C.S. Lewis has a lot of fanboys among Christians.
A bunch of guys in my hall have decided to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when it gets released Friday; they’re going to try to make the midnight showing, finals week or no finals week. I may go along with them. It looks like it might be a good movie.
Christianity Today, particularly their online component, has been gushing about it ever since the movie was proposed. They’re big C.S. Lewis fans there. So am I; but I tend to think of myself as more of a fan than an adherent. In other words, most fans of Lewis see him as the last word on literature, theology, and mythology; anything he did is great, and everything he wrote was brilliant. They see him as inspired by God, even to the same degree that St. Paul was inspired by God. They’re going to be very disappointed with the movie, then. In order to make a movie of any book, changes are inevitable, and they’re gonna nitpick these alterations to death and suck all the fun out of the movie. They’re already doing it, in fact. Some of them have posted an old letter of Lewis’s in which he didn’t care for the idea of a TV production of his Narnia books. Understandable, considering the technology in 1959; but the purpose of publicizing this letter is not to do anything other than attack the existing movie. (Trailers of it are here.)
I would agree with them that Lewis was a saint; I would disagree with their idea of what a saint actually is. A saint is by no means perfect; otherwise only Jesus would be worthy of the title. A saint is of course imperfect, but aspires to follow God in spite of this, and do what he tells us to. Saints, while worthy to a degree of reverence and devotion, are not worthy of worship and blind following. When Lewis is wrong, he is wrong, even though he is mostly right.
It is this blind following of Lewis that marketers are counting on to sell the movie. Ever since The Passion of the Christ, when movie studios discovered to their surprise that there’s a large Christian audience in America just waiting to be exploited, doors have opened up to make this movie that the Christians involved with the production are calling "simply providential." But it’s not providence. Does this parable sound at all like the kingdom of heaven?—
- It is a book about a battle
- and a producer thinks it will make a good movie.
- He spends a great deal of money to make this movie.
- Many people go to see it
- and spend their money to buy
DVD s of it. - They tell their friends what a great movie it is
- and their friends see it and also buy
DVD s. - The producer makes a lot of money.
- He makes six more movies about its sequels
- and the people buy
DVD s of those movies as well. - He sells them again, this time with special bonus features
- and the people buy
DVD s of those movies too. - A day’s wages are spent on all the movies
- and the producer becomes wealthy.
- The poor finally see the movies when they are shown on TV
- but can not buy them.
But don’t misunderstand me. Just because it’s not providential doesn’t automatically make it demonic. The success of The Passion of the Christ and The Lord of the Rings have shown that the demographics exist for successful Narnia movies; and the technology exists to make animals in the movie that don’t look like Muppets. Making these movies was only a matter of time and circumstance. And where money is involved, God doesn’t necessarily have to be. Presuming that he is there because the money is, is to confuse God and Mammon to a frightening—yet very American—degree.
The upshot is that too many people presume this movie, and its making, is more Christian than it is; and because of this they may presume that this movie will do Christian things when it, like every other inanimate object, will only do what intelligent beings make it do. If C.S. Lewis books and movies are to become Christian tools, Christians must use them as such; otherwise they will simply exist for no other reason than to make money for the publishing companies and movie studios. Same as usual.