W.W.A.D.?

I want to see the Narnia movie.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was the first "real" book -- the first book with more words than pictures -- I ever read. I remember finishing it and wanting to cry because it was over and I didn't want it to end. So I read it again, and again, and again. Over the years, I've read that book dozens of times, and I still love it. I still get to the end and don't want it to be over.

So I was excited when I first heard they were making a movie version. I downloaded all the online teasers and trailers and featurettes. It looked good. It looked right -- almost Peter-Jackson right. I couldn't wait for December to arrive so I could see this movie.

I still haven't seen this movie.

I'd like to. It's playing right up the street, and I ought to be able to just head over there and see it.

But, as it turns out, we're not allowed to just go see this movie, because it's not just a movie. It's part of the Culture War, don't you know. Buying a ticket to this movie means casting a vote in the Culture War. Or at least that's how the Culture Warriors will spin ticket sales for this movie. The better the box office for Narnia, the more they will argue that the "persecuted" majority is justified in persecuting others.

I really don't want my $6 (matinee price) to be counted as a vote for the Culture Warriors -- partly because the more their agenda succeeds, the fewer choices I will have the next time I go to the movies.

But the main reason I oppose these stupid Culture Warriors is because that's what Aslan would want me to do. After all, he's not a tame lion.

The Culture Warriors are legalistic, small-minded Telmarines, intent on driving all the beasts and magical creatures underground. We should tear down their bridges and their schools, turn their children into swine and celebrate their downfall with a raucous Bacchanalia. Maybe that sounds a little extreme, but it's what Aslan does to such people in the next book in the series, Prince Caspian.

I still want to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe though, so I guess I'll have to buy a ticket. Then I'll go see the Harry Potter flick, and maybe Brokeback Mountain. Twice. Just so my contribution to the box office isn't turned into some kind of weapon for the Telmarines.

Comments

[Linkmeister]

My sympathies. I'm getting very tired of my entertainment choices being politicized, but that seems to be the way it is these days. If you go see either of the Clooney films you're inevitably going to be maligned as a supporter of (gasp!) "that liberal!"

Harry Potter, as far as I know, has not yet been categorized by the Culture Warriors, so you might be on safe ground there (I saw it Monday).

[Ethan]

I have the answer: Have someone buy you a gift card that allows you to see first-run movies. Cinemark is one such chain that does this. Then, use the pass to see anything and everything, as it does not count towards the box office "take", in theory. Even if my theory is false, it will feel like you're not contributing to the take for that movie, hence no culture war.

[Andy]

I went through this exact reasoning for Passion of the Christ; in that instance, my curiosity about the film was overwhelmed by my belief that its creators were pushing an agenda or message that I did not necessarily want to support with my money, specifically a Christ figure who was held up more as a call to arms (it seemed to be a prequel to a film that might be called, "Jesus is Back: And He's Pissed") than an accurate representation of Gospel messages.

I don't think that's the case with Narnia, though. I did see it -- right away -- and I loved it, and I thought it was exceptionally faithful to the book. I don't think the people who made this movie wanted to do more than make the best LW&W movie they could, and for their artistic endeavors and integrity, I was happy to part with my money. That the film has been adopted by the conservative "family values" crowd is not the fault of the film, and they're not the ones profiting from it.

[KCinDC]

Like Andy, I avoided The Passion of the Christ because I didn't want to support Gibson's religious and political views (and because it sounded like it would be a thoroughly unpleasant experience, since I'm not a torture fetishist). I also had no such reservations in seeing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and I was glad to see that the Christian component had not been magnified or changed to please the culture warriors. And maybe I've just been sheltered from it, but the volunteer PR effort from fundamentalist churches seems to be much, much less than it was in the case of Passion. Perhaps too many of them fear the satanic influences of magic and talking animals.

[Perry]

Just buy a ticket for Brokeback Mountain, then sneak into TLtWatW. That way your purchase will be a vote against the Culture Warriors.

[bulbul]

I like Ethan's idea. There are, however, no participating locations in Philly - at least not for Cinemark.
The alternative would be to download an illegal copy, although at this point, it's probably all screeners.

[Scott]

You just posted this to try to win a trip :-)

This Sermon Brought To You By Narnia
The much-hyped Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe opens in theaters today and for every bit of Narnia marketing you come across it seems you'll also find a corresponding article in the media.

