Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Max White]

I watch/listen to/play twice. Once to not think about it and take everything on face value, the second time to realy sit and think about the subtext and themes. In the case of the Narnia books, and later the movies, I didn't realy enjoy it the first time around. It felt like somebody told a writer about high fantasy, and the writer thought this was awesome and went off to write a book, but never got the point. I know this is counter intuitive, as it was Narnia that helped develop the genera, but maybe they got the point after they got the talking rats. So the first time around I enjoyed it in the same way a wine critic enjoys drinking dish water.

The second time around, however, I was looking for what ever I could cram into an analysis, and found Jesus. Later the internet confirmed my suspisions. Might I say, without raging out here, I liked it even less.

I gave it a chance, wasn;t my cup of tea, I shall move on and leave you to enjoy a world you seem to like.

[scriver]

It kind of says a lot about me that I found the dragon thing (stereotypical dragon, representation of Satan or temptation or whatever, etc.) more annoying than the religious allegories

What dragon? I don't remember a dragon?

The whole "you know me by another name" thing does not mean that he is a representation of jesus. It could mean that he is a representation of karma, or their conscience, or a myriad of other concepts, plently of which have nothing to do with christianity.

Except we know he is supposed to be Jesus. Lewis himself has outright stated that the books are Christian allegories and that Aslan is synonymous to Jesus.

[Max White]

Movie Bob is a good source for how to think. He dosn't sound like it, but he is a realy smart guy that I disagree with on many veiws. One of them being the amount of sweating he thinks is required...

[Vector]

I was personally crazy about the novels.  I still love some of them, like The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Magician's Nephew (I am such a sucker for the creation story =/), and Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  I'm not as fond of the others, just as I'm not very fond of most of the Redwall books nowadays.

Frankly, though, I've never been that bothered by religion in my literature.  I'm not exactly Christian, although I do have a Christian background (both a Catholic nun and a Lutheran minister in my recent antecedents).  I generally don't mind heavy-handed metaphors, as long as the writer is earnest--and Lewis was earnest, so he's a joy for me to read.

Of course, I read a lot of other AU fanfics for other fandoms nowadays, so that may just be me =/

(No disrespect meant to those more faithful than I, only flippancy.  "Real life" and "history" are stories to me, too, so I have no intention to relegate religion to some lower level through my statement)

[ChairmanPoo]

I recall a singularily silly bit on which Alsan decides that the prince is fit to rule, because the prince thinks he is UNfit to rule. At that time I thought it was just stupid. Now I realize it was a poor attempt at hammering some "zomg humility is good!" stuff.

[ECrownofFire]

The whole "you know me by another name" thing does not mean that he is a representation of jesus. It could mean that he is a representation of karma, or their conscience, or a myriad of other concepts, plently of which have nothing to do with christianity.

The whole "died for your sins" thing in the Lion Witch and the Wardrobe kind of blatantly goes against that though. He's even stated to be (direct quote here, stated several times throughout at least one of the books) "the son of the Emperor-beyond-the-sea". The key part there is the son. Also, beyond the sea is believed to be "Aslan's kingdom", which just further cements that.

It kind of says a lot about me that I found the dragon thing (stereotypical dragon, representation of Satan or temptation or whatever, etc.) more annoying than the religious allegories

What dragon? I don't remember a dragon?

There's a scene in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in which Eustace (cousin of main characters) turns into a dragon.

Spoiler: Details (click to show/hide)

He's in some storm and hides in a dead dragon's cave. While there, he fills his pockets with gold and so on, and puts on some bracelet. He falls asleep, turns into a dragon (because of his greed and such, "Sleeping on a dragon's hoard with greedy, dragonish thoughts in his heart, he had become a dragon himself."). He realizes this, cries a bit over being a monster, etc. Takes a drink of water from a pond, then eats the dead dragon (Lewis says "... his tastes and digestion were dragonish."). The crew of the ship sees the dragon, and instantly plan to kill it (hey, it's a dragon, there's absolutely no chance of it somehow NOT being evil, right? ). They go off, find him, and figure out it really is him. He goes around, helps with the ship ("... Eustace's character had been rather improved by becoming a dragon."). Despairs a bit more about not being able to be around people and so on. Then he meets Aslan, and they go to some spring. Aslan scratches off his scales, he bathes in the pond and is *poof!* back to normal. He mentions that before he met Aslan, he hated him or something.

Spoiler: My interpretations (click to show/hide)

First of all, Aslan is Jesus, obviously. This means that Eustace previously wasn't "Christian", and hated the idea of it. Aslan removing his scales is probably representing repenting of his sins or something. Bathing in the spring is probably baptizing or something, I guess. Or just general sin-removal (Sin-Off! ). Him turning into a dragon because of his greed is probably something about him going to the "dark side" (the dragon is used as a symbol for Satan quite a bit in the Bible ) Him eating the dead dragon is probably something approximately equal to temptation and how you don't realize the horrible things you've done until it's too late (he didn't actually realize he had eaten the dragon until after the fact).

Overall, just one of the more annoying allegories to me.

[Vector]

It's basically the story of the Prodigal Son.

[ed boy]

The whole "you know me by another name" thing does not mean that he is a representation of jesus. It could mean that he is a representation of karma, or their conscience, or a myriad of other concepts, plently of which have nothing to do with christianity.

Except we know he is supposed to be Jesus. Lewis himself has outright stated that the books are Christian allegories and that Aslan is synonymous to Jesus.

Other sources state that he is a representation of jesus, certainly, but not that one is what I'm saying.

[Max White]

Honestly, there are better fantasy works out there that do an analysis of religen.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Tellemurius]

good grief a collection of horrible games. actually the best fantasy game for religion crap would be: Deus Ex (BE A ROBOT GOD!!!).

[Max White]

One game, Final fantasy X, it had all these religious undertones about how organised religion is bad and destructive... Based on the fact that you couldn't identify the figures as all belonging to a single game, and therefore haven’t played said game, how do you know if it is good or bad? Not saying it is either, but what makes you so sure?

And honestly, if we’re going for the subtlety of Deus ex, why not just say Halo? That has been rocking the 'Single homogenous culture good! Diversity bad!'  banner for a while now.

[Tellemurius]

oh come on, Helios was the most nicest AI that will be ever made.

[Max White]

I know of nicer.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Tellemurius]

She's only piss because we left her there.

[Max White]

I would like to think that really, she was testing us all along, and that the entire process was one big experiment. It was all a set up to try and make us fight back, for reasons unknown to us. Although that is just personal opinion.