Republican Jesus is a tame lion, because Republicans need to control everything, including their gods. Narnia Jesus doesn’t want to disembowel you with his razor-sharp claws for being a dick, but he can’t guarantee anything.
I always thought Tash and the Calormenes were more flavored of Islam/Arabic culture than Hinduism.
I was raised in a heavily Catholic household, so I guess the religious aspects of the books didn’t reach out and poke me in the eye when I read the books as a kid. Maybe I’ll go back and re-read them now.
I plan to see the movie because basically, anything the Weta workshop is involved in is pretty much guaranteed to be full-on eyecandy.
Um, no. You don’t have to write “groundbreaking books about teenaged sexuality” to avoid banishing female characters because they become trashy sluts when they decide they like lipstick.
That’s not really the problem with Susan in The Last Battle (though I hate to be put in the position of defending what is by far the weakest and most tedious of the books). The problem is that she now remembers Narnia as a mere children’s game and Aslan as one of the characters in it, while her brothers and sister remember it as something real and true. It’s her disparagement of something they all experienced together that really puts her over the top.
But it’s true that Lewis had very little patience with feminine nonsense. That’s why Aravis is the heroine of A Horse and His Boy — she can jump, ride, and scheme as well as — if not better than — any male in her vicinity. As a particularly unfeminine female, I liked that Aravis could kick Cor’s butt at everything they did together and still marry him in the end.
Tash and the Calormenes
Didn’t they open for Frank Black and the Catholics last year?
Didn’t they open for Frank Black and the Catholics last year?
Heh!
The sad thing about Meloy’s comments is that “Lua” is, by far, the best song on either of those albums. That is to say, it’s the one song I could stand on either disc, despite really, really wanting to like them.
I was a mopey and depressed teenager and college student a few years too early to qualify as an “emo kid”, and I’ve always been a folkie at heart, so if Bright Eyes had appeared at a different point of my life I would have been a huge fan. As it is, my total failure to enjoy anything he’s ever done just makes it clear that I’m finally over that phase of my life, which is a good thing.
Agreed with Mnemosyne re: the lipstick thing. I would argue that the lipstick isn’t symbolic of Susan’s sexuality. It’s more symbolic of her growing up, becoming a cynical teen, and renouncing her childhood fantasies and imagination. Of course, that idea still might be painful for those of you who aren’t Christian, since the childhood imagination = Christianity and she’s shut out of heaven, so to speak.
I won’t slam you. I’ll just say that I disagree with you and that I like most of Ellis’ books. There’s plenty of understandable reasons to dislike Ellis; the flaws in his books are in my opinion not subtle at all, but I enjoy them nonetheless.
I think, though, that the other aspirant to New Lost Generation status contemporary with Ellis - Jay McInerney - is better. I loved Story Of My Life in particular.
It’s more symbolic of her growing up, becoming a cynical teen, and renouncing her childhood fantasies and imagination.
I dunno. Like I said, I haven’t read the book, but doesn’t that seem like a pretty loaded and gendered symbol of becoming a cynical teen? And since we all do grow up, unless we’re tragically unlucky, does it make sense to make growing up into an act of betrayal? I mean, who wants to stay a kid forever? Is that a healthy thing to aspire to?
Of course, that idea still might be painful for those of you who aren’t Christian, since the childhood imagination = Christianity and she’s shut out of heaven, so to speak.
I wouldn’t say it’s painful. I’d say that it’s unappealing. I like lipstick, and I’m profoundly grateful that I wasn’t raised in a religious tradition that equated growing up with being shut out of heaven.
As I remember it, many adults made it into heaven in Narnia. Growing up wasn’t the thing that would get you shut out of heaven; failing to believe was.
Ok. But what do lipstick and nylons have to do with failing to believe?
Agreed with Mnemosyne re: the lipstick thing. I would argue that the lipstick isn’t symbolic of Susan’s sexuality. It’s more symbolic of her growing up, becoming a cynical teen, and renouncing her childhood fantasies and imagination
To put it in Pandagonian terms, it’s like she was that friend you grew up with that you used to listen to music with and share musical discoveries with, and then she decided, when she left for college, that she was only going to listen to classical music and refused to hang out with you and play some B-52s CDs, anymore, even for old-time’s sake.
Ok. But what do lipstick and nylons have to do with failing to believe?
Because it’s not the lipstick and nylons that are the point of what Lewis says (though people who haven’t read the book like to pick that line out). The point is that Susan becomes cynical and materialistic and considers memories of Narnia and Aslan (ie Christianity/Jesus) to be “children’s tales” that aren’t worth listening to.
