the problem of Susan
Curse you, Peter Jackson! You have ruined us, ruined us, for all post-LotR cinematic fantasy. Prince Caspian, like the earlier The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is not a bad little film1, but it didn't blow the top off my head and fill it with trees, mountains, creatures, swords, epic battles and dishy men2, and now I'm all spoiled and think it should.
What it does do is to provide a mostly-faithful version of the book, complete with heavily Spanish Telmarines in their heavily Inquisitorial castles, and a pleasingly motley collection of Narnian creatures whose representation feels only slightly amateur - a hint of a suggestion of cardboard ears. The plot does the necessary things, with the necessary cinematic compression and a not-quite-Osgiliath-level digression to attack the usurper's castle, which I will forgive because they did it with griffins, and griffins always get my vote. The battles are the same sort of mini-epic as the first film. The landscapes are beautiful. And I can't hold it against them for the centaurs, it is a truth universally acknowledged that cinematic centaurs can't help but look silly.
I liked Caspian, he was kinda cute, but I hated the way the film played up the rivalry between Caspian and Peter - flatly against the spirit of the books, which insisted from the start on the High King coming back to specifically to put Caspian on the throne, nobly but logically enough. Caspian in the book was actually more of a leader and less of a tactical dweeb. I flat-out loved, as I did in the first film, the Narnian great cats. Middle-Earth battles badly needed giant cats loping alongside the horses, they are nearly infinitely wonderful3. Oh, and I am fast developing an inappropriate girly crush on Edmund. He does that faintly withdrawn/intelligent/quiet/ironic thing, and does not degenerate, as does Peter, into emotional fuckwittage.
However! after mature reflection over my tea and chocolate pudding, I have come to the conclusion that above all the film quite neatly and faithfully illustrates and articulates the enormous problem at the heart of the Narnian chronicles, namely, sex. Lewis was writing British children's fantasy in the fifties, which basically means that sex wasn't in the universe of the books, other than the margin-note Dreadful Warning in what happened to poor Susan4, excluded from The Last Battle on the grounds of being "interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations." Which is all fine and well, except that he nonetheless merrily grows up the four original children in LW&W, so that they rule for ages and leave Narnia only as adults. Presumably not the kind of adults that are interested in lipstick and invitations, however? Which is a problem, because logically speaking at least some of them really ought to have found partners and had kids, because he's also set Narnia up only to function with humans as rulers, and when the four kids are hoiked back to the Real World, Narnia goes to pieces.
There's this sort of weird doublethink going on, where Narnia is real and urgent in its own right, but is also simultaneously no more than an arena in which the four children learn the necessary spiritual lessons. The logic and vitality of the magical landscape keeps on being sacrificed to the need to keep it both innocent and subordinate to the children's development; Caspian is actually stronger than LW&W because it does leave behind a ruler for the kingdom; the kids don't just abdicate their responsibilities. But of course Lewis has backed himself into a corner where the logical way of ensuring the succession wasn't possible in LW&W. There are suggestions in Horse and his Boy that both Susan and Lucy have suitors, but none are ever worthy, and of course they couldn't be - you can grow the child up, but you can't allow it to experience sex or parenthood, because the shrinkage back to childhood thereafter would be impossible, or at least strangely warped. I think the film nodded quite neatly to the Susan problem in developing the attraction between her and Caspian, which was realistic, but doomed on so many levels it's quite tragic to contemplate. At least he gets to marry the star's daughter in the next book, but I can't help feeling Susan would make a far more sensible Queen.
I hate what Lewis does with this: it's apparently appropriate for these fortunate, chosen children use Narnia in order to mature and develop in every way - courage, leadership, empathy, understanding, faith, trust, self-sacrifice, all the grown-up virtues - except sexuality. What, sex isn't for grown-ups? Especially not girls? Explains a lot, actually.
Now I have a dreadful urge to write Susan/Rabadash fanfic. Or even Susan/Caspian. Help!
1 Although I don't actually think it qualifies as a good little film, either. Perhaps we should stick with "little film".
2 It does fill it with dishy boys, but I'm getting a bit old for that.
3 Middle-Earth doesn't have cats, did you notice? They only turn up in appendices as belonging to the evil Queen Berúthiel, the exceedingly Gothy witch-wife to the twelfth King of Gondor. Tolkien was clearly a dog person, poor man. Berúthiel was the name of my very first ever role-playing character, more or less randomly after a search through the index of the Silmarillion. Strange but true, and probably horribly indicative. She was the pretentious type who only ever wore black and silver, and used her cats to find out secrets.
