FIRST LOLOL
Title: Deconstructing the Narnia/England dichotomy in Narnia/Inception crossover
Author: zempasuchil
Summary/Abstract/Thesis Statement: In WingedFlight's “Architect”, the dream/reality dichotomy introduced by Inception interacts with the Narnia/England dichotomy of the Narnia books in a way that invites comparison. Using a psychoanalytic toolkit, we may examine the structure of this fic, compare the structural binaries of dream-versus-reality and Narnia-versus-England, and use this comparison to draw out this fic’s characterization of a grown Susan Pevensie and her emotional relationship with Narnia.
words: 1974. oh my god I wrote six pages double-spaced.
Recipient and links to original fic: wingedflight21 ; Architect
Deconstructing the Narnia/England dichotomy using Inception crossover
In her Narnia/Inception crossover “Architect,” WingedFlight's choice of canons allows her to infer the importance of dreaming to the Pevensies' fantasy world on a psychological level. Not only does this crossover demonstrate and invite a comparison of the question, “What is the real world?”, important to both Inception and The Chronicles of Narnia, but it also brings psychoanalytic theory to an examination of Narnia. The rules of Inception describe dreams in manner consistent with the now-popular general knowledge of psychoanalysis, which paved the way in defining the individual and the concept of the self for the 20th century. In “Architect”, the dream/reality dichotomy introduced by Inception interacts with the Narnia/England dichotomy of the Narnia books in a way that invites comparison. These binaries are shown not to be wholly analogous - after all, for Lewis, Narnia is both the dream and the ultimate reality. In this essay, I use theories of psychoanalysis to examine the structure of this fic, compare the structural binaries of dream-versus-reality and Narnia-versus-England, and use this comparison to draw out this fic’s characterization of a grown Susan Pevensie and her emotional relationship with Narnia.
In the Inception universe, dreams are a way of entering a person's mind, using technology that makes sharing the dream possible. As the dream goes deeper, reaching the secret that the subject is concealing becomes more and more possible. However, there is also an increase in the subject's resistance, in the form of projections, or person-shaped devices, that defend against revealing the secret. In Freud's theory of the unconscious, which is the realm in which dreams take place, this is a similar process to the process of examining dreams to see what they reveal about their dreamer. In Freud’s description, there is a clear difference between the way the dreamer behaves toward the dream while dreaming, and while waking. While dreaming, the dreamer acts out her unconscious, specifically anti-social desire (this is her libido); while waking, she rejects them (see Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis 139, 141) (1) (2) . “[T]he ideas which people try to suppress,” Freud writes, “[…] turn out invariably to be the most important ones” (Introductory Lectures 142).
The plot of “Architect” follows the model of dream-invasion that Inception sets forth, as Cobb and his team travel through layers of dream, deeper and deeper, further into the Subject’s unconscious and towards the secret there. When the Subject is Susan Pevensie, going further into her unconscious means going further into Narnia as it exists in her mind. Where this fic begins, the reader (through Ariadne’s POV) knows nothing about Susan’s relationship with Narnia, positive or negative. We can, however, infer reliably that Narnia is very important to her, because it is most present at the deepest level of dreaming. In Inception, the deepest level is unstructured dreaming, called “limbo”; its chaotic nature and unbounded potential make it analogous to the unstructured libido residing in the unconscious (Introductory Lectures 175). The deeper the Cobb’s team goes, the closer they get to her secret, and the closer they get to Narnia.
WingedFlight leaves us the subtle hints of what Susan’s secret is in the eye of Ariadne, who is watching for the changes made to her dream architecture. Even before they begin the dream, however, Ariadne notices a painting of cliffs. We know from Lewis's books that Queen Susan and her siblings lived in Cair Paravel, by the sea; these cliffs are probably Narnian cliffs. Significantly, these remind Ariadne of limbo -- here is our first identification of Narnia with the unconscious. In the first level, the setting appears to be thoroughly England. The reading of the will is of the Professor's; this could very well be a memory. It names Susan as the inheritor of a wooden wardrobe, which the reader but not Ariadne knows to be Susan's first door to Narnia. In the second level, they meet a faun pushing the cart on the train, and look out the window to see dryads dancing. The train would indicate they are in England, but the dryads are part of a Narnian landscape. Just before moving on, Ariadne catches a glimpse of the wardrobe. In the third level, the characters find themselves in a Narnian crowd, probably in Cair Paravel's ballroom. The deeper they go into Susan's dreams, the closer they get to Narnia. But they never arrive through her dreams. In her dream, Susan blocks the wardrobe; at the end of the story, she, waking, gives Ariadne the key, and Ariadne opens the wardrobe to find her secret. Why this change in resistance?
