The Antisocial Socialist

That was an interesting reaad, thanks for the link. I never really got into the Narnia books at all*, but I think that kind of discussion generally applies to other books as well.

OMG the racist parts sound SO BAD. SO BAD.

I've never really understood why Susan being kicked out of Narnia by itself is sexist. I do think that the mention of lipstick and invitations is sexist (though on the other hand, aren't these kids supposed to be upper-middle or upper class? I think many women of that standing would have cared about fashion and social events, or at least pretended to), but I don't really get why Susan leaving is considered that too. It sounds more like the "grown-ups are boring, they've closed their hearts and imaginations so they can't even see all the magic going on" thing that so many books and movies have, especially when the other characters say that she now thinks that Narnia was just a game they made up as kids. I don't see the mention of her age as a sexist focus on women and aging, and more the fact that so many people when they're in their early teens or so really look forward to being cooler and more "grown-up", and then when as you grow up it becomes obvious that being a certain age doesn't magically make you cooler. IDK. Maybe it's just some context I'm missing here, and the fact that the annoying boy apparently doesn't get kicked out until much later. (I'm not trying to cause an argument here, I'm curious about the perspective of people who actually like the books.)

* I just never really cared about them and the only time I made an effort to care was when that movie came out and I borrowed my sister's books. I didn't really get into it, because even though there was an adorable kid, a faun, a lion, and Tilda Swinton, it just didn't hold my interest. :/ Should I try again?

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sabotabby

OMG the racist parts sound SO BAD. SO BAD.

It's even worse than that post lets on. When I was talking about it with my friends, I was like, "Yeah, I'd really love to see Disney adapt The Horse and His Boy for film; that would be the most hilariously awful thing ever."

I've never really understood why Susan being kicked out of Narnia by itself is sexist.

Oh man. It's a recipe for starting a flamewar in any discussion, but. Well, for one thing, she's not kicked out of Narnia. (Well, she is, but so are a lot of people, and that's not the thing that's controversial.) All of the kids are kicked out of Narnia after a certain age, because Narnia exists to teach them about Jesus, and once they're old enough to understand what they've been taught, they need to go out and learn about their world's Jesus. No one has a major problem with that, and it's suggested that, as adults, they will know Jesus in an even more significant way than they did as children.

But what happens at the end is that—spoiler for books published in the 50s—all of the kids who have been to Narnia, many of them now adults, along with their families, end up on a train. Which crashes. And they all die and go to Heaven, described essentially as Way More Awesome Narnia, that they will never be kicked out of. Except for Susan, who has rejected Narnia in favour of material things that are definitely coded in a way that she's embracing her sexuality as a young woman (as opposed to the other female characters, who have remained righteous and proper). Her entire family dies and she's left alone, having rejected Jesus.

As a child, I had a different opinion (I kind of hated Susan because she was a girly-girl, unlike tomboy Lucy, and she reminded me of someone I went to school with who tormented me), and read it as "rejecting magic and imagination," but reading it as an adult, it's because she's a lady interested in teh sexx0rz.

Should I try again?

Maybe? You almost certainly won't fall in love with them the way I did, because they're really not meant for adults and smart adults in particular. But also I think they're great and you can probably get through the entire series in a day or two. I'd be interested in your critique!

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ed-rex.livejournal.com

[Edited to fix HTML errors. And edited again, to deleted early prefatory notes to self.]

fate of Narnia kids, families, Susan and Susan's family

I didn't come to Narnia until I was 30ish. Read the first book, maybe part of the 2nd and let it go at that point. I wasn't so much offended as I was bored.

But your synopsis reads an awful lot like those Left Behind movies you've eviscerated here.

Have you ever read Ursula K. Le Guin's review of Lewis' The Dark Tower? It's included in her excellent collection of essays, Dancing at the Edge of the World. If you can find the book, I recommend it highly.