The CT Weblog offers some broad coverage and specifically explores the question, did Disney pay for your sermon? Sermon Central is offering a Narnia sermon contest where you can win a trip to London and $1,000 cash. ...

[JM]

I found the film to be highly politicized: Not only are the Murderous Fascist Villians so eager to die that they actively impale themselves upon the heroes' tools (not weapons, tools), but they're so alien that they shed no blood, at all, ever, when they do this. I expect that this was something that had to be done to get the PG rating, but I'm filing it under "Wrong Messages to Young People."

[NonyNony]

But, if you let the Culture Warriors dictate what you can do, they've already won, haven't they? Just go see it. Buy a ticket for another movie if you feel that you must worry about the numbers (but remember, if the numbers aren't good enough we won't see the rest of the novels turned into movies).

I thought it was quite a good movie, and thought I expected more "in your face" Christianity from the hype that's been surrounding it, I think they actually downplayed some of Lewis's allegory. I need to read the books again to make sure that I'm not thinking of things from later books, but even the "crucifixion/ressurection" scene didn't strike me as overtly Christian as the scene in the book did.

It was beautifully done, though. I'm anxious to see the next two done, especially "Dawn Treader" (I could not care less if any of the rest of them get made).

[Scott]

Buy the DVD used from Half.com or an Amazon.com reseller when it comes out.

[patter]

OK, lone naysayer here. I didn't like it much, and I haven't yet quite figured out why.

Part of the problem was that Tilda Swenson's Witch was just more interesting than the CGI Lion. Seems to be an unintended consequence of trying to capture perfect goodness -- in any medium. It's easier to identify with evil than with good, and thus the bad guys become more fully-faceted, e.g., Milton's Satan in "Paradise Lost."

[AH]

I re-read all 7 books just before the films were released. I can confirm that the film is entirely faithful to the book as far as the degree of allegory goes. The main deviations were some extra action scenes to bump up the thrill-quotient of the section of the book where the children are travelling to their first meeting with Aslan. The later books are much more explicitly allegorical - most notably, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle.

As an atheist, by the way, I am frequently bemused by the way that sane evangelicals like Fred seem to think that C. S. Lewis is a better fictional ambassador for the faith than people like LaHaye and Jenkins. All seven Narnia books are saturated in an authorial tone of perpetual sneer at anyone who does not share Lewis's views. They are a deeply, deeply unpleasant read. If Narnia is a sermon, it is one that appeals only to the choir.

[Edward Liu]

I don't think that you can really do a whole lot about the Culture Warriors and how they will spin ticket sales for "Narnia." If you go pay the money to see the movie, then the higher box office receipts will be spun the way you suggest, or in any other way that supports their viewpoint. If you don't go see the movie and box office receipts suffer, then they will spin this as incontrovertible proof of the power of the anti-Christian forces running rampant through the streets of America, which will still justify whatever nonsense they're trying to peddle. The same is true, but with reversed justifications, if you go to see "Brokeback Mountain" or "Breakfast on Pluto" instead.

For what it's worth, Hollywood is really good at justifying box office numbers to get them to mean what they want them to as well. My favorite was when they blamed the failure of the second Tomb Raider movie on poor reviews for the latest video game, rather than because the first movie was a steaming pile and the sequel looked even worse. The filmmaker said that the success of "March of the Penguins" should mean that it should be easier to get funding for documentaries, but the actual result would probably be that it will be easier to get funding for movies with penguins in them.

I believe in letting your dollars make statements, political or otherwise, but there's only so much you can do when people go to such lengths to deliberately misrepresent reality. So I say go see the movie and let the Culture Warriors and Hollywood spinmeisters and everybody else make of it what they will. They'll do it anyway no matter what you say to them afterwards.

[AH]

Forgot to add that the absence of that sneer makes watching the film a much more pleasant experience than reading the books.

