The Lion King
- JOHN J. MILLER
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is both a fantastic adventure story and a profound expression of Christian belief.
Because of this, C. S. Lewiss famous tale not only stands on the threshold of blockbuster success, but also holds the potential to become the next great battleground in the culture wars.
When Lucy Pevensie says that she has walked through a wardrobe
and discovered a new world called Narnia, her older brothers and sister dont
believe her. But little Lucy insists. By the fifth chapter of The Lion, the
Witch and the Wardrobe, the classic book by C. S. Lewis, two of her siblings
begin to worry that the poor girl has lost her head. So they approach Professor
Kirke, who is looking after them during World War II. There are only three possibilities,
he says. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling
the truth. You know she doesnt tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad.
For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that
she is telling the truth.
It turns out, of course, that Lucy really
is telling the truth, and it isnt long before all the Pevensie kids have traveled
to Narnia. Untold numbers of readers have followed them there more than
85 million copies of the seven-volume Chronicles of Narnia series are in
print and millions more will join them starting on December 9, when a film
version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe reaches theaters. The movies
commercial potential is huge. If Narnia werent by now one of the great brand
names in 20th-century childrens literature, its backers might have pitched The
Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to Hollywood as a cross between The Lord
of the Rings and The Passion of the Christ. Thats because it is both
a fantastic adventure story and a profound expression of Christian belief. Because
of this, Lewiss famous tale not only stands on the threshold of blockbuster success,
but also holds the potential to become the next great battleground in the culture
wars.
Narnia
certainly has its enemies. One of them is the White Witch, the fiendish creature
who brings perpetual winter to the land. Another foe, in our own realm, is best-selling
childrens author Philip Pullman, who has described the Narnia series as one
of the most ugly and poisonous things Ive ever read. (Pullman has explained
his own motives for writing books for kids this way: Im trying to undermine
the basis of Christian belief.) The Narnia movie may not deserve to generate
controversy, but there can be no doubt that it will, especially from the quarters
that objected to Mel Gibsons interpreting the story of the crucifixion. Watch
for Pullman to go on a new round of opportunistic Lewis-bashing, the New York
Times to print hand-wringing articles about Narnian theocracy, and the ACLU
to threaten litigation against public-school teachers who read the book to their
students or encourage them to see the movie. When Florida governor Jeb Bush chose
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as the centerpiece of a statewide
reading program, a columnist for the Palm Beach Post pounced. Frank Cerabino
complained about this cabal of Christian commerce and added, Were opening
up the public schools to some backdoor catechism lessons. As this manufactured
controversy unfolds, there will be crude references to the authors odd personal
life, which included a lengthy relationship with the mother of a close friend
the source of endless gossip and speculation and controversy. Others will
reproach Lewis for letting the word darkies appear in the Chronicles
(he was a racist!), accuse him of preferring his male characters to his female
ones (he was a sexist!), and theorize about why he spent most of his life as a
bachelor and enjoyed the company of men (he was a closeted homosexual!). The attacks
will begin from the moment movie reviewers not an especially conservative
group of people file their first dispatches. The entire assault may prove
relentless.
His conversion did not spring from a sudden epiphany, but was more like what his brother Warren called a slow steady convalescence from a deep-seated spiritual illness of long standing. It was, above all, a carefully considered decision. |
Thats because the Narnia stories are much more than meaningless entertainment for children. Some readers have said that the stories are Christian allegories i.e., literary representations of Biblical events. Lewis denied this, but he did call them suppositions: Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would have happened. And so Aslan comes into Narnia as a talking lion, suffers and dies for the sins of a child, and rises again. Most grown-ups understand whats going on here, even if many of the kids who listen to this as a bedtime story dont have a clue.
Clive
Staples Lewis, of course, was the greatest Christian apologist of the 20th century.
He was born near Belfast in 1898; he died at the age of 64, on the same day JFK
was shot. None of his contemporaries could compete with his wit, intelligence,
or influence, and arguably none has matched him since. He spent most of his adult
life as a professor at Oxford and Cambridge, and by the 1930s he had established
his reputation well enough that he was handed the prestigious assignment of writing
the third volume in the Oxford History of English Literature. It covered
the 16th century and took years to finish frustrating Lewis so much that
he wondered whether the pronunciation of its acronym, Oh Hell, was more than
a coincidence. Yet many Lewis aficionados consider it his finest work. Today Lewis
is revered as a popularizer of the Christian faith who also produced some literary
criticism; in truth, Lewis viewed himself as an academic who wrote about religion
on the side.
