C. S. Lewis

[maeve66]

And no, I haven't read The Screwtape Letters. But this semi-rant comes out of the general floating cultural reactions to the Narnia movie, as well as to many people who've counterposed it to Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. As such, it's in part a reaction to mistersmearcase's recent discussion of trying to read Pullman and his general distaste for fantasy novels, YA or otherwise, and in part a reaction to flowerlane's post about the Narnia movie. A lot of it is directly the comment I tried to make to flowerlane's post, but couldn't because of my mother's clunky old computer (no more -- now, she'll have DSL and a shiny new itty-bitty iBook).

So, for background: I like fantasy. I don't mind allegory, as long as I understand the allegory I'm being presented. I don't mind not understanding how everything in a fantasy works (this is to mistersmearcase, because it just seems like an extension of the "willing suspension of disbelief" notion. I do love Diana Wynne Jones, and loved most classic YA fantasy, from fairytales (Grimm Bros., Hans Christian Anderson*, the Fill-in-the-blank Color Fairytale books, to multicultural anthologies of same -- to mythologies from Greek to Norse. As an atheist child, I didn't distinguish between mythology, fairy stories, and religion. Seriously.

But C. S. Lewis is a special case, because to me, his work is only a slightly more polished version of exactly the sort of brainwashing he decries in his sci fi books, and to an extent in the Narnia books. Judging only from his young adult fiction and sci-fi work, he was very concerned that the secular humanists and commies and, secondarily, fascists, were taking over the world and destroying both the simple faith in a not-so-simple religion, and the irrational pleasure in "magic" that is the birthright of children. His is propaganda work, in other words, and it is propaganda work that is working really hard in exactly the areas that flowerlane identified in the movie, which (not having seen it yet) does seem to be pretty faithful to the book. His specific targets were: create a sense of wonder in children in the central tenets of Christianity, through surrogate figures; reinforce a basic system of Western "morals" and "ethics"; and reinforce standard Western gender roles for women.

Now, I will type the above (and the below) knowing full well that I liked the Narnia books AND his sci fi, as a child, though always with a twitching sense of unease. I could at one and the same time enjoy the stories and shudder at them slightly, knowing what I felt I was also seeing in them.

flowerlane's entry is a reaction to the movie, which she walked out of. And this was my response:

The worst thing I've read here (not having seen it yet, and somewhat dubious about doing so) is the change in the faun Tumnus. That's gross. For the rest of it, it's exactly the subtext and surface, too, of the book. Lewis was going (I think) for the pretty highly sadistic and sexualized Passion of the Christ with Aslan's sacrifice, and the shaving is just the Crown of Thorns, the binding is the scourging, etc. The first time I read it as a child, I cried and cried, and it was a pretty reliable weeper until my most recent rereading, which was last week. But I got the Christian allegory I think even the first time through it, when I was ten or whatever, and it made me very ambivalent and conflicted. The whole series did.

If you dislike this one, you should (well, should not, I guess) read The Last Battle, which is the final book in the series and an allegory of death and the hereafter, featuring the contrasting fates of faithful believers in Aslan, faithful believers (not their charlatan priests) in Pagan gods (in this case, a thinly disguised Islam), and atheists -- the grossly and curmudgeonly materialist dwarves. Guess who gets the worst of it? There's a scene at the end of the book when the rest of the (dead) characters are locked in a stable, but escape out the back into a purer, more "real", deeper Narnia. The dwarves refuse to leave the filthy stable and muck, because that's all they can perceive. NICE. C. S. Lewis was nothing if not theologically consistent.

For his adult version, see the sci fi trilogy Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength, all of which feature bonus anti-Communist plots, identification of Communism with Totalitarianism, and the worst, most awful essentialist gender stereotyping imaginable. Yes, I've been known to read stuff that horrifes and angers me. More than once. If I'm not mistaken, That Hideous Strength (which features a reawakened Merlin defending the Real Britain against modern scientific totalitarianism) has a nod to Louis Althusser in its arch-villain, a head-in-a-box who is a famous scientist who went mad after murdering his wife. I don't know. Maybe I'm making that bit up, in part. I know I read the book not long after learning that about Althusser (that he'd murdered his wife and gone mad)... he of the "base and superstructure is right ... in the final analysis", a construction I've always been fond of.

