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Posted on 10/07/2005 10:14:26 PM PDT by goldstategop
Canada's liberal press has greeted Disney's coming movie version of C.S. Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia" with a delicate note of caution. "Be alert for hidden Christian messages," warns the Toronto Globe and Mail's movie reviewer Liam Lacey.
No question, this is a man sensitive to religious innuendo. In the opening Narnia episode, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," after all, the lion plainly represents Christ, the witch is Satan, and the whole thing is an allegory of the Christian doctrine of the atonement.
So yes, there could definitely be "hidden Christian messages," perhaps because Lewis wrote the whole series for the express purpose of putting them there. In reading Bunyan's "A Pilgrim's Progress," one must be similarly on guard against "hidden messages" about the Christian life pilgrimage, and in watching Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," one must watch out for "hidden allusions" to the Passion and the Christ.
Nevertheless, the warning is warranted. A devout liberal cannot be too cautious these days. God might jump out at him from the most improbable books, and ever since Gibson's opus took in $84 million on its opening weekend, movies, too, may become downright dangerous.
How dangerous, I had cause to discover last week. I was in Alexandria, Va., visiting Helen Devitt Holt's studio, Summer Productions, to explore possible television interest in the history of Christianity. Six of the 12 projected volumes of our own book series on the subject are now in print, and we're at work on the next six. For years, her company has made documentaries for the Discovery Channel, and she says our highly illustrated books demonstrate great TV potential.
So we quickly discovered how fascinated with the subject of God the industry has become. Hearts once religiously stone cold have perceptibly warmed. Atheism is now altogether out, and what they're calling "agnosticism" is in. Not real agnosticism, for the genuine agnostic contends that, if there is some kind of reality beyond the natural, we humans could not know what it is. The agnostic is not saying, "I don't know." He's saying, "I can't know, and neither can you or anybody else." The real agnostic, in other words, has a dogma to which he firmly hews. (Though he does face one awkward little problem. If we can't know whether anything is true, then how do we know even that?)
The television industry's insiders – those few I encountered, anyway – are not saying, "Nobody can know about God." They are just saying, "I don't know." And one of them thoughtfully added, when I asked him about his own religious belief: "I'm a seeker, a searcher."
A seeker is a very tolerant thing to be and, in the heavy liberal ozone of the media industry, it is also a very safe thing to be. A seeker does not offend anybody or please anybody, refute anybody or affirm anybody. There is no such thing as a "bigoted seeker" (unless, that is, the seeker develops a distinct contempt for those who claim to have found something – not an unknown bigotry).
But in seeking there lies one great danger. Jesus said that if we really seek, we will find; if we really knock, the door will be opened. So what happens if the seeker actually finds something, finds some belief about God or in God which he is convinced is genuinely true? Not just "a view," or "my view," or "one way of looking at it" – but really true, literally and conclusively. That will mean, of course, that he must consider beliefs that are inconsistent with his own to be actually wrong, not merely different. Now that would be very, very illiberal, which no doubt is why so few such seekers ever find much.
Seekers have another problem, one that few admit to, though not all. Helen Whitney, producer of the much-acclaimed PBS movie "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero," confided a certain inadequacy when confronted with people bereaved by the cataclysmic disaster of 9-11. It was almost enough to make her take "the leap of faith," she said. Almost.
I asked Summer Productions' Helen Holt where she stood. "Every week in church," she replied, "I say the words, 'I believe.' And what follows is what I believe." Obviously a hopeless Christian.
Meanwhile, this unwonted Hollywood interest in God strikes some as plain preposterous. "Christianity in the movies?" wrote one wag to the Toronto Globe and Mail. "Omigawd! Why can't the movies just sell us sex and violence and cheap thrills like they're supposed to? Is nothing sacred anymore?"
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
May be one movie I go to see...
hidden?? Have these people never heard of this story before?
There was some speculation that the Christian themes might have been squeezed out of the movie version. I hope that's wrong. The person mentioning the possibility said, "I hope so, so everyone can enjoy it." And they need to make a movie version of the Satanic bible that Christians could enjoy. It isn't a two-way street for people like that, though.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
December 9, 2005 is the opening for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in thaters nationwide. I'm looking forward to the movie so I can see and hear " the hidden messages".
Apparently not. But then again, it is a Canadian reviewer.
thaters rhymes with tators but I meant to type theaters. LOL!
