2006-01-26 How A Declawed, Defanged Aslan will End Our Species and Our Souls
- when: 2006-01-26
- author: Kendal Brian Hunter
- source: The Ornery American
- topics: moralism C.S. Lewis Disney
- link: http://www.ornery.org/essays/2006-01-26-1.html
- title: Tamed! How A Declawed, Defanged Aslan will End Our Species and Our Souls
- summary: “This is the problem: C. S. Lewis was an unabashed traditionalist. As he outlined in The Abolition of Man, he believed there was an underlying and objective moral law, which was foundational to all human behavior.”
Since Lewis understood that his fiction and his religion were one and the same, having Disney produce the movie version of his books presents two problems: one is the ability to successfully execute a children's film in the way Lewis would have wanted it to be done, and second, their faithfulness are they to Lewis's philosophy.
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The second question, "How faithful will they be to Lewis's philosophy?" is not so clear cut. In his exposé, Disney: The Mouse Betrayed, Peter Schweizer outlines how Disney is not just an animation factory, but also an ideological factory. Specifically, Disney has been an advocate of left wing ideologies. Pocahontas, for example, has some anti-industrial, anti western themes involving the land, environmentalism, and so forth.
They also advocate non-traditional sex-roles. Mulan is one long commercial (product placement) for women in the military, not to mention a subtext of transvestitism – remember the ghost's comment about cross-dressing? Or consider Atlantis: The Lost Empire, with Santorini a male florist and Ramirez, the gang-banger mechanic. Furthermore in Lilo And Stich, Disney presents a running gag with Agent Pleakly in drag, and fighting with Dr. Jookia over a wig, not to mention the name of Agent Bubbles – is he a Man In Black, or a dance girl?
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This is the problem: C. S. Lewis was an unabashed traditionalist. As he outlined in The Abolition of Man, he believed there was an underlying and objective moral law, which was foundational to all human behavior. Furthermore, he is a tightly integrated philosopher. Even his essay on bicycle riding in Present Concerns is integrated with the emotional tension in Till We Have Faces. There is no question where he stood on the great issues.
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This relativism, as Lewis saw it, is poison. First, by declaring all things relative, you lose the ability to make any ethical statement: "My point is that those who stand outside all judgment of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of the impulse." (The Abolition of Man, Chapter 3) Intellectually, when you argue against the Moral Law, "you are arguing against the very power that makes you argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch that you are sitting on." (Mere Christianity, Book 2, Chapter 3)