Remember, at this point in the series, Susan isn’t a child (or even a teenager) anymore — she’s a grown woman in her 20s. She’s an adult. Lewis makes it clear that it’s her “adult” rejection of Narnia that’s the problem, not the specific items (lipstick and nylons) that are a shorthand for that rejection.
Actually, Mnemosyne, many of the people who raise the “lipstick and nylons” line have read the books and like them, albeit not in a way that precludes reading them critically. Here’s Neil Gaiman, for instance, on his story “The Problem of Susan”:
I’ll shut up now.
(And I’m not even going to tell you what my favorite children’s books are. Problematic doesn’t even begin to get into it.)
Here’s the passage under dispute, by the way, from page 169 of The Last Battle:
You be the judge — is Lewis criticizing Susan for liking lipstick and nylons, or is the fact that she’s “interested in nothing nowadays but lipstick and nylons” (my emphasis) the problem?
Actually, Mnemosyne, many of the people who raise the “lipstick and nylons” line have read the books and like them, albeit not in a way that precludes reading them critically. Here’s Neil Gaiman, for instance, on his story “The Problem of Susan”:
But I’ll shut up now, because I haven’t read the book. Maybe Rowling and Gaiman and Pullman are all misinterpreting it.
Eek. Sorry for the double post. I waited to see if it would pop up the first time!
“Nobody else has said it–or mentioned this part of the post–so I’ll stick my neck out for the inevitable slam. I don’t think Ellis can possibly be underrated. I find him practically unreadable, and it has nothing to do with his subject matter. It has to do with his writing–I find it pompous and arrogant (which is the poor writer’s version of confident). No thanks.”
I don’t know if I’d consider him unreadable, but of the two books of his I’ve read, he’s an unpleasant read. Worst of the “younger hotshots” still has to be the chump who wrote “Snow Falling on Cedars”. God that was brutal.
I’ll shut up now.
I hope I didn’t make you feel like you need to shut up. It’s just that I think that Pullman has seriously misread that passage if he’s under the impression that Lewis’ criticism of Susan is that she dared to grow up, become interested in boys, and wear nylons and lipstick.
There are, I think, a lot of perfectly legitimate criticisms of the Narnia books. They’re very bound to a particular class and culture at a particular time in history. (The colonialism and nativism is particularly cringe-worthy today.)
However, I do think that people who criticize the “lipstick and nylons” passage didn’t bother to read the whole thing.
Well said, badteeth, about Snow Falling On Cedars. I rarely read fiction, but I actually read that one for a short-lived book club. Yet only a few years later I can’t remember a damned thing about it. How memorable.
[Posting this again, it seems to have disappeared into the ether, so sorry if it double posts]
On a bit of a tangent, an interesting book on Lewis is The Question of God : C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life by Dr. Armand Nicoli, (Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital). The author chooses to examine the existence or non-existence of God by contrasting the lives and philosophies of Lewis, one of the best-known Christians, and Freud, one of the best-known atheists. In effect, he has them debate each other. Given that I just posted with some pretty damned harsh things said about the book (http://spaces.msn.com/members/seeker6079/Blog/cns!1pc6G9v5X5H6EAxs94pgZGkA!135.entry ), it may seem odd for me to say that it is well worth reading, yet I do. It challenges you to think, to feel, to examine your preconceived notions and wonder at the questions of the infinite. And in a world where people of faith often challenge not your intellect, but rather your very rights and humanity — and even whether you are even allowed to exist — such a warm embrace and invitation to reason’s home is to be grasped with both hands.
But doesn’t Colin Meloy know that he is orders of magnitude hotter than the Keane-eyed stick insect that is Oberst?
Though I should probably say that when I first read The Last Battle, I instinctively hated that passage, too. Mostly because it feels very thrown-in and tacked-on, as though Lewis felt he had to sacrifice one of the characters but didn’t decide on which one until the last possible minute. It also seems quite a bit out of character for Queen Susan, who was a deadly archer and quite the marital prize back in her day.
Basically, I don’t think Lewis really laid the groundwork for it, and it sticks out like a sore thumb because of that. But I think the people who read a huge amount into the “lipstick and nylons” part of it are working a little too hard.
Interesting.
I’m going to see Narnia, but just ‘cause it has the pretty lion in it (I like lions).
I read the book, too . . . sorta. Bought the big seven-pack, read the first two books, and basically gagged at the over-the-top . . . well, thisclose to plagiarism from the Bible. And moved on to something significantly better: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.