Resistance is ultimately the key to the dreamer’s true desires. Its presence indicates a secret to be sought out; it occludes, diverts, and distorts the true nature of that secret, that desire. The dream may appear to indicate one thing, or to be unimportant, but that is the mechanism of the unconscious: it hides the libido. This is true in psychoanalysis; however, in the universe of Inception, what is important to the dreamer in the waking world is important to them in the dream that Cobb and his team invade. The information they seek is always within the safe, an area indicated to be for protecting valuable information. This is also true in “Architect.” Resistance appears in the form of what Inception calls projections, characters in the dream driven by the resistance-mechanism of the unconscious who work to prevent the secrets from being found.
In Inception, the subject whose dream is being invaded is quickly convinced that his projections are working against him, and that he does in fact want to access the safe. But in “Architect,” this is not so. Susan, under her own power and with the help of her dream-traveling friend Merlin, are the ones who work to stop Cobb’s team from discovering her secret. In the second level, she will not look in the safe; in the third level, she stops them from opening the wardrobe. She is not just resisting these intruders because they are intruders; she is also resisting the discovery of her secret. In Inception, they convince the Subject to open the safe so that the contents may be discovered (the Subject must "create" them in the discovery, because only he or she knows exactly what they are). However, in this fic, Susan refuses to open the wardrobe. Not only is she guarded against Cobb’s invasion; she is also determined not to realize her secret herself.
If the characters in Susan's dreams are projections (except for Merlin), why do they not resist? And if they are not projections, what does that mean about Susan's dreamworld? There are two distinct possibilities here. Either WingedFlight chooses to make Susan's dreamworld Narnia, both making her unconscious real and not merely a dream while at the same time placing Narnia in Susan’s mind, throwing doubt upon Narnia’s reality, or the author is portraying the abnormally non-resistant, lucid-dreaming unconscious of someone who has been to Narnia. It is certainly possible that the author intends to imply both and explore both possibilities by leaving the degree of identification of Narnia and the dream-world ambiguous. This ambiguity does serve the fic well in that manner.
Susan’s attitude towards Narnia can be revealed in her attitude towards its discovery in her dream and outside of her dream, as well as her behavior in the dream itself. If we are in Susan's dream, her projections do not resist the discovery of the secret. Yet Susan herself is completely unwilling to let Narnia be revealed. She is aware that Cobb’s team are foreign, considers them hostile, and will not allow her secret to be revealed and realized. Normally, in Inception, when the dreamer realizes that she is dreaming, the dream begins to collapse around everyone in it, waking everyone up. During this entire story, however, Susan is aware that they are hostile, and yet the dream does not collapse around them. Is this because she is an expert architect, and able to suspend her disbelief? Is it because Narnia is so vivid in her unconscious that it acquires a strength of its own, much like Cobb’s projection of Mal?
Usually, in a dream, the dreamer is convinced that what is happening is real, and caught up in the action. In the second level we see skepticism on Susan's part, and her belief that what is in the safe beneath her seat is not important enough for her to look at it. In the waking world, Susan is absorbed in her "trashy romance" novel, and does not follow Ariadne to see her open the wardrobe. Narnia is clearly important to Susan, since her totem is the key to the wardrobe, and since it lies at the bottom of all her dreaming. Her reasons for not realizing her secret, Narnia, range from apparently apathetic to vehemently protective, but this defense falls away in the waking world when she gives Ariadne the key - Susan’s totem. The totem is the key to establishing one world - the ‘real world’ - as the primary world. The totem is made in the real world, and it indicates whether one is in a dream or not. By giving Ariadne her totem, Susan surrenders that knowledge. The question itself, of “what is reality?” is no longer important. It is as good as declaring that waking England is just as real as dreaming Narnia, just as important to her.
