The League of Bearded Catholics

Taming Aslan

I like the Lord of the Rings movies. Sure, there is plenty at which devoted Tolkien fans may legitimately chafe and grumble, but overall, a very respectable piece of work, and - for a major motion pictute based on a book - very faithful to the source material. Thumbs up, and all that.

The Narnia movies, though, I have found personally underwhelming. I was just not whelmed, at all. The first movie started strongly enough, but I lost interest by the middle. The White Witch is defeated and Narnia is set free in the end, but somehow... Meh. What bothered me seemed to be more than just the watery Disney-fication of the story, but involved something off key.

I could not at the time put my finger on any one reason for my ambivalence, but have just found a dandy article by Steven D. Boyer at Touchstone that I think sums it up, or begins to. In short, the modern world (and so the movie) rejects the very idea of hierarchy;

 

We can see Lewis’s strategy at work if we just think for a moment about what his original stories are like. Narnia is a great repository of hierarchical images and relations—of good kings and noble knights, of laborers who are not disgruntled and servants who are not demeaned, of Aslan the great Lion who rules over all, who is never safe, but always good.

One can hardly turn a page of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or of Prince Caspian without encountering compelling images of royal authority and knightly virtue—and we see now that both of these themes are intimately connected with Lewis’s positive construal of hierarchy, which in turn is foundational to his distinctively Christian vision of reality.

A Strange Sign of Maturity

...the movie as a whole consists in Peter learning to think and act independently... By (the end of the movie), he has grown enough to realize that receiving orders and following them is a sign of immaturity and weakness, whereas independent action, especially when it involves not doing as you’re told, is the sign of strength, maturity, and success.

Note well: disobedience is the sign of real maturity. This quiet, unobtrusive devaluation of humble submission to rightful authority is a significant omen of things to come in the later film.

...One could look at Caspian himself, who is transformed from a noble and honorable young king in Lewis’s telling, into a tortured warrior whose unchecked desire for personal revenge against his father’s murderer leads to the deaths of scores of his Narnian subjects. Or again, one could look at the virtuous Red Dwarf Trumpkin, whose cheerful, good-humored embrace of obedience in Lewis’s story is quietly dropped from the film, replaced by the more modern virtues of sarcasm, irony, and cynicism.

(emphasis and italics mine)

In addition to the problem with hierarchy, there is a general chipping away, or erosion, of the story at a myriad of points. For one, the Narnia in which the children find themselves is just... smaller than the one in the books. Not geographically, but less grand, less noble. Lewis' Narnia was suffused with spiritual and moral energy and significance. Something in the Narnian air made the importance of every action (or inaction) somehow closer to the surface. Courage grew more courageous, friendship more dear, sacrifice more costly, there. The Narnia of the films is... an admirably worked-up fantasy world, but where the most important thing is the children - that they have a Big Adventure and come out safe by the end of the movie. Whew! Now, wasn't that fun?

In the books, rather than being the Center of Everything, the Pevensie children play an important part in what they know is a story much bigger and more magnificent than themselves.

In the movies, Aslan's voice is not, as one might expect, the rumbling basso of a Giant Lion, but the velvety, soporific baritone of a kindly uncle. He seems not so much to have supernatural significance, but simply to have Super Powers. And he is very importantly, not known or referred to as the Son of the Great Emperor over the Sea - who as far as the films are concerned, apparently doesn't exist. The importance of that ommission is really difficult to overstate. Without God, there is no Son of God. Jesus becomes not the Maker of All Things and Savior of Mankind, but a great teacher... a kindly uncle. Without the Great Emperor Over Sea, Aslan becomes a kindly talking lion with super powers. He is shrunk.

In other words, the makers of the first two Narnia films, at least, just do not GET Lewis' story. They have never fallen in love with Narnia, though they may have read it fifty times. Like the wicked Uncle Andrew in The Magician's Nephew, they have only a surface understanding of Narnian events, and so they feel the need to juice the story up with invented rivalries, contrived teen romance, tone deaf melodrama and sturm und drang that not only gets in the way, but at times positively cuts against the grain of Lewis's story.

As Boyer observes;

 

In Lewis’s telling of all of the Narnia tales, the children’s experiences as kings and queens in Narnia consistently transform them into nobler, more virtuous people in their own world. They are not spoiled children wanting to be kings again; they are noble kings who carry that very nobility back into their non-royal roles as schoolchildren.

In the Narnia films, the children do not carry the spirit of Narnia with them into our world, but instead carry their childish pettiness into Narnia.

But, I mean, after all... you can't expect modern audiences to believe all that Pollyanna rubbish that Lewis put in there. So, we can dream of a place where the very land, the animals, the sky and the sea are better-than-real, but we must not do the same for people. People must always be portrayed with dull and cynical realism.

Tolkien on Tolkien on Film

Thank you, BBC, for posting this short (26 minutes) 1968 documentary about J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, featuring interviews with the author himself, some of his fans, students and a couple of amusingly tedious detractors. The film is also kind of a neat time-capsule of 1960s culture. I was seven at the time. I wonder what became of those fresh-faced college kids?

You might need to pay close attention, and ear buds might also help. Tolkien was a notorious mumbler, I'm afraid.

There was quite definitely a Tolkien craze in the late Sixties ("Frodo Lives!"). Then, as perhaps now, a large number of fans didn't get much past the flashing swords and fantastic creatures to what Tolkien was ultimately driving at. That's okay. As with fairy tales and nursery stories, the moral might slip in the back door and do some good down the road, just as there are many atheists who have been deeply influenced by the Gospel in ways they will never know or wish to acknowledge. They might one day be surprised to find themselves acting with heroic self-sacrifice and not completely understand why. It's in the air more than we might imagine... especially in America, I think. I hope.

