I thought this bore repeating, even if like C.S. Lewis better than Game of Thrones makes me some kind of old fogey who just doesn’t get fantasy.
https://leeduigon.com/2015/06/21/some-wise-words-from-c-s-lewis/
Tag: c.s. lewis
Why I Watch Movies and TV
Some of you are down on movies and television for celebrating immoral and even wicked actions and letting the characters in the story get away with it. Those are not unfounded criticisms.
As a fantasy novelist, I must plead guilty to writing in such a way that the story turns out as I want it to. King Ryons gets to Obann in time to save the city. Lord Orth passes through a phase of madness and idiocy to emerge as a true man of God. These things happen because I wrote them that way. It can’t be helped.
I watch a lot of old TV and movies. One reason is for relaxation. After a day of writing, I need to veg out. I don’t think any of you will accuse me of allowing these films to shape my moral outlook.
But there is another reason.
Writing a novel isn’t as easy as it looks. The only thing easy about it is that it’s very easy to mess it up. And as I write, I have two overriding concerns: character and story. Both have to be right, or the novel will be wrong.
So I watch for the same reason I never go to bed without a book to read until I fall asleep. I want to learn how to create and manage believable characters that my readers will respond to, and how to tell a story coherently, convincingly, and compellingly. I can’t learn that unless I immerse myself in other people’s stories. And because the story-telling art is so difficult, I have to keep learning all the time.
As hard as I try to avoid it, some of the stories I watch turn out to be dreck. From these I learn what not to do! From the others, the ones that are not pigs’ breakfasts, I pick up innumerable hints that I can apply to my own stories. From C.S. Lewis, Agatha Christie, Walter R. Brooks, J.R.R. Tolkien, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur Upfield, and many others, I learn the techniques I need to make my novels stand the test of readership.
And daily Bible reading is indispensable as a guide to what I ought to put into my stories and what I ought to leave out. As a writer, I can do nothing without God’s blessing and guidance.
A steady diet of B.S. fiction, consumed uncritically, unthinkingly, for no other purpose than “because it’s there,” has a really good shot at rotting the consumer’s mind.
If you want to be a musician, you have to listen to other people’s music. The same hold true for story-tellers.
UK to Ban ‘Gender Stereotyping’ in Advertisements
Totally forbidden gender stereotype!
You’d think there were no real problems to be dealt with anymore, the way governments keep zeroing in on bulls*** like this.
In the United Kingdom, the government’s Advertising Standard Authority has acted to prohibit “gender stereotyping” in ads… because it “might be harmful to people” (http://www.mrctv.org/blog/uk-ban-ads-promote-gender-stereotypes).
How could it be harmful? It could “lead to unequal gender outcomes–” What? what the blazes are they talking about?–“in public and private aspects of people’s lives.” Which is silly, isn’t it, because if the government’s going to step in and regulate some “private aspect” if your life, it isn’t private anymore, is it?
What exactly is a “gender stereotype”? Search me. Any acknowledgement that there are men and women and that they aren’t exactly the same, aren’t interchangeable… but how, then, do you go about creating ads in which “gender stereotypes” do not appear? Sure, you can show people playing bridge, or some other activity in which “gender” is irrelevant. But, see, if you were to show a woman sitting at a sewing machine–well, that would be unforgivable! From now on, you can only show men using sewing machines. Oops–just created a new gender stereotype.
Do they have nothing more serious with which to occupy their time?
We don’t have a bunch of commissars in charge of advertising in our country–not yet we don’t. But even these dorks in Britain could surely find something more important to do, if they really put their minds to it: presuming they have minds. How about coming down on blatantly false advertising, eh?
But no–these are the whoopee crowd, our betters, the enlightened ones: and by thunder, they’re going to tell us what to say and what to think, and they are going to re-mold our culture in their own little know-it-all hands and bring forth Social Justice if it kills us…
As C.S. Lewis once pointed out, the robber will reach a point where he’s satiated; but the self-righteous do-gooder will never reach that point, will never have enough of meddling in other people’s lives. And if his ministrations are actually killing them, he will be quite unaware of it.
‘Aslan’s Theme’ (from BBC’s ‘Narnia’)
Aah! Here’s a piece of music that never fails to soothe my spirit. It’s the theme music, by Geoffrey Burgon, from the BBC Chronicles of Narnia, produced in the 1980s and still wonderful today.
If I can get to Narnia, I reckon I’m right on the road to Beulah Land. I think C.S. Lewis would understand my saying that. In fact, I think that’s why he wrote the Chronicles–to get us (and himself!) fairly started on that journey.
God has given to some the ability to create beauty, to stir souls, to speak to hearts. He gave C.S. Lewis a goodly share of it.
The Humanist Messiah
When you take over God’s job, you have no end of problems.
Take that business about being the Creator. It’s maddening. All you’ve got to work with is stuff God already created. Even the minds of secular humanists were created by God. We do not know why He didn’t make them better at using them.
God created man, so humanists want to create something better. Their creation, their Homo sapiens 2.0, will be new, improved, far superior to the current version. It will be able to solve all the world’s problems that have licked us so far–war, poverty, hate, and getting blackberry seeds stuck between your teeth.
This is the humanist messiah. Artificial Intelligence. Flawed, sinful, mortal man will, with his own intelligence that has given us movies like Gigli and foreign policies that look like they were dreamed up by Punch and Judy, create intelligent beings that’ll be much smarter and much better behaved than their creators.
