Someday you will be old enough to read fairy tales again
--preface to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
There's evidently a lot of agitation out there over this week's release of the movie version of the C.S. Lewis children's classic, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. What could be the problem with a movie about four children who discover a magical world by traveling through a wardrobe? As the Washington Post noted in its Style section yesterday, the controversy centers on the contention that the book is a Christian allegory. In an entertainment world filled with the empty-headed likes of Lindsey Lohan and Yours, Mine, & Ours, it's surprising to realize that a movie might be controversial simply because of religious undertones. But a lot of ink has been spilled already, apparently to warn heedless parents that they might be exposing their children to something insidious. They may think they're taking their kids to an adventure story about a fantasy world filled with epic animal battles, pitting good vs. evil, but actually, they're endorsing Bible Belt entertainment. The Passion of Christ without the gore. What's next? Nascar on Sesame Street?
As Peter Steinfels wrote last Saturday in the New York Times, "Critics uncomfortable about the religious subtext of Lewis's stories have been launching pre-emptive strikes to alert the susceptible. Stopping short of proposing a PG-13 label (Parental guidance strongly advised -- contains religious content and fleeting Christian imager"), they have recognized the seven Narnia books as good escapist fantasy but please, please don't pay any attention to the other stuff."
These critics are quite vocal, and quite worked up. Adam Gopnik writes in the New Yorker, "Aslan, the lion, the Christ symbol, who has exasperated generations of free-thinking parents" is "in many ways an anti-Christian figure." Hmm. A lion-king who can liberate a world from evil only by sacrificing his life -- and then miraculously returns to life? An anti-Christian figure? "The books are better when read without the subtext," wrote Charles McGrath last month in The New York Times Magazine. "Aslan, for example, is much more thrilling and mysterious if you think of him as a superhero lion, not as Jesus in a Bert Lahr suit." In Salon, Laura Miller states, "The religious right is hyping The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. But just how Christian is it?" She goes on to shudder, "In addition to the usual TV and newspaper ads and theatrical trailers, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is being promoted by the Barna Group, a marketing firm that specializes in generating buzz to the Christian scene, by making advanced screenings, study guides and block ticket sales available to churches. Right-wing groups like Focus on the Family have endorsed the film." Tuesday night, a CNN segment that seemed transparently designed to terrorize blue-staters reminded viewers of the box-office punch of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, focused on a Baptist minister's determination to include the movie in his sermons, and finally burbled, "But sometimes a lion is just a lion!"
Whew. Isn't this all a little -- disingenuous? Regardless of the critics' consternation, although it is first and foremost a good read, Narnia cannot be stripped of its Christian underpinnings. "The whole Narnia story is about Christ," Lewis once wrote. "That is to say, I asked myself, "Supposing that there really was a world like Narnia and supposing that it had (like our world) gone wrong and supposing Christ wanted to go into that world and save it (as He did ours) what might have happened?" He also wrote that he wanted "The Chronicles of Narnia" to take the parables of the New Testament and cast them "into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations," hoping that this would make them "appear in their real potency."
This is a problem? Then what are we to do with, well, much of the works of Western civilization? Skip Milton, because some ministers in a red state emphasize fire and brimstone, and we are so much more progressive? Turn our backs on Micaelangelo's Pieta, because its beauty and power are somehow negated by its subject? Avoid Dante, because hell is like, such a downer?
I can understand that non-Christians might not want to see some sort of dogmatic tract, but The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is, like most works of literature, something that can be enjoyed on many different levels. It has unmistakable echoes of World War II: The children have been sent out of London to the countryside during the Blitz -- Narnia can certainly double as a stand-in for the Third Reich and the deadly effects of a world conquered by evil. The Beavers represent the stalwart Brits, and so on.
But the book has endured precisely because of C.S. Lewis's restraint and lack of proselytizing. It's a timeless tale of children cast in a world without adults, children who must brave terrors and make ethical choices. It's filled with centaurs, fauns, dwarves and talking animals -- and sheer adventure. Many, if not most children, don't grasp much beyond the immediate story line -- but the chapter of Aslan's sacrifice is one of the most powerful and memorable in all of children's literature. My daugher turned her face into my shoulder and asked me to stop the first time we read it. Someday she will understand the deeper message in it -- one that a child of a different religion or no religion at all may not ultimately share, but can either appreciate or choose to igore. In the end, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is about the wonders of the imagination and the redemptive power of love. To try to undermine that is, well, sillier than hiding in a wardrobe.