This characterization of Susan’s attitude towards Narnia as conflicted is a popular theme in Narnia fanfiction, and a vastly more mature reading than Lewis provides for in his brief dismissal of Susan in The Last Battle. It is an important recognition of her complex allegiances between the sacred and secular lives, as Lewis uses Narnia and England to symbolize, respectively. Susan is the adult character; she is the only one who survives to grow up, and instead of condemning her for it as Lewis does, leaving her behind in the Purgatory of secular England, this piece (among others of the author’s body of work, indeed the entirety of Narnia fandom) attempts to reconcile the inevitable profane responsibilities of adulthood while maintaining a connection to faith and the sacred, spiritual life. By holding on to the key and making it central, Susan asserts her power in both by refusing to privilege one over the other. Yet the Susan we see in the end is most peaceful when she gives the key to Ariadne, relinquishing that power. Surrendering the key, symbol of her power to distinguish between dream and reality, Susan is empowered in a different way: it allows her to embrace both worlds equally instead of separately. It is a particularly Christian power, surrender.
Like the unconscious, Narnia is both very important and perceived as unreal. The significance of dreams is underestimated because they are not “real”, but Susan engages with both dreams and Narnia as very important and, in the end, equally ‘real’ to England and the waking world. “Architect” does justice to Susan’s spiritual and secular strength by refusing to make her choose between Narnia and England, and refusing to accept these realms, the inner life and the worldly life, as mutually exclusive.
END NOTES
(1) Freud, Sigmund. Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Tr. and Ed. James Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton, 1966. Henceforth cited parenthetically.
(2) I realize that my definition of libido differs somewhat from Freud’s in Introductory Lectures. Freud emphasizes that it targets forbidden desires, and that it is the anti-social force that is countered by the conscious’s social concerns. I don’t intend to shrink from this discussion, but I agree more with Herbert Marcuse’s presentation of the libido and the unconscious as not necessarily anti-social, just as Freud shows that society finds all sexual desires perverse, rendering so-called perversions on par with "normal" sexual desires. (3)
(3) Please forgive that completely self-indulgent footnote.
Author: zempasuchil
Summary/Abstract/Thesis Statement: In WingedFlight's “Architect”, the dream/reality dichotomy introduced by Inception interacts with the Narnia/England dichotomy of the Narnia books in a way that invites comparison. Using a psychoanalytic toolkit, we may examine the structure of this fic, compare the structural binaries of dream-versus-reality and Narnia-versus-England, and use this comparison to draw out this fic’s characterization of a grown Susan Pevensie and her emotional relationship with Narnia.
words: 1974. oh my god I wrote six pages double-spaced.
Recipient and links to original fic: wingedflight21 ; Architect
Deconstructing the Narnia/England dichotomy using Inception crossover
In her Narnia/Inception crossover “Architect,” WingedFlight's choice of canons allows her to infer the importance of dreaming to the Pevensies' fantasy world on a psychological level. Not only does this crossover demonstrate and invite a comparison of the question, “What is the real world?”, important to both Inception and The Chronicles of Narnia, but it also brings psychoanalytic theory to an examination of Narnia. The rules of Inception describe dreams in manner consistent with the now-popular general knowledge of psychoanalysis, which paved the way in defining the individual and the concept of the self for the 20th century. In “Architect”, the dream/reality dichotomy introduced by Inception interacts with the Narnia/England dichotomy of the Narnia books in a way that invites comparison. These binaries are shown not to be wholly analogous - after all, for Lewis, Narnia is both the dream and the ultimate reality. In this essay, I use theories of psychoanalysis to examine the structure of this fic, compare the structural binaries of dream-versus-reality and Narnia-versus-England, and use this comparison to draw out this fic’s characterization of a grown Susan Pevensie and her emotional relationship with Narnia.
