I saw the Narnia movie over the weekend, and enjoyed it. Unlike most of the bloggers it seems, I’m not a particular fan of the books: in fact I’ve only ever read the first one, and that was many years ago. So I remembered the general outline of the story, but I watched the movie as a more or less freestanding piece of art.
I’ve heard conflicting reports about how much Lewis intended the story as a Christian metaphor, but the sacrifice of Aslan is about as subtle as a piano dropped on your head. Which was not all bad, because the metaphysics of the Atonement is one of my pet interests. But the more I think about this particular rendition of it, the more it disturbs me.
The first thing that struck me as “off” was the fact that Edmund is rescued and reconciled with his family before Aslan dies for him. This is quite different from the Gospel account, where Jesus is totally betrayed and abandoned at the hour of his execution. Instead of “he died for us while we were yet sinners,” it’s “he died for us while we were sinners, but kind of showing signs of improvement.”
Another problem with this is that it makes the White Witch’s demand for Edmund come out of left field. As somebody points out to her, it’s not like Edmund betrayed her, so what business does she have carrying out vengeance? To which she replies, it is written in the Deep Magic that all traitors belong to me, it is my right, or all of Narnia will burn up. If she were about to kill Edmund at a point in the story where he was still being a spineless creep, it would at least appeal to some natural sense of justice instead of a bizarre arbitrary rule.
The legalism may stem from the model that Lewis is using. Although to a great extent this resembles the Calvinist penal-substitution model of the Atonement, my boyfriend noticed that it also resembles the old “ransom” theory, which was popular in the early Middle Ages. There are a few different versions of this, but the one I’m thinking of has it that God pretends to ransom a captive humanity by offering up his son — only to have the son rise from the dead, and thereby deprive Satan of everything.
Even at the time it was current, this idea drew some complaints that the God of Truth would hardly use trickery and deceit, and generally that he was supposed to have saved us by self-sacrificial love, not by cleverness. The same problems apply to the movie version. When Aslan rises again, he basically says, aha, but there’s a loophole in the law she didn’t know about! From that angle, the Witch and Aslan are less like icons of good and evil than like two lawyers trying to outfox each other.
Yet I think that the basic idea could have been conveyed to a modern audience, if the movie had been willing to implicate the audience more. It is, in fact, very easy for movies to provoke our instincts for retributive justice; in fact a whole genre, the “revenge movie,” exists because of it. And certainly there are points in the movie where any viewer who is at all involved in the story is going to feel like killing Edmund himself. But that has already gone by when the Witch shows up to demand him, making it easy to distance oneself from the howling mob of monsters standing around the altar baying for blood.
But the Gospels don’t let us off quite so easily. Jesus’ followers don’t stand together when the soldiers come; they divide and scatter. They don’t respond to his death by girding their loins and going into battle against evil; they give up and go home. Though the story is more willing to show his heroes’ flaws than many children’s tales of his era, it still retells the Crucifixion with a rather cleaned-up human supporting cast. Which makes it a good yarn, but still comparatively short on grace.
I think that’s one of the reasons that Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, despite its shortcomings, is so effective. The sense of complicity among everyone involved (except Mary, of course) is very profound. In many ways it’s almost the exact opposite of the “revenge movie” – almost that is, except for the defeat of Satan.
Comment by Lee — January 18, 2006 @ 8:48 am
The movie was okay and true to the book though a little tepid somehow, and the battle scenes were stale (after watching the extended DVD version of the Lord of the Rings you expect quite a lot).
One thought I had was, why is Edmund the only badie? The other siblings seem like good, non-sinning folk, something that would drive my Fundamentalist family members to distraction.
I was touched by the movie unexpectedly. I guess something got through to my imagination even though I thought the movie was a little stale.
Comment by Troy — January 18, 2006 @ 9:39 am
Edmund didn’t come off as the only baddie of the children to me at all, at least not at first. Peter and the older sister (can’t remember he name at the moment) didn’t exactly treat Edmund well at all until about halfway through the film. It was only Lucy who maintained a sense of wonder for Narnia and a love for Edmund. Yes she was frustrated with him when he wasn’t telling the truth, but her reactions to him compared to her older sister and Peter are very appropriate/virtuous. This just shows that Lewis decided to make at least a couple of the children dynamic (Edmund too, it seems changed).
That being said, I think I would agree with this post that the theology of the story (at least as it’s portrayed in the movie–I haven’t read the book in 16 years) is left wanting.
Peace,
Eric
Comment by Eric Lee — January 18, 2006 @ 10:57 am
Hi Camassia,
I immediately compared the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (the Johnny Depp one) and felt that unlike the world created by Dahl, there was a chance in Narnia for children without any virtue or goodness to become heroic. Your b/f is very observant: I have never noticed the presence of the ransom model of the atonement in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe before!
I feel a questionable premise behind much criticism of the ‘theology’ of Narnia is the idea that the books are somehow a complete systematic theology, or series of theological propositions, in code or allegory. Certainly Narnia is full of allegory, but did Lewis really intend every element in them to correspond one-by-one to an elaborate ordo salutus, like Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Progress? Maybe he did. If he did, then you’ve illustrated how Narnia may carry within it the seeds of its own undermining as an an allegory of the gospel.
Comment by Paul Whiting — January 19, 2006 @ 4:35 am
Paul makes a good point. If one wants to see a truly allegorical work by Lewis, they should read Pilgrim’s Regress.
Comment by Lee — January 19, 2006 @ 8:24 am
I don’t think he intended it as a sort of speaking-in-code type of allegory, but like I said, the use of the crucifixion/resurrection story was pretty darned obvious. And when somebody lifts a plot line like that and makes changes to it, the changes are highly suggestive of how the author interprets the original. However, part of the problem here may be one of genre: the Christ story is basically grafted onto a heroic pagan epic, when the actual story pretty well subverted the whole heroic pagan mystique. I imagine that’s why Tolkien didn’t even try to bring explicitly Christian themes into LOTR, though some people do read them there.
Oh, and I agree Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is way more graceless. Dahl can be awfully vindictive, which is why he tends to be more beloved by children than adults. I think it was Chesterton who remarked that children, because they are innocent, love justice, while adults, because we are wicked, love mercy. (For that matter, maybe that’s why I don’t remember the blood-price for Edmund rubbing me the wrong way when I was a kid either.)
Comment by Camassia — January 19, 2006 @ 12:44 pm
I think you’re right about the problem that imposing a Christ-like narrative into a basically pagan-mythic framework creates for Lewis. This only becomes more pronounced later in the series as it becomes clear that Aslan isn’t just supposed to be a type of Christ, but, in some sense, Christ himself (see, esp. The Last Battle). This creates all kinds of problems with the storyline, not the least of which being the “atonement” in LW&W.
Comment by Lee — January 20, 2006 @ 8:54 am
Your final paragraph about the scattered apostles and the fidelity of Lucy and Susan is an important and interesting one. As a lover of the book (and a moderate admirer of the film), it gave me a new angle I hadn’t considered. Thanks.
Comment by Hugo — January 24, 2006 @ 12:52 pm