The reaction to the Chronicles of Narnia movie as compared to the reaction to Brokeback Mountain or King Kong has been culturally illuminating. Movie reviewers are culturally liberal as a group, whatever their politics. This need not be and in fact liberal may be the wrong term for the bias. The media is not so much out of step in terms of liberal politics, but socially and culturally. It is secular and libertine when much of the nation (if not almost all of it) is religious and moralistic.

But as a recent blog entry at National Review On-Line pointed out reviewers also live in a strange world. Most go to many movies a week. Most of us do not. Many reviewers crave something new while many of us got to movies as entertainment hoping for something our entire family can enjoy. Even Christian film buffs are not immune to this. At a Christian college it is perfectly predictable that a certain sort of student will hate (as a matter of first principle) any film most Christian�s like. They are so upset with the Christian sub-culture (often for just reasons) that their logic, to paraphrase Sarek, is uncertain when it comes to Christian films. Secular film reviewers, who seem to fear that any ticket for Narnia will lead to the Christian Taliban ruling America, are even more conflicted.

King Kong may be a great movie that breaks all records. However, surely someone could point out that it is a bizarre title to release at Christmas and that remakes do not always fare well. This looks like a great summer film put out at the wrong time. However, most sites looked as if they could not wait to get Narnia off their front pages; some never put it there, and put Kong in its place. My bet is that (in the end) Narnia makes more money over the Holidays than Kong. Even if I am wrong about the numbers, the unequal treatment given the two may speak to this media bias.

One of the most bizarre reviews of Narnia was at www.boxofficemojo.com. To be fair to the reviewer he seems generally cranky and he hated Kong. However, a quick Google search of his writings shows him to be a secular libertarian of the �religion is bad� school. From the title forward, it is plain that he has not even tried to shelve his ideology in reviewing the film. Of course, he has a right to do this, but it just means that the ninety percent or so of Americans who do not share his views must take his opinions with a grain of salt. It is a common tactic of secularists to try to divide the religious by labels and name callings. Most Americans don�t like fundamentalism of any kind given the way it has been portrayed to them by the media so mainstream Christians (who share the views of the Pope or Billy Graham) are painted as weird religious extremists. Since most of us have no desire to be on the fringe we separate ourselves from these groups and in those way the tiny secularists minority can cling to the power it has in our republic.  

My comments are in italics.

Scott Holleran

Disney’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, based on the first in a series of children’s books by C.S. Lewis, puts its religious ideas�faith, sacrifice, selflessness�to graphic images of death, supernaturalism and stark terror, making it inappropriate for young children.

This is a judgment that may or may not be reasonable. One can compare the reviewers take on the Harry Potter movies to see if this is a fair conclusion. However, one will not the complaint about �supernaturalism� in the list of things inappropriate for children. Does the author mean that God-talk can damage a young mind? Such a complaint would be impossible to prove, so one can only hope that he meant something else. If not, then we have the first hint of an irrational bias against religion.

This fanciful Christian propaganda opens with the bombing of London as a mother and her four children run for their lives. Dad’s at war when the bombs start falling and middle child Edmund (Skandar Keynes) runs back to grab his father’s photograph, prompting older brother Peter (William Moseley) to admonish him for being selfish. The self must be denied, Narnia warns, for the sake of others. Or else.

The director of the film is not a Christian. I see no evidence that the Disney Company is overrun with Christians. There were Christians involved in making this film, but since eighty some percent of the nation is Christian that is not surprising. In what way is this Christian propaganda? If it does support world-view than is Brokeback Mountain libertine propaganda?
Evidently the notion of self-denial really bothers the reviewer. That is his right, but of course one could ask his qualifications as a film reviewer to make such statements. It is also an odd time to make this criticism. He seems to feel that at the Holidays most children are in danger of thinking too much of their nation or of others. Has he ever had children or visited a mall? I don�t see little tykes overrun with monastic abhorrence of the things of this world. Perhaps a small reminder of duty, honor, country and living for others might help make them less narcissistic and more, well, jolly?
As for the �or else�, apparently the reviewer has never read Plato and discovered that selfishness and tyranny in the soul harms it. Being selfish makes you unlovable both to others and yourself. The �or else� is natural consequence of your behavior.  

What an else. But first, we meet the kids when they are sent by their mother to live in the country with an old professor. He lives in a big house with acres of empty rooms and closets and nothing for kids to do. The plot is relatively simple for a time, as the family dynamic takes shape. The youngest child, Lucy (Georgie Henley), represents pure faith and there’s a responsible older sister, Susan (Anna Popplewell), and Peter, who is in charge. Selfish Edmund is the demon seed in need of redemption.