[Abigail]

I think Peter Jackson-ish is a good way to describe the film, which sadly means that it isn't very good. The filmmakers took PJ-ish to mean 'it's a fantasy set in an invented, quasi medieval universe and there are battles in, therefore it's exactly like The Lord of the Rings', instead of taking it to mean 'we should think, feel and breath the book's universe for years before we even start writing the script. Every prop should be lovingly hand-crafted by people who are even more fannishly devoted than we are, and the whole thing should look so real that moviegoes will leave the theatre not entirely certain that they haven't just walked away from, rather than into, reality'. The result looks plastic and feels like a mishmash of elements that don't go together, neither LOTR nor Narnia.

In other words, forget the culture war. Go see Harry Potter (which is also no great feat of adaptation, but at least it looks better), or any other film of actual quality. Someone who loves Narnia as much as you do shouldn't be exposed to this film.

[will]

What a curmudgeon.

[lbb]

As an atheist, by the way, I am frequently bemused by the way that sane evangelicals like Fred seem to think that C. S. Lewis is a better fictional ambassador for the faith than people like LaHaye and Jenkins. All seven Narnia books are saturated in an authorial tone of perpetual sneer at anyone who does not share Lewis's views. They are a deeply, deeply unpleasant read. If Narnia is a sermon, it is one that appeals only to the choir.

Boy howdy. I know they only made the one movie of the one book, but did all the Narnia fans out there forget all the racist slurs of the later books? Did you all forget about those nasty Calormens -- heathens all, living to the south in an arid land, dark-skinned, wearing turbans and robes and curl-toed shoes, dirty and nasty and smelling of garlic, gosh, I wonder who they're supposed to be? While all the noble Aslan-believers in Narnia and Archenland are white, blond and blue-eyed. Haungh ptui.

[julia]

FWIW, you know I have serious culture warrior issues, and I took ten kids and seven or eight parents to see it the first weekend for HM's birthday celebration.

If anyone can sit through the movie and honestly interpret a militaristic, bloodthirsty autocrat with secret police who punish thought crimes and is eventually defeated by her use of legalisms to do wrong as an endorsement of the current dominant wave of public "christianity," they're sufficiently delusional that my staying away would be in some way a confirmation of their victory too.

Honestly, I would have expected Bush supporters to leave with apoplexy.

[julia]

fyi, lbb, they're planning not to make the Horse and his Boy.

[Merlin Missy]

Fred, you could console yourself with the thought that, since the money's ging to Disney, you're actually helping a company that supports gay rights. (Disney-spin: any direction you can make it!)

[lbb]

fyi, lbb, they're planning not to make the Horse and his Boy.

Of course not. That would be too honest.

(I'm sure they'll have some token non-Aryans in the movies, too)

[Jacob Davies]

I saw it & liked it a lot, though I haven't read the Narnia books in a decade. They were among my favourite books growing up too, although I think I always identified with Edmund more than the others, for whatever that says about me.

The Culture Warriors get on my nerves in this one too, as they do with their claims on Christmas and on what the Bible says and means. But I think in this case there's enough distance between the movie and them that they can't lay claim to it very convincingly.

I had a few problems with the movie: no blood; too much somewhat-dull fighting; and (this probably reflects the books, but so what?) Edmund is dark-haired, brown-eyed therefore evil, Peter is fair-haired, blue-eyed therefore good. Speaking as a dark-haired brown-eyed person, I am more than a little tired of that particular shorthand.

These days I'm tempted to refer to myself as Christian just to reclaim some of that supposed moral high ground. I grew up in England with hymns in (state-funded) first & middle schools, a high school with a sermon in the cathedral every morning, and good comparitive religion classes. British education and culture is Christianized in a way that is not true in the US, and yet few people believe at all in any of the literal Christian myths in the UK. I am what you might call a militant atheist in that I have
no belief in a divine being or creator, and certainly that if some entity did instantiate this universe, they don't deserve & probably wouldn't want to be worshipped. I have a feeling that most British Christians do not believe in the literal truth of the miracles or the divinity of J.C. either.

But I know the new testament fairly well and the old testament somewhat well, and there's a lot of things to like in what Jesus said (or what's attributed to him - it works for me either way). I like Douglas Adams' formulation: "One man [was] nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change". You don't need to believe he was the literal son of a literal god to feel that way about the new testament.

Anyway, I feel like all of that is part of my character & heritage & upbringing and all that and I get quite annoyed when other people lay claim to it and say that really it all means that you should vote for Bush, oppose abortion but not the death penalty, and hate homosexuals. No, thank you.

