It's all stops out...
Thinking a lot about Narnia lately.
I watched the Narnia movie in the theatre with Julian, when it had only been out a little while. I enjoyed little bits of it, was of course in love with Tilda Swinton in all her scintillant majesty(she was the reason I went), but mostly was disappointed. Aslan was not frightening. I found him less scary than Henson's beautiful old white lion-muppet. He was just a lion, like you see at the zoo.
And then there was the ending.
The look on his face before he killed Jadis, the look of "At last" on hers...it did not sit easy with me. Sitting in the dark as people cheered her death, I thought Well, this is a very America-Right-Now sort of movie, isn't it?
I quite liked the actress that played Susan. She was lovely, and all the while I ached for what Lewis did to her character, at the end of the cycle. It ruined the series for me utterly when I read it, and I saw the rest of the week through a cloud of venomous thoughts. Susan is denied heaven for what? Puberty? Liking boys? Were I shown a perfect world, given respect and challenges and surrounded by people who were intelligent and heart-whole, and then plunged back into post-Blitz England where I was expected to be a good housekeeping girl and not race alongside the boys--and were this to happen not once, but over and over--I think that I'd want to forget the bright world, too. I think I'd bury myself in 'lipstick and stockings and invitations.'
I think I'd become a scientist, or society wife, and build what brightness and take what control I could. It's like outside-engineered manic-depression, the flickering of good-bad-good-bad that is her situation as a child. Easier, to have contentment in great long streaks than to have everything right for little, tiny bits, and then to be pressed back into a container that is increasingly miserable.
Also there is the problem that C.S Lewis really does seem to have hated women. Married women were good, little girls were good. But women on their own? The only strong woman who did not have a father or a brother or a husband to guide her actions was Jadis.
Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series is written in direct opposition to Narnia. Pullman has called the Narnia books "(some) of the most ugly and poisonous things I've ever read."
(It is at this point in the writing of this update that I fell asleep. I will probably pick up this subject again later...it just surprises me what the combination of stress and medication can do to a girl. I stood up, walked three feet to the bed, sat down between Julian and his laptop, and fell asleep for about two hours. Just like that. How very weird. I was going to talk about my day, but I simply haven't the energy--I am going to try and take a sedate little walk, so that I sleep all right tonight, rather than being awake and worried about tomorrow until the wee hours of the morning. Jeez.)
--Gen
I watched the Narnia movie in the theatre with Julian, when it had only been out a little while. I enjoyed little bits of it, was of course in love with Tilda Swinton in all her scintillant majesty(she was the reason I went), but mostly was disappointed. Aslan was not frightening. I found him less scary than Henson's beautiful old white lion-muppet. He was just a lion, like you see at the zoo.
And then there was the ending.
The look on his face before he killed Jadis, the look of "At last" on hers...it did not sit easy with me. Sitting in the dark as people cheered her death, I thought Well, this is a very America-Right-Now sort of movie, isn't it?
I quite liked the actress that played Susan. She was lovely, and all the while I ached for what Lewis did to her character, at the end of the cycle. It ruined the series for me utterly when I read it, and I saw the rest of the week through a cloud of venomous thoughts. Susan is denied heaven for what? Puberty? Liking boys? Were I shown a perfect world, given respect and challenges and surrounded by people who were intelligent and heart-whole, and then plunged back into post-Blitz England where I was expected to be a good housekeeping girl and not race alongside the boys--and were this to happen not once, but over and over--I think that I'd want to forget the bright world, too. I think I'd bury myself in 'lipstick and stockings and invitations.'
I think I'd become a scientist, or society wife, and build what brightness and take what control I could. It's like outside-engineered manic-depression, the flickering of good-bad-good-bad that is her situation as a child. Easier, to have contentment in great long streaks than to have everything right for little, tiny bits, and then to be pressed back into a container that is increasingly miserable.
Also there is the problem that C.S Lewis really does seem to have hated women. Married women were good, little girls were good. But women on their own? The only strong woman who did not have a father or a brother or a husband to guide her actions was Jadis.
Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series is written in direct opposition to Narnia. Pullman has called the Narnia books "(some) of the most ugly and poisonous things I've ever read."
(It is at this point in the writing of this update that I fell asleep. I will probably pick up this subject again later...it just surprises me what the combination of stress and medication can do to a girl. I stood up, walked three feet to the bed, sat down between Julian and his laptop, and fell asleep for about two hours. Just like that. How very weird. I was going to talk about my day, but I simply haven't the energy--I am going to try and take a sedate little walk, so that I sleep all right tonight, rather than being awake and worried about tomorrow until the wee hours of the morning. Jeez.)
--Gen