* and speaking of insinuating Christian ethics and morals in fairy tales; Hans Christian Anderson is the originator of that trope, I swear to god. His stories are horrific in their guilt-steeped and sadistically fitted punishments for failing one or other of the commandments. "The Red Shoes"? "The Little Girl Who Trod on a Loaf"? YIKES.

Comments

[flowerlane.livejournal.com]

I discovered the Screwtape Letters in high school and remember thinking they were clever. But I think the nuns never gave C.S. Lewis to us in grade school. Hell, our school was so minimal that we did not have a library. I really don't know where books in our house came from when I was a kid. Anyway, I blush to admit that I did not know what Narnia was and thought we were taking my nephew to just another Christmas movie. Last year we saw Polar Express - what do I know?
So I had no prior acquaintance with the book to compare with the Disney version. And nobody told me in advance that we were going to a kid's version of Mel Gibson's Passion - in English. My reaction was, as they say, unmediated. Simply on the terms of the movie, sado-masochistic misogynist militarist nationalism, I fled. As someone pointed out in a comment, that pretty much describes modern western Christianity.
Sorry about the long comment. This just turned out to be very interesting.

[celesteh.livejournal.com]

Something that is interesting in the book, is that Aslan does not discuss any of this at all ahead of time and aside from the two girls watching, the other figures in the story aren't told about it. Aslan, in fact, doesn't want the girls to watch.

Obviously, Aslan is a Christ figure. I haven't seen the movie. I can imagine opportunities to be as gross as possible, like Passion of the Lion for kiddies.

In the book, the lion afterwards explains that ANYBODY who offeres their innocent blood instead of a traitor's would cause death to be undone. Which is kind of weird, as it's not according to christian theology.

I think I probably won't be watching the movie. All the movies that christians really like all suck. The heteronormativity of the nuclear family penguins. The Bondage of the Christ. Bah.

[celesteh.livejournal.com]

I just re-read the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and while Aslan is a Christ figure (duh), it's still a charming story. I've read that the movie dialog is really heavy-handed and awful, but that book isn't. Some of the later books are. I can't remember which one, but the one about "experimental schooling" which does get referenced in the LWW. Prince Casipan is even more strongly anti-education.

The "science fiction" books, though are just awful. Anti-science fiction is a more apt term. Christian hostility to education and science at least makes sense for Lewis. Look at the horrors wrought by industrialization during the war. But now? People must hate and fear their gadgets. Which, might make some sort of sense, if their can't afford them, or if their ipod is making them deaf and disassociating them from everyone and their cellphone is giving them brain tumors.. And the hatred of medical science (and biology) is sort of logical in a place where healthcare is generally unaffordable and doctors are arrogant, rude fuckwads who do nothing for you while substantially lightening your wallet. Maybe it all boils down to class issues.

[nothings.livejournal.com]

Well, chalk me up as an unmilitant atheist and a lousy feminist, because:

1. Tumnus' bare chest never struck me as sexualized; it was a matter of creating an interesting and convincing partially-CGI (?) character, and probably the movie cliche of keeping things simple (you can't say they look different from humans, they have to look different from humans, and if you want them to look different, having them not wearing clothes helps; it's also just the movie cliche of having the beasts be less civilized, regardless of the subtlety in the source material).

2. I guess the Stone Table scene could be interpreted as sexualized in the way that all pagan rituals can be read as being sexualized and in the way that modern dance is sexualized and in the way that, sure, a knife can be seen as a phallic symbol and stabbing with it is sexualized but, uh, it never crossed my mind.