Lucy (whose name means light) does not represent pure faith. She is the one �who sees.� Peter and Susan both act by faith (in the traditional Christian sense) but do not see as well due to their lack of logic (as the Professor points out). They have been blinded by an educational system that does not teach an open philosophy of knowledge, but places secularist blinders on them. Now this may be wrong, Lewis would be happy for a good argument, but it is not what the reviewer seems to think it is.
If by faith one means (with Dante whose bust is prominent in the Professor�s mansion and ideas in Lewis� writings): assenting to the most reasonable idea about which one still has doubts, then Lucy does have �faith.� If one means belief in the absurd or despite the evidence, then this is a concept that the Narnia books (and to a lesser extent the film) and Lewis rejected.
When a game of hide and seek leads Lucy into the imposing wardrobe, she steps into Narnia, a fantasy world with fauns, centaurs and an evil white witch (Tilda Swinton, dripping with contempt for children like she eats them for breakfast). Up until now, Lucy is a nice kid, but, like the movie, she grows less benign as she personifies the self-abnegation theme.

Evidently the reviewer thinks giving of self for the sake of others a fearful and evil idea. Of course, �self-sacrifice� may be false and not genuine. Lewis himself pointed out that some people do �give of themselves� in a controlling and manipulating manner. However, we would have to believe with a tiny secularist minority, against our experience (by irrational �faith�?) that all such actions are false and hypocritical. All the hospitals, charities, and community service done by self-denying people would be the problem. We should live (I suppose) in a Darwinian world where everyone lives for self. This sort of person delights in picking holes in folk like Mother Theresa or self-sacrificing public servants. There is a sort of brutal appearance of honesty to this, but if everyone who is afraid their kids will become like Mother Theresa instead of Ayn Rand does not go to this film I doubt it dents the box office. Bluntly, it is a world view that is ugly and not particularly rational.  
The other children follow Lucy through the gateway to snowy Narnia�the prerequisite is faith�

This is simply false. Edmund finds Narnia, because it is there, when he is deeply skeptical about it. He goes into the Wardrobe to mock Lucy and finds Narnia. Peter and Susan also find Narnia by accident not because they have �faith.�  
and the conflict takes shape, with Edmund willing to sell his family to the witch, Narnia’s dictator who has outlawed humans. Director Andrew Adamson (Shrek) makes the most of Lewis’ characters in visual terms, though he doesn’t linger for longer than a few seconds. Who can blame him? With preachy beavers, a two-faced fox and wolves, who sound like they smoke two packs a day, it would all seem a little ridiculous if kept on too long.

Lewis has written a fairy tale. A fairy tale is not a Dickens novel and is not dependent of deeply drawn characters. Instead a fairy tale is about place and deep archetypical lessons. The reviewer may find fairy tales absurd, but I am fairly assured the genre will out last him.

In fact, it does, with Narnia looking fake, though Adamson keeps it relatively convincing by moving things along at a brisk pace.

This is an odd sentence. What is it for a fantasy world to look �fake?�

The story remains intact, such as it is, with Narnians prattling on about a prophecy and someone named Aslan, a lion king (voiced by Liam Neeson) who uses mystical powers only after most of Narnia has already dropped dead. Rock bottom is reached when Santa Claus drops in looking like something the reindeer dragged in and sounding more like Oprah than a jolly old elf.

We now know the reviewer does not like prophecy in his fairy tales. He also (it appears) would only wish to believe in a god who keeps bad things from happening . . . an unfortunate position for a libertarian. Apparently, God would have to save us all from the consequences of all our choices in order to pass muster with this reviewer. Of course, it is Father Christmas and not Santa Claus who drops in, but knowledge of what he is reviewing does not appear a strong suit.
Bad Edmund gets what he has coming (by the movie’s morality), which means he is undeservedly forgiven in the next instant, this being a Christian picture. Like religion, this winter wonderland is arbitrary but, on its own terms, the fantasy falls apart.

Religion and forgiveness are arbitrary? How? The moral universe in Narnia, as in the real world, operates in a law-like manner. Sin and you are harmed by it as is everyone else around you. You pay a price and so does the community. Sometimes a great act of self-sacrifice can redeem the situation. This is not just a Christian notion, but is the result of centuries of human experience. Forgiveness is a mighty act that can help heal the worst situations.

Non-Christians should pause as they read this review. Most people in the USA don�t like Christianity because they are afraid it leads to an overly rigid morality. But is only a religion that knows the law, the deep magic of the movie, which can forgive. Secularists invent their own morality and transgressing that morality carries �rehabilitation� (which sounds so much more cheerful than punishment!) that only ends when the secularist is satisfied. Laws can be broken and mercy can be given in a rational universe with a Law Giver. Everything else, which looks at first like freedom, is simply substituting a Creator who gives us rights (as the Declaration states) with men who allow us rights.  
Dependable Peter leads his family into harm’s way because a couple of beavers told him it’s his duty to help others, which makes it still harder to accept nebulous Narnia as worth the lives of four children.