In the Inception universe, dreams are a way of entering a person's mind, using technology that makes sharing the dream possible. As the dream goes deeper, reaching the secret that the subject is concealing becomes more and more possible. However, there is also an increase in the subject's resistance, in the form of projections, or person-shaped devices, that defend against revealing the secret. In Freud's theory of the unconscious, which is the realm in which dreams take place, this is a similar process to the process of examining dreams to see what they reveal about their dreamer. In Freud’s description, there is a clear difference between the way the dreamer behaves toward the dream while dreaming, and while waking. While dreaming, the dreamer acts out her unconscious, specifically anti-social desire (this is her libido); while waking, she rejects them (see Freud’s Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis 139, 141) (1) (2) . “[T]he ideas which people try to suppress,” Freud writes, “[…] turn out invariably to be the most important ones” (Introductory Lectures 142).
The plot of “Architect” follows the model of dream-invasion that Inception sets forth, as Cobb and his team travel through layers of dream, deeper and deeper, further into the Subject’s unconscious and towards the secret there. When the Subject is Susan Pevensie, going further into her unconscious means going further into Narnia as it exists in her mind. Where this fic begins, the reader (through Ariadne’s POV) knows nothing about Susan’s relationship with Narnia, positive or negative. We can, however, infer reliably that Narnia is very important to her, because it is most present at the deepest level of dreaming. In Inception, the deepest level is unstructured dreaming, called “limbo”; its chaotic nature and unbounded potential make it analogous to the unstructured libido residing in the unconscious (Introductory Lectures 175). The deeper the Cobb’s team goes, the closer they get to her secret, and the closer they get to Narnia.
WingedFlight leaves us the subtle hints of what Susan’s secret is in the eye of Ariadne, who is watching for the changes made to her dream architecture. Even before they begin the dream, however, Ariadne notices a painting of cliffs. We know from Lewis's books that Queen Susan and her siblings lived in Cair Paravel, by the sea; these cliffs are probably Narnian cliffs. Significantly, these remind Ariadne of limbo -- here is our first identification of Narnia with the unconscious. In the first level, the setting appears to be thoroughly England. The reading of the will is of the Professor's; this could very well be a memory. It names Susan as the inheritor of a wooden wardrobe, which the reader but not Ariadne knows to be Susan's first door to Narnia. In the second level, they meet a faun pushing the cart on the train, and look out the window to see dryads dancing. The train would indicate they are in England, but the dryads are part of a Narnian landscape. Just before moving on, Ariadne catches a glimpse of the wardrobe. In the third level, the characters find themselves in a Narnian crowd, probably in Cair Paravel's ballroom. The deeper they go into Susan's dreams, the closer they get to Narnia. But they never arrive through her dreams. In her dream, Susan blocks the wardrobe; at the end of the story, she, waking, gives Ariadne the key, and Ariadne opens the wardrobe to find her secret. Why this change in resistance?
Resistance is ultimately the key to the dreamer’s true desires. Its presence indicates a secret to be sought out; it occludes, diverts, and distorts the true nature of that secret, that desire. The dream may appear to indicate one thing, or to be unimportant, but that is the mechanism of the unconscious: it hides the libido. This is true in psychoanalysis; however, in the universe of Inception, what is important to the dreamer in the waking world is important to them in the dream that Cobb and his team invade. The information they seek is always within the safe, an area indicated to be for protecting valuable information. This is also true in “Architect.” Resistance appears in the form of what Inception calls projections, characters in the dream driven by the resistance-mechanism of the unconscious who work to prevent the secrets from being found.
In Inception, the subject whose dream is being invaded is quickly convinced that his projections are working against him, and that he does in fact want to access the safe. But in “Architect,” this is not so. Susan, under her own power and with the help of her dream-traveling friend Merlin, are the ones who work to stop Cobb’s team from discovering her secret. In the second level, she will not look in the safe; in the third level, she stops them from opening the wardrobe. She is not just resisting these intruders because they are intruders; she is also resisting the discovery of her secret. In Inception, they convince the Subject to open the safe so that the contents may be discovered (the Subject must "create" them in the discovery, because only he or she knows exactly what they are). However, in this fic, Susan refuses to open the wardrobe. Not only is she guarded against Cobb’s invasion; she is also determined not to realize her secret herself.
