Is The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Christian propaganda or a Harry Potter-like fantasy/adventure story? In the weeks leading up to the release of Narnia, which comes out tomorrow, a mini-controversy percolated in the press about the dual marketing strategies devised for the film — one directed more narrowly at what Hollywood and Madison Avenue both perceive as the niche market of Christian believers, and the other directed toward the general public.
Alerted to the financial potential of the Christian movie audience by Mel Gibson's The Passion, the secular movie industry has been awkwardly engaged in trying to figure out how to exploit it, with little success to date. Aware that C.S. Lewis was a Christian apologist, and perceiving the keen interest of Christian groups in Narnia, some reporters covering the movie industry ham-handedly attempted to fashion controversy out of the absence of explicit religious references in both the movie and its advertising.
The point is, however, that Lewis' Narnia books themselves lacked explicit references to God, Christ, Christian prayer and practice. It is not a question of the movie makers and the advertisers deep-sixing the novels' references to Christianity or betraying Lewis' vision, but of Lewis himself choosing this particular method of translating the Christian story. The next step is to ask why he did so.
Of course, a combative secularist could conjure up a sort of conspiracy theory of sneaky C.S. Lewis embedding subliminal Christian messages in the Narnia books. But this is more an artistic issue than a crudely propagandistic one. Lewis was attempting to convey the reality of how Christ redeemed fallen man, in a fresh treatment that would slice through the accumulated rust of 20 centuries.
How often, when registering the presence of a crucifix in a room, are we struck by the sheer physical torture of what Christ went through for us? Custom erodes most of the dramatic effect of the corpus on the cross, allowing us to display crucifixes on the walls of homes where we comment snidely about others, bicker, lose our tempers, cheat on tax returns or take God's name in vain.
In the Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis was attempting a presentation of the Christian story that was not allegory but analogy — “here is how our sin and salvation story might play out in a parallel universe.” In part, he chose this method in reaction to living in an increasingly secularized England, but he also knew that many of the book's buyers would be Christian parents (since he was well-known as an apologist for the Christian faith), and he was addressing their children's need for an un-ossified experience of their faith.
What those children (and we) feel when we hear Aslan roar “not [like a] tame lion” is something close to the fear of the Lord; what they (and we) feel when Edmund must confess his cowardice and treachery resembles our shame before the all-seeing omnipresence of the good God. What they (and we) feel when Aslan submits to humiliation and a cruel death mirrors our emotions when connecting with the truth of the Lord's Passion. But one set of feelings is not merely a stand-in or a counterfeit of the other. Lewis was myth-making in the Chronicles of Narnia, and it was his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, a myth-maker on a spectacular scale, who first persuaded him of the truth of myths in relation to the Ultimate Truth.
So the dichotomy between the Christian market for this movie and the secular market is mainly a matter of marketing strategy. Lewis' children's fantasy is not a sneaky attempt to hoodwink unbelievers, but an effort to convey the reality of God's redemptive intervention in our fallen world. Over-interpreting Narnia as a point-by-point allegory only explains it away, robbing readers and viewers of the chance to enter into this story on its own terms. Lewis the author, literary critic, and Christian would not approve.
Madame X works in Washington DC for the federal government. Because of her employer, she must write under a pseudonym.