[Nea]

See it. I have the same attachment to Narnia that you do, and it's a beautiful rendition of the book. The few flaws it has are pretty much the result of Lewis' lack of description, while it does a lot for humanizing the children.

I don't think that the box office on this one is really that much a part of the culture wars. After all, it's the evil Disney that made the movie, while the book tends to show up on banned lists because it (like Harry Potter) MUST be satanic because there's a witch in it. I know a pagan who considers it a "mithraic myth" and enjoyed it thoroughly without feeling preached at.

See it. You won't regret it. It's a stunning rendition, far more beautiful than the BBC ones of a couple decades ago. (All I can say for those ones is that bad special effects make the baby Aslan cry.)

[Richard]

Fred -- see it. You'll love it. You'll laugh and cry (I kid you not). The VSO and I saw it on Christmas day (should that have been... "holiday day?") and loved it. As Nea said, they did a wonderful job of humanizing the kids, and even though the hair color is wrong for both Edmund and Lucy, it's a lovely movie with a true epic heart.

[kodi]

since the money's ging to Disney, you're actually helping a company that supports gay rights.

Ah, but you're also helping a company that opposes allowing any copyright after 1927 to ever lapse into the public domain! This is all very confusing.

[Marco]

I have never read the book. I did see the movie. I didn't think it had any religious overtones at all, let alone Christian ones. Maybe the book was oozing Christian values and metaphores, but to say this is a Christian movie just because one lion comes back from the dead is a little over the top.

[Mnemosyne]

fyi, lbb, they're planning not to make the Horse and his Boy.

I'm sorry to hear that, actually. Aravis was probably my favorite character in the whole series and seem pretty fully fleshed-out to me despite her being a -- gasp! -- evil dusky Calormene girl (who does eventually "convert" to believing in Aslan, which is pretty easy to do when he actually appears to you in the flesh and speaks to you, IMO). Her main sin in the book is being an aristocrat, since Aslan punishes her for blithely allowing her maidservant to be punished in her stead.

[Evan]

As an atheist, by the way, I am frequently bemused by the way that sane evangelicals like Fred seem to think that C. S. Lewis is a better fictional ambassador for the faith than people like LaHaye and Jenkins. [...] They are a deeply, deeply unpleasant read. If Narnia is a sermon, it is one that appeals only to the choir.

I'm not a theist either, but I agree with Fred. Aslan has always been much more profound to me than Jesus.

fyi, lbb, they're planning not to make the Horse and his Boy.

[head explodes]

They WHAT? It's far and away the best book of the series! Not to mention the only one with a plot line that lends itself to cinema. You're telling me they're going to do Prince Caspian, with a hundred pages of the main characters eating nothing but apples, and then a multiple-chapter flashback... they're going to do The Silver Chair, with the Jar-Jar-esque character of Puddleglum and the characters getting trapped by a "To Serve Man" ruse that wouldn't fool a five-year-old... they're going to do the unremittingly depressing The Last Battle... and THEY'RE NOT GOING TO MAKE THE GREATEST INTERSPECIES BUDDY/ROAD MOVIE OF ALL TIME?!

[Evan]

Correction... I didn't mean to imply, above, that Fred thinks Aslan is more profound than Jesus. I just mean that I agree with him about the merits of the Narnia books, which I think are quite wonderful (despite the faults enumerated above), and I don't think they preach solely to the choir at all.

[Prankster]

Personally, I've been surprised at the *lack* of politicizing to which this movie has been subject. I mean, maybe I just haven't been keeping up, but it really doesn't seem like this has been the center of a huge tempest the way "The Passion" was. And it seems like some of the really hard-core fundies have had trouble endorsing it, since it does, after all, feature all those eeeeeeeeevil pagan creatures and magic stuff. Likewise, it's pretty obvious a lot of kids are going to see this oblivious of the Christian metaphors, just because it's another Harry Potter/LOTR-style fantasy adventure. As a result, the usual suspects aren't quite as able to claim this as an ambiguous win for their side. If anything, I think they're being forced to face the fact that here's an undeniably Christian story that's full of all the stuff they shriek about when it turns up in Harry Potter. Could that mean that...Christianity can co-exist...with other modes of thought? No! No! Does not compute! C. S. Lewis, what have you done to my brain?!?

