McCain is nothing if not shrewd. After floating trial balloons for running mates such as Mitt Romney and Joe Liberman (!), candidates sure to alienate at least part of the party base, he comes up with a religious conservative with truly impeccable prolife credentials in the form of son Trig Palin.
In addition, he let the prolifers have their way on their plank in the platform, which is the strongest in the history of the party. The question now is, how do prolifers keep McCain's feet to the fire so that he will change his position from support of federal funding of unethical stem-cell research to opposition to it. Indeed, the need is for a ban on all human cloning
Friday, August 29, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
J. K. Rowling’s Books of Virtues: Sunny Stories Brighten Baby’s Bedtime Bigtime
Somebody said that "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine." And unlike some of our prescription medicines, a laugh is very unlikely to kill you. So I think it's about time to repeat this humorous take on the very serious subject of childrens' fantasy literature. This original satire of J. K. Rowling's Harrry Potter books first appeared on my blog of December 12, 2007. This satire had been read-tested by one high school senior who loves Harry and has read all the books, some more than once. She liked the satire and didn't realize that I take a dim view of Harry until I told her after she read the satire. This piece is copyrighted so if you download it for your personal use, you may not use it for profit and you may not modify the text in any way. (c) 2007 David Haddon
Hermione Protects Her Muggle Parents
Do any of you uptight, anti-magical parents dare to deprive your young children of their Natural Right to a vicarious enrollment in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry by not buying them the Harry Potter books? If so, just consider Hermione Granger’s touching solicitude for the welfare of her parents described in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Deathly Hallows).
At 17 an adult in the wizard world, she wants to join her pals Ron Weasley and Harry in the hazardous quest to destroy the magical objects or horcruxes that are Dark Lord Voldemort’s means to immortality. Deeply concerned that joining Harry and Ron in the battle against Voldemort might endanger her muggle (non-wizard and hence defenseless against magic) parents, Hermione thoughtfully induces in Mom and Pop Granger the magical equivalent of Alzheimers, then puts entirely new identities into their empty minds, and finally sends them off good as new to England’s old penal colony of Australia. With a daughter like that, you’d surely never need to worry about winding up in a nursing home prematurely!
Euthanasia Anyone?
Or about staying in one indefinitely! For incredible as it may seem, Mistress of Ceremonies Rowling obliges her world-weary senior readers by inserting the classic arguments for euthanasia into the closing pages of Deathly Hallows (pp 682-83). There Albus Dumbledore (the greatest of the good wizards) convinces Snape (the bravest of the good wizards according to Harry) to kill him by asking him “to help an old man avoid pain and humiliation. . . . because death is coming for me” with great certainty. Here and elsewhere Rowling marshals about half a dozen other arguments to justify this murder-suicide pact, but its execution certainly secures Rowling’s claim to having boldly gone where no man has gone before in a popular children’s fantasy, certainly not the likes of J. R. R. Tolkein or C. S. Lewis (her fantasy’s purported resemblance to theirs having been just a teeny bit exaggerated).
Rowling Lights Up Youngsters’ Lives
But the really great thing about Rowling’s Harry Potter books is their down-home cheeriness. As Hilda Ravensfoot described the series, “These books of virtues combine the atmosphere of the spellbook with the effulgence of a sunrise. They are a veritable festival of lights, growing in brilliance with each new volume” (Literate Witch Online, September 31, 2005). Since the ever growing cheerfulness of Rowling’s books is the only point on which all the reviewers and critics agree, it is surely the real reason why her series is so popular.
Kids just love to see Harry bubbling over with high spirits all the time—whenever he’s not being ostracized by the other students, desperately lying to Professor Severus Snape to keep from being kicked out of school for his rule breaking, or badly bummed out about his dark fate. And Hermione’s always so sweet—except when Rita Skeeter writes a new column about her and Harry, Ron puts his foot in it (which is pretty often) or Harry tries to patch things up between them.
Then there’s all those beautiful silver and white unicorns in the Enchanted Forest—dead —because one of the dark wizards liked to slurp up their blood every night as a health drink smoothie. But no one ever messes with those sweet, cuddly thestrals, the fanged and carnivorous, carrion eating, black skeletal horses with blank white eyes and batwings that only someone who has witnessed a death can even see.
