Would C.S. Lewis Have Risked a Disney ‘Nightmare’?
A newly published letter by C.S. Lewis shows how clearly he would have objected to a live-action version of his Chronicles of Narnia story, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Lewis writes in the letter dated Dec. 18, 1959, “I am absolutely opposed … to a TV version. Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare.”
The Christian apologist was primarily concerned with the depiction of Aslan, the lion character who functions as an allegory of Jesus Christ: “A human, pantomime, Aslan [would] be to me blasphemy.” He further comments that an animated version would be acceptable, but laments that Walt Disney combines “so much vulgarity with his genius.” The letter raises a critical question for devotees of Lewis’s work: Should we be opposed to this past weekend’s live-action release?
On one level, the answer might be simple. Lewis explicitly says he is adamantly opposed to a live-action version. Therefore we should be, too. But on further inspection, the basis for Lewis’s opposition was the propriety of human pantomime of talking animals, particularly that of the lion Aslan. But the just-released Disney version answers this concern to a large extent, because Aslan is a CGI (computer graphics imaging) creation, much like The Lord of the Rings’ Gollum, a 21st century version of Lewis-era animation.
And since Lewis approves of this kind of depiction of Aslan, his major complaint seems to be answered. But his comment about the “vulgarity” of the work of Walt Disney raises a somewhat more complex question. Is there something about the medium of motion pictures (animation included) that is morally questionable?
One way to get at answering this question is to briefly review how a particular American denomination tackled the issue in the last century. The Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC) is a small, historically ethnic denomination founded by immigrants from the Netherlands. In the first generations of immigration, these Dutch settlers were concerned about accommodation of their church to American culture. One of the salient points of concern was the so-called “film arts.”
In 1928, the governing assembly of the denomination, the CRC Synod, put forth its first official position on the Reformed Christian attitude toward movie-going, issuing a warning against theater attendance. The 1928 decision held that such “worldly amusements” as theater attendance were not inherently evil, but that their actual institutionalization in America was corrupt. Hollywood was seen as a haven for anti-Christian messages. Indeed, the temptation to worldliness in a medium renowned for its depictions and glorification of violence, lust, and depravity made it clear that Christians ought to avoid such practices.
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Article comments
1 - Nancy
I think Lewis uses the term "vulgar" in the now almost-extinct sense of something that is common to large numbers of people, of the masses, and not in the sense of indecency or bad taste. Remember he was a linguist & specialized in esoteric linguistics at that, together with his buddy JRR. In the late-Victorian mindset of their cultural level, "vulgar" meant "commonality" more often than it did "indecent". Just a thought.
2 - Guppusmaximus
... "vulgar" meant "commonality"...
Do you think Mr. Lewis was afraid of the mistake that commonality brings??
3 - Jordan
Nancy, point well taken. It's difficult to parse exactly what sense Lewis was using the term, but of course the negative connotation did not appear out of thin air, but rather is a reasonable offshoot of the denotation. That is, things that are common quite often become base or unseemly. This might be known as the "lowest common denominator." With respect to Guppusmaximus' query, Lewis was quick to recognize that the majority opinion can still quite often be wrong, and himself in many respects viewed popular culture to manifest something like the "vulgarity" of Socrates' "unwashed masses." An interesting case of this with respect to education, for example, can be found in the postscript he wrote to the Screwtape Letters, "Screwtape Proposes a Toast."