The Donkey, the Lion and the Wardrobe

[altariel]

I have no idea whether the bit about Mithraism is true or not (I'm sure someone can tell me), but I loved this piece of Narnian revisionism (from here):

"The moral force of the Christian story is that the lions are all on the other side. If we had, say, a donkey, a seemingly uninspiring animal from an obscure corner of Narnia, raised as an uncouth and low-caste beast of burden, rallying the mice and rats and weasels and vultures and all the other unclean animals, and then being killed by the lions in as humiliating a manner as possible—a donkey who reëmerges, to the shock even of his disciples and devotees, as the king of all creation—now, that would be a Christian allegory. A powerful lion, starting life at the top of the food chain, adored by all his subjects and filled with temporal power, killed by a despised evil witch for his power and then reborn to rule, is a Mithraic, not a Christian, myth."

Another piece of Narnian retelling that I adore is the bit in Perdido Street Station where Benjamin Flex opens up the back of the wardrobe to reveal a printing press. Love, love, love it so much! Almost enough to forgive the author for the death of Flex, but not quite.

Comments

[the-wild-iris.livejournal.com]

the more conventionally non-beautiful creatures get to be stolid rather than glamorously heroic

I'm forgetting Reepicheep, of course. But I think that he can still be slotted into that pattern: there's tension within the book between his glorious ideals and the fact that he's a mouse, and that's what makes him a comical - as well as heroic - character.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Reepicheep's a French musketeer. Indeed none of Lewis's animals is anything but a person in a furry suit. I think the observation altariel1 noted is very apt; he is such a High Tory. There is, of course one socialist in the books: he's the dwarf Nikabrik who comes to a bad end in Prince Caspian for distrusting the bosses and standing up for the workers. The other way you can tell he's a baddie is that he's a non-smoker - antisocial little killjoy, see? Vegetarians are specifically targeted as baddies, too, as are female head teachers. There wasn't a reactionary opinion that man didn't hold - I'm all on Pullman's side myself.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. I read the books as a child and loved them (missing all the allegory) but that's really off-putting. Of course he's a product of his class, society, and ivory tower like Tolkien. I'm used to cutting slack for classism and sexism if I like a story enough (I have a collection of unintentionally funny 30s boys' annuals) but ... bugger.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I saw an interview with the actors on TV the other night. I liked that they made the witch blonde to counteract the 'dark is bad' cliché, and also to make her look like the Aryan ideal since this was set in wartime, but the actors who play the children had incredibly plummy upper class accents. Oy.