These books are an excellent christian-friendly gift for children, if anyone wants to do some early Christmas shopping
I bet you played Beatles' records backwards when you were a kid. ; )
I saw the trailers for this thing. It's going to make a fortune. Superb release date.
I can't see how they can edit out the Christian messages without completeley changing the story.
I love C.S. Lewis's Christian apologetic writing but don't care much for the Narnia stories. However, I will see the movie.
So what happens when a liberal is confronted with a Christian message?
"Stop, stop, make it quit, nobody go see it !"
followed immediately by:
"See how open-minded I am?"
Cheers!
You might say that if Canada is against I am for it.
I read the entire seven volume set to my 7 YO last winter/spring as a bedtime story. These books are great that way: each chapter takes just about 15 minutes to read out loud. The perfect time alotment for a bed time story.
(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)
We saw the trailer for LWW when we saw Serenity. It looks outstanding. The trailer begins with the Pevensie children getting off the train and being taken to the Professor's estate by Mrs. Macready. As soon as my daughter saw the three children standing on the train platform, she sat straight up and gasped. She knew instantly what movie the trailer was for. More interesting still was the audience's reaction to the trailer: There was applause. Serenity was the #1 movie this past week. I wonder how common that reaction was and if the LWW trailer was shown in all of those theaters. That might go a long way toward explaining the liberal's dismay.
After I had a bar of soap, I did.
Agreed. Prior to Christmas, I'm sure it will.
I can't wait to see this movie.
That's me to a tee! I tried to read the fairy tales, but just couldn't get into them.
Much to my surprise, when I saw the trailer at a showing of Serenity last week...I started to choke up, BIG TIME.
I can't wait. It looks magnificent!
Thanks for the ping.
I appreciate it.
If there is no God, then you have to wonder what it is that His detractors are so afraid of.
We saw the trailer for the first time before Serenity too. It's been many a year since I was a little girl, and I had exactly the same moment as your daughter. I had no idea LWW was coming out on film, but as soon as I saw the children on the train platform, I knew what movie it was for. I got one of those tingly feelings at the back of my neck that slowly crept up my head and down to my toes. Tell your daughter she has excellent taste in books.
More interesting still was the audience's reaction to the trailer: There was applause. Serenity was the #1 movie this past week. I wonder how common that reaction was and if the LWW trailer was shown in all of those theaters.
I know athiests (though not the anti-social type) who are eagerly awaiting LWW. As one of them explained to me once (paraphrasing), "Atonement, sacrifice, redemption, and all that stuff may be religious themes, but that doesn't mean they don't also make for a damn fine story." I don't think I could have said it better.
That might go a long way toward explaining the liberal's dismay.
Has anyone else ever noticed how, when Christians complain about satanic themes in the Harry Potter stuff, they are being closed minded and intolerant. Yet when "open minded tolerant" liberals complain about Christian themes in The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe, they are just being "concerned"?
Do you have a link to this Toronto Globe article or Liam Lacey's review (How did Lacey even "review" it this early)? Sounds like WND is again making up news.
Well, not news since this is an editorial
I agree, but believe it or not, there are some Christians who think that the works of C.S. Lewis are satanically inspired.
Clive Staples Lewis has been perhaps the single most useful tool of Satan since his appearance in the Christian community sometime around World War II. With his strong belief in non-denominational Christianity, which he termed "mere Christianity", and his apparent orthodoxy in doctrine, the influence of his pen has reached across many years. When the light of God's Holy Bible is focused upon his writings, however, his heresy and outright love of Satan comes into bold focus....
...The Chronicles of Narnia are one of the most powerful tools of Satan that Lewis ever produced. Worst of all, these books are geared toward children. Please go the next page to read about this indoctrinating tool of witchcraft.
I must admit I was astounded when I read the stuff on this website. The site owners seem to be completely round the bend!
Not every reader sees that. Mr. Lewis wrote an actual story, and doesn't hit you over the head with the allegory.
I saw an elementary school reading textbook once that actually included a selection from Voyage of the Dawn Treader -- the part where Eustace is turned into a dragon. They just left out the part where he got turned back, which of course made the piece pointless and unresolved. (Of course, even in modern mystery fiction, I try to avoid the non-traditional, but occasionally have mistakenly stumbled on one that leaves my wondering where the last chapter went!)
fairy tales? i have never thought of them that way. they are gorgeous, textured and deeply metaphorical to not only spirituality, but life itself.
like holograms, they shimmer every which way you turn them: to children, perhaps they are fairy tales. to adults, they are maps.
