Posted on 12/05/2005 4:28:27 PM PST by Aetius
The Sunday Times December 04, 2005
Narnia's lion really is Jesus Christopher Morgan
AN unpublished letter from the novelist C S Lewis has provided conclusive proof of the Christian message in his Narnia children’s books.
In the letter, sent to a child fan in 1961, Lewis writes: “The whole Narnian story is about Christ.” It has been found by Walter Hooper, literary adviser to the Lewis estate.
It has emerged ahead of this week’s release of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. The film, starring Tilda Swinton and Jim Broadbent, cost £75m to make and has been at the centre of a tug of war between Christians and secularists.
Brian Sibley, author of Shadowlands, the book which describes Lewis’s marriage to Joy Gresham, said: “This is the most specific explanation of Narnia I have heard.”
The new film depicts one of the seven novels in Lewis’s series, which tell the story of four children journeying through a wardrobe into Narnia, a world of talking animals that is plunged into endless winter by a witch. The children and animals rally to Aslan, a noble lion.
On one side church groups, backed by the film’s producer Disney, are promoting the story’s message as Christian, with Jesus represented by Aslan saving a world fallen into sin.
Others say it is just an adventure story that draws on a variety of religious and folklore sources. Douglas Gresham, Lewis’s stepson, said recently: “Churches in Britain and America are promoting the film as a Christian film, but it’s not . . . and the Narnia books aren’t Christian novels.”
The letter, written from Magdalene College, Cambridge, where Lewis was a don, contradicts this. “Supposing there really was a world like Narnia . . . and supposing Christ wanted to go into that world and save it (as He did ours) what might have happened?” he wrote.
“The stories are my answer. Since Narnia is a world of talking beasts, I thought he would become a talking beast there as he became a man here. I pictured him becoming a lion there because a) the lion is supposed to be the king of beasts; b) Christ is called ‘the lion of Judah’ in the Bible.”
The text is contained in a volume of Lewis letters to be published next year.
---Others say it is just an adventure story that draws on a variety of religious and folklore sources. Douglas Gresham, Lewis’s stepson, said recently: “Churches in Britain and America are promoting the film as a Christian film, but it’s not . . . and the Narnia books aren’t Christian novels.” ---
Its almost as if the guy is ashamed of his stepfather's clear intent. Or maybe he's just afraid that the truth would make it harder to sell the film as a celebration of diversity, or some nonsense like that. Lord of the Rings proved (with an exception or two) that you don't need to PC-up a classic story for it to be successful on film, so hopefully they shunned multicultural considerations on this one as well.
Well.... Duh!
Narnia seems to be flying under the radar.
Not much publicity as compared to King Kong and
Harry Potter.
But word of mouth will spread like it did for Gibson`s
Passion of the Christ.
Oops .. the secret is out. Liberals won't give it any awards ... that is if Disney doesn't screw it up with foul language or innuendos that are unChristian.
Double, DUH!
"Narnia seems to be flying under the radar.
Not much publicity as compared to King Kong and
Harry Potter.
But word of mouth will spread like it did for Gibson`s
Passion of the Christ."
"Passion" can hardly be considered to have flown under the radar!!
Does the ACLU know yet?
“The whole Narnian story is about Christ.”
Catholic reading lists have promoted this series as "Christian" since I was a kid and that's a LONG time ago.
"...they tried to secularize a kids' movie and ended up having to drink a tall, boiling glass of STFU for it."
Mmmm mm, delicious. The lefties are so full of hate and bigotry for anything Christian that they can't even see straight.
Check out my profile...another award-winning movie you ought to see when it releases January 20.
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
Guess the death-and-resurrection thing wasn't subtle enough. Those geniuses broke the code. Dang it.
LOL...worth a big ol' Narnia BUMP.
Thanks for the spoiler ... I haven't read Narnia, but am looking forward to seeing it.
