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Chronicles of Narnia Trailer
Ant writes "After United States' broadcast debut of the "Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" trailer on Saturday, May 7th during ABC's network premiere of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", Ain't It Cool News posted AOL's link to the QuickTime movie (direct link to download the 56 MB high quality trailer file)." Fix yourself some turkish delight and enjoy.
And The Lord Of The Rings isn't antimodernist propaganda? A book is going to reflect the author's beliefs in some way unless it's very superficial.
LOTR is subtle where Narnia is obvious, but both advocate their author's views on life, because that is what literature does.
The Screwtape Letters was supposed to be a morality tale. If it disturbed you because it was trying to get across a fairly orthodox Christian point, that's because it was. Lewis wrote a few other `fictional' books with the same idea such as The Great Divorce. That said, I don't think it fair to saying that he was trying to manipulate his readers. It isn't his fault that most readers today aren't cognizant of the original context that The Screwtape Letters originally appeared in. His target audience was fully aware of what he was doing.
But neither The Chronicles of Narnia or his space trilogy was written for that purpose. The Chronicles were originally conceived as bedtime stories for his nieces and nephews that eventually poured themselves out into a series of novels. His space trilogy came out as his attempt to get into that new fangled new literary genre.
That's like complaining that the Fountainhead seems to promote individualism, or 1984 seems down on totalitarianism, or that Mein Kampf seems a touch racist. It's the goal of the author, and it's not hidden.
He's not out to "manipulate", he's out to convert, and then to improve the behavior of the converted. That might be the same thing as manipulation in the books of many folks, and I can definitely see how you wouldn't want that out of a fantasy series...
But honestly, CS Lewis pretty much wrote Christian propaganda, books on why he's not an atheist, etc...
It's just like complaining that when you went walking in the rain you got wet, is all.
Along with the other comments you've recieved to date, I'd like to ask you something: I believe that when a person criticizes someone for something, they should have a plausible alternative in mind. Otherwise they are just whining.
What is the plausible alternative for C. S. Lewis? Authors write things that are true to themselves, be it Christian, Pagan, Materialist, or what not. Any author who tries to be inauthentic to themselves generally turns out garbage; even if you can't put your finger on why, you'll not like it. A lot of young writers make this mistake, by trying to be someone else, instead of themselves.
Was he supposed to write non-Christian stories? But that's not who he was. And it's hardly like the Chronicles of Narnia are blatent propoganda; instead, it's simply that they are set into a Christian framework. I've read things set into Buddhist frameworks, oodles of things in strict materialist frameworks, things set in a Victorian framework, various philosophies, etc. Do you blame any of those authors for their frameworks?
Was he supposed to not write stories, because they bother you?
When it gets down to it, at the level you're talking about, every story "pushes" some worldview at you. Why is it you're only bothered by this one?
The most likely reason is that you don't realize that you're getting many other ones pushed at you, all the time, and you've only been sensitized to this one. In that case, the problem lies with you, not CS Lewis, and you're probably getting yourself nicely manipulated by other people without even noticing it. Everyone has a worldview that colors everything they do and everything they right. (In fact, Christian writings seem one of the best places to pick that up, regardless of how you feel about the rest of them; see Lewis' non-fiction writing and the works of Francis Schaeffer.)
That said, I don't think it fair to saying that he was trying to manipulate his readers
I think that's an important point. Lewis was writing at a time when being a Christian was the norm. His books were written to put across Christian morality, not Christianity in and of itself.
I remember being upset when I found out that the Narnia books were about Christianity; I felt tricked. But really the parallels are so blatent that there's no way he was trying to sneak anything past anyone. It was just his inspiration for the stories.
As for Screwtape, well, it's a story written as letters from a senior to a junior devil - if you can't spot the possibility of a Christian message there, then you can't really blame the author!
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
Oddly enough, when I first heard of the Narnia's ties to Christianity, I felt foolish for not noticing it before. I also found them even more interesting, because of how well written the allegory was. It wasn't so much that it was subtle (it's not) but that the story works well even if you are ignorant of the allegory! That is what I found most impressive about them.