I don’t know how legitimate this “previously unpublished letter” is, but the website nthposition has posted this item, purportedly written by C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia:
The Kilns,
Headington Quarry,
Oxford
18 Dec. 1959Dear Sieveking
(Why do you ‘Dr’ me? Had we not dropped the honorifics?) As things worked out, I wasn’t free to hear a single instalment of our serial [The Magician’s Nephew] except the first. What I did hear, I approved. I shd. be glad for the series to be given abroad. But I am absolutely opposed – adamant isn’t in it! – to a TV version. Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare. At least, with photography. Cartoons (if only Disney did not combine so much vulgarity with his genius!) wld. be another matter. A human, pantomime, Aslan wld. be to me blasphemy.
All the best,
yours
C. S. Lewis
Having recently reviewed two versions of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — the 1979 cartoon version and the 1988 live-action version — I can agree with Lewis. Cartoons, like plays and radio and books, allow for the engagement of the imagination, whereas audiences always approach films looking for “realism” — and certainly in Lewis’s day, there was no way to create a realistic portrayal of Aslan. Even in the 1988 version, Aslan might not be a human in a costume, but he still comes across like an oversized doll. So, as far as I’m concerned, the cartoon, as over-the-top and panto-like as it is, is infinitely preferable to the BBC version.
The interesting thing about the new film, of course, is that it is produced with computer-generated images — that is, the Aslan of this film is a cartoon, but a photorealistic cartoon! So, Lewis’s concerns might not apply to the new film.
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