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Thursday, 09 December 2010
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Steven Boyer has written an outstanding article about how the Hollywood versions of the Narnia books do not meet up with the message that C.S. Lewis intended. Here is an excerpt:
Narnia Invaded
How the New Films Subvert Lewis’s Hierarchical World
by Steven D. Boyer
"Hollywood Shifts the Center
So, what about Hollywood? Is the Christian vision of the Narnia films anything like that of Lewis’s own Narnia stories? That is the question we turn to next.
Let us begin with some brief attention to Walden Media’s 2005 production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—very brief attention, since we need to spend more time on Prince Caspian. This brevity is unfortunate in a way, because I think there really is a fundamental shift in focus in this first film, a shift from a story that is chiefly about Aslan to a story that is chiefly about the children, and especially about Peter as he grows toward maturity. To be sure, Aslan is quite helpful along the way, but he is no longer the center—and that is big news, if we are thinking about Lewis’s Christian worldview. So there is much more to be said about this first film, even if we do not have time to say it here.
Yet we must take time to note one aspect of Peter’s growing up that turns out to be especially relevant to our concerns. The greater part of Peter’s maturation is his learning to take responsibility for his situation rather than just quietly acquiescing in it. He must learn to take risks even in the teeth of Susan’s ever-so-rational good sense; he must learn to follow his own judgment, not just do what “Mum” would want him to do. This is not a bad lesson: unquestionably, maturity does involve this kind of growth toward independence. But consider the way this growth is formulated in the film.
The opening scene shows us an air raid in London, and we find Peter very angry at Edmund because the younger boy, rather than running to the bomb shelter as he has been instructed to do, runs back into the house to retrieve a photograph of his father and then has to be rescued by Peter. Peter performs the rescue all right, but he also savagely chastises his brother: “Why can’t you just do as you’re told!?”
A Strange Sign of Maturity
These are very significant words, for the movie as a whole consists in Peter learning to think and act independently—learning, in fact, not to do as he is told. The value of this kind of “disobedience” reappears frequently, but most significantly near the end of the film, in the high, climactic moment when the great battle against the White Witch seems all but lost. In despair, Peter commands Edmund to “get the girls and go home”—that is, to abandon this losing fight and get their sisters to safety. But the reformed Edmund now shows his own new maturity and virtue, and he shows it by disobeying.
It is a good move: by staying in the battle, Edmund is able to break the Witch’s wand and thus to contribute in no small way to the Narnian victory. In the celebration immediately after the Witch’s death, with everything now won and Edmund proved a hero, Peter offers a teasing, tongue-in-cheek “rebuke” to Edmund that takes us right back to the opening of the movie: “When are you going to learn to do as you’re told?” he hollers. Of course, he doesn’t mean it anymore. By now, he has grown enough to realize that receiving orders and following them is a sign of immaturity and weakness, whereas independent action, especially when it involves not doing as you’re told, is the sign of strength, maturity, and success.
Note well: disobedience is the sign of real maturity. This quiet, unobtrusive devaluation of humble submission to rightful authority is a significant omen of things to come in the later film.
Which brings us to the 2008 production called Prince Caspian. This film once again makes Aslan peripheral, and it also includes a greater number of departures from Lewis’s original story, including a sixteen-minute siege on the castle of the usurper Miraz that is nowhere in Lewis’s text. This film also addresses much more frequently and explicitly the important theme of hierarchy. Yet it is a hierarchy much different from that of Lewis’s books, and different in some pretty far-reaching ways.
This difference is evident absolutely everywhere in the film. One could look at Caspian himself, who is transformed from a noble and honorable young king in Lewis’s telling, into a tortured warrior whose unchecked desire for personal revenge against his father’s murderer leads to the deaths of scores of his Narnian subjects. Or again, one could look at the virtuous Red Dwarf Trumpkin, whose cheerful, good-humored embrace of obedience in Lewis’s story is quietly dropped from the film, replaced by the more modern virtues of sarcasm, irony, and cynicism...."
Click here to read the full article.
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