So far, I've heard only good things about this movie. Supposedly, Douglas Gresham, Lewis' step-son, has given his endorsement and assured that the "hidden" Christian messages are still there.
We read the entire seven stories to my wife and 6-YO last spring as "family reading", just before bedtime (for the son). We all enjoyed it a lot.
A lion? Talking animals? Sort of like Madagascar, right?
Why it's so illiberal,...it's,...it's,...it's,....dare I write it,....practically, conventionally conservative!
Too bad, his bad refuses to consider ever placing just a little bit of faith in God through Christ. Then the door would be open for the flood of hope available to him freely.
You should be reading "Harry Potter, and the Order of the Phoenix." I just got the audio book, and it runs about 27 hours! If you read that 15 minutes at a time, you could make the book last more than 3 months! lol
Mark
They don't want any competition. They believe that they hold all the power, and that they are the final arbiters of everything, including morality and law. And they want everyone else to think that as well.
Mark
This is an excellent link!
"Balaams Ass on C. S. Lewis"
Why cloak the clear message of Christ in pagan imagery? That's confusion and mixture, two things God warns against.
" its the mark of a country bumpkin to identify oneself as a devout Christian. "
Then I'd better change my screen name to "CountryBumpkin"!
Another thought: poison coated with sugar goes down easily.
Actually I doubt HE cares, but his "servants" get confused and stupid over many things.
That's me to a tee! I tried to read the fairy tales, but just couldn't get into them.
Have you read his science fiction/fantasy trilogy? (Perelandra, Out of the Silent Planet, That Hideous Strength). Or Til We Have Faces? More focussed towards adults.
(I love the Narnia books, BTW. Received them as a Christmas gift when I was 6 - I still have my gift copies, the old hardbacks with the original Pauline Baynes illustrations, and I still re-read them from time to time.)
The trailer looks great. I have the earlier cartoon and BBC live action versions of the Narnia stories, but both were disappointments - in the live version, Aslan looked like a badly stuffed toy, which sort of spoiled the effect. With the improvements in special effects, this one may ring the bell. Aslan looked magnificent, and the White Witch looks pretty scary (though I have always thought of her with jet black hair, probably because of the Baynes illustrations.)
A lot of so called "Christian" themes are borrowed from earlier pagan religions. After all, if God created everything, He therefore created pagans. Paganism was, simply an earlier, less perfect religion.
It's NOT pagan imagery - it's purely medieval, and the medieval world as a whole was more faithful and believing Christian than any time before or since. The pagan references are explicitly filtered through the medieval lens, just as they are for us today, since Western culture originated in ancient Greek and Rome.
Lewis's day job was as a professor of medieval and Renaissance literature. You can link almost all the references in the Narnia books to some literary or historical source - in fact one of the amusements for adults is tracking down his references.
I have looked at that website before, and frankly it's pretty far-fetched. I think that the author of that website is lacking in discernment and in a good solid background in literature and history.
He also may be one of those sort of Christians who simply want to sweep any reference to evil under the rug and not talk about it. But the medieval writers were wiser than that. Witches and pagan figures appear in THEIR stories -- but always to be be defeated, or to be subdued and turned to God's purposes.
There are good examples of both in the Narnia books. The White Witch, of course, is shown to be frankly evil, desiring power over all (you get her back story in a later book and she's bad clear through there as well, though also more complex). (Does anybody else catch the physical resemblance between the White Witch in the trailer and Satan in The Passion?). But my favorite example is when that old pagan god Bacchus/Dionysus appears in the second book, Prince Caspian, complete with attendant Maenads and Silenus. The key is when Lucy whispers to Susan, "I don't think I would feel safe with Bacchus and his wild girls if Aslan weren't here," and Susan agrees wholeheartedly. And that's the metaphor for the whole experience of filtering the classics through medieval Christian thought.
As you were.
Lewis himself observed that the idea is not that "Christianity is right, and all other religions are completely wrong." The way he put it is that God was dropping hints all along through the earlier pagan beliefs, preparing the world for Christ. So you have the myth of the Dying God, and sacrificial atonement, and all sorts of other ideas percolating around waiting for Christ to bring them to perfection.
I really believe that this statement is at the heart of secularism today. When I see the fear and loathing that was directed at John Robert's faith, you really come to understand that the left is completely hostile to anyone who has a deeply held belief.
That's it in a nutshell.
Very good observation.
Good morning. Thanks. Yes, that statement says it all.
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