Edit: I originally put an Age Restriction notice on this post to provide a content warning, but it meant that it bugged out when users who weren't logged in tried to view it. Therefore, I am removing the content restriction as this is not actually NSFW and will put the warning in text here instead: This post contains discussions of period-typical (1950s-ish) racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. It also contains discussion of my own religious beliefs and other such discourse-y topics. So, I made two poster images for
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lands_of_magic. The challenge was to make a poster for basically any fannish thing, and one of the suggestions was to make posters for fic one had never gotten around to writing. That was the prompt I chose, and for whatever reason the two fics-in-my-brain that presented themselves both had to do with Narnia. Both are concepts that I put quite a lot of thought into in high school. The only-about-Narnia one, I started writing sometime between the ages of 17 and 19, because I know I started it in high school, and I know I was still working on it sometimes very early on in university. Then something drew me away from it, and I lost touch with the person who was my sounding board about it, and I never finished it. The second was a fic that I never got around to writing but which was a crossover Narnia/Whoniverse fic about Susan Pevensie meeting Jack Harkness after her whole family died in the railway accident.
The images below the cut.
( Read more... )Anyway, in thinking about whether I would like to have a go at writing either of these again, of course I am thinking about a lot of Narnia-related things.
I don't
think hearing people talk about HDM got me thinking about this? It just seems like it arose from something else, but who knows.
A disclaimer: I never actually finished reading the Narnia books. I bought them in high school after becoming invested in the two movies that were out at the time. I read them, but I honestly found those that hadn't been adapted into films very boring, and I knew from the internet the general shape of
The Last Battle and naturally dreaded it. I think I got into the first bit of PJO at that point and forgot all about reading the Narnia books, bit by bit.
The texts of the Narnia books aren't that good. And so I really don't get what all the fuss is about anytime someone brings them up.
I think that there are completely valid criticisms that the books are, at times, racist and misogynistic. But you don't get the same kind of bile being risen up by other books of the time period and even from among the same circle of writers. People still unironically like LOTR. Maybe LOTR does gender a bit better, but the same accusations of racism could be leveled against them to my knowledge. Tolkein and Lewis were both men of their time. I am not saying that
excuses their ignorance, but I guess I am saying that I think that ignorance plays a greater role than informed hatred a lot of the time in older texts.
I think it was on here that one of you said something about the Narnian texts maybe giving a Muslims a fair shake? If that was one of you I would like to hear what you have to say about it.
I suppose the reason that so many people get upset about Narnia is that it is pretty straightforward in its allegorical elements, but I don't think that it makes any sense to read it as a purely-allegorical text, anymore than Lord of the Rings is purely allegory about World War I.
Tolkein famously wrote:
“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.”
And I think that, in that respect, the fact that Narnia is so directly applicable to Christianity probably doesn't mean that it is intended as a sneaky tool-of-indoctrination. I would have to do a lot more research about Lewis than I have just absorbed through osmosis, but I guess my first intuitive counter to that criticism of the books is that I really don't think children of 1950s England needed any help being indoctrinated by cultural Christianity. And, in fact, the Narnian narrative - if taken as religiously instructive and purposeful - has a much more universalist flavor than most mainstream Christians are prepared to accept. The fact that I find it comforting doesn't really mean that it is rank-and-file. While the suggestion that Aslan is "Narnia's Jesus" and the Emperor-over-the-Sea is a spirit akin to the intangible aspect of the God of Christianity is nothing I think any reasonable person is going to argue on its face, the fact is that Aslan and the Emperor are
distinct from Jesus and God the Father. A lot of people only read
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," as it is the most famous and tbh Lewis's prose and
especially his efforts at characterization leave much to be desired in mature readers. The pools in
The Magician's Nephew were free portals between all these different universes, and each of them had
their own creator and, in effect, god.
Furthermore, in Narnia itself you have the appearance of a lot of Greco-Roman deities and British mythological creatures who are not biblical by any means. You have
Bacchus in a
children's book at one point, and tbh I am never getting over that one.
And then, I have read recently in my sort of lazy, self-assessing research that in
The Last Battle, there is a Calormene soldier who is extremely devoted to Tash (a violent, negative deity whom the Calormenes worship) in a way that is, like, good-hearted and pious and pure even though Tash himself is a bad god who requires human sacrifice and is all sorts of devil-y archetypes folded into some rather orientalist imagery*. And in the end, Aslan tells the faithful Tash-follower that because of the
nature of his service to this bad god that it is as service unto him instead. Basically any good-intentioned piety was service to Aslan and any badly-intentioned service to a god was to Tash, even if they claimed it was unto Aslan. And while I find some appeal in that
too, I can promise you that most professing Christians are extremely one-way-the-only-way minded and aren't even sure that the people at the church down the street are doing it right.
