Hatefulness
As has become a holiday tradition since the arrival of my son, my wife and I are eagerly planning for maximally efficient use of the time that we will be able to foist our beloved offspring off on relatives and go do something by ourselves. This time is especially precious, since it involves free day care. When you have paid babysitters, you don't really relax, and you certainly can't take your time. A better situation is using friends as babysitters - more confidence in the outcome and a much lower cost. Of course, you can't dip into that well too often, or it will go dry. And even then, you don't dawdle much while out and about.
Leaving the spawn with grandma, however, is ideal. Grandma would likely kill for the opportunity to spend time with her only grandchild. Grandma is upset when we take the boy back. So time constraints are no concern. And grandma probably takes better - or at least more attentive - care of the boy than we do. For these reasons, holidays are special.
Mrs. Buckethead and I both love movies. And not just the part where reflected photons representing ordered patterns of information enter our brains through the mediation of our retinas. That, we can experience in the comfort of our living room. We love going to the movies. We love the big screen, and the speakers set to eleven (twelve during the previews), and the black juju beans stuck to our feet, and the tacky feel of the floor thanks to geological layers of spilled sody-pop and rancid popcorn butter, and the shriveled up hot dogs, stale nachos, flat fountain drinks and highly ergonomic yet mysteriously uncomfortable seating. We love old theaters with ratty curtains and antediluvian movie posters, and we love the new ones with stadium seating and torus screens. We love watching previews, and the wonderful sense of possibility and wonder that only one in a thousand movies ever deliver.
Therefore, every holiday we drive out to Ohio, spend some time with the family, inhale some turkey, and bolt for the nearest cinema.
So there I was, trolling the internet, reading movie reviews and contemplating the ideal mix of movies to take in. Kong is certainly at the top of the list. We will probably have the opportunity to see one, and possibly two, additional movies. Which to choose? Narnia has been on the radar screen for quite a while now, and so I was checking out what people thought of it. Generally positive, I found. Most reviewers felt that the director did an admirable job of representing the Christian themes of the book without descending into preachiness.
Then I ran across this. A review in the (surprise!) UK Guardian entitled, "Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion." I can see that those who are not religious, or at least not Christian, would not be 'for' the Christian allegory that is central to the novel, and therefore the movie. Well enough. Christian themes abound in many great works of literature, and most people who aren't disposed by faith toward those themes learn to get along, just as Christian readers by and large learn to cope with the non-Christian themes that can be found damn near everywhere else.
But this is a rather strong reaction:
Narnia is a strange blend of magic, myth and Christianity, some of it brilliantly fantastical and richly imaginative, some (the clunking allegory) toe-curlingly, cringingly awful.
...Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to? Poor child Edmund, to blame for everything, must bear the full weight of a guilt only Christians know how to inflict, with a twisted knife to the heart. Every one of those thorns, the nuns used to tell my mother, is hammered into Jesus's holy head every day that you don't eat your greens or say your prayers when you are told. So the resurrected Aslan gives Edmund a long, life-changing talking-to high up on the rocks out of our earshot. When the poor boy comes back down with the sacred lion's breath upon him he is transformed unrecognisably into a Stepford brother, well and truly purged.
...Why? Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right.
Does any of this matter? Not really. Most children will never notice. But adults who wince at the worst elements of Christian belief may need a sickbag handy for the most religiose scenes. The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw gives the film five stars and says, "There is no need for anyone to get into a PC huff about its Christian allegory." Well, here's my huff.
Lewis said he hoped the book would soften-up religious reflexes and "make it easier for children to accept Christianity when they met it later in life." ...So Lewis weaves his dreams to invade children's minds with Christian iconography that is part fairytale wonder and joy - but heavily laden with guilt, blame, sacrifice and a suffering that is dark with emotional sadism.
The fact that a movie that is, more than anything else, a children's fantasy, woudl provoke this sort of vitriol kind of amazes me. Especially in light of the fact that the writer also acknowledges that
Most British children will be utterly clueless about any message beyond the age-old mythic battle between good and evil. Most of the fairy story works as well as any Norse saga, pagan legend or modern fantasy, so only the minority who are familiar with Christian iconography will see Jesus in the lion. After all, 43% of people in Britain in a recent poll couldn't say what Easter celebrated. Among the young - apart from those in faith schools - that number must be considerably higher. Ask art galleries: they now have to write the story of every religious painting on the label as people no longer know what "agony in the garden", "deposition", "transfiguration" or "ascension" mean. This may be regrettable cultural ignorance, but it means Aslan will stay just a lion to most movie-goers.
This hatred of Christianity is ironic, too considering that most of the left, and in all likelihood the author of this review, would condemn any who criticised, say, Islam in even the mildest terms. And even more ironic when that Islam, in its extreme form, has resulted in much death and violence - actions antithetical to the Christianity she attacks.
Remarkable.
on
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That is an astonishingly
That is an astonishingly stupid article.
That being said, I have thought for a while that the Christian allegory parts of the Narnia saga left a lot to be desired. For example; I thought it was supposed to be the LAMB of God, not the warrior-lion of God, a curious construction that doesn't make much sense to me.
Now that being said, I don't give two shits what the allegorical content of the Narnia story is. I read the hell out of those books when I was little. They were awesome! And I can't frigging wait for the movie to come out. Kick ass!
Pfft... Christians are
Pfft... Christians are amateurs at guilt. (Catholics are good amateurs).