But the choice bit from that, for me, was the following (in part because I think she is right on about Tolkien, which makes me think she knows what she's talking about re Lewis):

There's a good deal of hatred in Lewis, and it is frightening hatred, because this gentle, brilliant, lovable, devout man never saw the need even to rationalize it, let alone apologise for it. He was self-righteous in his faith. That may be permissible to a militant Christian; but it is not permissible to a highly intelligent, highly educated man to be self-righteous in his opinions and his prejudices...

J R R Tolkien, Lewis's close friend and colleague, certainly shared many of Lewis's views and was also a devout Christian. But it all comes out very differently in his fiction. Take his handling of evil: his villains are orcs and Black Riders (goblins and zombies; mythic figures) and Sauron, the Dark Lord, who is never seen and has no suggestion of humanity about him. These are not evil men but embodiments of evil in men, universal symbols of the hateful. The men who do wrong are not complete figures but complements: Saruman is Gandalf's dark-self, Boromir Aragorn's; Wormtongue is, almost literally the weakness of King Theoden. There remains the wonderfully repulsive and degraded Gollum. But nobody who reads the trilogy hates, or is asked to hate, Gollum. Gollum is Frodo's shadow; and it is the shadow, not the hero, who achieves the quest. Though Tolkien seems to project evil into "the others", they are not truly others but ourselves; he is utterly clear about this. His ethic, like that of dream, is compensatory. The final "answer" remains unknown. But because responsibility has been accepted, charity survives. And with it, triumphantly, the Golden Rule. The fact is, if you like the book, you love Gollum.

In Lewis, responsibility appears only in the form of the Christian hero fighting and defeating the enemy: a triumph, not of love, but of hatred. The enemy is not oneself but the Wholly Other, demoniac. This projection leaves the author free to be cruel, and cruelty is the dominant tone in several of these stories ...

All of which really parses with your synopsis.

Edited Date: 2014-08-26 03:58 am (UTC)

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I need to read all of LeGuin's essay, because this excerpt is so totally right. *saves link*

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ed-rex.livejournal.com

I have two of her essay collections (Dancing on the Edge of the World and The Language of the Night) and find myself periodically going back to them over and over.

She writes simply, clearly and logically, but with an underlying passion that is really quite remarkable. I rather suspect that many among Our Sabs' friends would in particular find her re-thinking of her novel The Left Hand of Darkness particularly interesting. She kind of annotates herself moving from one stage of self-conscious feminism to another (and worries she might have to perform the same trick in another 20 years). That one's in the revised, 1989 edition of The Language of the Night. It's chock full of other good things too, including an extended meditation on Tolkien.

Ahem. My enthusiasm seems to be running over. I'll stop now.

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Your enthusiasm about the wonderful Ms. LeGuin made my day. :) I had to come back and say so.

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sabotabby

But your synopsis reads an awful lot like those Left Behind movies you've eviscerated here.

I guess, a bit? But not really. Narnia is hugely problematic and morally awful but I enjoy reading it, and the things that redeem it as literature are pretty important to me. Whereas there is nothing redeeming about Left Behind other than that it spawned Fred Clark's blog series and some hilarious fanfic.

LeGuin's essay is fascinating. I haven't read The Dark Tower, don't much care for Tolkien (sorry!), but she's quite right from what I have read. (I actually wouldn't classify Tash as demonic Other, incidentally. He's not so much evil as the guy that picks up Aslan's trash. Doesn't mean the inherent racism of a character like that is okay, but it's different than Good vs. Evil.)

The Narnia books are cruel, though. That's, oddly enough, one of the things I like about them. They're unintentionally very dystopic.

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ed-rex.livejournal.com

Now that that's out of my system, I'll do my best to shrug and grant that Tolkien isn't for everybody (but I am surprised he doesn't work for you, when you get down to it).

Anyway, I think you'd enjoy a lot of Le Guin's essays. Strangely, her fiction has always left me a little cold. It's very readable, usually interesting, but I've never felt moved by it. Kind of the way I've reacted to Iain M. Banks, now that I think of it ...

