“YOU’VE BEEN DRINKING POISONED WATER FROM THE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH…”

[fpb]

By now, all my friends, as well as a very large number of people who will never be my friends, know that I have a kind of gift for online brawls and battles. I once made carlanime laugh by remarking that there was something unnatural about having a great big online brawl without me. That was a joke; in point of fact I am not particularly happy about this

Comments

[mindstalk]

Well, the poisonous features could be there, but not perceived even unconsciously by most readers. If you think about something more, or know more about relevant things, you can get more (for good or ill) out of it. Lewis meant the Narnia stories as guides to Christianity, but for a lot of readers the allusions just went *whoosh* past them, I think not even particularly predisposing them to Christian ideas.

So no, I don't think you're placing elements there, but the actual poisonous effect may be minimal. There's also that a story can have multiple legitimate readings, especially if we're talking about cultural elements thrown together semi-consciously by a bunch of authors. Pseudo-biology and intimations of racial superiority are there; *so are* the archetypes of the peacemaker and the revolutionary, co-existences and violent struggle, with the authorial side of 'good' being pretty heavily on the former camp. Mutant stories support both "Nazi eugenics" and "persecuted minority" readings. Which reading is more significant for most readers, that's another matter.

[fpb]

I think it goes deeper than you think because it works together with the suffering-porn and repeated dystopia that are a major feature of the mutant world. There is also the fact that Lewis was conscious, almost to the point of allegory, of what he did; whereas I doubt that Claremont and his followers were awake to any of the implications of the world they created. The unconscious assumptions are what I wanted to bring out.

[thefish30]

The thing is, it is precisely the unperceived poison that is the most dangerous. When ideology is obvious and upfront, you can accept or reject it on your own terms. But when an ideology is wearing a play-costume--one that attracts or excites while hiding its true form--then people can be lulled into adopting mindsets that dispose them toward ideas that they would have spit on 'unprepared'.

Lewis understood this from his own conversion experience and meant for readers to *whoosh* past the allusions, in order to sneak truth by the "watchful dragons" of the mind and "baptize the imagination". I believe the cagey Rowling was up to much the same thing.

[fpb]

Maybe so, but I do not see JKR's stories - whatever her beliefs - as Christian: http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/fabio_p_barbieri/AGWBC01.html