So yeah, go see it.

(Though I was actually a bit disappointed. They get the atmosphere and general tone right at first, but then they try to blow it up into an extended LOTR-style adenture, which I don't think quite fits the story, which is smaller and homelier. Also, there was some really awful neo-celtic electronica crap on the soundtrack.)

[Rasselas]

I think everyone who lives or works near a computer, or even a calculator, has been fully informed of the contempt that the Internet's atheists and freethinkers feel for C.S. Lewis, and have felt since they started critical reading at the precocious age of 18 months.

Not all the children adopted by fundamentalists need be our enemies.

[Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little]

[brain dump]

Just to be the odd one out, I'm a Pagan who loves the books and thought the movie was absolutely perfect-minus-one. (The minus one is for Aslan's casting. I'm not saying that only James Earl Jones would have done it for me, but I think they really needed to get someone with a weightier voice than Liam Neeson.) I thought this movie did what ought to be done with a movie adaptation of the book: give you the spirit and plot of the original, and lovingly reinterpret where appropriate with a cinemagraphic toolbox.

Mainly I think there was reinterpretation done to make up for the lack of narrator. I mean, in the books, you have that Uncle-ish narrator kinda telling you what to think: "OK, Edmund's about to do something really nasty, but don't hate him, all right? Trust me on this." The movie, lacking this, instead tried to develop Edmund more, give him plausible reasons for being such a twit. I got the sense that the creative minds behind the movie took their cues for such additions from places where the book left the potential open.

I really like the WWII opener, too--again, without a narrator saying, "This took place during the blitz," you still have to somehow establish the setting. And they did, and they made it work double-time, using those opening scenes as another opportunity to flesh out the characters.

I think one of the places the LotR comparison comes from, aside from the deliberately LotR-style trailers (big mistake; LWW is a more personal tale than LotR, and trying to fool people into thinking they're going to see an epic isn't going to do you any good) is the way they took the battle out of narrative flashback and into real time, alternating scenes from the battlefield with scenes from the stone table. LotR aside, I loved that. For one thing, it made Peter's proving himself and Edmund's redeeming himself much more important, rather than the "oh-by-the-way" details they were in the recap in the book.

As for the Christian element, I agree with others who've stated that the movie neither magnified nor excised it. And see, the thing about Lewis, I find his version of Christianity a lot more appealing to me-as-a-Pagan than many competing versions of it. Lewis was fascinated by myth, seeing Christianity as the greatest myth of them all (which is not to say falsehood, remember), and he wasn't afraid to blend Pagan imagery and Pagan Gods into his Christian-themed stories. (That goes for the Silent Planet trilogy, too, as far as I'm concerned.) I read the New Yorker article recently that described Lewis as having turned to Christianity in order to rediscover, rather than flee from, magic. Given his fiction, at least, that seems an accurate description. I'm also really fond of Lewis's relatively sane take on the whole issue of what condemns a person and what redeems him. So, yeah. I'm a Pagan that's totally OK with C. S. Lewis.

[/brain dump]

Right. So, other than adding my voice to those urging Fred to go see it (and then post a review!), that's about all from me. For now. Thanks for reading & Have a nice day.

[Michael B]

Actually, there's been much less fuss about Narnia than I would have imagined. After all of the Harry Potter bashing that's gone on over the years, one could hardly blame anyone for returning the favor but criticisms of the movie by non-Christians (and non-fundamentalist Christians) has been very mild in my opinion. If only the fundies would return the favor some time in the future, but somehow I doubt they will.

[ninjanun]

If I hear the proclamation one more time that Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia are allegorical, my head just might very well explode. I hear it all the time from the pulpit; usually from well-meaning pastors who have never personally read the books, much less a real allegory. It's NOT a straight-up allegory, people! Pilgrim's Progress and Pilgrim's Regress were allegories, not Narnia. If anything, it's just a picture of spiritual things, conveyed through a mythological prism.

[/end rant]

[Mnemosyne]

After all of the Harry Potter bashing that's gone on over the years, one could hardly blame anyone for returning the favor but criticisms of the movie by non-Christians (and non-fundamentalist Christians) has been very mild in my opinion.