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sabotabby

(but I am surprised he doesn't work for you, when you get down to it)

I enjoyed The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as a kid, but they failed to imprint on me to the degree that the Narnia books did; I recognize that they're important and influential, but I don't like most of what they've influenced. (Or, rather, I love portal fantasy and mostly loathe high fantasy with the exception of George R.R. Martin, who deconstructs it.) I tried to read The Silmarillion and even as a child obsessed with dragons and elves and and magic, found it the most boring thing I'd read to date and couldn't get through it.

Years later, China Miéville summarized a bunch of good reasons to dislike Tolkien, but obviously he has worse things to say about Lewis and that doesn't faze me. It really comes down to I think he's boring and his characters are boring. And I almost prefer Lewis' brand of archaic racism where the Dwarves say "darkies" but there is One Token Good Brown Guy over Tolkien's genetic determinism.

Strangely, her fiction has always left me a little cold. It's very readable, usually interesting, but I've never felt moved by it. Kind of the way I've reacted to Iain M. Banks, now that I think of it ...

Naturally, I adore both Ursula K. LeGuin (her sci-fi much more than her fantasy, though; her fantasy is great and important but it's not really my thing) and Iain M. Banks (though it took me a while to warm up to him).

I should also add that Iain M. Banks has made me care about and empathize with sentient spaceships the size of planets and furry five-limbed aliens but Tolkien really never made me care about an elf.

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This is a really interesting quote, thanks for sharing. I kind of want to find that essay now.

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There is a few lines in Lord of the Rings that I'd like to repeat here, because I can't see Lewis really using them. Tolkien had been in the Great War, of course, and I imagine Lewis had too; but Lewis pretty much wrote the Carlormen as evil as a society as a whole--although, of course, one or two people from there who we get to know when they turn their back on their families and societies and run away end up being alright people.

But Tolkien had this from Sam. It's in the middle of the chapter "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit," and they've just run into Faramir's men, when suddenly some fleeing Southerners pass nearby. Now, it may be important that these guys are the only humans as a group we see in cahoots with Mordor; we have the odd individual, like Wormtongue and Bill Ferny (Saruman doesn't count because the wizards aren't actually humans); but whole legions of these guys have come along to fight.

And they, too, have dark skin. The relevance is in how Tolkien describes this individual himself (the only really detailed look we get at a Southerner), and Sam's thoughts about him.

The relevant bit:

Then suddenly straight over the rim of their sheltering bank, a man fell, crashing through the slender trees, nearly on top of them. He came to rest in the fern a few feet away, face downward, green arrow-feathers sticking from his neck below a golden collar. His scarlet robes were tattered, his corslet of overlapping brazen plates was rent and hewn, his black plaits of hair braided with gold were drenched with blood. His brown hand still clutched the hilt of a broken sword.
It was Sam's first view of a battle between Men and Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead man's face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he really was evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march of his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace[.]

The Southerners are different, in appearance and in dress, from any other humans he's met (and they're just as much based on an Indian or African culture as the Carloman's; plus Tolkien and Lewis were products of exactly the same British Empire), and they're fighting for the Enemy that wants to destroy or enslave them all; and the first time he sees one of them up close, he thinks of him as a fellow person, also caught up in the same tides as around them, and wonders if he actually is evil after all?

I prefer Tolkien.

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sabotabby

He's got some nasty depictions of the Southerners elsewhere, though.

This said, Sam's probably the only character that (re-reading the books as an adult, anyway) I actually liked, and this is why. Maybe Boromir, but this is coloured by Sean Bean.

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He does; but he also allows Sam to see this guy, at least, as a person, and have a moment of sympathy for him; he doesn't do that with the Orcs, and I don't think Lewis ever did that with any villain (in Narnia, anyways; one could argue "The Screwtape Letters, I suppose) ever.

The older I get, the more I realize that they're right; the main character is Sam. I think the hobbits are my favourites now, especially Sam, Merry, and Pippin; Sam and Merry are probably tied for first.

Sean Bean is excellent and I like his Boromir; I don't really trust Boromir, though. I'm re-reading the books for the first time in ages and they're just about to camp at the fords, so we'll see how I feel about him in another couple of chapters, heh.

