In deciding whether they should take their children to see the forthcoming Narnia movie, my esteemed colleague Aaron Wolf and his wife asked themselves "WWJD?" -- as in, "What Would Jack Do?" Among some other insightful (and delightful) things he had to say on Cindy Swanson's blog about The Chronicles of Narnia, Aaron shared the following quote from "Jack," as Lewis was nicknamed:
[N]othing can be more disastrous than the view that the cinema can and should replace popular written fiction. The elements which it excludes are precisely those which give the untrained mind its only access to the imaginative world. There is death in the camera.Posted by joydriven at May 5, 2005 01:41 PM | TrackBack~ C.S. Lewis
i think the movie should be viewed ONLY after reading all seven books. i recently re-read them all, and i am counting the days until the movie is released. after imagining your own characters and how narnia really looked, i think the movie will only be something to contrast against your own mental images....
i'm now about to start reading blue like jazz? is it as good as i've heard?
Posted by: terran at May 5, 2005 04:02 PMi've not finished it yet, terran. i've heard nothing but good about it, either.
Posted by: joy at May 10, 2005 01:06 PMjoy, do you have a context for this quote? I'd like to read the essay in entireity if you do.
Posted by: gouge at August 31, 2005 03:45 PMaaron's answer to that question:
I believe it is in Lewis' "Essays Presented to Charles Williams."
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0802811175/103-6990959-9739033?v=glance
I saw it in Credenda/Agenda, out of context.
A—
P.S. Here's a little more:
"If he had said simply that something which the educated receive from poetry can reach the masses through stories of adventure, and almost in no other way, then I think he would have been right. If so, nothing can be more disastrous than the view that the cinema can and should replace popular written fiction. The elements which it excludes are precisely those which give the untrained mind its only access to the imaginative world. There is death in the camera."
Posted by: joy at August 31, 2005 04:52 PMBoth Lewis and Eliot seemed to be naysayers of the cinema, for the distinct reason that, during their lifetimes, the cinema had quite limited capabilities.
Given the emergence of rather impressive CGI, I think each of them would at least take the opportunity to reconsider.
"There is death in the camera." Yikes, what a statement. It sounds like "There is death in the pot" (2 Kings 4:10).