Given the sky high rates of depression and suicide among American teenagers, a little inspiration and uplift like this surely can’t hurt. And isn’t that just what Rowling said she was going to do, show young people real goodness, how to live, love, laugh and be happy, all that joie de vivre. I mean who wants to read a dark fantasy about the same kind of thing you see every night on the evening news, especially since 9/11?
Speaking of joie de vivre, surely that’s what those black-hooded, light extinguishing dementors who clamp their jaws on your mouth— and suck out your soul—are all about. Just thinking about them’ll put the joy way down in your soul so deep you can hardly stand it. Just the ticket for the ’tweens!
And how about those happy campers called the Inferi: Corpses “that have been bewitched to do a dark wizard’s bidding.” Harry first gets to meet one when a slimy white hand comes out of the dark, icy water to grasp his wrist. Then he sees “an army of the dead rising from the black water.” A small group of them grab him from behind with their “thin, fleshless arms cold as death” to carry him into the water to share their fate . . .
To top things off, there’s good old Nagini, Voldemort’s big, black pet snake and alter ego. In the last book, she finally kills Severus Snape but first gets to eat poor Professor of Muggles Studies Charity Burbage for “dinner.” Charity’s magically suspended and still living body revolving over the Death-Eaters’ conference table is the image that dominates the first chapter of this book and sets just the right atmosphere for Rowling’s last wild romp with our kids.
Rowling Reels to a Rollicking, Shakespeherean Rhythm of Rigor Mortis
Medieval painter-moralist Hans Holbein’s Danse Macabre has absolutely nothing on Rowling’s, oh, so appropriately named Deathly Hallows! Wikipedia’s death count for the book includes 19 identified characters (excluding Harry’s owl Hedwig) plus about 50 unnamed witches and wizards, mostly Voldemort followers and loyal Hogwarts students killed in the Battle of Hogwarts. Thus, in Rowling’s last fantastic, fatal fantasia with Harry, she forges fatalities fit for a favorable face-off with Shakespeare’s fiercest feuds. “O O O O that Shakespeherean rag!”
Rowling also reveals that stunning Snape-Dumbledore murder-suicide pact previously concealed but already executed in the previous book. Only the “good” wizards make such death pacts in Harry Potter so don’t blame poor old Voldemort who, all on his own, had to suffer seven deaths not even counted as such by Wikipedia, one for each of his soul fragments. With a little help from Harry, Voldemort did finally kill himself, but—unlike the good wizards—he didn’t really mean to do it.
Well, you get the idea: “Lullaby and good night, And may baby sleep tight . . .
Hermione Protects Her Muggle Parents
Do any of you uptight, anti-magical parents dare to deprive your young children of their Natural Right to a vicarious enrollment in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry by not buying them the Harry Potter books? If so, just consider Hermione Granger’s touching solicitude for the welfare of her parents described in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Deathly Hallows).
At 17 an adult in the wizard world, she wants to join her pals Ron Weasley and Harry in the hazardous quest to destroy the magical objects or horcruxes that are Dark Lord Voldemort’s means to immortality. Deeply concerned that joining Harry and Ron in the battle against Voldemort might endanger her muggle (non-wizard and hence defenseless against magic) parents, Hermione thoughtfully induces in Mom and Pop Granger the magical equivalent of Alzheimers, then puts entirely new identities into their empty minds, and finally sends them off good as new to England’s old penal colony of Australia. With a daughter like that, you’d surely never need to worry about winding up in a nursing home prematurely!
Euthanasia Anyone?
Or about staying in one indefinitely! For incredible as it may seem, Mistress of Ceremonies Rowling obliges her world-weary senior readers by inserting the classic arguments for euthanasia into the closing pages of Deathly Hallows (pp 682-83). There Albus Dumbledore (the greatest of the good wizards) convinces Snape (the bravest of the good wizards according to Harry) to kill him by asking him “to help an old man avoid pain and humiliation. . . . because death is coming for me” with great certainty. Here and elsewhere Rowling marshals about half a dozen other arguments to justify this murder-suicide pact, but its execution certainly secures Rowling’s claim to having boldly gone where no man has gone before in a popular children’s fantasy, certainly not the likes of J. R. R. Tolkein or C. S. Lewis (her fantasy’s purported resemblance to theirs having been just a teeny bit exaggerated).