A lengthy aside: I far prefer book!Aragorn and Bakshi!Aragorn--who I think nailed him, although he needs pants--to Jackson!Aragorn, who is apparently was not raised as the hereditary leader of the remaining Numenoreans, and who apparently has been spending the past sixty years or so of his life just pissing around Rivendell or something, instead of spending them focussed on his goals of restoring the kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor, and working with Gandalf to destroy Sauron once and for all. Jackson started the movie with him in a different place because he wanted him to have a character arc; but he doesn't need one, because (a) the story's really about the hobbits, and not every damned person they meet needs his own character arc; and (b) he's got one; it's been spanning decades; generations even, if you look at the goal of restoring Gondor and Arnor not as a personal goal but one they've been working on just about since they fell; we're coming in at the last few minutes of it, pretty much, so to expect an arc in that time period is not only silly (IMO); it vastly diminishes what had been a very strong character.

I don't like wishy-washy!Aragorn, is what I mean. I mean, he met Arwen when he was 19; he fell in love; Elrond tells him the only human who would possibly ever be good enough for his little girl would be the king of Gondor and Arnor, so get cracking; and now, sixty or so years later, here we are, with him in an all-or-nothing fight in which either the Enemy will be destroyed and his goals will be met; or the entire world will pretty much be lost.

So to have him, at the beginning of Fellowship, feeling uncertain about his ability to lead etc etc undermines the sheer, terrific amount of effort it all took. In the book he's been driving after this goal for over half a century and it's now coming to fruition; this Aragorn pretty much just had it all fall into his lap because he was lucky and also did a few things. Hell, they didn't even allow him to be the one to treat Frodo on Weathertop; nor did they allow Frodo to be the one to resist the Riders at the Ford--which Gandalf then said was the only reason he held out long enough to reach Elrond and have the sliver removed; he resisted them to the last. I do understand they wanted to make Arwen all badass and while I applaud strong female characters in general, I don't approve of a minor character who, while in the background, was nevertheless the inspiration for all of Aragorn's deeds (apparently Jackson hasn't heard of "Romantic Inspiration"--or maybe he thought we hadn't) taking over to the point of making the other characters around her weaker than they were. She's a damned Sue, and I don't really like Sues.

*Ahem* Anyways. *Grin*

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That page in my first copy of The Two Towers (which I still own) is marked with tears. (Also Sam Gamgee is the best ever.)

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It's even worse than that post lets on.

The fact that it's even worse is something I don't even have any words for.

Your explanation of Susan makes a lot more sense than what I'd previously read about her. I didn't know about the part when they all die and Susan is the only one who doesn't go to Heaven; just about the bits the author quoted (where the other kids complain she no longer cares about Narnia). I normally wouldn't think that how the reasons could be coded to be about sex would matter, since they could just be stuff that materialistic people of her gender and social standing would care about, but since this is a guy who made Jesus into some kind of talking lion, it probably matters. That's awful, too. :(

I don't know what my reaction to Susan would have been as a kid, but now I wish I did. I don't even know what my reaction to the idea of the kids being kicked out would have been, because while I liked the idea that some adults are too boring to be magical, I also knew that some adults don't become boring and in my favourite books from my childhood you could be an adult and still do cool stuff, like teach at Hogwarts.

Maybe? You almost certainly won't fall in love with them the way I did, because they're really not meant for adults and smart adults in particular. But also I think they're great and you can probably get through the entire series in a day or two. I'd be interested in your critique!

I was supposed to be re-reading one of my favourite books, but I'm probably going to steal the series from my sister while she's away and read them. Thanks for the idea!

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sabotabby

I didn't know about the part when they all die and Susan is the only one who doesn't go to Heaven

To clarify, Susan doesn't die. Her lack of interest in Narnia—and her own family—means that she's not on the train with the rest of them when it crashes. (Part of me likes this, as it spawned the awesome Neil Gaiman fanfic where she grows up to be a cynical literature professor.) It also means, according to Lewis' apologists, that there is no contraction between her rejection of Narnia and the assertion that she'll always be a Queen of Narnia, as she now has an entire lifetime to come to Jesus.

