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Narnia Movie
I was so delighted to find out that a quality film based on the first of the Narnia series had come out. Last night neighbor Cyndia and I went to see it, and what a treat. My children and I grew up together sharing the Narnia stories. They even used to act out that early scene when Lucy first finds her way through the wardrobe and into that magic land, and meets Tumnus the faun at the lamp post. We would invite friends to come and see, and I would cook a huge pot of veggie stew for afterwards. I was director and stage manager and co-collaborator with my children, and they were the actors extraordinaire. Angel, (then Freya) was the quintessential Lucy, sweet and openhearted, brave and innocent. Frey was the perfect Tumnus, fae and magical and enchanting. He even made himself a couple of pointy ears using paper mache, paint and coathanger wire. These enactments were the prelude to the theatre troupe we would soon become, where I graduated to musician and storyteller and they added dance and mime to their repertoire.
So it was especially meaningful for me to see the film. I had seen earlier versions on tv over the years, but none as satifying as this one. The casting was really superb, and I loved all the children, and the animals were incredibly well done. They spoke and behaved like the conscious beings they really are, yet kept their wonderful animal qualities. And Aslan, the lion king was exactly as I used to imagine him when I first read the books.
There were a lot of things in the book that were left out of the movie...for instance the Wood Between the Worlds, and the lives of the children in the mundane world. 'Course that could be a good thing, as it encourages folks to go and read the books, and me to re-read them...
And of course the patriarchalelements of both the film and the books were glaringly obvious as I watched the film. I was innocent of all this when I first read Narnia, and simply enchanted by the magic. I didn't notice back then that all the evil villains were women. The polarization between the White Witch (evil) and Aslan (good) is disturbing in its reinforcement of the good vs evil male vs female paradigm that patriarchy is built upon. I don't like seeing children programmed once again to embrace this view of reality that sets up polarities and oppositions and engenders a war mentality and perpetuates sex roles and gender wars. I have the same problem with the Tolkien stories and Harry Potter. Not that the latter two emphasize evil in female, but they still are built upon that familiar good vs evil grid.
I prefer a circular grid that I sometimes call loving, loved, loveless. Getting stuck in lovelessness is to me what generates evil. Staying in the flow of love in all its stages, including taking breaks and time for oneself, giving love and receiving love to me is a better grid to work with than the old oppositional either/ors. All stages are included in the flow. In such a view there is no "other" to pit oneself against... all is connected. Just as in real life we all have the potential to be kind or nasty, and we all have responsibility in this regard. Life is really shades of grey and not just black and white. Often folks who do nasty things behave that way because they've been hurt. Better to find a way to heal the hurt instead of making war on it and creating more. It's ironic that forgiveness and compassion are integral to the Jesus archetype... qualities that come from the Mother... yet he has been set up as an icon of righteous battles with evil foes...."with God on our side." Of course that other army over there thinks they have god on their side too, and that we are the evil enemy.
The Christian elements in Narnia were clearly represented in the film as they were in the books. Aslan is obviously a Christ figure who is sacrificed and suffers and dies, and is then resurrected. The armies, the formal routines of soldiers lined up before the throne, the glorification of war in the name of all that's good and holy.... all of this is dangerously reinforcing of values and social traditions that have brought terrible suffering to our world....and tends to perpetuate the masculation* radical feminists have often decried.
Yet the underlayer of paganism shows through too in the Narnia books and film. The Stonehenge-like setting where Aslan is killed and reborn...the stone table on which he is sacrificed, which then cracks... the older traditions of the dying-reviving saviours that died for the Goddess and the Land.... tied in more with nature, with animals, with magic. Still, even these traditions were a departure from the far earlier gentle blood rituals of woman-centered societies. They do not represent a purely matriated* reality, but a transitional time between when masculated values were taking over.
The White Witch who obviously expresses the archetypal Bitch, the Snow Queen, the woman whose heart has grown cold, who cannot love, whose palace is made of ice, was in the film magnificent in her way. As woman warrior she was so reminiscent of others we have seen who fought for the good and to defend women. I couldn't help seeing how the roles could so easily have been switched, and how the Queen could have been fighting for good and Aslan for evil. That's how polarity works... it switches back and forth, giving the illusion that something has changed, but it is still about those "ignorant armies that clash by night."