Kyra, you didn’t read them in the “new” order, did you? Because The Magician’s Nephew makes NO sense if you read it before The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Grr. Stupid Lewis’ stepson, ruining the books for everyone who reads them now. I’m going to give them to my niece in the CORRECT order, with Nephew as the sixth book in the series, not the first.
The proper order for the Chronicles of Narnia is this:
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Horse and His Boy
The Magician’s Nephew
The Last Battle
Snow Falling on Cedars was a perfectly good mystery novel ruined by literary pretension.
Oh, I think the Grauniad is going to be getting a little letter from me…
the two dons may have shared the same love of unquestioning feudal power, with worlds of obedient plebs and inferior folk eager to bend at the knee to any passing superior white persons - even children; both their fantasy worlds and their Christianity assumes that rigid hierarchy of power -
Either a) Polly Toynbee hasn’t actually read any Tolkien, just the Spark!Notes versions, or maybe David Brin, or b) her reading comprehension sucks.
Not that these are mutually exclusive, of course (e.g. David Brin.)
Bonus points for correctly identifying the source of this line:
“Give us your crown!”
I loved Narnia as a child for the sheer fantasy of going into a simple wardrobe and ending up in a strange land. I still find the premise thrilling. I found Susan’s rejection of Narnia to be incomparably sad, perhaps because it epitomised all of the things about growing up that I feared. My youngest daughter is knee-deep in the books now, and loves them as much as I did.
Re: Bright Eyes–I love True Blue and I love Lua. So there.
V. Bacfarc said on December 5, 2005 04:42 PM:
Lewis is hardly a democrat
Um, unless you think he was lying, he certainly was.
(unf. today we have the worst of both worlds - robber barons who have become Grand Inquisitors…)
mnem, agreed - when you read them in light of Screwtape and the general condemnation of conformity and herd-mindset towards a mass-produced pop-culture commercialism, your interpretation sharpens. “Being like stalks” and afraid of being thought the sort of person who reads genre books - CSL talks about how when he was young he read fantasy secretly b/c he was afraid people wouldn’t think he was grown up and would diss him, but when he grew up really he stopped caring and read sf boldly. The mindset that doesn’t speak up when someone else is being tormented in jr high for being “weird” or geeky is the same mindset that doesn’t speak up for people being tortured because they’re enemies of the state…
And actually Lewis is anti-Imperialist - the whole of Silent Planet is a very broad joke on the Great White Hunter vs the Simple Natives meme so beloved of Hollywood and british pulp fiction.
I’m not sure I can get behind any interpretation of religion in general that denies the powerful, muscular, and revolutionary possibilities inherent in the religious experience. Trashing on an active, dynamic Christianity simply because it reminds you of the idiots would would like to claim it for their own is giving the idiots far too much credit. The power of Christ to liberate the oppressed and throw down tyrants is an important part of the appeal of Christianity and, historically, has been a great force for much good in the world.
We do live in times, in the US, that seem impoverished of the comforting, nuturing, and healing aspects of what is associated with Jesus Christ. But it’s important to keep in mind, as well, that there’s nothing exclusive about Christ the lamb and Christ the lion.
Narina in LW&W is a land oppressed, its people enslaved by a ursurper. Though surely constructed to be so by Lewis, who always has a point to make and rarely troubles to be too subtle about making it, the fact is that the circumstance is entirely in line with the aspects of Christiantiy that he wished to highlight. The liberation of Narnia by Aslan is a victory over oppression, a victory that liberated countless lives and banished a great tyrant. It is ludicrous in the extreme to state that the message of that part of LW&W is ‘might makes right’; it is certainly, rather, ‘right makes might’, which has always been one of Lewis’ messages (and one that is sadly neglected by our current social leaders).
The Decemberists? That’s the best you can do? It’s not like the excerpeted critic is an acolyte of a toothless hobo/ naive genius who sings only on even Tuesdays on random F train platforms. Like Bright Eyes, The Decemberists are a hipster band, and a hipster band whose current ‘hit’ is a dullish starcrossed English country house fantasy, at that.
I myself liked the Chronicles of Narnia until the fifth grade, when a well meaning teacher at my Catholic school made a point of dragging all the Christian allegory into view, ruining it for me forever.
Just to put my two cents in on the whole thing…
Mnemnosyne: However, I do think that people who criticize the “lipstick and nylons” passage didn’t bother to read the whole thing.