This is bizarrely the opposite of the film. . . Peter struggles through the entire film (too long in my opinion) to decide if saving Narnia is worth the danger. He bases his final decision not just on the �word of the beavers,� but his experience with the dangers that the free folk of that world face. Like any good Englishman in World War II, he is willing to run risk that others might be free.
The freedom of an entire country is in peril, the children might be able to save it, and they place the needs of the many (not at all nebulous creatures but real sentient beings they come to love) over their own needs. Like our brave soldiers in Iraq, they sense that it is the duty of free men and women to protect those that cannot protect themselves. The reviewer may think that such sacrifice is worthless, but I am glad that the veterans of the first two World Wars (Lewis was one) did not agree.

The faun who befriended Lucy wanted to turn her in, the centaur had a tough time taking a liking to Peter, who’s been designated the future king, and all Aslan seems to do is negotiate with the enemy and sacrifice himself.

Much of this is called character development in a film the reviewer likes. Some of it is just false.
The faun is selfish and a quisling. He puts his own needs over that of his fellow Narnians and works for the secret police. Of course, failing to do this and acting as a patriot would require self-sacrifice so perhaps the reviewer is upset that the faun eventually saves Lucy to his own peril. He wants to turn Lucy in before he knows what a human is. When he gets to know a human he sees that his species-ism is wrong-headed. He has learned to love someone different than himself at great cost to himself.

Aslan frees Edmund from the White Witch, does not place himself above the law, and kills the White Witch. What else should he have done?
The humans are not much better; Susan, the smart sister, abandons reason,

Instead, Susan opens her mind to the fact that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in a secularist philosophy. She is, in fact, encouraged to embrace reason by the professor.
Peter is hell-bent on risking the family for Narnia and, by now, Lucy is grating on the nerves. It seems poor Edmund, imprisoned by the witch, only wanted some candy.

Peter spends two-thirds of the film trying to get his family home. This statement is false and almost perversely so. We are not told what is grating about Lucy who is a favorite of almost every other reviewer of this film. Edmund�s love of Turkish Delight was a symptom for his self-centered desire to be �king of Narnia� and lord it over his siblings. He is willing to betray them for his own desires. Like many a selfish person, he discovers that getting what he wants means that he does not get what he wants!
  
The big battle, with mixed match-ups and acts of valor that make no sense, is a bust. Narnia’s greatest asset�Swinton as the white witch�is undone by overproduced fight photography, engaging her sword against a child in slow motion, forced to waste her best efforts at wickedness in a few moments that make her look like she’s Tina Turner from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome auditioning for Madonna’s Vogue video.

I don�t agree with this, but at least it has to do with the film and not the writer�s world view.
None of it is pretty, even when it’s supposed to be, let alone exalted. Despite Adamson’s mitigating efforts, Narnia stands for death, destruction and renunciation of self in a poorly disguised Christian fairy tale.

Narnia stands for life over death. It understands that a life lived for self where one lives as long as possible at the expense of duty, honor, and country ends up being long, but miserable. It understands that in the light of eternity such a choice is even more foolish.

Narnia is for the destruction of tyranny and the establishment of liberty under law.

Narnia believes that one finds the best self in the denial of selfish desires and in embracing love.

Narnia is a Christian fairy tale. One might want to compare secularist�s fairy tales and their dystopias to Narnia and decide which worldview has the better ideals. In any case, one should also beware getting worldview from a film reviewer with no qualifications!

Narnia Doing Better than Expectations?

Whose expectations? Let�s assume that film reviewers are a fair minded bunch. Let us also assume the bulk of them are to the left of the average voter in 2004. Does anyone believe Bush carried the film reviewer demographic?

I will acknowledge that my opinions on the Narnia films may be slanted because I am a Christian and love C.S. Lewis. Can�t we also acknowledge that if you really, really dislike Christianity and traditional values that it may also slant your notions of the film? After all, if Narnia does well, then there will be more �religious community friendly� films. You can count on it.

Granted any one review may not be biased in itself and Narnia is not Citizen Kane. But how else can we explain reviews (many reviews) that spend as much time dealing with religious �controversy� (in a country where eighty-five percent are Christians) as with the film itself. Doesn�t this impact reviews, especially on the web? Remember if only a quarter of the reviewers are harder on Narnia for being based on the book of a Christian author, then that will impact any composite score of critics (normally a good measure of a film�s value). Does anyone doubt that Brokeback Mountain benefits by its cultural politics while Narnia suffers from it?

A sane example, I will review the insane example at www.boxofficemojo.com later, is at the www.the-numbers.com.

Here under the expectations for the film we read:

Name: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the WardrobeStudio: DisneyOfficial Site: Narnia.comRelease Date: December 9th, 2005 MPAA Rating: Rated PG for battle sequences and frightening moments. Source: Based on a BookMajor Genre: FantasyGenres: Animated Characters Production Budget: $150 million Box Office Potential: $225 million

Notes: Just to get this out of the way, there is no organized boycott of this movie by secular groups, despite what some people are trying to report. If you do a search for “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “Boycott” all you’ll find is some groups are dropping their boycott of Disney, partially because of this film. As for the movie itself, every time I see the trailer I think, “Meh. Lord of the Rings did it better.” The reason for the comparison is obvious; the same company did the creature effects for both movies. This comparison will hurt the film at the box office, but not by enough to keep the film from showing a profit and getting a sequel or two. In fact, it might do well enough worldwide that the next two or three are given the go ahead and filmed simultaneously. Those movies, on the other hand, won’t be success, as this is the only book in the series that is easily adapted into a mainstream movie.