If the characters in Susan's dreams are projections (except for Merlin), why do they not resist? And if they are not projections, what does that mean about Susan's dreamworld? There are two distinct possibilities here. Either WingedFlight chooses to make Susan's dreamworld Narnia, both making her unconscious real and not merely a dream while at the same time placing Narnia in Susan’s mind, throwing doubt upon Narnia’s reality, or the author is portraying the abnormally non-resistant, lucid-dreaming unconscious of someone who has been to Narnia. It is certainly possible that the author intends to imply both and explore both possibilities by leaving the degree of identification of Narnia and the dream-world ambiguous. This ambiguity does serve the fic well in that manner.
Susan’s attitude towards Narnia can be revealed in her attitude towards its discovery in her dream and outside of her dream, as well as her behavior in the dream itself. If we are in Susan's dream, her projections do not resist the discovery of the secret. Yet Susan herself is completely unwilling to let Narnia be revealed. She is aware that Cobb’s team are foreign, considers them hostile, and will not allow her secret to be revealed and realized. Normally, in Inception, when the dreamer realizes that she is dreaming, the dream begins to collapse around everyone in it, waking everyone up. During this entire story, however, Susan is aware that they are hostile, and yet the dream does not collapse around them. Is this because she is an expert architect, and able to suspend her disbelief? Is it because Narnia is so vivid in her unconscious that it acquires a strength of its own, much like Cobb’s projection of Mal?
Usually, in a dream, the dreamer is convinced that what is happening is real, and caught up in the action. In the second level we see skepticism on Susan's part, and her belief that what is in the safe beneath her seat is not important enough for her to look at it. In the waking world, Susan is absorbed in her "trashy romance" novel, and does not follow Ariadne to see her open the wardrobe. Narnia is clearly important to Susan, since her totem is the key to the wardrobe, and since it lies at the bottom of all her dreaming. Her reasons for not realizing her secret, Narnia, range from apparently apathetic to vehemently protective, but this defense falls away in the waking world when she gives Ariadne the key - Susan’s totem. The totem is the key to establishing one world - the ‘real world’ - as the primary world. The totem is made in the real world, and it indicates whether one is in a dream or not. By giving Ariadne her totem, Susan surrenders that knowledge. The question itself, of “what is reality?” is no longer important. It is as good as declaring that waking England is just as real as dreaming Narnia, just as important to her.
This characterization of Susan’s attitude towards Narnia as conflicted is a popular theme in Narnia fanfiction, and a vastly more mature reading than Lewis provides for in his brief dismissal of Susan in The Last Battle. It is an important recognition of her complex allegiances between the sacred and secular lives, as Lewis uses Narnia and England to symbolize, respectively. Susan is the adult character; she is the only one who survives to grow up, and instead of condemning her for it as Lewis does, leaving her behind in the Purgatory of secular England, this piece (among others of the author’s body of work, indeed the entirety of Narnia fandom) attempts to reconcile the inevitable profane responsibilities of adulthood while maintaining a connection to faith and the sacred, spiritual life. By holding on to the key and making it central, Susan asserts her power in both by refusing to privilege one over the other. Yet the Susan we see in the end is most peaceful when she gives the key to Ariadne, relinquishing that power. Surrendering the key, symbol of her power to distinguish between dream and reality, Susan is empowered in a different way: it allows her to embrace both worlds equally instead of separately. It is a particularly Christian power, surrender.
Like the unconscious, Narnia is both very important and perceived as unreal. The significance of dreams is underestimated because they are not “real”, but Susan engages with both dreams and Narnia as very important and, in the end, equally ‘real’ to England and the waking world. “Architect” does justice to Susan’s spiritual and secular strength by refusing to make her choose between Narnia and England, and refusing to accept these realms, the inner life and the worldly life, as mutually exclusive.
END NOTES
(1) Freud, Sigmund. Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. Tr. and Ed. James Strachey. New York: W. W. Norton, 1966. Henceforth cited parenthetically.
(2) I realize that my definition of libido differs somewhat from Freud’s in Introductory Lectures. Freud emphasizes that it targets forbidden desires, and that it is the anti-social force that is countered by the conscious’s social concerns. I don’t intend to shrink from this discussion, but I agree more with Herbert Marcuse’s presentation of the libido and the unconscious as not necessarily anti-social, just as Freud shows that society finds all sexual desires perverse, rendering so-called perversions on par with "normal" sexual desires. (3)
(3) Please forgive that completely self-indulgent footnote.