I have read the entire septet, many times, from second or third grade onwards. I despise that part in TLB about Susan. I hate that an Aslan who is perfectly willing to let someone who thought he was evil into heaven is unwilling to work with Susan. That, and the fact that Susan just lost her entire family in one fell swoop — I think I cried for Susan at the end of the book.
There’s always part of me that hopes that Susan was left alive so that she can allow the memories to come back to her, so that she can join the rest of them in heaven.
Personally, I’ll be very interested to read Gaiman’s “THe Problem with Susan.” It certainly sounds interesting.
i read some of the narnia books in elementary school but no longer remember them. the only song i’ve really heard from the decembrists is “shiny,” and i really like it.
but i have to say, since no one else seems brave enough to admit it to what is apparently a very hostile audience, that i fucking love bright eyes. yes, he’s pretentious, and no, he can’t ’sing’, at least not like emmy lou can sing. i could try to defend him against these and other charges (like lack of originality–not to say he is actually all that original, but rather to argue that ‘originality’ is nigh-impossible and not even necessarily desirable), but i won’t waste your time with that now. (though if anyone wants to actually have this argument with me, i’m up for it.)
say what you will, of me or of him; i think he’s brilliant. believe it or not, reasonable people (even music snobs) can disagree on this point.
I read and re-read the Chronicles of Narnia as a child. I was terribly embarassed when I realized that the stories were Christian allegories, and not subtle at that. I haven’t read them as an adult. Still, I remember it as quite imaginative and entertaining, and I can’t seem my way to disliking C. S. Lewis. Voyage of the Dawn Treader was my favorite of them.
But, I will say that two things always bothered me about the Narnia stories, from the first time I read them.
First, that passage about Susan. I remember that short passage quite vividly. As an eight year old, I could feel the contempt for what Susan represented oozing from that passage. And what I understood Susan to represent was the moment of achieving adulthood, with one’s first real taste of independence and freedom.
Second, was the character of Lucy. She’s the first character introduced, and the last character at the end, and throughout she’s so innocent and infantile that she scarcely seems human. I’d feel vaguely sickened whenever that character was mentioned.
I think Eustace was the only character that ever seemed to grow and mature through the course of a story. Despite all the lessons and challenges, none of the other characters ever seemed to grow up at all. Peter, the eldest of the four children, was apparently adult enough to take the initiative to try to find the Wood Between The Worlds, but we never get a sense of him as an adult in the world.
And in retrospect, that’s what I didn’t me out about the stories — Lewis’s firm preference for childish innocence over adult maturity, and a refusal to move from one to the other. It’s hard not to engage in cheap psychoanalysis, but the way that the sign’s of Susan’s adulthood are implicitly about her expression of her sexuality can’t but be suggestive.
It leaves me longing for Milton, who at least championed experience over “fugitive virtue.”
Milton “he for God only, she for God in him” - a model for adult female moral responsibility?
Like we say in fandom, YMMV…
This comment affected me strongly - I think there’s much to say for it, although I rush to point out that a great force for good is not necessarily an unalloyed force for good.
A big problem for secularists, atheists and liberal theists is that the transformative power of Christ in the here and now is so often overlooked for the afterlife alone. Just look at a megachurch - “it’s fine to be wealthy, keep on hoarding your riches for Christ so long as I, your friendly televangelist, gets his cut”.
Where is the space for Aslan today?
i heard conor oboerst does lines of blow off the thighs of fifteen-year-olds.
but that’s just what i heard…
Well, I for one welcome these Narnia movies, because it will give some of us a chance to throw the American Taliban’s “beloved” C.S. Lewis back in their teeth. (How’s that for a Christian sentiment?) I really don’t understand their love affair with Lewis, since he was not even remotely their type of shrill, hate-filled, anti-intellectual “Christian.” Why, in The Last Battle alone, we have the bit that has already been pointed out above, where the virtuous Calormene is welcome in Heaven. We also have:
(1) No Rapture (those faithful to Aslan have to struggle against the followers of the false Lion, rather than getting beamed up in advance)
(2) Some of those who fought on the “wrong side” nevertheless are welcomed into Heaven at the end (e.g., some of the dwarves who were shooting the horses with arrows)
(3) Did I mention, no Rapture? Take that, LaHaye!
It’s been a while, but I also seem to remember that The Great Divorce had some speculation at the end about the possible finiteness of Hell. Whatever else he was, Lewis didn’t seem to be into sadistic revenge fantasies to the extent of modern American fundamentalists. And Lewis enjoyed smoking and having a few cold ones, too.
