It's REAL! Sort of.
I'm off to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for the second time this afternoon, and it's struck me that the last few years of my adult life have been weirdly like a series of dreams come true. Well, not come true, but I can SEE them now -- that is, apparently God, in Her infinite wisdom, has decided that all my favorite childhood books are going to be made into splendid movies now that I'm no longer a child any more.
There's something very odd about this, about the way that images can seem to fulfill the promise of dearly loved texts, and yet can seem at the same time a little beside the point. When I was six years old I would have given anything -- ANYTHING -- to see Aslan. Now, mumble-mumble years later, seeing him does indeed make me gasp, and I'm mildly horrified to say that when Lucy opened that wardrobe door in the movie, I cried.
But these books -- and The Lord of the Rings is the same way -- have been in my life for so long, and are, after many rereadings over decades, so deeply intertwined with my sense of who I am, that the images, while delightful, somehow don't feel like they're mine. The stories are more to me than what they might look like. Aslan isn't just a lion, he's an idea, or a sort of accumulation of ideas that I've had about him over the years. Those ideas were always private. The weren't things you could point to on the screen and say, that's it.
I can't help wondering how different the experience must be for people whose dearest childhood books are the Harry Potter series. I'm not interested, just now, in differences among Narnia and Middle Earth and wizarding England. What interests me at the moment is that those of us who grew up with Narnia and Middle Earth grew up without seeing them, and those of you who grew up with Harry Potter grew up seeing wizarding England almost immediately. There will be no decades-long gap of repeated rereadings while you wonder and dream of what the final dual in GoF might look like. You might like or dislike the movie's version, but it's there in your head, and you won't have to live in a state where it was just an idea.
It must be cool, seeing your dreams so soon, like getting a Christmas present that's exactly what you want, exactly when you want it. For those of us who grew up when movie magic was just not up to the task of showing Aslan, seeing him at last is more like stumbling across that present in your attic, still fully wrapped, decades later. It's exactly what you wanted, but it doesn't mean quite the same thing any more. And what you got instead -- a lifetime of dreaming -- turned out to be rather nice as well.
There's something very odd about this, about the way that images can seem to fulfill the promise of dearly loved texts, and yet can seem at the same time a little beside the point. When I was six years old I would have given anything -- ANYTHING -- to see Aslan. Now, mumble-mumble years later, seeing him does indeed make me gasp, and I'm mildly horrified to say that when Lucy opened that wardrobe door in the movie, I cried.
But these books -- and The Lord of the Rings is the same way -- have been in my life for so long, and are, after many rereadings over decades, so deeply intertwined with my sense of who I am, that the images, while delightful, somehow don't feel like they're mine. The stories are more to me than what they might look like. Aslan isn't just a lion, he's an idea, or a sort of accumulation of ideas that I've had about him over the years. Those ideas were always private. The weren't things you could point to on the screen and say, that's it.
I can't help wondering how different the experience must be for people whose dearest childhood books are the Harry Potter series. I'm not interested, just now, in differences among Narnia and Middle Earth and wizarding England. What interests me at the moment is that those of us who grew up with Narnia and Middle Earth grew up without seeing them, and those of you who grew up with Harry Potter grew up seeing wizarding England almost immediately. There will be no decades-long gap of repeated rereadings while you wonder and dream of what the final dual in GoF might look like. You might like or dislike the movie's version, but it's there in your head, and you won't have to live in a state where it was just an idea.
It must be cool, seeing your dreams so soon, like getting a Christmas present that's exactly what you want, exactly when you want it. For those of us who grew up when movie magic was just not up to the task of showing Aslan, seeing him at last is more like stumbling across that present in your attic, still fully wrapped, decades later. It's exactly what you wanted, but it doesn't mean quite the same thing any more. And what you got instead -- a lifetime of dreaming -- turned out to be rather nice as well.