Comments on: Aslan: The Grandfatherly God

By: 12 Best Blog Posts I Linked To in 2008 at Semicolon

12 Best Blog Posts I Linked To in 2008 at Semicolon — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 04:02:15 +0000

[...] Alan Noble on Aslan, the Grandfatherly God at Christ and Pop Culture. Have the Narnia movies removed all the “danger” from Lewis’s picture of God? [...]

By: Denes House

Denes House — Mon, 19 May 2008 20:44:58 +0000

I’m curious what you think now that you’ve seen Prince Caspian, if you’ve seen it. I think PC – the movie – tries to go back and “renature” Aslan a bit, after the first film. He is more Godlike in PC the movie than he was in LWW the movie, and also has some terrifying attributes.

Denes Houses last blog post..John Mark Reynolds on Caspian

By: Adena

Adena — Sat, 17 May 2008 02:17:16 +0000

That Lucy was horrendous in every way. Any time I think of her all I can hear is, "MIFTER TUMNUF!" Adenas last blog post..The First Checkup and BLOOOOOOD

By: Carissa Smith

Carissa Smith — Thu, 15 May 2008 02:30:38 +0000

Aslan was technically a Muppet (Henson Co. and all) in the BBC version. His mouth never moved in sync with his words.

Also, Lucy had buck-teeth and looked like a member of the Beaver family.

I was just happy when the BBC version came along because it was better than the atrocious animated version that was all we had prior to it.

Kids these days . . . they don’t know what we had to suffer.

By: The Dane

The Dane — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:16:35 +0000

I think I have a copy of that old TLTWATW on dvd (a white elephant Christmas present from a while back). I never cracked it open because Aslan looked like a puppet on the cover art. The Danes last blog post..20080505

By: Ben Bartlett

Ben Bartlett — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:18:53 +0000

Dane, Have you seen the BBC TV version of the first three books? I'd be curious for your thoughts. They are considerably lower quality, but I actually think they are much better because they accurately reflect the books both in content and emphasis. Ben Bartletts last blog post..Baby Isaiah Pics!

By: The Dane

The Dane — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:11:28 +0000

@Ben – True, I don’t mind the changing of an author’s vision. I just wish the movies were good. But the first one (which seems the easiest to translate to screen) was only so-so. I liked the pre-Narnia scenes a bit, but once the children went to Narnia, the movie lost much of its magic for me.

@Carissa – Whenever I hear “uncanny,” I usually associate it with the X-Men. Different worlds, I guess.

The Danes last blog post..20080505

By: Alan Noble

Alan Noble — Tue, 13 May 2008 04:42:13 +0000

Fawn,

I actually just heard him on the latest Mars Hill Audio Journal. It seemed like an interesting idea. I’ll have to check it out.

Ps
Anyone who doesn’t subscribe to Mars Hill Audio Journal really ought to.

By: fawn :)

fawn :) — Tue, 13 May 2008 04:10:37 +0000

Alan, you should check out the book
Planet Narnia by Michael Ward in which he discusses his theory of the foundational structure of the Narnia books and how this affects the view of Aslan in each as well as other things. It is becoming quite an accepted view of Lewis’ work. Ward spoke at my school a couple weeks ago and it was fascinating. :)

By: Carissa Smith

Carissa Smith — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:00:09 +0000

Thanks for your post, Alan. I’d forgotten, until you mentioned it, that passage from The Problem of Pain. Specifically, I’d forgotten that Lewis used the word “uncanny” (to describe a state nearing, but not yet having reached awe). It’s a word I usually associate with Freud (in English translation, anyway–the original German word was unheimlich, also translated as “un-homely”) for whom Lewis of course had little respect. For Freud, the uncanny was unsettling precisely because it was strange and yet somehow familiar at the same time. It’s the sort of thing that makes you question the boundaries of what’s human. The werewolf in Prince Caspian, for example, would be uncanny in the Freudian sense–he’s unsettling because he is human and yet not human. But, for Lewis, awe seems to hold nothing of this familiarity. The Numinous commands our adoration because it is so entirely different from us.

I’m not sure sure where I was going with this, but thinking about the uncanny in relation to Narnia has at least helped me come up with a theory about why I was terrified of that werewolf in PC as a child–so terrified that my dad had to stop reading the Narnia books to me, even though I’d already made it through Lord of the Rings, which is ostensibly much scarier.

Lewis wrote The Four Loves; maybe one day I’ll write “The Four Fears” (though Lewis already made a good start in that direction, as this passage indicates).

By: Paul

Paul — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:04:56 +0000

A good example of how much can be loss in translation from books to movies. The idea of who Aslan truly is definitely represents the crisis of who Christ is. Thank you for the challenge.

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:21:03 +0000

Terrific post, Allan. People talk about Lewis worrying about a live-action rendition of his books looking silly in real life, and how CGI effects these days take away that problem. Perhaps so, but I’d say there’s still plenty about the books (some pretty central stuff, as you point out) whose spirit they aren’t accurately rendering.

Of course, if you’re the Dane, nobody should care because there’s nothing wrong with changing someone else’s work.