It's true that sometimes women can be awful. Masculated women who have taken on the trappings of patriarchy... or just been so wounded by it that they have become emotionally shut down... or have become so male identified that they join in the competitiveness and estrangement. Perhaps this is the origin of such women that show up in fairy tales - like thewicked stepmother...Snow White's nemesis with the poisoned apple. Always in such tales the force of good and redemption is shown as male... the handsome prince who awakens us with a kiss of love. Yet the Crone with her apple of wisdom goes way way back and is a positive female archetype.
From a child's point of view, a mother figure who is not loving and supportive is a threatening figure indeed. And yet hidden in that literary reprimand is a warning to women... "behave as you are expected... continue to be a prop and a slave... to put others always before yourself and have no dreams or goals or needs of your own... the eternal dishmop... or you will be abhorred and cast down." Nowadays we hear the bitch applauded and see words like "no woman made great changes by being well behaved" or something to that effect. This is part of the positive effects of feminism that has sought to liberate women... but it is also what has been held against feminists, touted as angry bra-burners and trivialized.
Aslan cried "witch!" when he accused the White Witch of evil doings and denounced her... and one of course could hear how this word has become interchangeable with "bitch." When he finally pounces on her and kills her the story fulfills its theme; good has triumphed and evil has been vanquished once again. Now we can raise our swords in victory and our armies can rank themselves in neat triumphant rows, the bugles blowing, the banners snapping smartly in the wind.
"This movie isn't going to be good for witches" I whispered to Cyndia in the theatre during that scene. "Lucy is the real witch," Cyndia responded. :0) Good answer, I thought.
Please don't mistake me. I still loved the film and love the Narnia books. I will still devour any new Harry Potter book or film that comes out. The magic and the fun transcend it all. I just hope our coming generations can take these cultural experiences for that, and will know enough not to buy into the rest.
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*Masculation does not mean "emasculation." It is word coined by Genevieve Vaughan, author of "For Giving", a book about the gift economy. "Masculation" describes the process whereby both women and men are conditioned to reject and devalue nurturing, free giving, cooperativeness, egalitarianism, supportiveness, and other qualities we tend to think of as "feminine." "Matriation" is a word I coined, after having been inspired by Gen's word... a word that expresses the antidote to masculation, a process that reclaims the above qualities for all.
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Just thought you might like to read this article: Since I can't copy all of it here, you might want to go the the internet site listed below for the complete text.
Marketing Narnia
By S. Brent Plate, The Revealer
Posted on December 26, 2005, Printed on January 8, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/29879/
Several newspaper reporters phoned me in the weeks leading up to the opening of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, the big-budget, semi-CGI adaptation of C.S. Lewis's much loved children's story. Since I published a book on Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, reporters wanted an expert quote on the marketing of the Narnia film, and whether this would be a "Passion for kids."
They were responding to some buzz about the marketing techniques, that the folks at Disney were working with Motive Entertainment to hit some of the same evangelical Christian markets that helped promote Gibson's film to controversial big returns at the box office. Disney, careful not to alienate anyone, downplayed these so-called "grassroots" marketing techniques and said that only 5% of the marketing budget was directed toward specific Christian groups (churches, parachurch organizations). With a marketing budget estimated at $120 million...well, you do the math. That's a lot of posters, postcards, CDs, and workbooks to serve as "resource guides" (read, "tools for evangelism," "bible study spinoffs") for church leaders. (Much of this is available through the website, narniaresources.com.)
Disney's reluctance to make much of these alternative targets was based on a fear that non-Christians, and even many Christians, would be turned off by the idea that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was nothing but a veiled Christian story. But I think what people really react against is the highjacking of mythology through marketing, the attempt by some Christian groups to straightjacket a multi-faceted story into a single interpretatio
1/10/06 8:25 PM
thank Goddess for more and more female film makers emmerging!
feel free to view my reel here (it's a quick time download and it's safe):
http://s56.yousendit.com/d.as
and visit my online journal here:
http://www.livejournal.com/us
blessed be and grace with ease,
T