Oh ye of little faith.

I was flipping through a movie magazine while doing cardio at the gym recently, and I discovered that Disney had abandoned the Narnia franchise after only two movies due to disappointing box office numbers for Prince Caspian.  The next film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, is being released under the aegis of Fox instead - the curious among you may examine the first trailer on the Apple web site.

Narnia is one of the foundations of my childhood.  As I’ve mentioned before, my mother read the Narnia books to my siblings and myself long before we could really understand them as stories, so I learned about Narnia at the more or less the same time I was learning to talk. 

However, that's not the only thing that I (literally) learned at my mother's knee.  I was raised to believe that Walt Disney is an evil empire, a perverter of truths in the interests of marketing, so it was with some degree of trepidation that I originally discovered that Disney was going to be producing the screen version of Narnia.

Whatever your opinion of the House of Mouse, you can't argue that they know their business when it comes to capturing the hearts and minds of children. (And the wallets of their parents.) That being said, it's impressive that they were able to take C. S. Lewis' classic children's fantasy series, a series whose popularity has continued for over 60 years, and fail with it to the point that they dropped it like a hot potato.  It's even more impressive when you consider that the Lord of the Rings films had already taken the risks necessary to prove the existence of a movie marketplace for classic fantasy.

It’s not common knowledge, but Lewis and Tolkien were not only contemporaries but friends, and were in fact writing their respective fantasy masterpieces at about the same time.  C. S. Lewis’ fantasy world has always had a less prominent profile than The Lord of the Rings, perhaps due to its less aggressive content - Narnia has its share of wars and battles, but it lacks the epic sweep of Tolkien’s world.  Lewis was also writing for a younger audience than Tolkien, and it’s undeniable that the Narnia books virtually defined the genre of juvenile fantasy for a long time.

But there’s a much more fundamental difference between the material, and it’s that difference which so strongly affects the respective motion picture adaptations.  The Lord of the Rings portrays an epic struggle between Good and Evil, with the Ring itself acting as an ongoing test, a constant temptation for all the characters who are presented with the opportunity to possess it.  Some pass this test, some fail it – in fact, Frodo himself fails at the final moment in his quest.

On the other hand, it's generally accepted that the story of Narnia is an extended Christian metaphor, but what does that mean in practical terms?  The various journeys to Narnia by people from our world are journeys of belief, explorations of spirituality, of faith. The characters are constantly being required to take - or not take - action based on their belief in Aslan, and the spiritual nature of those decisions help to make them better people, both in Narnia and when they return here.

The temptations faced by the characters in the Narnia books are more subtle than the One Ring, but they are just as constant.  Those who succumb are punished, and those who resist are rewarded - but even those who succumb may achieve redemption.

It’s this aspect of Narnia which is least well realized in the movies, and that may well be the reason that they haven’t done better at the box office.  In the process of trying to turn them into conventional fantasy action adventures, Disney lost touch with the essence of the Narnia books, and in losing touch they cheapened the stories to the point where they lost their attraction.

Movies like The Chronicles of Narnia clearly demonstrate that special effects have advanced to the point where virtually any world of the imagination can be recreated for public consumption. But in that process, I think that filmmakers have to remain true to the underlying foundations of those worlds - you might even say that they need to have faith in them.

- Sid

Do you think that Lynda Carter knew about all this?

They all have impossibly small waists, long legs, breast implants, and.....high heels!  Who wears high heels to perform stunts and acrobatics? That's impractical and insane!

- Fitness expert Laurie Smith

"On Paradise Island where we play many binding games, this is considered the safest method of tying a girl's arms!"

Wonder Woman, Sensation Comics, November 1944

Although in some ways this is a follow up to my last post, which featured Red Sonja braving sub-arctic conditions in a thong, this topic really has its genesis in an exchange of e-mails with Laurie about a month ago.

I was browsing through a fellow blogger's site, one which features comic book scans, and there was a cover image from Lois Lane's comic.  (Yes, Lois had her own comic book for a while.)  I downloaded the JPEG of the cover and e-mailed it to Laurie with the following comment:

Hey look, Lois has acceptable abs. 
- Sid

Little did I realize that I'd immediately be subjected to a quick rant in return:

The helpless heroine....notice the submissive body posture, the wide-eyed "I'm helpless" look.....Such stereotypical gender/role depiction in comics! 
- Laurie

And it's quite true. A quick tour through the Lois Lane comics ("Superman's Girlfriend!") shows Lois repeatedly being saved by Superman, and very often saved from her own poor "feminine" judgement. 

The world of the comic book hero has traditionally been a boy’s club, not only for the heroes and villains, but for the readers as well.  Over the years there have been periods of time when romance comics and female characters have been popular, but the bottom line has always come back to the juvenile male.  On that basis, the treatment suffered by the “weaker sex” is unfortunate but not terribly surprising.

However, Lois Lane doesn't represent the worst representation of womanhood in four-colour web press - sadly, the representation of female heroines is much more distorted and unfortunate than that of the supporting characters.  Now, to be fair, comic books have always been the domain of idealized exaggeration, but when did all the female characters, supporting, heroic and villainous, start to look like exotic dancers?*

If there’s a poster girl for the ridiculous and sexist portrayal of women in comics, it has to be Wonder Woman. Ostensibly intending to offer a positive role model for young women, in actuality William Moulton Marston, who created Wonder Woman in 1941, was a devout fetishist in the area of bondage and domination.  Lest there be any misinterpretation of his views, Marston went on record to his publisher as feeling that:

The only hope for peace is to teach people who are full of pep and unbound force to enjoy being bound ... Only when the control of self by others is more pleasant than the unbound assertion of self in human relationships can we hope for a stable, peaceful human society ... Giving in to others, being controlled by them, submitting to other people cannot possibly be enjoyable without a strong erotic element.

Early issues of Wonder Woman repeatedly feature her being tied up, dominated by men and women, and spanked.  What other female hero came equipped with her own wrist cuffs and rope?  And although over the years her initial bondage roots have diminished, illustrations like this still pop up now and then:

Bound figure, phallic missile, open mouth - as George Carlin used to say, you don't have to be Fellini to figure that out. And as per the opening quote from Laurie, would anyone want to wear those boots for more than ten minutes, let alone fight crime in the damn things?  Ah, but if you look at them as bondage footwear...

Or how about this?

Odd how the captured male superheroes get chairs...

But there’s hope, even for Wonder Woman. In honour of the 600th issue of her comic, Wonder Woman received the new costume shown at the top of this post, a costume which might actually be appropriate for strenuous exercise if not actual combat with the forces of evil.  Sadly, the reaction of the fan community has not been positive.  Come on, people, can’t you at least let the poor woman wear something with a low heel - and shoulder straps?

- Sid

* That was intended to be rhetorical, but if I had to guess, I'd say it starts to become embarrassing in the early 90's, when Marvel Comics was doing swimsuit issues à la Sports Illustrated.

Concept over practicality.

Red Sophia:  Enough talk, you short grey celibate!  What do you think of...these!
Cerebus the Aardvark:  They'd probably heal if you stopped wearing that chain mail bikini.

- Cerebus the Aardvark, Issue 10

I realize that comic book characters have to maintain consistent costumes for branding reasons, but honestly, if there's snow on the ground and it's cold enough to see your breath, wouldn't you want to put on some pants? And a sweater?

- Sid