And Republican? Please. Sure, the pursuit of modern science and innovation bothered Lewis (and Tolkien), but given that Edmund and Eustace both get in trouble because of greed and selfishness, I don’t really see him putting a posthumous stamp of approval on today’s Republican agenda.
“Um, unless you think he was lying, he certainly was.”
Bellatrys, I stand corrected (although probably nobody but me is still reading this thread). I think I was confusing his politics with Tolkien, whose political views tended towards a kind of benign despotism. My memory may be faulty in that regard, too.
The main point I was attempting to make, though, was that one can like C. S. Lewis’ narratives without liking his politics or conservative (but not fundamentalist) theology. Neil Gaiman I think has the right idea: he’s a big Lewis fan (”Stardust” in particular shows some Lewis influence, as well as George MacDonald) without agreeing with Lewis’ theology at all.
One thing I certainly recall from reading Lewis’ apologetic writings (”Mere Christianity” comes to mind) is that he is extremely sexist: women are incapable of friendship to the level men are, and when disagreement in marriage occurs, the man is the one to break the tie. I don’t know if he changed that view after being married, and certainly “Til We Have Faces” is far more woman-positive than much of his earlier writing.
V. Bacfarc: “Frankly, I find Pullman irritating (Kyra’s parents are both evil bastards, but we’re supposed to admire them in the end, and who can believe that the sex act between the teenage protagonists is actually what saves the multiverse?)”
I love His Dark Materials! He may be pulling a diva act hating on Lewis so much, but his books are the quirkiest, most original and beautiful “juvenile” fantasy stories to come along in years, and they’re Satanic in the best possible way. I didn’t have the same problem with Kyra’s parents.
As for Bright Eyes, I’ve never heard him. I kind of feel bad for the guy now–it takes guts to look like a whiny dork in public.
No, that bugged the hell out of me. I never really got a strong line on what exactly the deal with Lord Asriel was, and Mrs. Coulter undergoes a completely inexplicable change of character that bothers me more than anything else in the books.
I really did love the first two books of HDM, but it completely falls apart in book three. The whole ending seems rushed and very poorly thought out. First of all, what happens between the end of book two and the beginning of three? Mrs. Coulter kidnaps Lyra while Will is looking for his father. At the end of the night, Will comes back down from the mountain, and yet Mrs. Coulter is now thousands of miles away without the aid of transportation. She also appears to have had Lyra drugged for several weeks.
And what’s the deal with the angels? He specifically says that they only appear corporeal for the benefit of humans, and that, in reality, they would appear more like abstract architecture. And yet they can be set on fire, have their wings broken, and be bitten by insects? And the head mucky-muck angel is completely duped by Mrs. Coulter? Because he’s horny?! WTF.
And then, at the end (spoiler), Will and Lyra can’t be together because they can only leave one hole open, and it has to be the one out of hell. But there’s apparently a convenient stairway right into hell from Lord Asriel’s castle, so why can’t the dead just climb out there? And the bomb! The stupid bomb that Will seals into another dimension, and yet it blows a hole in the one he’s in? Why can’t Pullman keep track of these things?
I actually don’t mind sex being the saving grace of the universe. It’s the fact that Will is probably fifteen at this point and Lyra is maybe twelve or thirteen that squicks me out.
End His Dark Materials hijack.
Nearly everybody says they didn’t get the Christian allegory when they first read the books.
It’s an interesting phenomenon, considering how blatant it is.
I rencently re-read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and I’ve found that I’m too anti-authoritarian to enjoy it anymore.
There was one part where Aslan is going off to die, and he says it’s his Father’s will, and the children ask if he could just ignore his father. “Ignore the Father!?” he says, in such a tone of voice that it closes the discussion.
Me, I was thinking, “Hell yeah, ignore your damn Father! Who the hell is he, anyway, that you have to do every little thing he says?”
Secondly, I kinda preferred it when the bitchy brother was bitchy. The good children are too much like pod people. They’re dull as hell.
As for the followers of Tash really being followers of Aslan if they were good, in it’s way it’s a very insulting sentiment. Whille it is a step up from Christians who think that heathens have no redeaming qualities, it’s essentially the same as saying “Frederick Douglas had the oratory skills of a white man!” It’s still pretty damn insulting.
Speaking of, I think it might be interesting to tell a story of some children who wander into whatever country Tash is from and befriend him. I don’t know, look at things from the perspective of history’s losers. I think there’s a rage and despair about being shoved aside so that the god’s chosen people can take your stuff that isn’t explored enough in fiction.