3. I honestly don't think tLWatW is going to do much religious brainwashing or indoctrination. I even doubt that Lewis intended it to do so, but maybe so, since it sounds like the stuff in The Last Battle is much more that way (but then again, his approach could well have changed by then). Let's put it this way: despite some structural similarities, Aslan is a lousy Jesus figure. Emperor over the seas? Ok. Stone Table ressurection? Check. Forgiving, let the past be the past? Roger. Killing the White Witch? Well, I guess you can argue that's some sort of Satan metaphor... Killing random "bad guy" underlings in a ferocious or even animalistic way (or, ordering Peter to)? Not much turning the other cheek going on here.

I don't read this as "Aslan is a hipped-up Jesus meant to be more appealing to children"; I read this as "Lewis decided to borrow some story elements from his religion because he thought they were really interesting story elements (or at least, better story elements then the crap he was coming up with himself)". I read this as Lewis was no Tolkien, and in trying to come up with an interesting backstory/world setting, created a mythology by borrowing from his religion. I have a lot of trouble seeing how this could indoctrinate somebody. I mean, I guess you could have a Sunday School revelation, "Oh, this is just like Aslan" and somehow be more hooked, but, uh. I remain unconvinced. To me it's more like Shakespeare ripping off plots. (Not to compare Lewis to Shakespeare. (Oops, too late.))

4. As to rampant sexism, I guess I noticed it with the beavers, but I was particularly struck by the scene where Santa gives Lucy the magic healing vial. "Wow, this is just like 90% of computer RPGs; the women are the healing mages."

Really, my problems with the movie were, I imagine, identical to what my problems with the book would be if I read it now: it's a dumb children's story. Everyone (good) is magically all right in the end, and Edwards "treachery" is (a) unconvincing and (b) not all that treacherous, so the dramatic engine of the story doesn't drive.

((b) might be different from the book, I dunno. They just hedge his treachery in certain ways to make him more forgiveable; he doesn't tell the White Witch the destination of the other children until she threatens someone else in front of him. (a) is probably identical to the book, and maybe it just works less well in the movie because of poor acting or something (although other people I've talked to about it didn't have any problem believing Edward's actions, so mileage may vary))

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

But see, that's the thing. He wrote the whole series to lead up to The Last Battle, which is practically the Rapture, so it's not just that he's riffing on plot details from his religion: he was a literary theologian himself, so it's not an accident.* That's even clearer in the science fiction, but it's pretty clear in the Narnia series as well, once the whole parallel religion (Tashkent) is introduced in The Horse and His Boy... again, I have read and reread this series, and actually like it and enjoy it. But it had a point and an intention, and I do think he wanted to do some indoctrinating -- what celesteh says above, especially in his views that modern (e.g. 1950s) British education was getting away from its orthodox Anglican roots and going all scientist on the poor children of Britain. The upper middle class ones. I didn't even TALK about the sickening class references.

And I repeat: I can enjoy reading his stuff and suspend both my disbelief and my political critique. But that's temporary. When I emerge from the book (or the movie, I guess) those faculties are turned back on.

What I actually want to blog about at some point is what the intent is in Philip Pullman's trilogy, because that's gotten a lot of ink, and I haven't managed to finish it, which is really unusual to me. I can't seem to read the third book (The Amber Spyglass, I think), and it's a bit ironic, because the general reaction seems to be that Pullman is deliberately writing a critique of organized religion. I can't tell. It's not as purely enjoyable to me as, for example, Lewis' Narnia series, or -- to bring in a publishing blockbuster with absolutely no religious axe to grind -- the Harry Potter series. Or to bring in a body of work that is not as media-glitzy, the work of Diana Wynne Jones, which is also agnostic on religion.