Rowling Lights Up Youngsters’ Lives
But the really great thing about Rowling’s Harry Potter books is their down-home cheeriness. As Hilda Ravensfoot described the series, “These books of virtues combine the atmosphere of the spellbook with the effulgence of a sunrise. They are a veritable festival of lights, growing in brilliance with each new volume” (Literate Witch Online, September 31, 2005). Since the ever growing cheerfulness of Rowling’s books is the only point on which all the reviewers and critics agree, it is surely the real reason why her series is so popular.
Kids just love to see Harry bubbling over with high spirits all the time—whenever he’s not being ostracized by the other students, desperately lying to Professor Severus Snape to keep from being kicked out of school for his rule breaking, or badly bummed out about his dark fate. And Hermione’s always so sweet—except when Rita Skeeter writes a new column about her and Harry, Ron puts his foot in it (which is pretty often) or Harry tries to patch things up between them.
Then there’s all those beautiful silver and white unicorns in the Enchanted Forest—dead —because one of the dark wizards liked to slurp up their blood every night as a health drink smoothie. But no one ever messes with those sweet, cuddly thestrals, the fanged and carnivorous, carrion eating, black skeletal horses with blank white eyes and batwings that only someone who has witnessed a death can even see.
Given the sky high rates of depression and suicide among American teenagers, a little inspiration and uplift like this surely can’t hurt. And isn’t that just what Rowling said she was going to do, show young people real goodness, how to live, love, laugh and be happy, all that joie de vivre. I mean who wants to read a dark fantasy about the same kind of thing you see every night on the evening news, especially since 9/11?
Speaking of joie de vivre, surely that’s what those black-hooded, light extinguishing dementors who clamp their jaws on your mouth— and suck out your soul—are all about. Just thinking about them’ll put the joy way down in your soul so deep you can hardly stand it. Just the ticket for the ’tweens!
And how about those happy campers called the Inferi: Corpses “that have been bewitched to do a dark wizard’s bidding.” Harry first gets to meet one when a slimy white hand comes out of the dark, icy water to grasp his wrist. Then he sees “an army of the dead rising from the black water.” A small group of them grab him from behind with their “thin, fleshless arms cold as death” to carry him into the water to share their fate . . .
To top things off, there’s good old Nagini, Voldemort’s big, black pet snake and alter ego. In the last book, she finally kills Severus Snape but first gets to eat poor Professor of Muggles Studies Charity Burbage for “dinner.” Charity’s magically suspended and still living body revolving over the Death-Eaters’ conference table is the image that dominates the first chapter of this book and sets just the right atmosphere for Rowling’s last wild romp with our kids.
Rowling Reels to a Rollicking, Shakespeherean Rhythm of Rigor Mortis
Medieval painter-moralist Hans Holbein’s Danse Macabre has absolutely nothing on Rowling’s, oh, so appropriately named Deathly Hallows! Wikipedia’s death count for the book includes 19 identified characters (excluding Harry’s owl Hedwig) plus about 50 unnamed witches and wizards, mostly Voldemort followers and loyal Hogwarts students killed in the Battle of Hogwarts. Thus, in Rowling’s last fantastic, fatal fantasia with Harry, she forges fatalities fit for a favorable face-off with Shakespeare’s fiercest feuds. “O O O O that Shakespeherean rag!”
Rowling also reveals that stunning Snape-Dumbledore murder-suicide pact previously concealed but already executed in the previous book. Only the “good” wizards make such death pacts in Harry Potter so don’t blame poor old Voldemort who, all on his own, had to suffer seven deaths not even counted as such by Wikipedia, one for each of his soul fragments. With a little help from Harry, Voldemort did finally kill himself, but—unlike the good wizards—he didn’t really mean to do it.