On another subject:
“The power of Christ to liberate the oppressed and throw down tyrants is an important part of the appeal of Christianity and, historically, has been a great force for much good in the world.”
Um… when? Which tyrants were thrown down by Christians and not replaced with equally horrible tyrants?
mothworm, I just liked the story, up through the end. Didn’t have the same doubletakes that you did, but I read it quickly after being on the public library’s waiting list for months. You could pick apart a lot of other fantasy/sci-fi books in a similar manner.
I’m sure you could. I read the whole series within a week or two, so maybe the inconsistencies stuck out more. I guess I was disappointed becasue the set up in the first two books seemed so well worked out and promised a much beetter conclusion than was offered. I can live with a couple of nitpicks, but The Amber Spyglass just seemed riddled with holes that were too integral to the story.
Nearly everybody says they didn’t get the Christian allegory when they first read the books.
I didn’t, but I was pretty young when I read them and had a pretty half-assed religious education. I also was pretty fuzzy on why the kids were being sent into the country in the first place, not really having a grasp of the Blitz.
Then I read the books again — well, at least a couple of them — as an adult, and they were anvilicious with the Christianity. Edmund was the only character who was at all interesting because he acted out of some kind of motivation and underwent personal growth.
I was also really young when I read them, and it wasn’t that I didn’t get the Christian symbolism–it just didn’t leap out at me and make me go “Whoa, Aslan is supposed to be Jesus,” because I was basically surrounded by Christian symbolism in my daily life (devoutly religious parents, Catholic school.) Using fiction to allegorize the sacrifice of Jesus didn’t strike me as anything out of the ordinary, was all.
it takes guts to look like a whiny dork in public
Not as much as it used to. That’s progress!
As for the followers of Tash really being followers of Aslan if they were good, in it’s way it’s a very insulting sentiment. Whille it is a step up from Christians who think that heathens have no redeaming qualities, it’s essentially the same as saying “Frederick Douglas had the oratory skills of a white man!” It’s still pretty damn insulting.
The problem is, Lewis’s identity as a Christian required him to believe that Christianity is the truth. I don’t think it’s “insulting” to break with doctrinal conventions and suggest that virtuous people aren’t necessarily cast into eternal damnation for worshipping the wrong god. The analogy with Frederick Douglas fails, because it’s possible to be white and not believe that blacks are inferior orators. It’s not logically possible to be a Christian, yet believe that Christianity is incorrect. Lewis was finding the most all-embracing way out of the dilemma. I’d much rather have Christianity composed of “insulting” people like Lewis than a legion of drones clutching Bibles they’ve never read, marching in lockstep toward theocratic dominion. Not least because in the exchange in question, Aslan also turns it around and says that those who do evil in his name belong to Tash. This would not bode well for Messrs Robertson, Falwell, and Dobson.
I fall in the category of never having noticed the Christian imagery when I was a kid. Of course, I think I read them when I was 7 or 8, and was raised in a secular humanist household.
I read them later on, and have to agree with someone above that The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the one I still like.
As for The Last Battle, I always hated it. I didn`t know what bugged me about the Susan thing, but it bugged me. And the end with everyone dying just annoyed me. Having no good cultural conceit of heaven, it just made no sense to me at all that they all just died.
I’m curious to re-read them now, and see what I think.
I also notice that the “new order” is justified by a letter CS Lewis wrote to a child who said they should be read chronologically. I think perhaps he was just being nice to the kid. To be honest, the only one I think that NEEDS to be read out of order is “The Magician’s Nephew”. The others could be read chronologically I think.
Bellatrys:
I have a love/hate relationship with Milton. The worst thing about Milton is the profound sexism — in Paradise Lost Eve’s real sin is acting on the desire to be Adam’s equal, and Adam’s sin is his refusal to beat Eve into submission in proper manly fashion.
But there are also things I love about Milton, and in this context, I was thinking of the idea he often reiterates that it’s better to actually know the difference between good and evil, and choose good, than to be “innocent.” That’s exactly what Lewis seems to reject. He prefers “innocence.”
(Another aspect of my mixed feelings about Milton: Milton was a revolutionary, but he was a bourgeois revolutionary.)
His Dark Materials was secular?
Sweet Crispy Disco Ball, what sort of crack were they smoking?
“I don’t have much to say myself about a movie I will not see, based on books I did not read, that may have some allegorical allusions to a religion I do not adhere to.”
Well said!
And B.E Ellis is definitely underrated. I think that most people don’t like having their own devils reflected against them in crystalline clarity.