That's because the books (and Lewis) are pretty much the antithesis of fundamentalist "Christianity." The Narnia books have always been regarded with a certain amount of suspicion by fundamentalists -- I mean, Aslan tells a non-believer that because he did good works, he can go to heaven in The Last Battle! That's antithetical to what most fundamentalists believe.

Personally, I think a copy of the books should be distributed to all children being raised in fundamentalist families. At least they'll know there's more than one way to be a Christian.

Oh, and I suspect that Lewis would have LOVED the Harry Potter books. Hermione is very much a Lewis heroine: no-nonsense and smart as a whip.

[buckets]

"The result looks plastic and feels like a mishmash of elements that don't go together, neither LOTR nor Narnia"

The mishmash has in a sense always been there--it is, apparently, a criticism that Tolkien made. I suspect that Lewis was less interested in creating the universe than in building the allegory (contra, Tolkien).

[Lila]

I have to weigh in to defend "The Horse and His Boy". It's not my favorite of the series (that position belongs to "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader") but I love Aravis. I forget who, but some reviewer who hated both the books and the movies recently castigated Lewis for apparently believing that all girls are either tomboys or idiots. I have to say that was pretty much my opinion growing up: all the other girls I knew were either tomboys or, in my admittedly immature opinion, idiots. Maybe that just means I'm as big a sexist as Lewis. Or maybe Lewis and I are both, in our own ways, rebelling against what our society expects girls to be like.

As for the racism...hm. I don't doubt that Lewis was a racist in the sense that he probably believed white Europeans were in some sense superior to other people. However, he struggled hard to be fair. Aravis is quite a good character--certainly more admirable than the idiot Prince Cor--and the young Calormene in The Last Battle comes out well.

I'm inclined to view the (stated and unstated) racism in the Narnia books rather the way I view the limited role of women in the first three Earthsea books: we all have to start from somewhere, and usually that means starting with the tropes of our own culture's literary tradition. Some of us manage to expand or escape them eventually.

I also find The Lord of the Rings much, much more disturbing from the point of view of race. I would feel the same way about its sexism, were it not for this:

"Shall I always be chosen?" she said bitterly. "Shall I always be left behind when the Riders depart, to mind the house while they win renown, and find food and beds when they return?"
"A time may come soon," said he, "when none will return. Then there will be need of valour without renown, for none shall remember the deeds that are done in the last defense of your homes. Yet the deeds will not be less valiant because they are unpraised."
And she answered, "All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But when the men have died in battle and honour, you have leave to be burned in the house, for the men will need it no more."

[clew]

Gandalf justifies Eowyn's anger in an even more explicitly feminist speech, which I cannot now find: something along the lines of "she has had to stand more grief with less freedom and support than any man of Rohan". ...I always liked Eowyn and Faramir for overcoming similar insults of upbringing; 's why they're such a good couple.

[Rix]

Narnia didn't turn out to be the movie the Culture Warriors expected. It's too good-scary, too good-hearted, too creative, too open-minded.

[Amanda]

Haungh ptui.

Just wanted to stop by with a little praise for the best onomatopoeia ever.

[L]

Lila: Considering that the author of the Earthsea books is a woman, your complaint about them borders on the absurd. And I don't see how you could have paid even cursory attention to "The Tombs of Atuan" and say that there was only a "limited role of women in the first three Earthsea books". It's simply contrafactual.

As far as racism in LotR goes, in my experience most of these claims say more about the speaker than they do about Tolkien. I have no idea if that's true in this case -- although your assumption that Lewis was a racist on no evidence in particular is suggestive -- and I'm not going any further with that myself. But see http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=228636 (Easterlings are not Asians, and although it doesn't point it out, the Wainriders of Gondorian history correspond more to Indo-European invaders than anything else) http://scifi.about.com/cs/lordoftherings/a/aa012303.htm and http://tolkien.slimy.com/faq/External.html#Racist

Clew, the quote you were looking for is:

"My friend," said Gandalf. "you had horses, and deeds of arms, and the free fields; but she, born in the body of a maid, had a spirit and courage at least the match of yours. Yet she was doomed to wait upon an old man, whom she loved as a father, and watch him falling into a mean dishonoured dotage; and her part seemed to her more ignoble than that of the staff he leaned on."

