Monthly arts and media column

By January, you should feel well and truly Narnia-ed. This is because the spirit of Christmas 2005 is being brought to you unmissably via shopping centres, Nestle cereal packets and McDonalds Happy Meals through multiple illustrations of frosty images of the White Witch and the warm magical profile of Aslan the Lion.

If you’ve gone anywhere near the children’s books during your lifetime, you will probably have a strong opinion about the fact that Disney have got hold of the series of films that will be made over the coming years. Perhaps you have misgivings, strongly influenced by the adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. Will they mess up the imaginations of future readers? Will they trash our own mental picture of Narnia? Are they going to alter the strong gospel allegory in favour of a Hollywoodian secular message of goo?

Influences

Let’s look at three of the big influences on the making of the movie, together with their motives and beliefs: the Director and co-writer, Andrew Adamson; C.S. Lewis’s stepson and co-writer, Douglas Gresham; and finally, the distribution and publicity machine of Disney.

First, Andrew Adamson, best known in movie-world for his direction of Shrek and Shrek 2, doesn’t claim to hold any Christian faith. This is a story about family and betrayal and forgiveness, he says of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

He’s adamant that he’s stayed true to the spirit of the book, even if there are parts that have had to be beefed up because of Lewis’s brief dealings with big scenes such as the final battle of the story. When asked about how he has dealt with the Christian undercurrent of the story, he said I’m not really dealing with it at all. I’m just making a movie of the book, so I’m telling the story as C.S. Lewis wrote it.

Co-producer

The next man to question is Douglas Gresham, the stepson of C.S. Lewis and co-producer of the film. As the representative of Lewis estate, Gresham has played a huge role in writing the script, making the film and even negotiating the McDonalds Happy Meals publicity deal. It seems as though his influence on set was also massive, some crew saying critically that they weren’t allowed to spit without Gresham’s permission.

What did he want the film to be? In an interview with Christianity Today, he reveals that he has a personal, living faith, describing himself as someone who used to be an Edmund before he turned good, but who would now like to be Lucy the Valiant. Lucy was the one who was most believing and trusting in Aslan all the way through. That’s where I’d like to be. However, he believes that Christians are wrong to approach the film, or the book for that matter, as a vehicle of Christian symbolism. I think it’s far better to read the book or see the movie and try to find out where you fit into Narnia. Analyse yourself and how you would react under these circumstances. He concedes that C.S. Lewis, whom he knew as Jack, had a problem with cinema as a medium because of the uses to which it was often put. However, Gresham was careful to give this project into the Lord’s hands in prayer for many years and to choose a production company (Walden Media) whose mandate was to produce good, entertaining movies that also educate, not merely in factual matters but in matters of ethics and values and morality.

Publicity messages

However, all of the production and design of a film counts for nothing if the publicity messages are wrong. Many fantastic films have bombed at the box office because of a campaign that concentrated on elements of a storyline or ideologies that audiences aren’t interested in. Which is why Disney has had a tricky job in their role of promoter of Narnia. They want to reach the mainstream, secular audience, but they also want to tap into the huge Christian audiences that made Mel Gibson’s Passion such a hit in 2004. In an interview with the Washington Times, Dennis Rice, Disney’s senior vice president of publicity, said: ‘We believe we have not made a religious movie, but a great piece of cinema that is true to a great piece of literature’. Yet, in the States, Disney has employed the services of Grace Hill Media, the industry leader in church-based promotion and Paul Lauer’s Motive Marketing, the publicists behind Passion, to directly pull in the Christian market to see the film.

Brains switched on?

It seems as though no one is really sure what to say publicly about the Christian messages within the book in case money is lost. It is the simple truth that many will make their millions through this franchise, which is set to run into at least five more films, and nothing must compromise that. As consumers, we need to make sure that we are viewing the film with our brains switched on to the fact that this is a commercial enterprise. If it helps us or our friends to discover more about the Christian faith then we need to rejoice and turn to God’s word to take us deeper into the truths that we are enjoying, rather than to the cinematic experience of the next Hollywood film.

Eleanor Margesson

© Evangelicals Now - January 2006
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