A myth, but a true one

"It’s square in all the coolest ways," says actress Tilda Swinton of the shining new star of the film firmament, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." The Cambridge-educated actress, London born into a patrician Scottish military family, plays the evil Jadis, The White Queen, with perfect pitch, a bone-chilling examplar of the Nordic type of the master race favored by Hitler (above leading her troops into battle against the forces of good).

"A devout Catholic, JRR Tolkien was a key player in Lewis' conversion to Christianity in the early '30s, urging Lewis to accept that the story of Christ was a myth -- like those Greek and Norse myths he loved -- but a true one," writes Moira Macdonald of C.S. Lewis, author of "The Chronicles of Namia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," a triumph of the 21st-Century filmmaker's art that burst upon the big screen larger than life this weekend, leaving George Clooney's latest anti-American rant, "Syriana," as well as the latest beloved Harry Potter blockbuster in the dust.

We are intrigued by the contrast between what Tolkien presumably meant by "but a true one" -- separating the Christian myth from those that preceded it -- and our own take on "but a true one." Tolkien no doubt meant to imply the Greek and Norse myths were not true, while our take was that whether or not you believe the specifics, all three are true. It's akin to what we wrote here the other day about our friend John O's 80-year-old friend's bit of folk wisdom that "Cats are aliens sent down to protect us." As we said then:

You don't have to believe it to know it's true.

We are lumpers, not splitters, a distinction made amongst plant taxonomists (now known as practitioners of systematics). That's how we feel about "Narnia." A comparison with the somewhat muddled story line of Mozart's transcendent "The Magic Flute" came readily to mind when we tried to account for the casting of a woman -- The White Queen -- as the embodiment of evil in "The Chronicles":

Sarastro [Aslan] is the solemn but fatherly embodiment of reason and clemency. The Queen [Jadis], by contrast, is a character straight out of the Italian opera seria -- one-dimensionally vengeful, formal, static, spouting electrifying high F's -- less a person than an idea.

Exactly. It's not, as the angry feminists cry, a woman vs. man thing per se. In fact, if the feminists are in a snit, they should recognize that in this story a woman has burst through the glass ceiling to assume the top position in Hell. Our imail correspondent sheds light on it all:

She: Do you mean that, without knowing a thing, you know everything by the music? Would you know, if you knew NOTHING about the story?

We: Yes. The music rules.

She: I felt that about Mozart, and his father [in "Amadeus"]. . . the music told the whole story. Did you not know that it was a father-and-son death ritual, you would still understand the love-hate death ritual.

While with Mozart it was the notes -- "too many," as Solieri said in "Amadeus" -- with the makers of magic of  "The Chronicles of Namia," the play is the thing.

Comments

[Laura Lee Donoho]

Wow! Mozart, true myths, cats as aliens. You have taken some of the most interesting elements in life and woven them into a fascinating read. I just finished babysitting so my son and his wife could go see Narnia and they came home happy and childlike.....which is what happened to me Sunday.

[andophiroxia]

Goodness.. these feminists make it into a friggin male vs. female thing? When are they going to acknowledge that men and women cannot simply live without each other. We need each other. That's it.

I guess if someone wants to be all-powerful, to hell with everyone else.

Sad.