*Re: Orientalism/racism/Islamophobia critique of Lewis's work, see what I said above about the product of their time remarks. But furthermore, the human populations of the Narnian world (of which the country Narnia is only a part, yay for Eurocentrism I guess?) are transplants from Earth. There are no native humans to that world as I understand it.
According to Wikipedia, the tensions between Calormen and Narnia are kind of based on historical fact???
Calormenes are described as dark-skinned, with the men mostly bearded. Flowing robes, turbans and wooden shoes with an upturned point at the toe are common items of clothing, and the preferred weapon is the scimitar. Lavish palaces are present in the Calormene capital Tashbaan. The overall leitmotif of Calormene culture is portrayed as ornate to the point of ostentation. The people of Calormen are concerned with maintaining honour and precedent, often speaking in maxims and quoting their ancient poets. Veneration of elders and absolute deference to power are marks of Calormene society. Power and wealth determine class and social standing, and slavery is commonplace. The unit of currency is the Crescent. Narnians hold Calormenes in disdain for their treatment of animals and slaves. Conversely, Calormenes refer to the human inhabitants of Narnia as "barbarians". All of this appears quite consistent with the Osmanli Turkish Ottoman Empire (1299-1923), its known and purported splendor, rigid class structure, and the always-volatile relationship with many of its European neighbors.
So, like, yeah, I'm not going to argue with anybody that it isn't racist/xenophobic. And yet I think that in the above-stated sense that Aslan was totally willing to accept the Tash-follower guy, and the fact that you have a sort of mutual-distrust and dislike and a sometimes-okay coexistence between the Calormenes and the Narnians that Lewis wasn't trying to suggest that there was nothing redeemable about them as one might in the modern day if one were going at a xenophobic rant, metaphorical or otherwise. Again, I am not really trying to act like I am particularly qualified to draw conclusions here, just talking about a thing. I guess inasmuch as one can look to their cultural programming before anything makes them question it, one could say that growing up in the British
Empire that still sort of existed even formally up into the 20th Century that viewing someone as
other and outside was pretty much par for the course. Europe has a long, long history of that, all the way back to Rome. The term "barbarian" comes from a mockery of what non-Latin languages sounded like to Latin speakers as I understand it (or was it Greek? - I'm too tired to look it up).
Incidentally, my Narnia google trawl of recent days led me to Skandar Keynes's twitter (the guy who played Edmund in the most recent Narnia adaptations). Turns out, as of 2016, he said he'd quit pursuing acting. He was, at the time, working as an advisor to a (blergh) Conservative MP in the UK, but a scroll through his twitter indicates that perhaps his primary interest is in Middle Eastern relations. (This being explained, partly, by the fact that he is half Lebanese.) Which led me to this thread which I, unfortunately, lack the sophistication to fully find the line between satire and seriousness, but it does have a bibliography that seems to indicate that there's some degree of seriousness involved.
https://twitter.com/KarlreMarks/status/1181897446001201152 I am educated enough to know that the origin of the Caesar salad bit is BS, though. Score 1, me.
But to draw this ramble to a close, I guess I would just like to express my frustration with the tendency to equate Narnia with, idk, a mainline protestant thinkpiece?
Perhaps it is because of my position where I feel embattled by both the mainstream/conservative practitioners of my faith and by non-religious/atheistic/practitioners-of-other-religions people within the leftist circles I tend to be in the periphery of. I recently had a falling out with someone (with whom, to be fair, I was never going to be eye-to-eye with but continued to try for the sake of a social group) who said that I was about two steps away from being a "white supremacist tradwife" on twitter. I can assure that this isn't the case, and that whole situation would merit another post, and I think I might be better off not making it for now. I bring it up now because, I suppose, I feel like a lot of present-day Christians are extremely unsophisticated in their philosophy, not least of all because their cultural institutions make them
afraid to examine very much.
The fragility of modern faith is something that is interesting to see. Again, I could make another whole post about the push of anti-intellectualism in conservative (Christian) religious communities, particularly that which exists in the American South as this is where I am from, but I feel like there is this sense that being a person of faith is like being a part of an endangered species. There are those in the sort of evangelistic atheist community who see religion as a cultural disease to be eradicated in the name of scientific or cultural progress. I am completely opposed to that line of thinking, and I try not to engage with it except when it is useful to do so for the sake of my blood pressure, but I guess I can simply say that I don't think that the eradication of faith/religion is ever going to happen. I believe it is a human impulse, for personally biased but also just historically observant reasons. And yet, on the one side, you have people who think that if people of faith would just listen to them list a handful of philosophical problems and takes on, like, the Problem of Suffering, Why Does God Let Bad Things Happen to Good People, Why does Evil EXIST, etc., that their silly, childish beliefs would melt like cotton candy in rain. And on the other hand, you have people of faith who... apparently... believe the exact same thing?