But, if one were to claim that any movie in which a good character dies (or is represented as being as-good-as-dead, and is then resurected; then can't we also say that E.T., Superman, 5th Element, Highlander,Finding Nemo,Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, Matrix, Snow White, and Peter Pan are all Christian movies too? After all, Tinkerbell is for all intensive purposes dead; then she comes back, as did Neo, Nemo, Superman, the 'Supreme Being', and the rest.
This is something that as a movie producer, I wouldn't focus on. I'm not involved in the movies, lacking both talent and desire. But consider; to proclaim a movie 'Pro-Christian' is to invite attacks on multiple fronts. First we have the 'Christians' who say that YOUR intrepretation of Christ isn't the same as THEIRS; so obviously YOU must be wrong and evil. Then we have the Jewish, Muslim, Buddist and Wiccan people who WERE looking for an entertaining movie; but don't want to see a movie counter to their religious beliefs.
And thirdly, I question the timing of this discovery. What an amazing coincidence, a letter lost to all for 30+ years is discovered just HOURS before the US theatrical release. Some may call it coincidence, I call it highly suspicious.
The whole Narnian story is about Christ
Does the ACLU know yet?...... hopefully not until after 700 million people have already seen it, and made $700 million world wide.
It's probably anti-Semitic and will lead to riots worldwide.
Worse.....it's anti-witch.....and surely the Wiccans will be slaughtered en masse.....
*rolling eyes*
OK, where the hell do I sign up? LMAO
And I thought the Lion was either Ramsey Clark or John Kerry. Silly me!
under the radar?
Its all over Christian radio and even the posters are up in the churches. It will be big and it'll be becuase of a nontraditional marketing strategy.
I did not say to myself, "Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia": I said, "Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen."
C.S. Lewis: Letters to Children. pp. 44-45.
But surely ABC will have a special on about how indignant they are!
:-)
Aw, jeez, Dad, nobody's gonna miss just one, are they? LMAO
I have been on a CS Lewis mailing list where Douglas would occasionally answer to a specific question about Jack; and my take is that either the comment is out of context, or Douglas is making a fine distinction between something that is truly Christian and something that is only partially Christian.
OOOHOHOHOHOHO WOWOWOW! IT'S THE DISCOVERY OF THE MILLIENNIEA! THANK YOU MR. POINTYHEADED MAN, I COULDNR'T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU!
MUST SHOUT FROM THE HILLTOPS!
(aplolgies for speeling erroers, to excited to type :D)
The MSM that hates this movie might also go after Bush with such a hatefest because of his Christianity? Ya think?
You don't need marketing to sell Narnia. It's Narnia.
yeah. word of mouth is prob pretty big with this one.
see here though...looks like a lot of $$ wasnt spent on church marketing...it just seems that way.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2005-12-02-narnia-main_x.htm
The lion's share of the film's marketing budget — reputedly $80 million — has been spent on saturation TV ads, but lesser amounts have been spent on grass-roots marketing to schools, libraries and youth groups. Johnson says just 5% was spent wooing churchgoers, but the press coverage has centered on faith-based marketing.
You make a good point about other movies with what could be considered Christian themes or elements, but that really aren't intended as Christian movies or books. But with Narnia, it seems obvious that the author's intent was to fashion a Christian story via a thinly-veiled allegory with talking animals. I just find it interesting that Lewis' stepson would deny what Lewis himself said of the story.
As to the business considerations; yes, I think one of the reasons Gresham responded as he did is because he doesn't want the film to be 'tainted' in the press as a Christian proselytizing vehicle for unaware audiences. Yet at the same time Disney has been reaching out specifically to the Christian community with its marketing.
I don't see why the stepson couldn't just say something along the lines of 'yes, Lewis wrote this as a Christian allegory, and we have been faithful to that spirit in the film adaptation, but at the same time it is not an evangelizing tool and is not so overt that a non-believer would be uncomfortable, and as such we have made it so that it can be enjoyed on any number of levels, from a religious allegory to nothing but a fun fantasy/adventure film.
That seems to me to be a better, offend-noone answer.
You may be right. And his answer may not have been presented in total. But from the response, it seemed as if he were repulsed by the idea.
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