Yes, there are a few scientists who’ve been trying to warn us that the A.I. enterprise is bound to turn out like Windows 8–not quite as nice as you expected. But because there is no one as anti-human as a humanist, the God wannabes seem eager to scrap H. sapiens 1.0 altogether, just plain get rid of us, with all our stupid problems, and replace us with their own creation. “It’ll be sooo much better! You’ll see!” Although how we’ll actually be able to see it from the boneyard, they don’t say.
C.S. Lewis already told us all about this, way back in 1945, in That Hideous Strength.
We already have a God, a Creator and a Savior, and He has equipped us with enough common sense to see that something perfect cannot and will not be created by imperfect beings. But it was Satan who told us that it can–way back in the beginning (see Genesis 3).
And it is Satan who’s the god of humanism.
Special Treat: Narnia Music
Geoffrey Burgon composed this theme music for the BBC’s much-loved adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, back in the 1980s.
The beauty of this music never fails to move me, sometimes very close to tears. I think it’s because Aslan the Lion is, after all, meant to represent Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And the thought of being in His presence ought to move you.
The Liberal Chronicle of Narnia: ‘The Earth Priestess Brings Social Justice to the Workers’
Hundreds of writers have tried to imitate C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. This is the latest effort.
The “Earth Priestess,” as you may have guessed, is really the White Witch, come back to Narnia to liberate its oppressed minorities from the religious hegemony of Aslan, the Lion. The book is to be published by the Democrat National Committee.
“If you can’t beat ’em, cheat ’em,” said DNC factotum Bill Z. Bubb. He neither confirms nor denies that the author, “Iso Smart,” is cover for the writing team of Al Gore, Chelsea Clinton, and a couple of space aliens.
In this Chronicle, the White Witch overthrows Aslan by exposing him as a transphobic, Islamophobic, micro-aggressing biggit, and the Minority Peoples of Narnia rise up and banish him to the wild wastes of Flyover Country. There is much about this edition of the White Witch that strongly resembles Hillary Clinton: like, for instance, the power her voice has to etch glass.
Mr. Gore was asked how he found the time and inspiration to write a fantasy (if indeed he did write this), when he’s been so busy with the release of his other fantasy–oops, sorry: I mean his non-fiction book–It Would Be Just So Cool to Take All Our Orders from Brussels, co-authored with John Kerry. “I’ve always wanted to improve on Narnia,” he said, “especially in regard to Saving the Planet and promoting feminism and alternative families. I’ve always felt the White Witch–and of course she’s not a witch, that’s just a label that biggits throw around–was the most admirable character in all those books. She represents the female spirituality of The Planet, with Social Justice for all.”
Mind-numbingly creative, The Earth Priestess Brings Social Justice to the Workers comes up with truly unexpected twists–like Dwarf Lives Matter, making the Marsh-Wiggles pay their fair share of taxes, and forcing Centaurs to perform gender re-assignment surgery, to name a few.
Lewis’ Pevensey children having all died in his last Narnia Chronicle, The Last Battle, The Earth Priestess introduces a new group of children from our world–Shawonka, Hussein, Wu Wei Shu, and Glyptodonna, whose two dads are busy campaigning for More Gay Rights. “We explore what American families will look like after one more of our people serves as president,” says Bill Z. Bubb.
All proceeds from the sale of The Earth Priestess Brings Social Justice to the Workers will go to the Clinton Foundation.
Coming Up: New Narnia Book by Liberals
Gee, I wish that map of Narnia had reproduced in a larger size. I don’t know how to enlarge it, so break out your magnifying glasses.
When I come back from the nursing home this morning, I’ll tell you about a new book that’s bound to generate sharp interest: a whole new Chronicle of Narnia, written not by C.S. Lewis, but by liberals.
Stay tuned!
‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past’
O God, Our Help in Ages Past, composed by Isaac Watts in 1719, still has power to move us today. Here we have it augmented with scenes of the beautiful English countryside–I think what C.S. Lewis would have called “the real England,” which is a shadow of something even better, found in Heaven.
‘He’s Not a Tame Lion’
A reader chided me (on another site) yesterday to “leave the sermonizing out of it” and stick to “newsworthy” stuff. Stop talkin’ about God and just give us the nooze!
Well, here’s some news for you, sunshine: God really is God, this whole shebang belongs to Him, we are truly provoking Him to anger, and when He gets mad, watch out.
God is not an adjunct to the news. People think He’s only to be found inside a church, where you can go and visit Him once a week, as if He were a patient in a nursing home. No, not so. Actually, He’s everywhere.
So you can’t leave Him out of it, and civilization can’t just go about its business as if there were no God. Because there is.
In C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, the children from our world are admonished, again and again, that Aslan the Great Lion, Lord of all Narnia–and for Aslan read “Jesus Christ,” the Lion of the Tribe of Judah–cannot be anticipated, manipulated, controlled, outsmarted, or, of all things, taken for granted. “He’s not a tame lion!”
No, He is not a tame lion. He will not go when we wish Him to go, nor will He stay away when we wish Him to stay away. He is not our bellhop at Hotel Earth!
He is King of Kings, Lord of Lords, ruler and origin of all Creation; and if you think the news, if you think that what’s happening in this world that He created, sustains, and owns has nothing to do with Him–
Well, think again.