In a one paragraph film summary about one-third is taken up with quashing a rumor that nobody in my religious community has heard. Remember accusation of bias is not the same as �boycott.� The argument about the film (which the reviewer now concedes understated the film�s success) concludes by saying that the other books in the series cannot be made into mainstream movies. So the last sentence actually has nothing to do with the expectations for this film. . . is it possible that world-view caused the reviewer to allow hopes to undercut sense? (This is like the few Christians who thought that the film would do 80 million on opening day. They were deluded by their hopes. The film was number 2 in December all time, until Kong, wishing for more than that was just not reasonable for the first film in a franchise.)

Besides what is �mainstream?� Prince Caspian (the next film) has a battle scene and a climactic sword fight. In fact, it centers on a band of rebels against an evil tyrant. That plot has worked well in a few movies I could name. It has the brave and knightly �talking mouse� Reepicheep, the single best character in the books. All kids can relate at a deep level to the main theme: the conflict between an aging monarch and his younger heir.

To go further, The Horse and His Boy or Voyage of the Dawntreader strikes me as more mainstream than Narnia if �mainstream� means less overtly Christian. They also have plots that are easy to summarize and some big action sequences. This is particularly true of Dawntreader which has sea monsters, pirates, mystical/magical encounters, and comic relief (Dufflepods anyone?). Has the reviewer actually read these books? In any case, Narnia�s expectations were all about problems with the franchise and not about potential. Religion is viewed as a problem, not as a way to tap the largest single group in America (and the world). There are more than one billion Christians on the planet after all and Christians are the most rapidly growing group on the planet. We are, after all, the one�s making babies so family films better start to cater to us (or to the religious in general).

Narnia Rules, but Brings Out Bizarre Reviews

The Washington Post review is typical. It has to admit that Narnia is a great film, but it can hardly stand to do so. It after all is Christian, which somehow now means �controversial.� One will note that this adjective is not applied to a tedious film about gay cowboys playing to insular audiences in major media centers.

My comments are in italics as usual.

A Winter WonderlandThose Who Don’t Believe in Fantasy Will Thaw at ‘Chronicles of Narnia’

By Stephen HunterWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, December 9, 2005; C01

Rule, “Narnia,” “Narnia” rule the waves — and it certainly will, or at least the waves of over stimulated children and grateful parents whose tidal rush breaks upon the nation’s multiplexes during the holidays. As a destination, it should please members of both generations.

So far so good, though this is not just a children�s movie it is good for children.

Andrew Adamson’s sterling version of “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the perdurable C.S. Lewis classic of children’s fantasy, is well told, handsome, stirring and loads of fun.

It’s also, for mordant ironists, a rich vein of psychological ore revelatory of the beloved “Jack” Lewis, as he nicknamed himself, who wrote children’s classics by night, taught and lectured on medieval English lit at Oxford and Cambridge by day and, by very late of night, dreamed of spanking various ladies of his acquaintance.

Lewis himself hated the intellectual posturing that assumes, without argument, that one could tell a great deal about the psychology of a person from their writings. Such guesses have the benefit of (usually) being incapable of falsification so operate as the perfect foil for the intellectualism that passes for education in modern times. Our sexually obsessed and dysfunctional era loves to make this sort of airy speculation about sex. Why is the factoid in the review? What does it tell us about the movie? Out of the thousands of facts about Lewis� life, including the fact that all of his books are still in print, that he married happily late in life, and that he had a long friendship with Tolkien somehow what was most important to the reviewer was the sexual temptations of the young Lewis.

Let�s be clear. The young Lewis was no saint and neither was the older Lewis. He wrote frankly about his failings in his private writings which he viewed as failings. As he grew older he grew in grace and his failings and temptations also grew less. The only imaginable point of this �revelation� about Lewis is to try to �pull him down� and show him to be no better than the rest of us. Well, yes, if by that one means that he was a sinner, but not if one means that he was content to wallow in his sin or to publish private information in a major newspaper in the sort of review likely to be read by children.

Well, we shall speak no more of that little quirk. Taken at face value, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” decodes into a kind of dashing view of colonialism for the pre-pubescent set, an empire-and-faith fable set in a fantasy world whose relation to the real one will be, for adults, its most fascinating element.

�Taken at face value� the film is nothing of the sort. Lewis was no fan of colonialism and this �decoding� (a word indicating that even the reviewer knows that one cannot find colonialism in the film if one takes it at �face value�) is absurd. Later Narnia books deal with an imperial power which is utterly evil, and argue for the freedom of little nations over against this expansionist empire.