It's still totally fucked, though, if in line with the sort of disproportionate retribution the series visits on insufficiently deferential children.

I don't know what my reaction to Susan would have been as a kid, but now I wish I did.

Did I mention that the girl who bullied me was actually named Susan? So I totally visualized her. In hindsight, Susan of the books is the only one with half a brain and therefore my second favourite. (After Edmund, who is a snarky bastard even after he finds Lion!Jesus.)

I don't even know what my reaction to the idea of the kids being kicked out would have been, because while I liked the idea that some adults are too boring to be magical, I also knew that some adults don't become boring and in my favourite books from my childhood you could be an adult and still do cool stuff, like teach at Hogwarts.

Well, the implication is that they can find a better kind of magic in the real world, and I actually really dig that, religious or not. One can read in all kinds of different interpretations, but as a kid who was never going to get to go to Narnia, I liked the idea.

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Well, at least she stays alive and spawns fanfics where she lives to be a badass! I'm much more ok with this because I kind of didn't care about the other kids (except Lucy because she was adorable) when I watched the movie. It's still more disappointing than the headcanon I had back then, about how Susan would go on to be in a sort of relationship with the witch and they'd become badass evil queens together. I guess that made more sense in the head of my teenage self, who couldn't understand why anyone anywhere near Tilda Swinton wouldn't magically fall in love with her.

I'm sorry that the girl who bullied you was called Susan! I never thought of Edmund that way, I just kind of wanted to punch him in the face, but that might be because when the movie came out and I paid any attention to the series was when I was at a "snarky, cynical teenager who hates everyone" phase.

Well, the implication is that they can find a better kind of magic in the real world, and I actually really dig that, religious or not.

I never thought about it that way, but that's a really awesome perspective! I'd only ever considered that in the sense of how adults in some series can still inhabit magical worlds as meaning that they were still aware of magic and didn't just grow up and shrug it off. I wish I'd tought more like you did, because in my case, I was disappointed that I wouldn't go to Hogwarts.

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sabotabby

It's still more disappointing than the headcanon I had back then, about how Susan would go on to be in a sort of relationship with the witch and they'd become badass evil queens together. I guess that made more sense in the head of my teenage self, who couldn't understand why anyone anywhere near Tilda Swinton wouldn't magically fall in love with her.

I can't avoid falling in love with Tilda Swinton while watching her on screen; I would probably have a heart attack if I ever got near her.

Book!Jadis is also pretty awesome and lots of people fall in love with her, but not Susan, unfortunately. Swinton is the best thing about those movies.

...you're making me want to write revisionist Narnia fanfic now, yikes. Although if I did it would probably involve the Talking Animals taking over instead and creating a Democratic Republic of Narnia, led by the cat in the last book, aligned with a post-slave revolt Calormen.

Movie!Edmund completely sucks. I mean, it's a decent interpretation of the character, but in the books he goes from whiny bad guy to good guy who grudgingly does the right thing but is a bit of a curmudgeon about it, and the latter is one of my favourite character types, so.

I am still waiting for my Hogwarts acceptance letter. It's been delayed I guess.

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Seriously! How could anyone not fall in love with Tilda Swinton, or a character played by Tilda Swinton? I read a lot of the bits with Book!Jadis and decided that it would totally work for my OTP.

You should definitely write that fanfic. As long as Jadis and Susan also end up together somehow, bringing the powers of lesbianism to Narnia.

I'm glad to hear he's less annoying in the books! That's something, at least.

My theory is that we haven't gotten Hogwarts letters because we don't live in the UK, so we'd get letters from our regional equivalents, and maybe mine just shut down due to a lack of budget or is so disorganised that they forgot to send me a letter. *crosses fingers*

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sabotabby

You should definitely write that fanfic. As long as Jadis and Susan also end up together somehow, bringing the powers of lesbianism to Narnia.

