'Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion'

[jefferson_dem]

A very interesting review of the new film, from The Guardian ->

Children won't get the Christian subtext, but unbelievers should keep a sickbag handy during Disney's new epic, writes Polly Toynbee

Monday December 5, 2005
The Guardian

<SNIP>

This new Disney film is a remarkably faithful rendition of the book -faithful in both senses. It is beautiful to look at and wonderfully acted. The four English children and their world are all authentically CS Lewis olde England. But from its opening scenes of the bombing of their Finchley home in the blitz and the tear-jerking evacuation from their mother in a (spotlessly clean) steam train, there is an emotional undertow to this film that tugs on the heart-strings from the first frames. By the end, it feels profoundly manipulative, as Disney usually does. But then, that is also deeply faithful to the book's own arm-twisting emotional call to believers.

<SNIP>

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.

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.

<SNIP>

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.

<SNIP>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1657942,00.html

[SkiGuy]

1. looks like Polly has some "issues"

[Poppyseedman]

3. That is an understatement

I don't understand why atheist like this writer hate religion.

Why do they hate something they don't even believe in?

I don't believe the moon is made of cheese, I don't hate the moon. If someone says I must believe the moon is made of chesse, I nod my head, smile and walk away.

Nobody is going to make you believe or drag you to see the movie. Their hatred is strange

[trotsky]

5. I think it's about hatred of a particular interpretation.

Don't all of us liberals - especially the religious ones - detest the notion that the rich are rich because god likes them better?

Or do you agree with that idea?

[Poppyseedman]

10. Anybody who thinks

that the rich are rich because god likes them better?

Doesn't know a thing about God

Why would you think I agree with that idea?

[trotsky]

12. OK, so that went right over your head.

If the message of Narnia is that God's favorites are rewarded, that's a pretty bad message, isn't it?

[CarbonDate]

28. Willful ignorance.

I don't think (s)he wanted to understand.

[greyl]

8. Well, the separation of cheese and state is an ongoing issue...

central to human liberty and reason.
I wish you wouldn't joke about it.

[Poppyseedman]

11. In what way was I joking about it. I didn't even bring it up

CS Lewis never advocated the merger of religion and state

[greyl]

13. OK, so that went right over your head.

hint: It says cheese and state. It was a joke within a serious comment on your contrast of a person who has the delusion that the moon is made of cheese with... oh just pass the crackers. :)

[Orrex]

20. Head cheese?

No whey.

[JAbuchan08]

2. I still have a soft spot for the Narnia books

I even bought the boxed set, only to discover the representation of a vaguely muslim country as evil. I wonder how they will represent that in the movies?

[vonslagle]

4. Jeez Polly,

What did you think it was about?

How did Polly get out of Journalism school, without realizing that CS Lewis was a Christian writer?

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. Where does she say that she's only just discovered this?

There's nothing in the article to indicate this is a new view of hers. In fact, it seems she's held the view for a long time ("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.")

[vonslagle]

15. Just the tone

It sounds like she's surprised that Disney didn't write the Christian implications out of the film (Granted, they changed the ending of the original Little Mermaid into a happier more PC ending.)

I mean, if you hated the writings of CS Lewis, why would you ever go to see Narnia in the first place? Couldn't she have cited personal reasons for turning down the assignment? Would we really want to read a review of "Capote" by James Dobson? Or a review of "Get Rich or Die Tryin" by David Duke?

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. What - and pass up a chance to pontificate?

Polly Toynbee has never been shy about expressing her opinions. I think the good review of the film from the Guardian's film reviewer, and his remark that there's no need to get upset about the Christian allegory, was more provocation than she could stand. :-)

[Orrex]

17. Missing the mark

Lewis famously (and disingenuously, if you ask me) insisted that the Narnia books weren't meant to be Christian allegories. Sure, Clive. Whatever you say.

And what makes you think that she didn't realize that Lewis was Christian? Her complaint is not that the books are vapidly moralistic pro-Christian fables, but rather that the particular flavor of the proffered Christianity is so distasteful.