Well, you get the idea: “Lullaby and good night, And may baby sleep tight . . .
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Solzhenitsyn RIP
I learned of Alexander Sozhenitsyn's death only Tuesday. I use several news sources including NPR, but I'm not a news junkie. And Sozhenitsyn fell out of favor with the American elites when he clarified his motivation for exposing the lie that was Soviet Communism in The Gulag Archipelago and other works such as A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. This Nobel laureate was roundly booed by the graduating class at Harvard during his commencement address there when he warned the West that her forgetfulness of God was leading her in the direction of the tyranny that the Russian people had suffered under for 70 years.
For Solzhenitsyn was by the time of his exile to America a theist, a Christian theist, who had come to accept his grandparents' primitive belief that Russia was suffering under Communist oppression because they, the Russian people, had forgotten God. Like Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn experienced conversion while in prison, and he blessed his chains, as it were, for bringing him the wisdom to grasp the truth about God.
If you are familiar with Dostoevski's The Brother's Karamazov, you will appreciate Sozhenitsyn's use (in A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) of the names "Ivan" and "Alyosha." In both books, Ivan is the character lacking faith, Alyosha, the one having it.But Sozhenitsyn's Ivan is not a doctrinaire atheist, he is a much more humane and likeable character than Dostoevski's. This Ivan is almost American in his mild insistence that prayer may work for you, Alyosha, but not for me. So if you haven't read The Gulag Archipelago (And I've only read the first of its two large volumes.), don't try it first or second. Go instead for the short but powerful evocation of the gulag in his short novel, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Then there is Cancer Ward and other novels and works that may today be more important than the brutal history of the Gulag.
For Solzhenitsyn was by the time of his exile to America a theist, a Christian theist, who had come to accept his grandparents' primitive belief that Russia was suffering under Communist oppression because they, the Russian people, had forgotten God. Like Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn experienced conversion while in prison, and he blessed his chains, as it were, for bringing him the wisdom to grasp the truth about God.
If you are familiar with Dostoevski's The Brother's Karamazov, you will appreciate Sozhenitsyn's use (in A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) of the names "Ivan" and "Alyosha." In both books, Ivan is the character lacking faith, Alyosha, the one having it.But Sozhenitsyn's Ivan is not a doctrinaire atheist, he is a much more humane and likeable character than Dostoevski's. This Ivan is almost American in his mild insistence that prayer may work for you, Alyosha, but not for me. So if you haven't read The Gulag Archipelago (And I've only read the first of its two large volumes.), don't try it first or second. Go instead for the short but powerful evocation of the gulag in his short novel, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Then there is Cancer Ward and other novels and works that may today be more important than the brutal history of the Gulag.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
"J. K. Rowling: Sovereign Fantasy-World Creator," to be in "Touchstone," Nov. 2008
Free at last! Thank God! I'm free at last! Yesterday I got my editor's acknowledgement of receipt of my revised 2226-word ms for Touchstone's forum on Harry Potter to be published in November, the month the next Harry Potter movie comes out. As I understand the forum, my con article will be submitted to a couple of critics for their responses to it.
Over the past 8 years that I have been studying and writing about my bete noire, Harry, I have compiled a massive basis of observations for my criticism, including my notebook with detailed notes on my reading of each of the seven volumes of the series. And I have written thousands of words of detailed commentary. For all of that, I have published only four articles on Rowling's work, three in The American Spectator Online (July ?, 2005; Aug. 15, 17, 2007) and Celebrate Life (Nov/Dec 2007). The mainstream Christian journals have taken the Christianity Today line that these books are a "book of virtues." And even First Things and Touchstone have published favorable reviews on the little wizard.
I have distilled my 5000-word 2007 ms to meet an editorial requirement of about 2000 words. So, instead of my natural approach of building detail on detail, I have cut the details to fit and made my strongest argument on the basis of the contrast between Rowling's Post-Christian imagination and relativist morality and the profoundly Christian vision and transcendent (absolute) morality of Tolkein and Lewis. I think that the necessity of brevity will prove a virtue in this essay.