It's also worth mentioning that Eowyn performed the single greatest feat of arms of any mortal in the story, and did so in a way that was unexpected precisely because of the sexist assumptions of many others.

As to the original situation with the TLTWATW movie, I think this is a scruple we need not hold. There is no culture war as far as Hollywood is concerned, only money. Thus we got "The Ten Commandments" in the 50s, and "Saturday Night Fever" in the 70s. But even if there were, more movies like this one would in no way make for fewer movies like "Brokeback Mountain". It's not a zero-sum game as long as there's plenty of room for quality cinema in the marketplace -- and to judge from the volume of schlock that's shovelled out just to keep films in the multiplexes, there will be for a long time.

[bulbul]

patter: Part of the problem was that Tilda Swenson's Witch was just more interesting than the CGI Lion.
Evil is always easier to portray. That is why CS Lewis wrote "The Scretape Letters", but not their "angel" version.

ninjaun: If I hear the proclamation one more time that Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia are allegorical, my head just might very well explode
I know how you feel. It kinda reminds me of "Moby Dick" - every time someone describes it as "the book about the whale", it makes me want to scratch my/their eyes out. It also tells me that the person in question has either not read or not understood the book.

Lila: we all have to start from somewhere, and usually that means starting with the tropes of our own culture's literary tradition
Very well said. Same applies to "The Horse and His Boy" which was inspired and perhaps a slight parody of "The Arabian Nights". Especially the way the dialogue imitates the style of the Burton translation, down to "as one of the poets said". Unlike Lila, however, I do not believe CS Lewis was a racist. All his works suggest the opposite. The fact Calormenes were portrayed as dark-skinned was either due to the Arab inspiration or simply a way of stereotyping adversaries or picking the most distinct ones. Kinda like the "terrorists" in "Die Hard" are German and tall and blond. Anyone ever heard of overinterpretation?
THaHB is my favorite, too. Partly due to the "Arabian Nights" thingie and the language, but mostly because of Aravis. That one passage where she's punished for her coldness is beyond powerful.

[Puck]

Everything is political to someone. All that matters is what it means to you.

Don't see it if you feel persecuted. But please stop kvetching about how persecuted you are. Or better yet re-interpret it so it doesn't have christian overtones.

It's just a movie. Don't make such a big deal of it.

[Lila]

L: Speaking of absurd, do you mean to say that a woman can't write a book (or series) with a limited role for women? I wasn't talking about how many women there are in The Tombs of Atuan, but about their roles: what you see them doing.

LeGuin herself has noticed the same pattern:

Le Guin admits that in her earlier works she "wrote like an honorary man." She was initially cautious in her feminism. Even in "The Left Hand of Darkness," she still used "he" for the androgynous characters and rarely showed them in feminine roles. She told me that she regrets having allowed her characters only heterosexual relationships. But she feels she wrote the best book she could given the times. [...]
At the time I read it, I didn't notice Earthsea's distinctly male bias. Nearly all fantasy fiction, from C.S. Lewis' "Narnia" to J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," featured male protagonists. Le Guin acknowledges, "That's how hero stories worked." She started on a fourth book in the mid-'70s to correct the imbalance, but put it aside. "Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea" finally appeared in 1990 and won the Nebula. (Faith L. Justice, "Ursula K. LeGuin", http://www.salon.com/people/bc/2001/01/23/le_guin/index1.html)

If you think this particular article-writer has an axe to grind, I invite you to browse the many other comments Ms. LeGuin has made about Earthsea and gender roles.

As for Tolkien's racism, his preoccupation with "higher" and "lower" races is omnipresent in the trilogy. "Swarthy" is universally A Bad Thing in Middle-Earth. The Men of Gondor have mingled with "lesser" men and "dwindled". Walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, in my opinion. It doesn't keep LotR from being a great book, but it keeps me from wholeheartedly throwing myself into it. YMMV, of course.

[Seth Gordon]

Speaking as a yid who saw the movie, I think the campaign to market this as some kind of clever propaganda for Christianity (of any variety) is too clever by half. Disney is offering pastors potential soul-saving brownie points in exchange for definite cash, and there is so little Christianity in the movie that Disney is clearly getting the better end of the deal.

