Tea at Trianon: The Battle for Narnia

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, December 17, 2010

The Battle for Narnia

What would C.S. Lewis say? According to the WSJ:

Walden Media, the film-production company responsible for the movie versions of Lewis's children books, "The Chronicles of Narnia," is therefore in the unenviable position of triangulating three distinct and not always compatible factors: what Lewis actually wrote; what American Christians would like to believe he wrote and what large numbers of filmgoers want to see onscreen.

The third and latest film, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader," is said by producer Mark Johnson to reflect the company's renewed resolve to "reach out to the faith-based community." The first film, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," marketed with the assistance of the firm that promoted Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ," was a big hit in 2005.

The second, "Prince Caspian," underperformed at the box office. This may have been because the second book in the series (to go by order of publication), isn't nearly as well-known as the first, or perhaps it was because the film was released in May instead of at Christmastime. Or (you can almost hear the Monday-morning studio executives calculate) "Prince Caspian" might have fizzled because it consisted of not much more than one CGI battle scene after another, with little of the religious symbolism that infuses the death and resurrection of the lion god Aslan in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe."

"Dawn Treader" (the film) does point more emphatically to its religious subtext than "Prince Caspian" did. So, too, does the book. When Edmund Pevensie asks if Aslan exists in our world as well as in Narnia, the lion replies that he does, but "there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."

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