The lynchpin of my essay, then, is the following words of Aragorn to Eomer in the fields of Rohan when Eomer disputed his passage with Legolas and Gimli on their mission to rescue Pippin and Merry:
"Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house" (The Two Towers, Ballentine pb, 1965, 50, cited by Gene Edward Veith, “Still Ringing True,” World Magazine, 2001).
Do pray for Joanne Rowling and her many readers, that God may grant them his grace.
Over the past 8 years that I have been studying and writing about my bete noire, Harry, I have compiled a massive basis of observations for my criticism, including my notebook with detailed notes on my reading of each of the seven volumes of the series. And I have written thousands of words of detailed commentary. For all of that, I have published only four articles on Rowling's work, three in The American Spectator Online (July ?, 2005; Aug. 15, 17, 2007) and Celebrate Life (Nov/Dec 2007). The mainstream Christian journals have taken the Christianity Today line that these books are a "book of virtues." And even First Things and Touchstone have published favorable reviews on the little wizard.
I have distilled my 5000-word 2007 ms to meet an editorial requirement of about 2000 words. So, instead of my natural approach of building detail on detail, I have cut the details to fit and made my strongest argument on the basis of the contrast between Rowling's Post-Christian imagination and relativist morality and the profoundly Christian vision and transcendent (absolute) morality of Tolkein and Lewis. I think that the necessity of brevity will prove a virtue in this essay.
The lynchpin of my essay, then, is the following words of Aragorn to Eomer in the fields of Rohan when Eomer disputed his passage with Legolas and Gimli on their mission to rescue Pippin and Merry:
"Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear; nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men. It is a man's part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house" (The Two Towers, Ballentine pb, 1965, 50, cited by Gene Edward Veith, “Still Ringing True,” World Magazine, 2001).
Do pray for Joanne Rowling and her many readers, that God may grant them his grace.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Prince Caspian Lite
Before the Pevensie children are jerked out of the London train station by Prince Caspian’s blowing Susan's magic horn, Susan has already been deftly characterized as a loner liar and Peter, rather crudely, as a short-tempered brawler. These flaws seem to be the direct result of their tenures as Queen and as High King in Narnia. An inauspicious beginning for Director Andrew Adamson’s essay at translating C. S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian into a commercially successful movie, but these character defects help explain why Susan and Peter fail to see Aslan when innocent little Lucy does.
"Prince Caspian" the movie actually begins in media res with a scene not seen but implied in the book: the wife of King Miraz giving birth to a son. But Miraz is usurper of the Telmarine throne of Narnia and murderer of the former King Caspian, who was his own brother and Prince Caspian’s father. Thus, the birth of Miraz’s son as heir to the throne is a death sentence for the youthful Prince Caspian, Miraz’s nephew and rightful heir to the throne. Prince Caspian’s consequent flight results in his meeting the Old Narnians who adopt him as their champion against Miraz.
The quick transition from baby delivery to chase scene as Miraz’s horsemen pursue Caspian works well, cinematically, for a movie full of such chases, two big battle scenes (one newly conceived for the movie), and the single combat of High King Peter and King Miraz. Not for nothing is this children’s story rated PG 13. NPR’s movie reviewer noted a bit sourly that the battle scenes take up the better part of the 2-1/2 hour film. All this fast-paced combat action along with their special effects certainly enhanced the movie’s $56-million first-weekend box office, but the time lavished on them didn’t do much to advance the moral vision of C. S. Lewis’s original.
Nevertheless, the theme of belief vs unbelief is retained as the children and their dwarf companion make the ill-advised decision not to follow Aslan when Lucy sees him and understands his invitation to follow him on their quest to bring aid to Prince Caspian at Aslan’s How (“a low hill”). Later on Aslan tells Lucy that she should have followed him even if the others would not. And the question of why they had not seen Aslan troubles Peter and Susan as revealed in their dialogue with Lucy.
Arrived at Aslan's How, High King Peter prematurely concludes that Aslan has left the execution of the rescue of Narnia up to the kings and queens and their Old Narnian supporters. When his rash plan to make a sortie into the relatively lightly guarded castle of King Miraz ends in a costly rout, he and Caspian blame each other and even get into sword play.