For kids, the pleasure will be in some of the best special effects of the year. And for both, the overarching endearment will be a narrative that speeds through its two-hour-plus running time.

At last actual comments on the film.

The movie has attracted some pre-release pub because it is famously a “Christian allegory.”

Well, no it is not an allegory, famously or otherwise. An allegory is a book like Pilgrim�s Progress where the faithful character is called Faithful. Narnia is an exercise in what-ifery. What if God created a world like Narnia? What would it be like? Lewis dislike allegories for the most part and always denied he wrote one. Our film reviewer has moved from cheap psychoanalysis to literary analysis while managing to say almost nothing about the film.

And yes, it’s true, Lewis was a well-known adult convert to Anglicanism (from the intellectual’s fashionable atheism) who wrote much about his faith in God. Maybe too much; some find him a bully on the subject.

Let�s guess the reviewers opinion. Who finds him a �bully?� How does writing a book arguing for a topic count as being a bully? Are atheists so sensitive that they cannot abide losing arguments?

Of course, that is true if internet atheism is any indication. Google atheism and take a look at the sights. Humorless and dour they assume that all Christians are stupid and that all smart people are atheists. Christians know by experience, as Lewis surely did, that many clever folk are atheists and that there are good arguments against Christian theism. Such Christians, Lewis included, simply prefer the arguments for Christianity which they think better.

Whatever, it is true that the plot he engineered for the first of his seven “Chronicles of Narnia” reenacts the march to Golgotha, the ugliness enacted thereupon, and the good news three days hence, when someone powerful arises and gives hope to a death-haunted world. However, in the role of Jesus Christ is a lion named Aslan who, no matter how holy he may be, is still a lion, and when he paws an enemy to the ground, he then bites its head off. That’s pure big carnivore and a long way from Christ’s admonition to turn the other cheek.

Just as secularists produce what-if stories for their world view (�What if aging, bald white men from France could go around the universe in a star ship making it so?�), so Christians ask what-if questions assuming their views are true. That may be hard for the reviewer to imagine as he has an oddly stunted view of Jesus and of Christianity.

There is a left wing version of Christianity, light years from historical Christianity, that has somehow become the only version in the minds of writers at the Post. In this version, the Christian God is much like a senile Santa patting everyone on the head and handing out presents.

The Bible describes our God as a God of war. The Christian God employees archangels like Michael whose only job seems to be creating havoc amongst the forces of darkness. Jesus Christ cleared the temple of his day with a whip and called his enemies �old fox� and �white washed tombs full of dead men�s bones.� He was �the Lion of Judah� as well as the Lamb of God. In fact, it is the very power of the Man that made his sacrifice so great. He could have called legions of Angels to His defense, but did not. He was a strong man who chose to die for the sins of mankind.

Christ advocated �turning the other cheek.� In context, most Christians at most places at most times (leaving aside an odd pacifist fringe) have understood this to mean that personal vendettas and revenge are out, but that a robust defense of others is a positive good. We invented chivalry and knighthood after all! As a Christian, I cannot hate my enemy nor seek personal retribution. I must forgive. On the other hand, the government �does not bear the sword in vain� and can act to defend the powerless and weak.

The fantasy seems just as, if not more, plumped up with symbols of that other modern religion, the state. You can feel Lewis the professional writer cleverly pandering to his readership of patriotic, well-educated middle-class English adolescents of the ’50s.

Where? How?

It’s a veddy British Isles kind of thing, with a lord of all being the majestic lion, symbol of Britain on the royal shield, along with the unicorn, the heraldic symbol of Scotland, and then the unicorn shows up as a steed upon which a valiant young knight charges into battle.

If the film had been set in an African land, then the film�s use of cultural symbols of that place would be applauded as good. Why is the fact that a British author wrote a book set in Britain using British culture worth comment? Is Anglo-Saxon culture now so evil that parent�s must be warned of its existence?

Second, the reviewer gets the book and films symbolism wrong in any case. He confuses symbols added by the movie makers (Peter�s steed) with those found in the book which he shows no signs of having read.

Lewis was a classically trained scholar with a fascination with the symbols of the Middle Ages. He uses the language of heraldry all through the book. The reviewer apparently once saw the British coat of arms on a whirl wind tour of England and assumes that Lewis, the Oxford don, must have drawn his sources from the same simplistic set of images that seem to exist in the reviewer�s mind. Orthodox Christians beware! If he sees the Eagle on a Saint John the Divine icon, he will think you are pushing the Bush war agenda! (�Plainly the use by Saint Michael Church of the icon of Saint John the Divine with its plain imperialistic symbols, including a very American eagle, in this era of war is meant to reinforce the not-so-subtle pro-Republican message of the liturgy.�)

But even a moment�s thought suggests many different possibilities more in tune with the message of the book than �lion as England.� We might begin with Lewis� friend Charles Williams and his image of the lion. We could quickly move on to basic fairy tale conventions. The lion is the king of the beasts. What other animal could be king of the talking beasts of Narnia . . . a lemming, a hedgehog, a fox? We could then think about the Biblical image of Christ as the �lion of Judah.� Both these ideas seem more plausible than the simplistic �colonialism� image when we remember that Lewis� was not doing British what-ifery, but Anglican what-ifery.

