Christmas Eve Viewing

[poliphilo]

I watched a bit of Prince Caspian. It was frightfully violent. The fairytale people were fighting the Spanish conquistadors. There was a cute mouse that killed grown men with a rapier. I was quite enjoying all this until a dead-eyed CGI lion turned up and everyone curtsied and bowed to it while it said pompous things. The lion had super-powers and conjured up a river god who killed the chief conquistador and then everything was fine again. The lion had been living in retirement in the forest- and the reason it hadn't intervened before and saved a whole lot of killing was a deep mystery we were advised not to question. 

Seriously, does anyone find Aslan an attractive character? I think he's ghastly. 

I cleansed my palate with Whistle and I'll Come to You- a reworking of an original idea by M.R. James- starring John Hurt as an old man grieving for the wife who has been taken away from him by Altzheimers.  The new material didn't quite fit the framework of the original- the whistle the old man finds on the beach had become a ring- thus making a nonsense of the title- but the slow pacing and murky atmospherics were just right. Forty years ago Jonathan Miller made a more faithful version with Michael Hordern in the lead that has become a classic- and this matched up to it well and was- if anything- even scarier. 

Comments

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I tried to read the Screwtape Letters. Had it not be recommended to me by the Christian who decided I wasn't worth saving after all, I probably would have been more willing to like it. Like YOU said, clearly brilliant but...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Lewis believed in an angry God who consigns unbelievers to the flames. It's a hateful belief and- for me- nullifys all the charm and intelligence he coats it with.

I think it represents a real moral and intellectual failure to believe in that sort of God in the modern age.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think that's oversimplying Lewis a bit. It's pretty clear, both from the fate of the dwarfs in The Last Battle and from his more explicit treatment in The Great Divorce, that for Lewis hell is a self-imposed separation from God. For him, hell isn't other people so much as oneself.

In fact, there's a rather good parody of the kind of Ulster hellfire preacher you seem to have in mind at the beginning of The Pilgrim's Regress:

And when John came into the room, there was an old man with a red, round face, who was very kind and full of jokes, so that John quite got over his fears, and they had a good talk about fishing tackle and bicycles. But just when the talk was at its best, the Steward got up and cleared his throat. He then took down a mask from the wall with a long white beard attached to it and suddenly clapped it on his face, so that his appearance was awful. And he said, ‘Now I am going to talk to you about the Landlord. The Landlord owns all the country, and it is very, very kind of him to allow us to live on it at all – very, very kind.’ He went on repeating ‘very kind’ in a queer sing-song voice so long that John would have laughed, but that now he was beginning to be frightened again. The Steward then took down from a peg a big card with small print all over it, and said, ‘Here is a list of all the things the Landlord says you must not do. You’d better look at it.’ So John took the card: but half the rules seemed to forbid things he had never heard of, and the other half forbade things he was doing every day and could not imagine not doing: and the number of the rules was so enormous that he felt he could never remember them all. ‘I hope,’ said the Steward, ‘that you have not already broken any of the rules?’ John’s heart began to thump, and his eyes bulged more and more, and he was at his wit’s end when the Steward took the mask off and looked at John with his real face and said, ‘Better tell a lie, old chap, better tell a lie. Easiest for all concerned,’ and popped the mask on his face all in a flash. John gulped and said quickly, ‘Oh, no sir.’ ‘That is just as well,’ said the Steward through the mask. ‘Because, you know, if you did break any of them and the Landlord got to know of it, do you know what he’d do to you?’ ‘No, sir,’ said John: and the Steward’s eyes seemed to be twinkling dreadfully through the holes of the mask. ‘He’d take you and shut you up for ever and ever in a black hole full of snakes and scorpions as large as lobsters – for ever and ever. And besides that, he is such a kind, good man, so very, very kind, that I am sure you would never want to displease him.’ ‘No, sir,’ said John, ‘But, please, sir…’ ‘Well,’ said the Steward. ‘Please, sir, supposing I did break one, one little one, just by accident, you know. Could nothing stop the snakes and lobsters?’ ‘Ah!...’ said the Steward; and then he sat down and talked for a long time, but John could not understand a single syllable. However, it all ended with pointing out that the Landlord was quite extraordinarily kind and good to his tenants, and would certainly torture most of them to death the moment he had the slightest pretext.

That bit always makes me laugh.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm oversimplifying. Lewis's doctrine of hell was comparatively subtle- but it's still a doctrine of hell- and I don't see all that great a moral difference between his position and that of the hellfire preacher in The Pilgrim's Regress.

Any God who builds hell into his universe is a wicked God- and it is wicked to give him honour.

Don Cupitt says of Lewis, his "...self-conscious rejection of modernity leads him close to vindictiveness on the many occasions when he arranges supernatural retribution for people and points of view he dislikes. There is all too much holy relish."

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

Yes - considering the appalling background that Lewis had, it's amazing that he grew to see the comic side of that kind of hell-fire preaching, and even to make fun of it

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

disagree entirely - he believed that hell was an individual's choice of separation from the good - whether or not the individual believed in God - whic hi s why some of the apparently "bad" people were "saved" in the Narnia books - that's in the Last Battle - their service on the "wrong" side was judged to be service of the good, and therefore of Aslan

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You're right. I was oversimplfying.

But I think any theology which has hell built into it is a mistaken theology- even a wicked one.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

i think that it depends how you define hell - and, risking repetitiveness, to me hell is self-chosen separation form the good - been there, done that - well done, you, if you haven't done that

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I can accept "hell" as an earthly state. We've all had a taste of that. But hell as an eternal state of separation from the good- an eternal exile- that I'm very unhappy with.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

Aren't we all? But who has ever suggested that it's an eternal exile - except by self-imposed choice? i don't know of any argument that it's anything but self-imposed

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

What I mean is that I reject the whole doctrine of salvation and damnation, heaven and hell. I find it fundamentally objectionable. Whether damnation is self-imposed or not doesn't, for me, really matter.

I'm aware of the Christian arguments around "the problem of evil" but I am not a Christian.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

er - no, he didn't - see another post

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

As steepholm and ooxc both say, that's being rather unfair to Lewis. I always particularly liked the bit at the end of the Last Battle where King Tirian (I think it was) is surprised to be accepted by Aslan when he has never worshipped him and has always worshipped Tash.

Aslan explains that it is a person's behaviour that counts, regardless of whose name those acts are dedicated to. Hence evil done in Aslan's name means the person really belongs to Tash and any good done in Tash's name is taken note of by Aslan.

However, I do agree that Aslan's behaviour throughout the series highlights my problems with the Christian God and life became so much simpler when I decided that Zen Buddhism made so much more sense and I stopped struggling to believe in any sort of God.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was unfair. A little glib too.