He certainly possessed a remarkable vocation for it, in
part because as a young man he had succumbed to atheism. Just as some of the most
penetrating critics of Communism have been ex-Communists, Lewiss own period of
irreligiousness equipped him with a disarming ability to explain and defend the
principles of Christian life and thought. His conversion did not spring from a
sudden epiphany, but was more like what his brother Warren called a slow steady
convalescence from a deep-seated spiritual illness of long standing. It was,
above all, a carefully considered decision. His friend J. R. R. Tolkien, a fellow
Oxford professor and an orthodox Catholic, was instrumental in coaxing him along.
(Lewis returned the favor: Tolkien once said that he never would have finished
The Lord of the Rings without his friends unflagging encouragement.)
The
writings of G. K. Chesterton also helped sway Lewis, especially Chestertons observation
that when Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, he was revealing himself to be either
a crazy or a phony or, in fact, the flesh-and-blood Son of God. This insight
would have a profound effect on The Chronicles of Narnia and their depiction
of Lucys initial comings and goings through the wardrobe. Before that, however,
it would help Lewis craft one of the most famous passages he ever wrote about
his faith.
C.S.
Lewis (1889-1963) |
During World
War II, Lewis delivered a series of radio broadcasts over the BBC. These were
eventually collected in a book, Mere Christianity, which remains one of
his most popular titles. In one of its short essays, Lewis noted that many skeptics
are willing to call Jesus a great moral teacher but unwilling to accept his
divinity. Lewis held a dim view of this position:
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
It is a jarring
passage by no means an iron trap of logic (it is conceivable that a madman
might utter wise words), but surely a line of reasoning that forces clear thinking.
Protestant evangelist Josh McDowell has called this set of choices Jesus
as liar, lunatic, or Lord the trilemma. In The Lion, the Witch and
the Wardrobe, Professor Kirke presents the Pevensie kids with their own trilemma
as they consider Lucys talk of Narnia. Call it liar, lunatic, or logic. Before
long, the children enter Narnia together and the older ones apologize to their
sister for disbelieving her story.
As it becomes clear to them that
Lucy is neither a liar nor a lunatic, Lewiss grand purpose begins to emerge.
After asking Lucys forgiveness, the Pevensies wonder where they should go. A
robin flies into sight and offers itself as a guide. One of the kids questions
whether they should follow it. Could it be leading them into a trap? Thats a
nasty idea, says Peter, the oldest. Theyre good birds in all the stories Ive
ever read. As Jonathan Rogers points out in The World According to Narnia,
This is the first instance of a theme that recurs throughout the Chronicles:
The children know what to do because they have read the right imaginative stories.
There is too little of what we really like in stories, Lewis once told Tolkien. I am afraid we shall have to try to write some ourselves. In offering Narnia, one of his main goals was to save children from his own fate of falling into the snare of disbelief. |
Yet
Lewis worried that the right imaginative stories were in short supply. (Another
subtle theme of the Narnia books is the inadequacy of British schooling.) There
is too little of what we really like in stories, Lewis once told Tolkien. I
am afraid we shall have to try to write some ourselves. In offering Narnia, one
of his main goals was to save children from his own fate of falling into the snare
of disbelief. Lewis believed that a powerful sense of compulsion spoiled his religious
upbringing. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to
feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? he once asked (in what was
for him an uncommonly stilted passage). I thought the chief reason was that one
was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. Then he continued:
But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping
them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them
for the first time appear in their real potency. If war is the continuation of
politics by other means, then Narnia is the continuation of Sunday school by different
devices.
And so each of the books in the series contains elements of
Christian instruction: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe confronts the
challenge of belief and introduces the concepts of sacrificial death and resurrected
life; Prince Caspian describes a period of corruption and restoration;
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader includes a baptism scene; The Silver
Chair recounts a descent into hell; The Horse and His Boy takes on
the problem of unbelievers; The Magicians Nephew offers a creation story
and reveals the origin of evil; and The Last Battle depicts the end of
the world. Many children who encounter these stories miss the analogues completely.
That was all right by Lewis. I am aiming at a sort of pre-baptism of the childs
imagination, he once said. So when Professor Kirke explains why Lucys reports
of Narnia might be true, Lewis isnt hoping that kids will think of Chesterton.
But he does hope to create the conditions for them to gain a sophisticated understanding
of their faith, when theyre ready to grasp it.