Lions and unicorns, oh my! There are so many other Britishisms it’s almost unsporting (and certainly dull) to list them all, from landscape to culture to gear to weather. It climaxes in a giant, linchpin-of-history battle so familiar to the Brits, as they rarely lost one (the Spanish Armada, Trafalgar, Waterloo, Battle of Britain). But more important, there’s a kind of empire assumption underlying it all.

No. There is not. The Queen of Narnia, statist to the max, is overthrown. The government that replaces hers is almost not a government at all. People are left alone and justice is done. The state becomes smaller not larger in Narnia. I would assume (if anyone cares) that taxes go down under High King Peter, who can lay off all the wolves.

The movie is really another in a long line of unquestioning colonial morale-raisers, so necessary for the maintenance of empire, circa 1950, when the book was published: It’s about the arrival in a troubled land (Narnia, in whose syllables may be heard a faint echo of “Britannia”) of white Britons of noble visage, pale beauty and steely bearing in the middle of a war of darker creatures. Our boys and girls immediately move to center stage — indeed, it turns out that their coming has been foretold — and they are quickly appointed to leadership positions.

Of course, this just may have more to do with Fairy Tale conventions than with British colonialism. Is Jack the hero of Jack and the Beanstalk to support the British empire? Could it be that children like reading books about, well children?

The absurd comparison of the sound of �Narnia� to �Britannia� could be extended endlessly to fit almost any thesis the reviewer had proposed. For comparison imagine a reviewer who decided Lewis was attacking colonialism by writing his book. Then the same sort of facts could be used to support this thesis. (Narnia is small. Narnia sounds like Britannia.)Here is a novel thought: Narnia is more likely to have gotten into the classically trained Lewis� mind through the Roman town of that name than through vague associations with Britannia. Such speculation is endless and proves nothing.

As to the �whiteness� of the children, it seems to escape the notice of the reviewer that in 1950 most children in Britain were white. Is this bad?

The boys get to be knights, the girls princesses, every British boy and girl’s fantasy.

Has the reviewer been to Disneyland lately? There are a great many princesses and sword bearing young men there. Are they all British? Was the reviewer ever a child?

Thus elevated, they lead the darker masses in battle to victory, and stay behind to rule magnificently and justly. Talk about Kipling’s White Man’s burden!

Of course, at this point the reviewer forgets that they achieve their �white man�s� victory over the White Witch. Her reign of snow and winter and bland whiteness is ended and Narnia begins a springtime of color.

Of course, the race of beavers has long escaped me, but fortunately for me the Post reviewer has told me the truth. Now I know that beavers are actually people of color. But wait, hasn�t this Washington Post reviewer just compared �dark masses� to the talking animals that make up the bulk of Peter�s army? This seems a bit racist to me. I have to admit that I never think of people of color when I see animals, talking or otherwise, but I guess the reviewer does.

But Lewis gets his little redcoats into Narnia by the most lamely imagined conduit. It’s a simple wardrobe, a storage cabinet for out-of-season clothes. He couldn’t take the kids through a looking glass, a wishing well, a magic door, a diamond facet? Nah. When Lucy Pevensie (adorable Georgie Henley) finds refuge in the big box on the upper floor of an ornate mansion where she and her three siblings are waiting out the Blitz, she finds herself suddenly in Narnia. No explanation given, no explanation needed.

That is why it is called a fairy tale. The reviewer might note that a �magic door� is in fact a door. That a looking glass is just as workman-like as a wardrobe in most houses. In fact, it is making magic the common place that is so wonderful in the best fairy tales.

Jack gets to the cloud land by a bean stalk. Now this is never explained and in fact it is impossible to climb to the clouds on a bean stalk! However, the story is likely to survive this revelation.

Lucy wanders about, running into the faun Mr. Tumnus (part James McAvoy, part computer illustration) and learning it’s eternally snowy in Narnia because the White Witch Jadis (the fabulous Tilda Swinton) has taken over, declared eternal winter and outlawed Christmas. Only the legendary lion king Aslan can stop her, with a little help from Santa Claus. The last touch may be a bit much (Lewis’s Oxford buddy J.R.R. Tolkien thought so) and you may wonder, where where where is Tiny Tim?

Of course it is Father Christmas and not Santa Claus, but the reviewer has already indicated that though he may have the right prejudices about British colonialism he knows nothing about fairy tales and mythic literature.

Lucy returns to reality, and after some hemming and hawing gets her three siblings — treacherous Edmund (Skandar Keynes), noble Peter (William Moseley) and timid Susan (Anna Popplewell) to join her. The first thing they notice — after the gas lamp in the forest — is the talking beaver. And that is the signal technical excellence of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”: the beaver.