Why not talk to the experts, those of the Jewish faith, if you really want a good guilt trip laid down? ;)
I was thinking, ala Nicholas'
I was thinking, ala Nicholas' comment, that the reviewer was chanelling his inner lapsed Catholic, and only happy that he had no store of Jewish guilt to purge.
Pfft, indeed. That said, I found The">http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43386]The Onion's take instructive, and for anyone who might want to avail himself of a raspberry to deliver to those arrogant enough to think they should tell anyone what to believe, Ill">http://www.illwillpress.com/xmas.html]Ill Will Press has dragged out a classic from past years.
And even more ironic when
And even more ironic when that Islam, in its extreme form, has resulted in much death and violence - actions antithetical to the Christianity she attacks.
Christianity, of course, having a completely spotless historical record of peaceful conversion and an utter lack of aggressive warfare and territorial acquisition.
Where is this "most of the left" who would condemn any criticism of Islam qua Islam, which is to say, on its theological grounds, as the author criticizes Christianity here? Can you link a couple of them?
Well, I lean a bit toward the
Well, I lean a bit toward the left, and I'd have to say I'd criticize anyone who blindly thrashes any religion on the basis that they don't like it. Granted, I'm not a writer of any kind, hence I'm unlikely to debate about it lengthily in a public forum, so maybe I don't count as a counterpoint.
Just to point out that all non-Christians aren't as angry and spiteful as the author of that review, I'd like to mention that as a non-Christian I am very much looking forward to seeing this movie. (Though, like Buckethead and the Mrs., my husband and I have to wait until we can leave the young'uns in family care so that we may fully enjoy the experience.) I appreciate it for what it is: an amazingly imaginative story based on another person's viewpoint. And my many non-Christian friends feel the same.
The special-effects don't hurt, either. :P
I don't imagine that all non
I don't imagine that all non-Christians feel the way this person does. I imagine most manage to get through their day without even thinking mildly derogatory thoughts about the religion. I am not particularly religious myself. But the bile in this piece really set me back.
Phil, I know you have at least a moderate-sized beef toward religion, but consider this:
The Crusades were in essence defensive wars, and concieved of as such. The lands that were held by the Muslims in 1000ad were formerly Christian - the exception being Arabia itself and the former Persian empire. Islam tried to conquer Europe, rather un-peacefully, from around the eighth through seventeenth centuries, and many times was on the verge of success.
On that note, compare how Christianity spread with how Islam spread. Islam spread in its first millenium *exclusively* by the sword. Christianity spread primarily by missionaries in Europe and elsewhere. The big exception for Christianity was the Spanish, and they weren't a very nice people. But of course, they had been fighting the Muslims for control of Spain for eight hundred years prior to 1492, the year not just of Columbus' voyage, but the conquest of Granada - the last Muslim outpost in Spain.
And further, a completely spotless record on the part of Christianity is not a requirement for criticism of Islam. The core doctrines of Christianity, summed up in the sermon on the mount, are markedly different than those of Islam, whose founder was in fact a warrior who began the Muslim tradition of Jihad personally. Christians have in many (theologically speaking, all) cases failed to live up to the creed. But look at the church considered as a whole - who does it honor, and hold up as exemplars? The Catholics didn't make Leo X a saint, they pick people like Francis.
The religious wars of the seventeenth century, terrible as they were, made possible the more tolerant Christianity we have now.
And by condemning a criticism of Islam, I mean just what you did, and the calls for "understanding" and implicit or sometimes explicit accusations of racism or whatever - whenever someone points out that, hey, how come everywhere Islam borders something not-Islam, there's usually violence? And why do the vast majority of all these terrorist attacks over the last thirty years prominently feature Islam? Does that have anything to do with the fact that the Koran doesn't have something like the sermon on the mount, or admonitions to love thy neighbor and turn the other cheek?
People are often very, very bad. By nature. A belief system that restrains, rather than encourages these impulses is likely to be rather easier to get along with.
And further, a completely
And further, a completely spotless record on the part of Christianity is not a requirement for criticism of Islam. The core doctrines of Christianity, summed up in the sermon on the mount, are markedly different than those of Islam, whose founder was in fact a warrior who began the Muslim tradition of Jihad personally.
Well, a more spotless record on the part of Christianity would be required prior to a smug suggestion that "My religion doesn't engage in any of that nasty violence stuff." I mean, Giordano Bruno might have something to say about that. Among many millions of others.
It just speaks of the worst kind of blind provincialism to say, "My religion's violent practitioners are aberrations; theirs are standard-issue." While there's obviously a difference of scale and purpose, Christianity is not all St. Francis covered in birds and doe-eyed Jesuses surrounded by sheep. I'm sure if we poll all the murderers behind bars, we'll find a lot more Christians than we will Jews, Muslims, Buddhists or atheists. (Insert "True Scotsman" fallacy here.) This is not a defense of Islam, because I don't defend Islam; but most Christians, like most people, are just as capable of violence as anyone else.
And by condemning a criticism of Islam, I mean just what you did, and the calls for “understanding” and implicit or sometimes explicit accusations of racism or whatever . . .
So, then, no links, or . . . ? Does something like this help? For all the worship that Bush gets for Finally Doing Something About The Middle East, it's been what you'd probably consider the Global Leftist Conspiracy over the last several decades who have condemned the violence in illiberal Islamic societies and have called for liberalizing influences. Upon which the Long-Suffering Right has responded that we shouldn't do those kinds of wars or military interventions. (You remember Kosovo? Right? And how in favor of all that the current crop of Crusading Global Saviors was?)