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Ah Los Angeles. The anti-Narnia, where it's always Christmas and never winter. Hee. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
crankygrrl can never understand my aversion to winter, but when the rest of you have been beaten and pelted with precipitation, ice, wind and cold and I'm here in a very cute black sweater, a pink scarf, green shirt and clogs without socks and there's not a chance in hell (unless the White Witch really does come out of that giant billboard) that I'm going go encounter snow today, my case really makes itself.
There are things I miss about winter - the first snow fall, the way it blankets things, the fog of hot breath and cold air, the purity of the silence. But driving in it, digging my car out of it, getting it in my socks, hell wearing socks, having to wear socks!!, these are not things I miss.
I'm more than mildly trepidatious about "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe." As I get older, I can really look at books and movies as different things, look at film adaptations as interpretations and not hate them if they don't capture everything about the book that I loved. I can appreciate the work on it's own merit (most of the time). However, these books are different for me (and I'm sure for much of my flist). These were books that my mother read to me, over and over again because I loved them and I insisted upon it. When the cartoon version came out, the local paper printed the script for kids and I read that, on my own and saved it for years. These were the first "novels" that I read on my own, the words already burned into my consciousness, and putting shape to them in my head instead of through my mother's voice was one of the first steps I took to becoming both the reader and the thinker that I am. If my association with The Lord of the Rings is tied to my father, Narnia is tied to my mother and her infinite patience of reading these to me (and the fact that while she always got a little weepy when Aslan was killed, she never cried - something that could not be said for either Heidi or Little Women).
These books were playmates, the characters as rich and alive for me as anyone real. I talked to them, went to battle with them, learned archery at camp because of them, learned grace because of them. And yes, I had the crisis of conscience when I was an adolescent about these books as Christian Allegory, hated them with a fiery disdain for about six days, and then surrendered and decided not to read them again. But I did, and I found that it didn't matter. They held up as literature and allegory, and I can thank them for the little about Christianity I do know that didn't come from upteen watchings of The Ten Commandments and my Classical education. Because ultimately, they are about grace, about growing up and finding faith, and if that faith is a white lamb or a golden lion, that's okay, if it's a symbol or being saved, that's okay too, because as allegories, they offer the best of Christianity - self-sacrifice, peace, love, forgiveness, change and redemption, and all of our best stories are about those things.
I want these movies to make me shiver in the cold, make me feel the abaondonment of these children sent to the country to escape the war, feel their adventure and their bravery, their pettiness and betrayal. I'm so very afraid it won't, and yet the trailer, when all four children walk into Narnia, with the fur coats and the grey sky and the clean snow? That shot is pretty close to perfect.
crankygrrl can never understand my aversion to winter, but when the rest of you have been beaten and pelted with precipitation, ice, wind and cold and I'm here in a very cute black sweater, a pink scarf, green shirt and clogs without socks and there's not a chance in hell (unless the White Witch really does come out of that giant billboard) that I'm going go encounter snow today, my case really makes itself.There are things I miss about winter - the first snow fall, the way it blankets things, the fog of hot breath and cold air, the purity of the silence. But driving in it, digging my car out of it, getting it in my socks, hell wearing socks, having to wear socks!!, these are not things I miss.
I'm more than mildly trepidatious about "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe." As I get older, I can really look at books and movies as different things, look at film adaptations as interpretations and not hate them if they don't capture everything about the book that I loved. I can appreciate the work on it's own merit (most of the time). However, these books are different for me (and I'm sure for much of my flist). These were books that my mother read to me, over and over again because I loved them and I insisted upon it. When the cartoon version came out, the local paper printed the script for kids and I read that, on my own and saved it for years. These were the first "novels" that I read on my own, the words already burned into my consciousness, and putting shape to them in my head instead of through my mother's voice was one of the first steps I took to becoming both the reader and the thinker that I am. If my association with The Lord of the Rings is tied to my father, Narnia is tied to my mother and her infinite patience of reading these to me (and the fact that while she always got a little weepy when Aslan was killed, she never cried - something that could not be said for either Heidi or Little Women).
These books were playmates, the characters as rich and alive for me as anyone real. I talked to them, went to battle with them, learned archery at camp because of them, learned grace because of them. And yes, I had the crisis of conscience when I was an adolescent about these books as Christian Allegory, hated them with a fiery disdain for about six days, and then surrendered and decided not to read them again. But I did, and I found that it didn't matter. They held up as literature and allegory, and I can thank them for the little about Christianity I do know that didn't come from upteen watchings of The Ten Commandments and my Classical education. Because ultimately, they are about grace, about growing up and finding faith, and if that faith is a white lamb or a golden lion, that's okay, if it's a symbol or being saved, that's okay too, because as allegories, they offer the best of Christianity - self-sacrifice, peace, love, forgiveness, change and redemption, and all of our best stories are about those things.
I want these movies to make me shiver in the cold, make me feel the abaondonment of these children sent to the country to escape the war, feel their adventure and their bravery, their pettiness and betrayal. I'm so very afraid it won't, and yet the trailer, when all four children walk into Narnia, with the fur coats and the grey sky and the clean snow? That shot is pretty close to perfect.
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