[bulbul]

Lila: Tolkien's racism came back to haunt us when "Return of the King" came out. All the conservative pundits around here kept on repeating the same BS about "Men of the West" and their values and morals and whatnot which helped them prevail over the forces of Evil of the East. I was shocked, but not surprised.
As for gender roles in fantasy literature, at this moment I cannot help but feel very sorry for those of you who cannot at least read Czech or Polish :o). While in the English-speaking world JRR Tolkien is the uncontested master of the genre, in Central Europe he faces a stiff competition in the person of Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. His 5-volume "Wiedźmin" saga, while having a male chief protagonist, is centered around two strong female characters (a girl raised as a warrior and a sorceress) and features a large number of very notable female characters (sorceresses, queens and soldiers). The world of Wiedźmin has it all - elves, magicians, sorceres, dwarves and warriors, yet it has a distinct Central-European feel to it: a number of small kingdoms bickering and fighting over borders and order of accession with a large empire in the East constantly threatening the fragile balance of power, powerful free cities, strong guilds, universities and religious orders. And while his books often read as historical novels in the best tradition of Nobel Prize winner Henryk Sienkiewicz (the battle of Brenna in the final volume comes to mind), the way Sapkowski deals with difficult issues often begs the question why in the name of the flying fuck people still consider fantasy a "low" genre. One of the unifying teams of the saga is racism. The obvious example: elves vs. humans ("dhoine" in the ancient language of Sapkowski's world), where the immortal but sterile elves view humans as a pest and at one point engage in a guerilla war against them. The other way around it's humans against "the old creatures" - dryads, kelpies, veelas (sorry for the HP terminology), vampires and other original inhabitants of the continent where humans and elves are only newcomers. But it is the attitude of humans towards dwarves that strikes close to home in these parts - dwarves depicted as bankers and the term "pogrom" leave little doubt about who the author had in mind. There may be several good reasons to learn Polish, but Sapkowski is definitely one of the best.
And sorry for the stupid question, but YMMV is "Your mileage may vary", right? What is WWAD?

[Theo]

Is there a source for the claim that they won't be filming The horse and his boy? I agree this would be a crying shame, it's one of the more movie-friendly of the books.

I agree the racism in Narnia is significantly less bothersome and integral than that of Middle-Earth, and as we saw in the LotR movies the latter could be jettisoned without harming the story.

[Fred Clark]

Theo --

"What Would Aslan Do?" A play on WWJD? -- What Would Jesus Do?

[mds]

"and (this probably reflects the books, but so what?) Edmund is dark-haired, brown-eyed therefore evil, Peter is fair-haired, blue-eyed therefore good."

Well, actually, I don't have them handy at the moment, but the illustrations in the books show Peter as dark-haired, and I think Edmund is fair-haired. So there. :-) Maybe the filmmakers simply liked the results of the screentests.

"and even though the hair color is wrong for both Edmund and Lucy,"

Okay, this provides some independent support. But was Lucy's hair color wrong? I know it always seems as if she should have perky blond pigtails, but I thought Pauline Hayne's drawings had her dark-haired too. (Hmm, which would make Edmund the only fair-haired one. So what might that be saying?)

I thought the movie was pretty good, as far as such things go, though not as cool as Fellowship of the Ring. And the Christianity was very much of the take-it-or-leave-it variety. My parents both saw it and loved it, and I'm sure that they were seeing it as a purely Christian film. On the other hand, the kids behind me in the theater were probably not going to run out and buy Bibles afterwards. Lewis didn't really write religious tracts that were meant to cause people to convert upon reading them, despite many people's distaste with their overt religosity. I was raised in a fairly fundamentalist Christian home, and I think it was only on my second reading that I "got it." They were books about a lion, some kids having adventures, and talking animals, for goodness' sake.

"What is WWAD?"

What Would Aslan Do? It's a take-off on the popular American catchphrase, What Would Jesus Do? Frequently used by people who then decide that he'd ignore the poor and hate on homosexuals. Although I liked Duff Man's interpretation in that one Simpsons episode.

[Captain Slack]

The Wiedźmin series (more properly known, per the article, as Krew elfów, "The Blood of the Elves") is also the basis for the upcoming computer game "The Witcher" (a literal translation of Wiedźmin, although Sapkowski prefers "The Hexer").