I've read a lot of compelling arguments that say that, in terms of cultural discourse and debate, progressive Christians really cannot say that the backward, queer-hating, anti-intellectual, angry, violent, stupid Christians who perpetuate fascism and genocide without a thought "aren't real Christians." For every sociological intent and purpose, they are, regardless of what one believes about the spiritual state of anyone in particular. On the other hand, though, I really wonder what personal business these terrified, cowering Christians have calling themselves Christians when they're scared to death that watching
Good Omens is going to turn them into a secular Satanist a la Anton Levey.
But back to what that even has to do with Narnia:
When I was looking for Narnia pictures to make the above poster-things, I found several search results returned from the
library of DVDs that some church somewhere has. (I can guarantee they are the religious homeschooling community type, which I have mixed feelings about from personal experience
and what I [thankfully]
didn't often experience when I was home-schooled.) Sorry but it's just so weird to me that some churches become so turned-inward that they have to become little communes. I don't think there's anything wrong with a church providing services to their members and communities, but when the first impression I get is their collection of Narnia DVDs, I am struck by certain presumptions which may or may not be true.
The first of these presumptions is that a lot of protestant Christians seem to think that, because C.S. Lewis wrote it and also wrote texts they like to read in Sunday School,
The Chronicles of Narnia is the only Jesus-approved speculative fiction. (Idk they never talk about his Planets books. I knew one lady who did once, rest her soul.)
And, in turn, a lot of non-Christians look at any Christian who
does like Narnia as if we are meant to turn in a term paper with a robust bibliography about how we justify such a terrible thing since it has such stark Christian imagery in something that... isn't the Bible? And that is where I got my title from. I feel like a lot of people, both Christian and non-Christian, treat
The Chronicles of Narnia like it is the Christian Apocrypha or something and it is bananas to me.
I guess, to be fair, I understand where some of it comes from. I think that a lot of people, especially non-Christians, feel frustrated by the way in which present-day western mythology is so saturated with Christian lore in a way that everyone likes to ignore or is simply too immersed to see for what it is. I had a conversation with someone on twitter recently about how in the BBC series
Merlin they talk about "the Old Religion" sometimes, but they seem to have
no concept of religion in the present sense. They
have one presumably, but they
never allude to Christianity or a church or anything of that nature. It is almost funny, and yet the series itself sort of necessitates that one assume that the "New Religion"
is Christianity if one knows enough about England or Arthuriana to fill a thimble.
I remarked to this person that it was frustrating even to me
as a Christian that there is a thing in popular culture that we can use Christian concepts and themes all day long, and as long as we don't
name them, we're being nicely neutral and inclusive. And no, it isn't. The person helpfully replied to me that an environment in which a person has to
hide their religious beliefs or affiliations (not just fail to bash people over the head with it) isn't really a religiously tolerant environment at all.
This practice of pretending unmarked Christian mythological allusions and concepts are "neutral" is alienating both to people outside the Christian faith and to those within it. Treating it as background noise that
everyone is just supposed to assume is "normal" is generally not good.
Christians are faced with it being cool to be what they are as long as they never say it out loud in mixed company, and
everyone else is faced with these things being treated as default. And yeah, that sucks.
And so I think that frustration often just suddenly reaches a boiling point when anyone talks about Narnia. I feel like people expect me to
explain C.S. Lewis and all his flaws to them every time I bring up Narnia. And, yeah, I am a little hypersensitive and tired and hate confrontation about fandom stuff that doesn't feel friendly or fun, so maybe I am overstating things, but this is my blog. But, like, I feel like this frustration is kind of weirdly placed, because regardless of what one argues about allegory versus applicability, the Christian mythological influence is overt and discussed in theological terms, even if Aslan is the actually-separate-from-Jesus god of another universe. There is nothing stealthy about it. There is nothing mysterious or vague about it, as in the above-mentioned case of
Merlin or every time substitutionary atonement is used as the natural conclusion to any conflict between good versus evil but is treated as neutral and as existing in a vacuum.
So I guess I would just like to say that Narnia isn't a modern-revelation religious text to any Christian in their right mind. One could say that it is religious
literature, I guess, but it isn't scripture, so please (strawman I'm frustrated with but whose features I have seen in many anecdotes in my life) stop laying it at my feet as if it is.
One last side-note: I found this video series of some theologian-type Oxfordian talking about how each of the Narnia books represents the spirit of one of the seven heavens of medieval cosmology and it is super interesting. He is like a professor of Christian apologetics, so his biases of it being sort of religiously affirmative literature are
heavy, but it also made me feel kind of happy about being able to see a broader meaning and openness to, I guess, magical concepts than any average Christians are ever comfortable with (as most Christians would tell you magic itself is forbidden). Here's one video from it:
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