For what it's worth, I agree with her in that regard.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

24. There's an interesting discussion of that at

http://andrewrilstone.blogspot.com/2005/12/see-you-later-allegorist.html

As I understand it, what seems likely is that when C.S. Lewis said that the Narnia books were not a Christian allegory, what he meant was that not that they were not explicitly Christian but that they were not technically an allegory, and that when he said this he was using a very technical, very narrow (probably too narrow to be correct) definition of allegory.

I've never found the Narnia books especially offensive, but I haven't read The Last Battle, which is reputed to be the most explicitly theological of them.

[xray s]

6. CS Lewis's writings are nothing at all like this reviewer described

I would recommend the book "Mere Christianity" is anyone is interested in what Lewis really thought, especially the chapter on Social Morality.

As far as the relationship between Tolkien and Lewis is concerned, a book was writen about it (Tolkien and Lewis, the Gift Of Friendship), Which was reviwed on Booklist as follows;

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1587680262/104-5461695-8419904?v=glance&n=283155

The two most successful twentieth-century English fantasists were friends from shortly after their 1926 meeting until the younger's death. Both fought in World War I, in which all but one of Tolkien's dearest school friends died, and Lewis lost a buddy whose mother he thereafter cared for, as promised, until her 1951 death. As young Oxford dons, they discovered they shared a love of medieval northern European literature and, after Lewis (1898-1963), greatly aided by Tolkien (1892-1973), converted to Christianity, a common faith. Lewis' great aid to Tolkien was to encourage unflaggingly the development of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien reciprocated Lewis' supportiveness for Lewis' fiction and scholarship but was too conservative a Catholic to approve of the low-church Anglican Lewis' popular Christian evangelical writings and especially his limited toleration of divorce, which apparently seemed adventitious even to Lewis when he married divorcee Joy Davidman and never told Tolkien. In a graceful, sympathetic, and appealing dual biography, Duriez stresses their influences on one another and the depths of their friendship. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

[trotsky]

16. I was so incredibly disappointed with "Mere Christianity."

Not long after I realized I was an atheist (after growing up Christian), several Christians online told me I just *had* to read Mere Christianity, that it would answer so many of my questions.

Well, I did, and I was only a few pages into it when I realized it was some of the silliest and illogical tripe I'd ever seen. Worse yet was that he was trying to be serious! Mere Christianity I swear could have been written by an atheist wanting to make the religion look ridiculous and imaginary.

Oh, I trudge through and finished it, but it never did get better. When you lay down a foundation of marshmallows, it doesn't matter what kind of house you build, it ain't gonna stand.

[Orrex]

18. I agree completely, and offer an additional gripe

Aside from Lewis' farcically bad handling of homosexuality in Mere Christianity, his chapters on "morality as natural law" are intellectually offensively.

I've complained elsewhere that his writing suffers from the same fatal flaw of all apologetic writing--if you don't believe before you open the book, then the arguments are entirely unconvincing.

Though espoused as some of the 20th century's best apologetics, it's really not much better than Lee Strobel's awful stuff.

[trotsky]

19. Nail on the head.

if you don't believe before you open the book, then the arguments are entirely unconvincing

That's EXACTLY what I thought.

I will say that Lewis is better than Josh McDowell, though. :evilgrin:

[Orrex]

21. Ick

Yeah.

I have a particular dislike of Strobel because a Christian coworker pimps his writing with an almost pathological enthusiasm, but MacDowell might be the worst of the worst.

[Silent3]

32. There you go again...

...approaching this stuff with that hardened heart of yours. How do you ever expect to get properly sucked in like that? ;)

Oh, and here... take of few of these pods home with you. What do they do? Why, they help you feel better! Just trust me on this one. You'll understand soon. :evilgrin:

[divdeacon]

30. Mere Fundamentalism

I am divinity school graduate (Christian), and I also have a strong dislike for "Mere Christianity"--it's basically Christian fundamentalism without being blatantly disparaging toward (or pissed off at) women, homosexuals, liberals, etc., but the fundamentalist ideals are still there. I much prefer the theology of Moltmon, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, Gilkey, and the like. If you don't read a lot of theology and just want a good alternative, I recommend John Haldane's book, An Intelligent Persons Guide to Religion. He (a Christian) also wrote a very good book with JJC Smart (an atheist), called Atheism and Theism (or vice versa--I can't remember), which I also highly recommend. It outlines, very succinctly, the basic arguments for both, without an overt bias (other than their own perspectives, I mean) toward one or the other.