* On specific details... Edmund's betrayal in the book is worse, as I recollect it, than what you've described in the movie. And Aslan ASKS Lucy and Susan to walk with him to the very edge of the clearing or whatever, where the Stone Table is; he may not SAY that he wants them to witness it, but they're the only characters he brings. It doesn't have to be letter-perfect to be an allegory. Oh, and I think Lewis' Christ is a muscular Christian kind of Christ, and also that he draws on the smiting stuff in the Old Testament to justify the violence. The same exact sort of spirit can be seen in That Hideous Strength. The defining characteristic of Lewis' world view seems to me to be the centrality of properly hierarchical social arrangements: humans above (non Talking) animals; men above women; Kings above commoners; the classes in their right places, etc.

Oh, and flowerlane, note the length of MY comments: I believe in long LJ back-and-forths, as long as they're not flamewars of any kind. And this doesn't seem to be one. I think differing perceptions of literature are what make it fucking interesting, you know?

[nothings.livejournal.com]

He wrote the whole series to lead up to The Last Battle, which is practically the Rapture

Did he actually plan the whole thing out, though, or did he write one and it was successful and then he plotted out the whole thing? I mean, I'm not disputing, I'm just asking. Certainly it wouldn't be the first time somebody planned out a whole thing without knowing whether they'd actually get to do it, but it just didn't feel that way to me. Similarly, the lack of story chronology--of course, he could have started "in the middle" intentionally, deciding that that was the best starting place, but it also could be because he started with a story and then built out from there.

So, I mean, I defer to your knowledge if you actually know this, but if it's just speculation, or if it's something Lewis said after he wrote the first book (when he might then have started planning all the others), it's kind of doubtful.

It doesn't have to be letter-perfect to be an allegory

I certainly agree with that, but if it's such a flagrant mismatch (Aslan's violence), if it's an allegory I don't see what the message is, and I certainly don't see how it can be indoctrinating. tLtWatW seems more to me like it attempts to invoke your existing knowledge of the magic of Christ's ressurection and borrow that wonderment for what happens to Aslan (nevermind that that won't work for kids!) than it seems like it would manage to convince people of either (a) that this really happened to Christ or that (b) that Christ was awfully magical, and if it's not doing that, what exactly is it supposed to be doing that is helpful-to-Christianity?

But yeah, I mostly agree with your response I just quoted in response to something like celesteh's "In the book, the lion afterwards explains that ANYBODY who offeres their innocent blood instead of a traitor's would cause death to be undone. Which is kind of weird, as it's not according to christian theology." Indeed, you can read this as a sort of "anybody can be good" message, rather than a "anybody can be god" message. But then again it does seem to sort of undermine the metaphor.

Oh, and I think Lewis' Christ is a muscular Christian kind of Christ, and also that he draws on the smiting stuff in the Old Testament to justify the violence.

Ok, that's a fair point. It seems weird to me with the namby-pamby Catholic upbringing I had, but I can believe it.

The defining characteristic of Lewis' world view seems to me to be the centrality of properly hierarchical social arrangements: humans above (non Talking) animals; men above women; Kings above commoners; the classes in their right places, etc.

Oddly enough, this is one of the scenes that most stuck in my craw, although I forgot all about it until I read your comment: when the 3 children walk into the, uh, the place where Aslan's army has set up camp and a hush falls over all the, uh, army and they all stare at the children in, well, awe and reverence. Eeeagh lord almighty. (Haha, and I just used that phrase without thinking about the context.)

At the time I think I was finding this more just offensive in the "gah, children's power fantasy, we have to be princes and kings and throw around swords and wield power" but the classist/hierarchical view of it makes more sense. I do remember thinking it was a little jarring that the Pevensies even had family they could be sent to out of London and wondered about the class issues there, but I just ran with it.

I think differing perceptions of literature are what make it fucking interesting, you know?

Wait, did your original comment get lost because of computer problems, or because, uh, somebody didn't want long (contentious?) comments in their journal?

[nothings.livejournal.com]

I had to split this because I hit the length limit, and this was a pretty separate aspect of the reply:

Edmund's treachery

Ok, since it is possibly different, and I don't recall the book at all to do the comparison, let me spell out the details of that and of Aslan's sacrifice as they were in the movie, and you can compare:

• In their initial encounter, the Witch offers Edmund the eventual kingship
  
• Asking about Peter, Edmund's all "he wouldn't get to be king too, would he?"
  