The
miracle of the forthcoming movie may be that its producers didnt try to distort
Narnia beyond recognition. There have been attempts to do this in the past. During
the 1990s, for instance, Paramount owned the film rights to The Chronicles
of Narnia and began to develop a script for The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe. Moving the books setting from wartime Britain to modern Los Angeles
(and replacing air raids with earthquakes) was the least of its flaws: The Pevensie
children apparently entered Narnia not through a wardrobe but through a swimming
pool, and the White Witch tempted Edmund not with Turkish delight but with cheeseburgers
and hot dogs. Worst of all, Hollywood proposed that perhaps Aslan shouldnt be
killed. That would have represented a literary sacrilege, like rewriting The
Passion of the Christ so that Jesus doesnt die. Some of these ideas really
shocked me, says Douglas Gresham, a stepson of Lewis and an executor of his estate.
Ultimately these scripts were never made into movies because nobody really wanted
to make them. One of the key factors must have been the concern that an unbowdlerized
version would be seen as little more than Christian propaganda. Indeed, even HarperCollins,
the publisher of Lewiss work, has felt the urge to neuter Narnia. Four years
ago, it announced plans to release a new series of books based on Lewiss characters.
Well need to be able to give emphatic reassurances that no attempt will be made
to correlate the stories to Christian imagery/theology, said a memo that was
leaked to the media. Lewis fans gnashed their teeth, and HarperCollins had the
good sense to shelve this rotten idea.
Unlike the works of other literary giants, which are often more admired than read, C. S. Lewiss writings have had an increased readership owing to the widespread acclaim. Yet Lewis is not great because he is popular; he is popular because he is great. |
By 2001,
Paramounts rights to Narnia had lapsed. Walden Media, a Boston-based company
headed by Michael Flaherty (who briefly worked for National Review in the early
1990s), bought them from Gresham. One of Waldens strategic aims is to take outstanding
childrens books and turn them into films. In the last two years, it has produced
Holes and Because of Winn-Dixie; next year will see the release
of a live-action Charlottes Web. (For The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,
and its budget of more than $150 million, Disney ultimately became a co-financier.)
Refreshingly, Walden has embraced Narnias Christian themes. The movie is true
to the book in almost every way. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
is a short book, so its easy to get everything in, says Flaherty. The film actually
contains several helpful flourishes. It provides extra historical context for
the German bombing of London and the evacuation of city children into the English
countryside. (At one point, a news broadcast plays over a radio in the background,
and the voice belongs to Gresham a thoughtful tribute to his stepfathers
own wartime commentaries.) In the book, Father Christmas makes a joyful appearance
in Narnia; in the movie, the scene closes with Lucy gently scolding her older
sister Susan, I told you he was real. Lucy is blessed with an extraordinary
gift of faith, a quality that allows her to accept the reality of Narnia when
her older and supposedly wiser siblings wont. Her new line, which she doesnt
speak in the book, actually enhances the story in an understated but compelling
way.
Unlike the works of other literary giants, which are often more
admired than read, C. S. Lewiss writings have had an increased readership owing
to the widespread acclaim. Yet Lewis is not great because he is popular; he is
popular because he is great. His greatness has been ignored by some, especially
in English departments. Others have scorned it. Such assessments wont change
this winter, as Narnia achieves its highest level of public exposure. Instead,
opinions of Lewis are bound to intensify. But the larger effect will be positive.
Lewis enthusiasts massively outnumber Narnias naysayers. Their ranks will swell,
as moviegoers become book readers and book readers dust off an old favorite. And
a new franchise may be born, as Hollywood becomes excited at the prospect of six
moneymaking sequels. It seems hard to believe, but the importance of C. S. Lewis
will increase rather than diminish. As Professor Kirke tells Lucys brother and
sister, when they come to grips with the possibility of worlds beyond our own:
Nothing is more probable.
This is J. Fraser Field, Founder of CERC. I hope you appreciated this piece. We curate these articles especially for believers like you.
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Acknowledgement
John J. Miller. "The Lion King." National Review (December 3, 2005): 45-47.
This article is reprinted with permission from National Review. To subscribe to the National Review write P.O. Box 668, Mount Morris, Ill 61054-0668 or phone 815-734-1232.
The Author
John J. Miller is National Review magazine’s National Political Reporter, based in Washington, D.C. Miller is the author of three books: A Gift of Freedom: How the John M. Olin Foundation Changed America, Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America’s Disastrous Relationship with France (co-authored by Mark Molesky), and The Unmaking of Americans: How Multiculturalism Has Undermined the Assimilation Ethic. In addition to National Review, he writes frequently for a variety of publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Reader's Digest, The New Republic, Boston Globe, New York Post, and the New Criterion. He is a contributing editor to Philanthropy and the author of a Philanthropy Roundtable monograph, Strategic Investment in Ideas: How Two Foundations Reshaped America.
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