[nemo137]

7. Phillip Pullman, who I admire as an author, has similar issues with Narnia

I enjoyed this response to him, which I found on ALDaily.

If Pullman is right, not only should mainstream moviegoers stay away from Lion, so should evangelical Christians. "The highest virtue, we have on the authority of the New Testament itself," the avowedly atheistic Pullman said in a recent interview about the movie, "is love, and yet you find not a trace of that in the books."

But is Pullman right?
<snip>
Lewis's motives for writing The Chronicles were more complex. Did he, as Pullman charges, intend them to be "propaganda for the religion he believed in"?
<snip>
Lewis's approach in The Chronicles was deeply rooted in his own experience. A crucial element in his conversion was a long conversation with J.R.R. Tolkien in which Lewis became persuaded that the many and, to him, deeply moving ancient myths in which a god dies and is reborn to save his people had "really happened" when Jesus was crucified and resurrected, placing Christianity squarely at the intersection of myth and history. Lewis had an enormous regard for pagan myths, both for their marvelous stories and for the truths about origins, aspirations, and purpose he found embedded in them. In writing The Chronicles, in which the divine lion Aslan is slain to save a treacherous child and then triumphantly resurrected, Lewis was trying to write a myth of his own that had all the excitement and truth of other myths, including the Christian one.

Full Article Here
http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=84bgxkbbzvqrch10g3kbwp5g8kv3ccbn

[LisaM]

9. I don't recall their house being bombed at the beginning of the book

Granted, I've only read them about 50 times, but I guess I overlooked it.

I personally have always found these books to be a model of religious tolerance - in the last book, it is CLEAR that whatever god you choose can be the right god - and they taught me that all religion is the same, no matter in which form it manifests itself.

If they make movies out of all seven books, and really stick to it, I think the fundies will have a problem at the end.

[BOHICA06]

23. The gap of 60 years ....

made the bombing scene necessary. If they started on the train landing, like the book does, many if not most viewers under 40 would be saying "What? & Why?" The three minutes assist all understand the "why" of the rest of the story.

[handsignals4theblind]

25. - Narnia is a subtle form of indoctrination for Jesus

That like Christianity is what is so unfortunate about the TAle- it obssesses more about a "here after" than the very tangeable and real here and now.

[renie408]

26. IT'S A STORY

>>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.<<

Hey, try this on for size...in a world populated by animals, the kids were the ones with the opposable thumbs. That right there might be enough to make them kings and queens. IT'S A STORY. What fantasy movie or story of any kind gets by without SOME suspension of belief??


This kind of crap is what gives atheists a bad name. Why would anyone act so shocked and offended by the fact that there are religious overtones in a movie based on a set of books that are unashamed religious propaganda? That would be like being shocked that movies based on the Left Behind series have a religious agenda. Hello??

But like the Bible, if you are not inclined that way, it is just an interesting story. No harm, no foul.

[grumpy old fart]

27. Lewis would be outraged at this film and Disney......

<snip>...Throughout the last years of his life, Lewis made very clear that he opposed any attempt to create a film version of his Chronicles of Narnia. His main objection reflects a valid literary conceit: allegorical fiction is best left to the reader's imagination.

<snip>

http://archives.umc.org/interior.asp?ptid=1&mid=10384

[BoneDaddy]

29. Narnia

I grew up on the books, read them all multiple times. Narnia, is only offensive if you make the choice as seeing it as propaganda. It, like all mythological fantasies, is so successful at bringing into play the great themes of human experience. If you take it as myth, it is a beautiful tale of rites of passage, redemption, sacrifice etc...If you don't you will see it as all the problems we associate with fundamental christianity.

Remember that Lewis wrote this through the lens of his own experience and we, too, see it through our own personal lens of experience. During WW1, there was a clear battle between good and evil, so it was easy to fall into that dichotomy.

I think we need to be critical of Lewis and any writer, but I don't think this is the big hullabaloo people are making it out to be.

[hunter]

31. Too many mothballs in everyones' wardrobes...

In my not so humble opinion.

It's a movie, a Disney movie.

Next stop, Winnie the Pooh vs. Satan.

Spoiler alert:





















Pooh wins.