That could have been Jadis' master plan the whole time—delegitimizing the monarchy so that the people would rise up in protest. "NO GODS, NO LIONS."

My theory is that we haven't gotten Hogwarts letters because we don't live in the UK, so we'd get letters from our regional equivalents, and maybe mine just shut down due to a lack of budget or is so disorganised that they forgot to send me a letter. *crosses fingers*

Ontario's magic academy shut down under Mike Harris...oh shit, that's something else I'm going to have to write, isn't it?

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YES. THIS WOULD BE GREAT. PLEASE WRITE THIS FIC.

Shouldn't it be "NO LIONS, NO MASTERS"? Since the lion is supposed to be Jesus and all. Either way, I want one of those slogans on a t-shirt, to show my solidarity with the ~~people~~ creatures of Narnia.

Ontario's magic academy shut down under Mike Harris...oh shit, that's something else I'm going to have to write, isn't it?

Yes. Yes, it is. I would read this and I'm not even that familiar with Canadian politics.

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sabotabby

Shouldn't it be "NO LIONS, NO MASTERS"? Since the lion is supposed to be Jesus and all. Either way, I want one of those slogans on a t-shirt, to show my solidarity with the people creatures of Narnia.

I think it would be "NO LIONS, NO KINGS." I also think that slogan does get used in the last book, by the evil atheist dwarves.

Yes. Yes, it is. I would read this and I'm not even that familiar with Canadian politics.

There is a half-formed sequel to 19A0 that exists in roughly the same universe, 30-40 years later, where the presence of that particular brand of location-based magic has been incorporated into the political structure. It's a very different type of story—more political thriller with wizards than weird magic realism anti-gentrification allegory—but it's actually more mapped out in some ways than the thing I'm supposed to be writing.

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*saves this link* Ah, Narnia. As a child I loved it for both Watsonian and Doylistic reasons (the Christianity meant my parents approved of it, which was very important to my safety) and I keep toying with the idea of rereading now.

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sabotabby

I'd be interested in your reread if you choose to do it! I can talk about this shit all day.

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whatifoundthere.livejournal.com

Have you read Lev Grossman's The Magicians? It's a novel that playfully deconstructs Narnia in a "Your Fave Is Problematic" sort of way, and it's sad and disturbing and funny and brilliant. The book is about a bunch of young men and women who are attending a "RL" magical academy while nurturing fantasies of a different sort of magic, the magic of a children's book they all read and loved (called Fillory in the novel, but a transparent cipher for Narnia). The conflict between the "real" work of being a magician and the warm memories the students have of Fillory is the driving force of the book.

I wrote a review of it here; some mild spoilers. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on it.

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sabotabby

Well, you are the third person to recommend it to me this month, but the first to mention that there is a prof in it named Mayakovsky, so obviously I have to read it now. I'm reading Seanan McGuire's InCryptid right now, but I just polished off the first book in like a day and I think there's only three, so this one's going on the list right after that.

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ironed_orchid

I love the Magicians and Magician King. But the pov character is not particularly likable, so I liked the second better when we had more story from a female point of view.

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My grandmother gave me her copies of all but two of the books when we visited her in England when I was I think ten; she had the other two but couldn't find then just then, so she said she'd send them on later when she found them but didn't so they may not have turned up (she also gave me her copy of "The Silmarillion," because my grandmother was awesome), but I found them in libraries and later got my own copies. And they were magical and I adored them; and because I was still a Christian at the time and fairly devout, when our local priest in his sermon one day brought them up and talked about how Aslan was really Jesus that only made them more awesome, because that meant that Narnia and the magic and Aslan and stuff were real, and they were one of several books I pretty much re-read constantly as a teen.

I eventually stopped reading them, though, for many years, and in my early twenties I started drifting further and further away from Christianity (a process that would have happened almost a decade sooner if I had realized, back in Grade Four, when I first read some of the Norse myths, that this was a still-living religion with people who still followed those gods). Tolkien became "nearier and dearier to my heart," as my mum would have said, and I ended up becoming a Heathen and also joining the SCA, which was also directly influenced by my love of Tolkien (my joining the SCA, that is; the SCA itself was also totally influenced by Tolkien, but not by my love for it, heh).

