Deathworks and Narnia

Gavin Ortland asks whether "Narnia Among the Deathworks." Ortland explains:

It was Carl Trueman who introduced me to the idea of a deathwork, though the concept is Philip Rieff’s. According to Rieff, a deathwork is an assault on something that is hallowed to an established culture. It isn’t a critique or argument that the culture is untrue, but a means of profaning something that is sacred in order to make it seem ridiculous or repulsive. Trueman summarizes it as “the act of using the sacred symbols of a previous era in order to subvert, and then destroy, their original significance and purpose.”  

He uses a couple of examples to illustrate the concept:  Andres Serrano’s repulsive 1987 photograph "Piss Christ", which immersed a crucifix into urine in order to recast "[t]he sacramental ... into the excremental." Another are "priests who wear the LGBTQ rainbow when carrying out their liturgical duties," which profane the symbol of the rainbow--a symbol of God's faithfulness and promise. That is, "The priests and ministers who perform them are simply helping the church become just like our world: a place where the sacred symbols that give church life meaning are degraded and parodied until nothing but chaos remains, and the things intended to remind Christians of God’s faithfulness become objects of ridicule."

    Deathworks go beyond just the sacred. I've noted over the years the penchant of Hollywood to take a beloved story, television series, or movie and remake it but in a way that mocks the original, often turning into something ridiculous or contemptible, for no other reason than to destroy its popularity. The earliest example I remember of this was how The Brady Bunch television show was made into a movie that mocked and derided the television show. The Star Wars sequel trilogy is also a great example. That series of movies was designed to reduce, minimize, and kill off the Han Solo and Luke characters from the original trilogy--i.e., the strong male characters. It is telling how reviled is the sequel trilogy that all the advertising that you see about Star Wars still uses imagery from the original trilogy. But it also did its job in that there seems to be little interest in Star Wars among the youngest generation. 

    But is is not just those examples. Earlier this year, I watched the latest He-Man movie which similarly did the same to the old He-Man animated television series, taking what was supposed to be an inspirational cartoon for young boys which taught morals in each episode, and turned into a long series of crass joke and demeaning scenes for the main character. The latest (perhaps last) Indian Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, was similarly designed to diminish the titular character so he could be replaced by a strong female "Mary Sue" type of character. Ditto for the most recent James Bond move, No Time To Die. And I don't think I need bring up the Amazon television series, The Rings Of Power. 

    The Critical Drinker often describes such movies as not treating the source material with respect, but I think the characterization of "Deathworks" is appropriate because the remakes are often so terrible that it kills audience interest in the original material. And that is the goal. Christians and young white men are no longer allowed to have heroes and role models. 

    And this brings us back to the upcoming Narnia project. Ortland points out the upcoming move, The Magician's Nephew, offers us a gender-bent version of the lion, Aslan, voiced by a woman (Meryl Streep) and intended to look like David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust down to multicolored eyes and a red stripe down the face. This is a problem because, as anyone that has read the Narnia books knows, Aslan is supposed to be a Christ type figure.

    Not surprisingly, Narnia lovers and purists were dismayed by this gender-bending of Aslan, and with Gerwig’s tampering with a beloved character and story. Samuel James argues that it is essential to the character of Aslan that his voice evokes a father; Pierce Taylor Hibbs explains that Aslan must be male because Aslan’s maleness is essential to the story Lewis wrote; Anne Kennedy says Gerwig “is taking a thing of sublime beauty that opens a door of the soul for Christ to step through to heal and restore what is broken and wrong” and says Gerwig herself is the one desecrating it. 

 [snip]

    So how might a glam, rainbow, gender-bent Aslan be like Jesus? The simple answer is that he can’t be. Gerwig has reframed Aslan so that one of several things must be true: either she no longer means for him to parallel Jesus, she reinvented Jesus and then created her version of Aslan to match him, or she failed to think in Lewis’s theological categories. Whichever it is, this Aslan is not and cannot be the Aslan of the books. Perhaps Gerwig means to convey that there is nothing essential to Aslan (and therefore to Jesus) that depends upon his being male. Yet as the critics have made clear, that’s not the case, and Aslan is and must be male, for his voice must evoke fatherhood. I might go a step further to suggest that this Aslan is aligned with today’s cultural ethos, and therefore opposed to the Bible’s ethos, in appearing to be both male and female or, if you prefer, neither male nor female. He may be a Bowie-like character, but he is not a Christ-like one. 

Again, however, that is the point. For some, they will be drawn into the idea of a gender bent Christ like figure. Others will be disgusted and turn away. But if the movie performs badly enough--like some of the examples I've cited before--it will not only cripple interest in the source material, but virtually guarantee that no one else will try producing a Narnia movie or television series in the foreseeable future.