|
|
|
News and Ideas from around the Anglican World |
|
____________________________________________________________________________
December 2005
Nearing Narnia The C.S.Lewis classic hits the big screen this month Alex Newman
Fed on a steady diet of fantasy blockbusters such as Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter series, everyone is curious about what to expect when Disney releases The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on December 9.
The media seems mostly preoccupied with the C-word -- whether the film will be Christian. Liam Lacey warned Globe and Mail readers that it would be. Another Globe article, by Jeff Leeds, claimed that the “entertainment industry is taking notice of, and trying to profit from, what it views as the in creasing influence of religiosity on American culture.”
It’s a concern of the Christian public, too, but for different reasons. Since C. S. Lewis wrote it in1950, 85 million copies of the book in 29 languages have been sold. And millions of children have been weaned on the story about four siblings at their uncle’s estate outside war-time London, who find the frozen world of Narnia inside a forgotten wardrobe, and engage in a battle of good versus evil.
Although Lewis swore up and down it was not a Christian allegory, the battle ends with a classic Christian atonement storyline -- the innocent all-powerful lion, Aslan, gives his life up for Edmund who had fallen into the evil clutches of the White Witch.
If the trailers are any indication, the movie promises to be just as exciting as the book, with high-tech fantasy in spades. One narniaweb reviewer who’d seen the rough-cut public screening in August was enthusiastic: “Overall it was fantastic! I can’t wait another two months.” Another said the movie “kept quite close to the plot of the book.”
While audiences just want a good movie, there’s been a phenomenal marketing effort to avoid alienating any of them, Christian or secular. On the one hand, Movie Marketing -- the same company that executed The Passion campaign -- was hired to woo support among churches.
On the other, the campaign seems to have downplayed any Christian connection to either Lewis or Philip Anschutz, Christian founder of Narnia’s production company, Walden Media.
At a public screening of the movie’s rough cut at the end of August, a Disney spokes man said, rather elliptically, that “movie theatres are the churches of today’s culture and movies are their sermons,” adding that this movie “celebrates the true, the good, and the beautiful.”
As strange as the media and marketing behaviour is, profit can do it to you, especially when it’s the irresistible God and Mammon connection. After all, look at The Passion of the Christ - it was one of the top ten high est grossing films in history, with $370M in ticket sales.
And Disney has US$150M invested in the film. Plus there’s the advance product placement. Tables at Chapter’s and Indigo’s groan with new releases of Lewis’ books; a line of jewellery has just come out (a silver leaf pendant etched with the words “Good Triumphs”); a Narnia video game and a Christian pop album inspired by the film have also been released.
With a film such as this, there’s always the prospect of evangelizing -- with media worried and Christians hoping.
Following The Passion, some pastors noted that church attendance rose by as much as 10 percent, but that was an unequivocal Christian message. Narnia might telegraph clearly to Christians – that the innocent divine gives up his life for that of his friends – but its message may be too subtle to a post-Christian world unfamiliar with biblical references.
That is, unless the medium of fantasy proves effective. Director Andrew Adamson, the New Zealand-born son of missionaries who parlayed his unique vision into the phenomenal Shrek success, says, “Fantasy takes us to new places, takes us to realms we can only imagine, transports to another time and place.”
But can it transport all the way into the deeper mystery of transcendence?
Alex Newman is a regular contributor to the Anglican Planet and will review the Narnia Chronicles with her son Aidan, 12, next month.
|
|||
|
|
|
Copyright The Anglican Planet © 2005 |