So why are Lewis’s largely exemplary heroes characterized as and behave like such jerks? Simple: The decadence of popular culture in the West is such that had these two teenagers acted as responsibly as their originals, they would have been “like totally unbelievable" to the target audience of movie goers, teenagers and up. Good little girls like Lucy may be tolerated, but virtuous teenagers are oxymoronic.
Even worse, in a misguided effort to dazzle us with special effects and toy with vengeance, the film sensationalizes the Black Dwarf Nikabrik’s introduction of the Hag and the Werewolf and their proposal to revive the White Witch—by reviving her. Thus, she actually appears with a demonstration of her ice-producing power in Aslan’s How, a fortress shrine to Aslan complete with the remains of the broken stone table on which Aslan had been sacrificed for Edmund. This desecration of the fane of Aslan is offensive enough, but her witchcraft is so powerful that she easily mesmerizes both Peter and Prince Caspian who feebly protests, “This is not what I wanted.” Edmund, a teenager but apparently still young enough to retain some virtue, bursts in just in time to save the day.
The revised message of this scene seems to be that the power of witchcraft is so great that it can neutralize if not control the will of the two main heroes. But this flatly contradicts what Lewis was demonstrating. Instead, in the book we see that even at this, the lowest point of his military fortunes, Caspian had quite enough chest to reject with indignation the madness of using witchcraft to substitute the evil Witch for the evil Miraz: “So that’s your plan Nikabrik! Black sorcery and the calling up of an accursed ghost.” His imagination fed by the chivalrous tales of Old Narnia, the real Prince Caspian of Lewis’s book was impervious to such a proposal. But in this scene, the movie Prince Caspian comes across as a slightly doltish Telmarine (complete with a non-descript East European accent) who lacks the virtue to resist the power of the White Witch’s mere ghost.
Thus, Disney subverts one of the central themes of Lewis’s book: An adult mentor's loving nurture of the moral imagination of children through teaching them to love the right stories creates men and women of moral conviction who will act in accord with the virtues they have imbibed from those stories. This subversion is a profound betrayal of Lewis’s vision because the conversion of Telmarine Prince Caspian first to solidarity with his hereditary foes, the Old Narnians, and finally to faith in Aslan parallels Lewis’s own conversion first of his imagination by George MacDonald’s classic fairy story, Phantastes, before his later conversion to faith in Christ. Indeed, I am not alone in believing that Lewis put something of himself in Prince Caspian.
Furthermore, The Chronicles in general and Prince Caspian in particular are Lewis’s artistic response to the poverty of imagination, the inhumanity of the dominant naturalism of the Europe of his as of our day. In The Abolition of Man, Lewis discursively skewered this philosophy (quintessentially Ayers’s Logical Positivism) and its academic camp followers such as the authors of the infamous “Green Book.” But through his fantasy, Lewis gives us a story to capture the imagination of children and so help parents to actually give us men like Caspian, men with chests.
If ever the culture of the West comes to its senses and recovers its Christian roots, this seriously flawed if entertaining attempt to translate Prince Caspian into film must be redone, retaining and emphasizing both of Lewis’s two great themes: 1) The vital role of the right kind of children’s stories in the moral formation of men with chests and 2) The long walk of faith that demands hard steps of obedience to the King.
"Prince Caspian" the movie actually begins in media res with a scene not seen but implied in the book: the wife of King Miraz giving birth to a son. But Miraz is usurper of the Telmarine throne of Narnia and murderer of the former King Caspian, who was his own brother and Prince Caspian’s father. Thus, the birth of Miraz’s son as heir to the throne is a death sentence for the youthful Prince Caspian, Miraz’s nephew and rightful heir to the throne. Prince Caspian’s consequent flight results in his meeting the Old Narnians who adopt him as their champion against Miraz.
The quick transition from baby delivery to chase scene as Miraz’s horsemen pursue Caspian works well, cinematically, for a movie full of such chases, two big battle scenes (one newly conceived for the movie), and the single combat of High King Peter and King Miraz. Not for nothing is this children’s story rated PG 13. NPR’s movie reviewer noted a bit sourly that the battle scenes take up the better part of the 2-1/2 hour film. All this fast-paced combat action along with their special effects certainly enhanced the movie’s $56-million first-weekend box office, but the time lavished on them didn’t do much to advance the moral vision of C. S. Lewis’s original.