But I still had fond remembrances of them, and still had the books themselves, so when Karl was little I started to read them to him. "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" was pretty much fine until Aslan's very symbol-heavy sacrifice, but, ugh, trying to then read him "Prince Caspian..." That was the last time I tried to read the books, and I couldn't finish it. It was annoying enough the way Lewis kept occasionally calling his dwarf characters, including the good ~~dwarfs~~dwarves "it" instead of "him," because, dude, go ahead and minimize Gimli as a person and a character by calling him "it;" it's insulting; but far, far worse is that the symbolism became more and more heavy-handed (which is deeply off-putting and alienating when one isn't actually a Christian and just wants to read their damned fantasy in peace, thanks very much); and then Aslan actually tells Lucy that she should have had faith in him and done what she thought he wanted instead of thinking about things rationally which, in context, would have meant leaving the others in an unfamiliar, hostile wilderness and going off alone, because she thought she was seeing Aslan when no one else could, even when to her he was in clear sight. Keep in mind, too, that while, okay, in the first book he could talk, and magically breathed stone animals back to life, and hell, came back to life himself (although that last seemed to have been the magic of the table, not of Aslan himself), he had not in any way showed the slightest ability to magically disappear, or to only appear to one person but not to others, or only be visible if you really, really believed he was there.

[argh I am too verbose; continued!!]

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[continued!! Also have my only Tolkien icon lol]

We lived at the time "in a little house on the top of a hill in the middle of a wood," to quote a story I haven't finished writing, and Disney's bloody "Snow White" was problematic enough, what with people who were lost in the woods coping by freaking out and just randomly running until they fell over, whereupon friendly forest creatures would come and save them--that's awesome if you're in a city but when you are actually living in the middle of nowhere, where it was very possible for the kids to get lost in the woods while never leaving the property, and with not only foxes and bobcats, but also wolves and bears (not to mention coyotes and cougars, who, incidentally will happily eat children) roaming about, then reading stories where the heroine's panicked response not only doesn't get her killed but actually saves her is deeply problematic (to the point that I wrote a new version where, when she gets left alone in the woods, she survives by staying put and being sensible until the dwarves happen by and find her). So even without the off-putting and clunky Christian metaphors, any story where, rather than coping with being lost in a wilderness by sticking together and making rational decisions based upon the best information you have at hand, you are encouraged instead to go and follow any imaginary, magical beings you think you see, even if no one else can see them, and even if they seem to want you to follow them over the edges of cliffs--even if it means sneaking away from the group in the middle of the night to do so is deeply, deeply problematic, the more-so if you are trying to raise the kids that science and knowledge and facts trump magic (I know, but it works if you're Heathen *wry grin*).

Plus, Jesus, no, don't go wandering over cliffs by yourself in the middle of the night because you think you saw something no one else could, even when they looked really hard! Jesus Christ, that scene was going to get my kids killed, and it was there that I gave up and will probably never re-read them again (although I'll keep the books).

I still intend to re-read "The Silmarillion" again some day though; it is also full of religion but is far, far less heavy-handed about it (and also less directly Christian; it probably helped a lot towards setting my feet on a pagan path, lol).

Plus Tolkien can spell the plural of "dwarf" correctly. And never called Gimli "it".

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sabotabby

Hahahaha, but how do you really feel?

It's funny, because I think I realized Aslan = Jesus pretty early on and it didn't bother me. Because this wasn't my religion, but so many other things I was reading were equally remote to my experience, so I just acknowledged it as really weird worldbuilding, like weirder than Asimov and L'Engel, and kept reading. Aslan's heavy-handed sacrifice makes no narrative sense, which is why I think the books are only good if you read them as a child first.

Whereas I acknowledge, much as I don't like Tolkien, that there is much more nuance and complexity to find if you read the books as an adult.

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