Quote:But so far, so good. The story makes sense. The lion exchanging his life for Edmund's is the sort of thing Arthurian legends are made of. Parfait knights and heroes in prisoner-of-war camps do it all the time. But what's this? After a long, dark night of the soul and women's weeping, the lion is suddenly alive again. Why? How?, my children used to ask. Well, it is hard to say why. It does not make any more sense in CS Lewis's tale than in the gospels. Ah, Aslan explains, it is the "deep magic", where pure sacrifice alone vanquishes death.
Ignoring the Christian allegory why is Aslan's resurrection any more nonsensical than say Gandalf's in LoTR?
Quote:Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to? Poor child Edmund, to blame for everything, must bear the full weight of a guilt only Christians know how to inflict, with a twisted knife to the heart. Every one of those thorns, the nuns used to tell my mother, is hammered into Jesus's holy head every day that you don't eat your greens or say your prayers when you are told. So the resurrected Aslan gives Edmund a long, life-changing talking-to high up on the rocks out of our earshot. When the poor boy comes back down with the sacred lion's breath upon him he is transformed unrecognisably into a Stepford brother, well and truly purged.
Christ's sacrifice is the foundation of Christianity.
Quote: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 Peale 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.
Newsflash lady that part is allegory too! It's supposed to represent the crown one gets in heaven.
The Guardian
I see your The Guardian and raise you Box Office Mojo.
Quote: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 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.
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.
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.
The other children follow Lucy through the gateway to snowy Narnia—the prerequisite is 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.
In fact, it does, with Narnia looking fake, though Adamson keeps it relatively convincing by moving things along at a brisk pace. 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.
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.
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. 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. The humans are not much better; Susan, the smart sister, abandons reason, 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.
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.
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.
Box Office Mojo
Wonderful.
The whole series is quite religious, but I liked it anyway when I read the books as a kid, and I also loved the BBC versions which I saw on video... religious yes, but also fantasy, and I like fantasy. Book seven was too religious I think (I mean before it had been religious, but book 7 goes way overboard with the Revelations stuff...), but that one didn't get made by the BBC...
most of your fables out there deal exclusively with religion, if the story stars animals you can bet that there will be morals involved.
Lewis had some amazing letters and memoirs, including a series of letters written between God and the devil as if they're old friends talking about man-kind. It was really awesome.
Quote:Lewis had some amazing letters and memoirs, including a series of letters written between God and the devil as if they're old friends talking about man-kind. It was really awesome.
That sounds really awesome. What's the title?
That would be an interesting read. Satan, before his rebellion, was an archangel, one of the 3 (that we know about) most powerful and important angels created.
I have read bits and pieces of "The Screwtape Letters", a book Lewis wrote that is from the point of view of a senior demon to his subordinates, and it is very good. But I've never heard of the one you mentioned, lazy. What is it called?
I think it was called 'Divorced', I read it while I was interviewing different churches at the time. The debate of Lewis would come up alot because of how and why he converted to Christianity and how he seemed to dip in celtic ideals and mix them with christian ones. Tolkein was a catholic and he and Lewis would have huge conversations about religion, at one point Tolkein tried to convert Lewis to catholosism but Lewis was more interested in the Church of England (a monster of a church that was out-right evil in the past and is now very laid back). But I also remember reading some things that were 'unpublished' officially; only published inside biographies about Lewis from other authors. That might be where I found the letters.
damn i'm thinking now that I mixed up divorce and screwtape because screwtape sounds alot like what I read but within a different context ('Divorced'). I'll see what I can dig up on the web.
And yeah LL, the story of Lucifer is one of my favorites. I remember studying it and realizing that there's nothing evil about him at all. He loved God so much, and wanted to be God's favorite and most loved angel, that he started an 'anti-human club' to get God's attention, his club grew in numbers and soon Heaven was split down the middle with anti-human supporters on one side and monkey lovers on the other. The war started and many angels were killed and Lucifer got this idea of forcing God to love him, God sent Michael and good ol' Michael threw Lucifer out of heaven and told him that now God has no love for you.
Which is what the underworld is. I mean if you strip away the BS that was added later about 'Hell' (Named after Hellen) and all the weird ideas of it; by sinning against God your immortal soul is placed in the underworld and never allowed to enter heaven, instead you 'live' in the underworld without God's love. or another way of saying it is 'live forever in your guilt'. Lucifer now is trying to collect these people who hate God for his ideals and will eventually amass a new army to try and overthrow God and force God to love him more than man kind.
I love the weird ideas about how hell is a place where you're whipped by chains or forced to do horrible things in a fiery torture chamber when in reality it's just the ideal of disobeying God and not living through him. The weird ideals probably came from people mixing greek mythos with hewbrew writings and turning Lucifer in to a kind of Hades who was transformed by Zeus in to a monster who rules the place of the dead (there's no heaven or hell in greek mythos) which is described as this haunting place where the dead are collected (basically what we consider to be limbo) and i'm totally ranting right now. :D
From wiki
Works on heaven and hell. The Great Divorce is a short novel about imagined conversations in the foothills of Heaven between the saved and the potentially damned. The title is a reference to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. This work deliberately echoes two other more famous works with a similar theme: the Divine Comedy of Dante Aligheri, and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Another short novel, The Screwtape Letters, consists of letters of advice from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood, on the best ways to tempt a particular human and secure his damnation. See, Problem of Hell.
Yup, i'm thinking I mixed the two. But the great divorce is definitely a good read and it was really interesting. I never thought of it before but its very much akin to the devine comedy.