Nevertheless, the theme of belief vs unbelief is retained as the children and their dwarf companion make the ill-advised decision not to follow Aslan when Lucy sees him and understands his invitation to follow him on their quest to bring aid to Prince Caspian at Aslan’s How (“a low hill”). Later on Aslan tells Lucy that she should have followed him even if the others would not. And the question of why they had not seen Aslan troubles Peter and Susan as revealed in their dialogue with Lucy.
Arrived at Aslan's How, High King Peter prematurely concludes that Aslan has left the execution of the rescue of Narnia up to the kings and queens and their Old Narnian supporters. When his rash plan to make a sortie into the relatively lightly guarded castle of King Miraz ends in a costly rout, he and Caspian blame each other and even get into sword play.
So why are Lewis’s largely exemplary heroes characterized as and behave like such jerks? Simple: The decadence of popular culture in the West is such that had these two teenagers acted as responsibly as their originals, they would have been “like totally unbelievable" to the target audience of movie goers, teenagers and up. Good little girls like Lucy may be tolerated, but virtuous teenagers are oxymoronic.
Even worse, in a misguided effort to dazzle us with special effects and toy with vengeance, the film sensationalizes the Black Dwarf Nikabrik’s introduction of the Hag and the Werewolf and their proposal to revive the White Witch—by reviving her. Thus, she actually appears with a demonstration of her ice-producing power in Aslan’s How, a fortress shrine to Aslan complete with the remains of the broken stone table on which Aslan had been sacrificed for Edmund. This desecration of the fane of Aslan is offensive enough, but her witchcraft is so powerful that she easily mesmerizes both Peter and Prince Caspian who feebly protests, “This is not what I wanted.” Edmund, a teenager but apparently still young enough to retain some virtue, bursts in just in time to save the day.
The revised message of this scene seems to be that the power of witchcraft is so great that it can neutralize if not control the will of the two main heroes. But this flatly contradicts what Lewis was demonstrating. Instead, in the book we see that even at this, the lowest point of his military fortunes, Caspian had quite enough chest to reject with indignation the madness of using witchcraft to substitute the evil Witch for the evil Miraz: “So that’s your plan Nikabrik! Black sorcery and the calling up of an accursed ghost.” His imagination fed by the chivalrous tales of Old Narnia, the real Prince Caspian of Lewis’s book was impervious to such a proposal. But in this scene, the movie Prince Caspian comes across as a slightly doltish Telmarine (complete with a non-descript East European accent) who lacks the virtue to resist the power of the White Witch’s mere ghost.
Thus, Disney subverts one of the central themes of Lewis’s book: An adult mentor's loving nurture of the moral imagination of children through teaching them to love the right stories creates men and women of moral conviction who will act in accord with the virtues they have imbibed from those stories. This subversion is a profound betrayal of Lewis’s vision because the conversion of Telmarine Prince Caspian first to solidarity with his hereditary foes, the Old Narnians, and finally to faith in Aslan parallels Lewis’s own conversion first of his imagination by George MacDonald’s classic fairy story, Phantastes, before his later conversion to faith in Christ. Indeed, I am not alone in believing that Lewis put something of himself in Prince Caspian.
Furthermore, The Chronicles in general and Prince Caspian in particular are Lewis’s artistic response to the poverty of imagination, the inhumanity of the dominant naturalism of the Europe of his as of our day. In The Abolition of Man, Lewis discursively skewered this philosophy (quintessentially Ayers’s Logical Positivism) and its academic camp followers such as the authors of the infamous “Green Book.” But through his fantasy, Lewis gives us a story to capture the imagination of children and so help parents to actually give us men like Caspian, men with chests.