Director Andrew Adamson came up through special-effects discipline, reaching the apotheosis of that craft in movies that were all effects all the time: the “Shrek” films. In “Narnia” he has brilliantly supervised the nearly impossible: supple, expressive animal faces. That is, actual performances from the masses of hard-drive-accumulated electrons (or whatever the hell they are) that represent the creatures: It’s all here, the whole human spectrum, from the sparkle in an eye to the heft of a jowl or the twitch of a nostril, the lick of a lip, all those little nuances of expression that are completely beyond the reach of actual animals. Even Aslan himself (voiced by Liam Neeson) isn’t just an MGM or a royal lion or even, really, a Lion King: He’s more, a subtly hued study of wisdom, courage and fire undercut with Christ’s most appealing human characteristic, his doubt. He knows where he’s going to end up.

We note that when the reviewer writes about film, his area of specialization, he writes interesting and thoughtful commentary.

The human performers are not far behind the animated ones. The four children are convincing, particularly the young Henley, and Keynes is close behind as Edmund, tormented by his attraction to the witch, willing at first to sell out siblings and beavers all. And you believe it, too, because of Swinton’s cruel, chilly witch, with frosted hair and the demeanor of a Vogue editor accidentally abandoned in a fish market who then becomes a superb warrior queen in the battle sequence, almost carrying the field with her steel chariot and samurai sword moves. Her evil disdain and high style are perfect, and she makes you feel the charisma of evil and why it could attract the troubled odd-boy-out Edmund. At the same time, Jadis is not as comically overwrought, as, say, Glenn Close’s Cruella De Vil in the Disney live-action variants on “101 Dalmatians.” Her Jadis is just thoroughly mean and unpleasant, every schoolchild’s sneering, domineering, perfect teacher.

I should say that the movie rides its PG rating right to the very edge; its evocation of animal death and battlefield mayhem and jeopardy to children is extremely powerful, and some kids may find it disturbing. Parents should be warned that the movie is far more explicit than the book and consider carefully before taking their younger children. Most disturbing of all is the scene that replicates the Crucifixion, the actual death of a Christ-figure before his Resurrection. There’s no blood, but in all these sequences there are spasms of pain, the plain view of piercing and stabbing, and the final surrender to stillness. Finally, a fleet of wolves serves as the White Witch’s secret police, and they too are disturbing creatures, full of menace and intensity.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (140 minutes, at area theaters) is rated PG and contains intense, if bloodless, violence and death.
� 2005 The Washington Post Company

So here we see a review that is good when talking about the film, but a mix of prejudice and ignorance when not doing so. How did the reviewer get away with this analysis? It is about conservative Christianity, which most of his fellow employees cannot help him with.

Remember the first time you saw a movie that was so stirring, so beautiful that you wanted to see it again? Right after the movie ended?

Remember films that impacted you physically they were so enjoyable?

I remember watching Star Wars for the first time and noticing after the film that I had grooves in my hands from flying Luke’s X-Wing for him.

I remember when Bambi’s mother died and the Wicked Queen in Snow White transformed before my eyes.

My job has me use film in the classroom. Some films are smart. Other films entertain. A few do both well reaching a wide audience. It’s A Wonderful Life. Fantasia.

How rare it is when something entertaining is also profound!

And now, I have returned from the first night of a new holiday classic Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to report a miracle. They got this film right. If you loved the book, and you understand a movie is not a book, then you will love the film. It has the essential message exactly as it should.

If you don’t know the book, don’t worry. The film stands on its own. Narnia is no fan boy film unwatchable by any but the faithful. If you can understand a fairy tale, then you will understand this movie. And yet there is so much visually and intellectually beyond the simple story that you will be able to watch this movie many times. I went with an eight year old who watched the whole thing without flinching. (She has still not seen Lord of the Rings or Star Wars.) She loved it. My fifteen year old son loved it. My thirteen year daughter loved it. My wife, no fan of fantasy movies, loved it. And toughest of all my eleven year old son thought it cool. What other movie can do that?

Forget ideological whining by reviewers who confuse their hatred of traditional Western values with thought.

If you think the wolves in the wood should never be fought, then you will hate this film. If you think evil does not exist, you will be uncomfortable. If you believe forgiveness is cheap and bad behavior has no cost, then this film will make you furious. But if you are like most of us, then this film will make you shout for joy.

Tonight for the first time in a long time I watched a film that made my heart ache with the beauty of the scenes, made me cry, stirred my passions, and made me think. (All those neo-Platonisms! Surrounded as I was by Torrey students all of whom have read the Timaeus, we were the only audience in the world to burst into applause when Aslan asked, “Where is the fourth?”)

The child actors are a miracle . . . especially Lucy who is actually a child . . . the first we have seen in a Disney film in forever. The White Witch is fierce some and has the best fighting moves seen Matrix. My son says that centaurs are awesome warriors . . . and there is Aslan now far and away the lion king.

