The Chroni-WHAT-cles of Narnia
Pocahontas and I have a GreenCine subscription — DVD rental by mail, like Netflix. While we’re waiting for Battlestar Galactica Season 2 Disc 1 to finally be available when they owe us a DVD, a steady stream of the things we don’t want as much flow in.
So I recently saw “The Chronicles of Narnia.”
I loved the Narnia books as a boy. I read the whole series several times. Once I read them by order of internal chronology instead of the usual series ordering.
The whole Christian allegory thing? I didn’t have a clue. It was a surprise when I first heard of it.
Now, almost three decades later, it becomes very hard to miss. My recollection of the book is sufficiently old and indisctinct that I don’t know whether the movie is more heavy-handed, but I felt beaten about the head by the lectures on faith.
I liked the story better when I didn’t understand it.
The entry title owes to Lazy Sunday, the SNL video about two milquetoast white boys rapping about their badass selves that was blogged pretty much everywhere when it was new. You can call us Aaron Burr from the way we’re droppin’ Hamiltons!
"The whole Christian allegory thing? I didn’t have a clue."
I can't fer sure pin down the precise number of my age now, but I read the books in paperback out of sequence, as I haphazardly found them at the library; my first finding of them, though, was a week I was sick in the infirmary in summer camp -- as I said, I can't be precisely sure of my age, but I think 7-8, though possibly 9; not older.
Anyway, it was about a third of the way through the second Narnia book (in the sequence I encountered them, which I don't clearly recall just now) that I suddenly realized -- up until then I'd had no clue -- that "holy crap! Jeez! This is Christian propaganda!"
And I felt kinda pissed off and oddly cheated, and quite annoyed, for having been progagandized without realizing it.
But I finished the books in the infirmary, anyway, and eventually (not all that long after) finished the entire series, because that's what I did, man, if it was sf or fantasy, at that age.
I got over my annoyance, pretty much, by the time I was a mid-teen -- though I've never felt an impulse to take up Christianity, despite enjoying Lewis's actual apologetics (never cared for the Perelandra trilogy, though; too cardboard, too much allegory and too little anything else of interest).
Anyway, that's my version.
Posted by Gary Farber![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.mememachinego.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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May 2 2007 20:08
Oh, and I did reread the Narnia series several times, because that's also what I did.
I thought the young actress who played Lucy did a very good job, by the way.
Posted by Gary Farber![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.mememachinego.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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May 2 2007 20:10