• The Witch is all, "no, no, you'd need servants".
  
• Edmund is there for the reading of the Queen's proclamation about Tumnus' consorting with humans
  
• They meet the Beavers and go to their place
  
• Edmund sneaks out and goes to the Witch's
  
• The follow and see him go in
  
• She won't give him turkish delight until he reveals where the others are (I think those were linked, it's been a couple of weeks)
  
• He reveals; she imprisons him
  
• Everyone barely gets out of Beavers' in time, head for Stone Table
  
• Witch asks Edmund where they were going, he says he doesn't know
  
• Later, a fox (or something) who knows where they were going (I think) won't reveal, and Witch is about to kill him, and Edmund steps in and reveals the Stone Table destination. (Witch "kills" fox anyway, natch.)
  

• Aslan sneaks off at night
  
• Susan and Lucy follow
  
• Aslan realizes they're following, asks them to accompany him (although I read this not so much as him wanting them to see as him figuring he can't stop them)
  
• Aslan gets close (NOT in sight of Table) and tells them they can go no further
  
• Susan leads Lucy up a hill until they end up with a view
  
• etc.
  
• Aslan appears to come back in maybe a day or so, not three.
  

One particular note (and I doubt this is actually different from the book), is that the Witch proposes the fantasy of Edmund's siblings being his servants, and he is happy with it and runs with it. Apparently we are supposed to think this is evil and bad, but the fantasy of all four kids being rulers with all the non-humans as their (essentially) servants: not bad or evil at all! Hooray!

[nothings.livejournal.com]

Oops, I just spotted the "Sorry about the long comment" from flowerlane to decipher what you were referring to, so you don't need to explain that.

[felicks.livejournal.com]

The Screwtape Letters is a great read, and really, more palatable as Christian propoganda because it is straightforward in its goals.

Meanwhile, I actually think the gender roles in Narnia are much more open than in most fantasy literature. Namely - there are female characters at all! Who have speaking parts! And participate fully in the adventure! And risk their lives!

Yes, they are given different roles from teh boys, but much more than most of the other, even more contemporary fantasy literature I was reading as a kid.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

I'll have to think about that, the girls having adventurous roles... in this same Brit kiddy lit tradition (though doubtless C. S. Lewis would pale at the comparison) I read the Enid Blyton "Five Go..." this and that books, and not only were there two girls, too, but one of them was a total tomboy, and the most appealing character, George. She insists on being called George although she's Georgeanna on her birth certificate.

What else... I am trying to recall, because it's true that the classics of Young Adult adventure/fantasy fiction have male protagonists, and I know I just imagined myself into their roles -- Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island... but then there's Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz books... a bunch of male animals only in The Wind in the Willows except for the parrot... The Little House books... those are female protagonists, though their adventures are firmly rooted in settler-recollection reality. The gold medal (in my opinion) for female-focused adventure stories like Narnia, i.e. with magic and so forth, are Robin McKinley's books, starting with The Blue Sword. Also Joan Aiken's Battersea chronicles, starting with The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. And, as mentioned in some earlier comment or the post, Diana Wynne Jones' stuff, especially the Chrestomanci books (of which there is a new one) and her Crown of Dalemark series. And, finally (because I could keep writing about this pretty much endlessly), Lloyd Alexander's Prydain chronicles, where Eilonwy (god, I loved that name; I was totally going to name a daughter Eilonwy) was much the more interesting and practical and brave character than Taran.

It's an interesting discussion -- I didn't (and still don't) pick my literature, either YA or adult, by how politically correct it is, but I did (and still do) tend to gravitate towards fiction that I can feel comfortable in, or at least feel interestingly irritated by. I don't read almost any male-authored sci fi, for example.

