The Lion, the witch and the misogynist (Part 2)

I'm very glad to direct you to this NPR story about the Hollywood adaptation of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. Although it's only mentioned breifly, Andrew Adamson decided to deal with the issue of sexism in his new adaptation. Adamson wanted to change some of the gender issues, such as Aslan telling Lucy and Susan that they cannot fight in the war because "battles are ugly when women fight." (sidenote: I can't find Aslan saying this in the book, Father Christmas however does. I'm not sure if this was simply changed for the film, or just an error on NPR's part) Adamson said he was unwilling to put these parts in his film. Douglas Gresham, C. S. Lewis' son by marriage to Joy Davidman, inherited the rights to the stories, and was against Adamson changing the gender issues of the book.

Adamson however argued that C. S. Lewis changed his perceptions of women when he married Gresham's mother, Joy, and his books started to reflect that as women started receiving stronger rolls (sidenote: check out Till We Have Faces and A Grief Observed to see how this plays out in Lewis' later writing). Gresham and Adamson, as NPR reports, came to a compromise. Susan is allowed to fight, but in the end does not kill anybody.

I find it ironic that Davidman really railed Lewis for some of his gender views, which eventually changed them, in my opinion, for the better, and now her son is defending Lewis' earlier stance on gender. He may be merely arguing for the sake of accuracy to the original work, since we will never know what Lewis himself would have wanted.

I am curious to know what Phillip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy and one of Lewis' most vocal critics, would think of the story now? I would not be surprised of Pullman is still very skeptical, even with some of the more obviously sexist moments removed. Pullman has some very clear views on religion. His books tend to argue that religious belief tends to get it all wrong, and usually just shadows what is really happening. The end of the third part of the trilogy The Amber Spyglass I think makes some really important points, which lead me to believe that Aslan as a deity is probably quite unsettling to Pullman, and I can definately respect that since I find Aslan a very unsettling character as well.

To Adamson, I applaud you for not merely taking this story and presenting it as it is in the book, but really looking at what the book means and thinking not only in the context of today, but the context of Lewis' life. I quite agree that Lewis became far less sexist as time went on, and I am very curious to know what he would have wanted for the stories. Lewis was not a simple person, he was very complex and very dynamic, and as a result I think very open to new ideas. If he wasn't, he wouldn't have married a Jewish-American women who was so adept at knocking sense into him.