rthstewart (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rthstewart) wrote2009-10-27 05:38 pm
rthstewart) wrote2009-10-27 05:38 pm
Entry tags:
Going there, again
I wrote this out a few days ago as I was trying to decide whether to insert the conversation between Susan and Peridan in which he dances around the fact that the Shoemaker, a Faun, is probably homosexual.
So, I'm going there. Again. In Chapter 7 of TQSiT.
"Nothing deceives like a document." A quote from the spymaster, Intrepid himself, William Stephenson.
There is some of this that is just plain outrageous. All documented, all true, completely outrageous, even in these days of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
To the point of going there or not, I've really tried to make the cultures of Narnia different from 1942 England in order to provide the basis for the Pevensies being so comfortable with people and cultural practices that are different. I've written of this so many times but in this chapter and the next, it really matters, or maybe that having laid the groundwork, we can leap with them the next step.
Not only has the culture of Narnia made them tolerant, they have also witnessed first hand the intolerance of dissent and differentness in the Witch and Miraz. They have come in, twice, at the end of reigns of terror. Their people have been brutalized for over a thousand years. This HAS to make them more sensitive to evidence of hatred, doesn't it?
So now to underscore the point, I've gone after another sacred cow of Narnia fandom in homosexuality with Queen Susan's withering criticism of Peridan for being an idiot about it. It's not slash, it's not incest, it's not any practice at all, whether Pevensie or someone else. It just is. Susan's reaction is a "so what, and what's it to you?" It's about belief, being slow to judgment that belongs to Aslan alone, empathy, gentleness, and minding one's own business.
So, why do I insert yet more gratuituous sex into the stories? First, does it make sense in the story? In this milleu, the answer has to be yes, for lots of reasons. It can be part of the English boys' public school experience in one way or another (Lewis writes of it, in fact), it's part of the intelligence community of the time, it's part of the animal and plant kingdom, and it's in the lusty mythology of satyrs and fauns.
Second, it's there because I'm preaching. (Sometimes, yes, it's in there because it's fun and funny and gratuituous, or not always.) It's showing that the racial, religious, ethnic and sexual prejudices and injustice that blind other people, that encourage people to look the other way and just not see it, these prejudices do not blind the Pevensies. And that's important in this vision. In this vision, being Narnian and bearing the charge from Aslan, means you cannot look the other way or treat others with contempt and condemnation because they are different.
Anyway, I'll hit send.
So, I'm going there. Again. In Chapter 7 of TQSiT.
"Nothing deceives like a document." A quote from the spymaster, Intrepid himself, William Stephenson.
There is some of this that is just plain outrageous. All documented, all true, completely outrageous, even in these days of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
To the point of going there or not, I've really tried to make the cultures of Narnia different from 1942 England in order to provide the basis for the Pevensies being so comfortable with people and cultural practices that are different. I've written of this so many times but in this chapter and the next, it really matters, or maybe that having laid the groundwork, we can leap with them the next step.
Not only has the culture of Narnia made them tolerant, they have also witnessed first hand the intolerance of dissent and differentness in the Witch and Miraz. They have come in, twice, at the end of reigns of terror. Their people have been brutalized for over a thousand years. This HAS to make them more sensitive to evidence of hatred, doesn't it?
So now to underscore the point, I've gone after another sacred cow of Narnia fandom in homosexuality with Queen Susan's withering criticism of Peridan for being an idiot about it. It's not slash, it's not incest, it's not any practice at all, whether Pevensie or someone else. It just is. Susan's reaction is a "so what, and what's it to you?" It's about belief, being slow to judgment that belongs to Aslan alone, empathy, gentleness, and minding one's own business.
So, why do I insert yet more gratuituous sex into the stories? First, does it make sense in the story? In this milleu, the answer has to be yes, for lots of reasons. It can be part of the English boys' public school experience in one way or another (Lewis writes of it, in fact), it's part of the intelligence community of the time, it's part of the animal and plant kingdom, and it's in the lusty mythology of satyrs and fauns.
Second, it's there because I'm preaching. (Sometimes, yes, it's in there because it's fun and funny and gratuituous, or not always.) It's showing that the racial, religious, ethnic and sexual prejudices and injustice that blind other people, that encourage people to look the other way and just not see it, these prejudices do not blind the Pevensies. And that's important in this vision. In this vision, being Narnian and bearing the charge from Aslan, means you cannot look the other way or treat others with contempt and condemnation because they are different.
Anyway, I'll hit send.