It'll Never Catch On

You may have seen this, but it's still cool - a (very short) film of G.K. Chesterton speaking at Worcester College in 1931.

Of course, I doubt these talking motion pictures will ever replace silent films. Just a novelty.

(Tip of the slouchy, shapeless hat to Michael B..)

Saving the Boomers

Good news; Barbara Nicolosi Harrington is back to blogging after a nearly two year hiatus. If there is a short list of women to whom I would grant the title Honorary Bearded Lady, she is on it.

She writes in this article at Patheos about the slow-motion train wreck that is the aging of the Baby Boomers, the really only half-interested response of their children, and the way this is reflected in the art of the modern cinema.

Thanks to the unrestrained narcissism of the Boomers, the Gen-Xers (or whatever they would like to be called) find themselves honestly assessing the worth of all the things the Boomers discarded - self-sacrifice, tradition, family, hard work, authenticity.

Her position is that part of the job of the Church may be to help the X-ers to forgive the Boomers and bear their old age with patience, rather than, you know... euthanizing them. The generation that aborted a fourth of its young now hopes for better treatment from their surviving children.

Another task of the Church is to get the Boomers to repent of their misdeeds for the sake of their own souls.

I remarked on Facebook that many Boomers have so much of themselves invested in their colossal mistakes that it will take a special kind of grace for them to be able to repent. I thought of an illustration; think of how hard it would be, having covered your body in tattoos and other "body modifications" to ever even begin to consider that it might have been a mistake. Psychologically, emotionally, and in every other way, one has a vested interest in keeping up the game face and insisting you have "no regrets", because the alternative is too upsetting to think about.

Both Great With Popcorn

Steven Greydanus sends along a link to his article in the National Catholic Register, in which he riffs a bit on Roger Ebert's recent movie musings, which are in turn a riff on the UK's Campaign for Real Ale.

Got all that?

Okay, so I was sucked in by the reference to my very favoritest adult beverage, but it's not really about ale. It's all about how good movies are something like good ale, and how there are not enough of these good movies (nor is there ever enough good ale!).

This brings up a great point, a kind of universal constant: there is no good thing that can't be explored more deeply by using an analogy to beer. Indeed, what true and wholesome thing is not something like good ale? If you do not yet see the logic, just have another ale, think it over, and it will come to you.

You know Chesterton was in a movie, right? A cowboy picture by J.M. Barrie, no less. He starred alongside his buddy George Bernard Shaw. This is his birthday week, too! How are you planning to celebrate?

 
(Left to right) Lord Howard de Walden, William Archer, J.M. Barrie, G.K. Chesterton and Bernard Shaw (Hat tip to The Bioscope blog)

My Daughter's Not Going to Like This...

Fans of the original Nickelodeon cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender might not like the casting for the upcoming sure-thing blockbuster movie directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

The lead role, Aang - from what was originally a very Asian-inspired story world - is played by... (wait for it)... Noah Ringer, a white kid!

The other leading roles are also played by Europeans. Not that there's anything wrong with being European, but in roles with names like, well, Aang, Katara, Sokka and Zuko, you might expect to find one tiny Asian.

In a move sure to enrage longtime fans of the show, the part of Appa, the giant, cuddly flying Bison, will be played by a box of McDonald's french fries.

Paramount defended the casting, saying;

Night's vision of 'The Last Airbender' includes a large and ethnically diverse cast that represents cultures from around the world,

This includes, apparently, a wide range of ethnicities drawn from even the most remote corners of Europe. Unless you are an extra. It seems the extras in Avatar are pretty ethnic, in the best tradition of, say, Tarzan movies.

The Loyal Opposition

"Be a man!" said I. "You are scared out of your wits! What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think God had exempted Weybridge? He is not an insurance agent." - H.G. Wells, The War Of The Worlds

We've been on a G.K. Chesterton kick here at TLBC, lately, but have some items in the works from our other Patrons.

I've been reading H.G. Wells' The War Of The Worlds for the first time since I was a kid. It is one of those stories that has become an iconic cultural touchstone (like Don Quixote), that nearly everyone knows, but surprisingly few have actually read. Wells, a famous and influential atheist, was a contemporary of Chesterton, and the two maintained a running debate in the press.

As I read Wells' book, I find myself wishing that someone had made the story into a movie. Oh, I know there have been movies based on the idea, but they have (as far as I know) all been set in contemporary times, so that the events and technology might seem more "real" and frightening to the audience.

What I would like to see is a period piece, a film telling the story as it was first written, as if Martian invaders landed near London at the end of the nineteenth century. What is needed, I hope you'll agree is a Steampunk adaptation of The War of the Worlds. It would be perfect. The Martian machines are descibed as always belching steam, and one character in the book calls them "boilers on stilts, I tell you, striding around like men". Oh, bring on the gears, antique pipe fittings and brass gauges.

I would pay double to see that movie, if it were decently well made. From the first page of the book, I have kept picturing the main character (naturally enough) as Orson Welles in the Citizen Kane phase of his screen career. Who could play the role now?

To help you get in the right frame of mind to consider that question, here is a Steampunk inspired song, which curses the inventor of the digital clock (hat tip to Der Wolfanwalt);

You know it's a cold, inhuman world we have built when numbers of us find themselves pining for the relative romance and charm of the steam engine and the metal cogwheel.