If ever the culture of the West comes to its senses and recovers its Christian roots, this seriously flawed if entertaining attempt to translate Prince Caspian into film must be redone, retaining and emphasizing both of Lewis’s two great themes: 1) The vital role of the right kind of children’s stories in the moral formation of men with chests and 2) The long walk of faith that demands hard steps of obedience to the King.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Friday, May 9, 2008
Evangelical Manifesto, Part 1 / Memento Mori: Three Extractions
First the memento mori: I'll complete the Biblical three score and ten next month, and today my dentist pulled three molars from the right side of my mouth. Two had gold crowns and the third a large mercury amalgam filling that had cracked and broken. Perhaps because I also have "moderate periodontal disease," they came out relatively easily and I only had to pay $115 each instead of the $185 listed for "surgical extraction." Because many of my gold crowns have been undermined by decay, my mid-term prospect is to extract all of them and get an upper plate. (The bottom plates tend to work poorly because the lower jaw is too flexible.)
My long-term prospect is, of course, the same as yours, death. But "since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ," and I "rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. . . . Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!" (Romans 5:1, 2b, 9). I simply take Jesus at his word when he said, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24)
Second, Evangelical Manifesto: The steering committe includes the likes of Timothy George, Os Guinness, Rich Mouw (President, Fuller Theological Seminary), David Neff (Editor in Chief, Christianity Today Media Group), and Dallas Willard (Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California). Charter signers include Leighton Ford, Irwin Lutzer, Jack Hayford on the one hand and Ron Sider and Jim Wallis on the other. Notable by their absence are leaders heavily involved in the culture war such as Jim Dobson and Tony Perkins of Family Research Council.
The Manifesto bills itself as "A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment." The infelicitous statement of the rationale for this declaration of "who we are and where we stand" seems to be saying that living together in societies riven by deep differences about religion and ideology is "one of the greatest challenges of the global era." Lack of clarity in the writing here gets the Manifesto off to a rocky start, but pluralism is certainly a problem, perhaps in ways more serious for Christian faith than they seem to think.
The Manifesto does maintain most of the theological distinctives of Evangelical faith--except for God's judgment and wrath and the Last Things, Heaven and Hell. Since these severely challenged biblical doctrines are so important for effective evangelism, this is a serious defect. Nevertheless, these worthies do maintain first of all that "Jesus Christ is fully God become fully human. . . beside whom there is no other god, and beside whom there is no other name by which we must be saved" (p. 6). This exclusive claim of Christian faith is perhaps where the spiritual battle rages most fiercely today so that point is well taken. More later.
You can find it at http://www.anevangelicalmanifesto.com/
My long-term prospect is, of course, the same as yours, death. But "since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ," and I "rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. . . . Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!" (Romans 5:1, 2b, 9). I simply take Jesus at his word when he said, "I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24)
Second, Evangelical Manifesto: The steering committe includes the likes of Timothy George, Os Guinness, Rich Mouw (President, Fuller Theological Seminary), David Neff (Editor in Chief, Christianity Today Media Group), and Dallas Willard (Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California). Charter signers include Leighton Ford, Irwin Lutzer, Jack Hayford on the one hand and Ron Sider and Jim Wallis on the other. Notable by their absence are leaders heavily involved in the culture war such as Jim Dobson and Tony Perkins of Family Research Council.
The Manifesto bills itself as "A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment." The infelicitous statement of the rationale for this declaration of "who we are and where we stand" seems to be saying that living together in societies riven by deep differences about religion and ideology is "one of the greatest challenges of the global era." Lack of clarity in the writing here gets the Manifesto off to a rocky start, but pluralism is certainly a problem, perhaps in ways more serious for Christian faith than they seem to think.
The Manifesto does maintain most of the theological distinctives of Evangelical faith--except for God's judgment and wrath and the Last Things, Heaven and Hell. Since these severely challenged biblical doctrines are so important for effective evangelism, this is a serious defect. Nevertheless, these worthies do maintain first of all that "Jesus Christ is fully God become fully human. . . beside whom there is no other god, and beside whom there is no other name by which we must be saved" (p. 6). This exclusive claim of Christian faith is perhaps where the spiritual battle rages most fiercely today so that point is well taken. More later.
You can find it at http://www.anevangelicalmanifesto.com/
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