[felicks.livejournal.com]

Huh. Once again I'm busted for talking out of my ass. Maybe I'm totally wrong. Lets see: as a kid I read a lot of Daniel Pinkwater (all boys except for 2 books and stuff written after I grew up I'm afraid), Edward Eager (did feature girls doing magic and having 'adventures'), Narnia, Choose Your Own Adventure books (generally boy centric), Ray Bradbury (as far as I can remember there were only occasional mother characters to represent for the xx chromosome types - generally not speaking parts), Isaac Asimov (oh boy - boys), Madeline L'Engle (downright feminist!), Piers Anthony (boys club), Roald Dahl (mostly men with excellent exceptions), The Borrowers (girl hero!), OK, I'm really procrastinating going to sleep. I take it back though - I read more boys than girls, but girl fantasy heros were available to me for sure.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

I know I should like Daniel Pinkwater, but I just can't. I don't like his writing style, at all. And Madeleine L'Engle... she gave me exactly the skeevy-creepy, guilty-to-like feeling that Lewis did and does. And the reasons were similar (here I go about to contradict my earlier statement about not choosing books for their PCness... it's just...) I LIKED the books, but also felt guilty about liking them, because it was clear to me that they were, in a way, a polemic against everything my family believed in). L'Engle's stuff -- especially the series about Meg's family, starting with A Wrinkle in Time was all about the Christian allegory, and also fairly anti-communist/totalitarian (again, the two are identical in these books). But L'Engle's books have always been even more difficult for me, because they appear to start out championing math-science brainy girls and pure science and physics and so forth. But they're all about angels and theology and the cosmic struggle of angels against Satan, and really quite similar to Lewis' worldview, especially when you get to her retelling of Noah's Ark, which made me ILL. It's true that there are strong and spunky girl heroines in L'Engle, and working scientist mothers. But that Christian subtext... oy. I could never get into her Austin family books.

This icon is Rosa Luxemburg as a teenager. I wonder whether she ever read escapist young adult fiction? I wonder whether there were any books that could have been described as that, in German (or Polish) when she was a teen, in the 1870s or 1880s?

[celesteh.livejournal.com]

A Wrinkle in Time was anti-communist?? Augh! I was hacked as a child!

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

This icon is Rosa Luxemburg as a teenager. I wonder whether she ever read escapist young adult fiction? I wonder whether there were any books that could have been described as that, in German (or Polish) when she was a teen, in the 1870s or 1880s?

Don't know about Polish, but in German the answer is easy: E.T.A. Hoffmann. He practically invented that genre for the entire continent of Europe.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Is that the dude who did Struwwelpeter? AKA "Shockheaded Peter"? No, upon googling, I find that it is a different Hoffman. Man, E. T. A. Hoffman definitely invented the genre... she could have been reading that, or as I suspect she learned French, she could have been reading Dumas and Verne. It would be interesting (to me) to know such a thing, actually. What was the furniture of her mind before economics and theory, basically?

Also -- have YOU read any of the C. S. Lewis sci fi I cite above, and particularly, That Hideous Strength? Because I wonder about that Althusser thing.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

Probably the way to get hints of it would be her early correspondence, particularly with her family. But who even knows if that's still extant? It's the sort of thing the Stalinists meticulously, cultishly collected and preserved for Lenin (if only to redact it), but Luxemburg never got that kind of treatment, for better and worse.

As for Lewis, I was made to read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 4th grade, and since I was hip to the Christian subtext, and vehemently, almost bigotedly Jewish at the time, I didn't enjoy it in the least. So I never felt the urge to examine any of his other writings.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Her adult personal correspondence has been collected; I've written about it before, on LJ, I think. But I haven't seen anything (certainly, anything translated) from when she was younger.

When I was a young teenager -- especially eighth grade through say, sophomore year -- arguing about religion (belief versus atheism, atheism versus Catholicism, Zionists' desire for a state versus a secular state, Vatican City as a state) was all fuel for my most enjoyable polemicizing. And I was rude, and baiting, back then. I would LOOK for biblical literalists in order to argue viciously with them. God, I'm glad I'm past that.