4 Susan got shafted, more or less misogynistically. Neil Gaiman definitely had a point there.
What it does do is to provide a mostly-faithful version of the book, complete with heavily Spanish Telmarines in their heavily Inquisitorial castles, and a pleasingly motley collection of Narnian creatures whose representation feels only slightly amateur - a hint of a suggestion of cardboard ears. The plot does the necessary things, with the necessary cinematic compression and a not-quite-Osgiliath-level digression to attack the usurper's castle, which I will forgive because they did it with griffins, and griffins always get my vote. The battles are the same sort of mini-epic as the first film. The landscapes are beautiful. And I can't hold it against them for the centaurs, it is a truth universally acknowledged that cinematic centaurs can't help but look silly.
I liked Caspian, he was kinda cute, but I hated the way the film played up the rivalry between Caspian and Peter - flatly against the spirit of the books, which insisted from the start on the High King coming back to specifically to put Caspian on the throne, nobly but logically enough. Caspian in the book was actually more of a leader and less of a tactical dweeb. I flat-out loved, as I did in the first film, the Narnian great cats. Middle-Earth battles badly needed giant cats loping alongside the horses, they are nearly infinitely wonderful3. Oh, and I am fast developing an inappropriate girly crush on Edmund. He does that faintly withdrawn/intelligent/quiet/ironic thing, and does not degenerate, as does Peter, into emotional fuckwittage.
However! after mature reflection over my tea and chocolate pudding, I have come to the conclusion that above all the film quite neatly and faithfully illustrates and articulates the enormous problem at the heart of the Narnian chronicles, namely, sex. Lewis was writing British children's fantasy in the fifties, which basically means that sex wasn't in the universe of the books, other than the margin-note Dreadful Warning in what happened to poor Susan4, excluded from The Last Battle on the grounds of being "interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations." Which is all fine and well, except that he nonetheless merrily grows up the four original children in LW&W, so that they rule for ages and leave Narnia only as adults. Presumably not the kind of adults that are interested in lipstick and invitations, however? Which is a problem, because logically speaking at least some of them really ought to have found partners and had kids, because he's also set Narnia up only to function with humans as rulers, and when the four kids are hoiked back to the Real World, Narnia goes to pieces.
There's this sort of weird doublethink going on, where Narnia is real and urgent in its own right, but is also simultaneously no more than an arena in which the four children learn the necessary spiritual lessons. The logic and vitality of the magical landscape keeps on being sacrificed to the need to keep it both innocent and subordinate to the children's development; Caspian is actually stronger than LW&W because it does leave behind a ruler for the kingdom; the kids don't just abdicate their responsibilities. But of course Lewis has backed himself into a corner where the logical way of ensuring the succession wasn't possible in LW&W. There are suggestions in Horse and his Boy that both Susan and Lucy have suitors, but none are ever worthy, and of course they couldn't be - you can grow the child up, but you can't allow it to experience sex or parenthood, because the shrinkage back to childhood thereafter would be impossible, or at least strangely warped. I think the film nodded quite neatly to the Susan problem in developing the attraction between her and Caspian, which was realistic, but doomed on so many levels it's quite tragic to contemplate. At least he gets to marry the star's daughter in the next book, but I can't help feeling Susan would make a far more sensible Queen.
I hate what Lewis does with this: it's apparently appropriate for these fortunate, chosen children use Narnia in order to mature and develop in every way - courage, leadership, empathy, understanding, faith, trust, self-sacrifice, all the grown-up virtues - except sexuality. What, sex isn't for grown-ups? Especially not girls? Explains a lot, actually.
Now I have a dreadful urge to write Susan/Rabadash fanfic. Or even Susan/Caspian. Help!
1 Although I don't actually think it qualifies as a good little film, either. Perhaps we should stick with "little film".
2 It does fill it with dishy boys, but I'm getting a bit old for that.
3 Middle-Earth doesn't have cats, did you notice? They only turn up in appendices as belonging to the evil Queen Berúthiel, the exceedingly Gothy witch-wife to the twelfth King of Gondor. Tolkien was clearly a dog person, poor man. Berúthiel was the name of my very first ever role-playing character, more or less randomly after a search through the index of the Silmarillion. Strange but true, and probably horribly indicative. She was the pretentious type who only ever wore black and silver, and used her cats to find out secrets.
4 Susan got shafted, more or less misogynistically. Neil Gaiman definitely had a point there.