Some films soar (think of the Rings Trilogy). Other films are jolly (like a holiday with Mary). Narnia does both. It is a magnificent jollification and what more can one ask for on this Holy Day God’s greatest holiday.

Who do we thank for this film? How can we make sure Disney and Walden make more? See this film. See it again. Write letters. Read the book. Rejoice that the DVD will be out by next Christmas!

At the end of the film I kept hearing people gloating that they could spend their next seven holidays watching the sequels.

Just do it Disney. Now while the children are the right ages.

Merry Christmas to the film makers. You have given us a present to last our life times.

I would like to thank the Torrey Honors Institute and Biola University for the funding that made this paper possible. This paper is based on my lecture at God Blog I held at Biola University in the fall of 2005.

Having a philosopher write about blogging is either overkill or under kill. On the one hand, we are well read as a group and try to ask the hard questions. On the other hand, blogging is a new cultural phenomenon and philosophers are famously disconnected from the actual world. I was once lost in Atlanta at an American Philosophical Association meeting. I could’t find my way back to this gathering of philosophers, so I got on public transport and looked for that unique, detached from reality look that only a philosopher could have. This is a sort of smart but still clueless look that philosophers have cultivated over the past few decades. Having identified one of us, I was able to follow this philosopher back to the APA conference without even speaking. My friends often remind me that in practical terms I am radically inferior to a pizza since a pizza can feed a family and I cannot. Practically speaking it is a dismal career choice, but I am not dismal about it which may also be a sign of social inability. So what could a philosopher possibly have to say about blogging that would be worth the time of a technically and culturally savvy readership?

Philosophers like to ask big questions about everything and everything includes blogging. Part of my role at Torrey Honors at Biola University is to try to analyze cultural trends. However, this is merely playful amusement concerning God blogging because I am going to unrestrainedly speculate and that always makes people in my profession nervous. Hopefully this will be informed speculation of the sort that stimulates thought and does not cut it off. Is blogging a revolution that will liberate the masses and bring down the Old Media? Or is it a way for nerds to talk to themselves without leaving their basements?

Anyone who has lived through Internet revolution has to worry about falling for the Next Big Thing. Now Hugh Hewitt, himself Renaissance like in his work as both a legal scholar and radio host, has written a book comparing blogging to the invention of movable type. Is it rational to be this excited about blogging or is Hewitt just falling for more Internet hype? Whenever I read big claims about new technology, my assumption is that these claims are quite mad or that someone is trying to sell me a book. Of course, this is remotely possible! Hewitt is a sober person, but he is in the entertainment industry after all. He would not gain listeners by comparing blogging to the invention of the disposable lighter. However, I would actually like to defend Hewitt’s general contention. I actually think that he’s right.

Of course, when talking about blogging, one should really be referring to the new media, which includes new technology such as pod casting. I am going to keep using the term “blogging” for all of the new media partly because it is the word of the moment, but mostly as a shorthand. I wish to discuss the whole future of sort of a new individualistic media based on new technology. This technology will allow individuals to make decisions once available only to corporate bosses or studio heads. Some of these decisions made by individuals will be sublime and others ridiculous. Imagine a time when virtual actors can be purchased for pod-films. Using such technology, a Star Trek fan could keep William Shatner alive and active forever. The choice will soon not be Paramount Studio’s to make, but will be made by millions of fans.

What are the implications of this printing press/stage/studio in every family room? Philosophically, I think blogging is about to bring balance in the long running tension between live and preserved performance. People have a limited amount of free time and they can choose to use it doing things “live” (like a discussion) or consumed pre-packaged product. Long ago there was a commercial that asked: “Is it live or is it Memorex?” Technology has made it harder and harder to tell. The winner has been “preserved” performance . . . the tape of the concert (or the eight track or CD or DVD . . .) winning out over the live performance.

As a person who loves live theatre, there is little doubt that the local community theater has not been able to compete with Hollywood. This is not t say film is bad, but in the battle for time Hollywood beat Broadway or more importantly the millions of theaters all over America. Of course, there are advantages to both theater and film, but few Americans will ever know the joy of small theater. Most people do not live near high quality intimate theater.

Within Western Civilization there has been a long running debate over which is better, which to be involved in. I am not going to get into that argument. I am just going to assume that both live, interactive performance and preserved performance have a place in the well-lived life.

Blogging is going to right an imbalance between live and preserved performance. Slowly over the last five hundred years, live performance has been dying and preserved performance has been growing. It is the imbalance that should worry us and it is the righting of the imbalance that should excite bloggers.

But first let’s ask: What is so great about live? If it dies, who cares? The best way to find out is to examine the critics of the move toward preserved performance. Plato, I think, offers the best attack on preserved performance. For of course books are preserved performance. In ancient times they were a new technology that allowed a different type of education from live dialoging with Socrates in the Agora. Books are on the side of preserved technology. When this paper was a conference talk, it was a live thing and now it is not whether you are reading it or listening to the pod cast version. Books worried Plato and next we will turn to his attack on them and all of preserved performance.