3: There has been a good deal of fuss about the rumour — which is still only a rumour at time of writing — that Meryl Streep has been cast as the voice of Aslan in the forthcoming Netflicks adaptation of the Narnia saga.

There has been a good deal of fuss about the rumour — which is still only a rumour at time of writing — that Meryl Streep has been cast as the voice of Aslan in the forthcoming Netflicks adaptation of the Narnia saga. CS Lewis describes Aslan’s voice as deep and resonant, which are not necessarily the first words which come to mind when you think of the star of Kramer vs Kramer, although she did do a pretty good turn as Margaret Thatcher. But it is perfectly possible that Greta Gerwig thinks that an incredibly fierce CGI lion who speaks with a relatively soft, feminine voice would convey exactly the otherworldliness that Lewis’s Aslan ought to have. By no means can we infer that the director has unilaterally declared that Aslan is a lioness. 

But what if she had?

 Well, when Lewis goes looking for an analogy for the Crown of Thorns, he has the Witch shave off Aslan’s mane; which doesn’t work if They are a Lioness. And the scene in which the two girls romp through Narnia on the Lion’s back would, I think, have a slightly different emotional resonance if they were riding a Lioness. Unless, of course, Lucy and Susan are going to become Lucius and Simon; but that would spoil the analogy between the Pevensie girls and the women who went to the tomb of Jesus on Easter morning. I must admit that the  idea of Simon becoming obsessed with Levis, Lynx and night-club passes has a certain charm. Would we then have to say that Petra receives the Magic Sword from Mother Christmas? Or are swords purely male symbols, in which case she would get the healing potion. It’s complicated.

None of this is uninteresting. Switching a character’s gender is a good way of interrogating how gender works in your story. Helen Mirren is obviously correct to say that the James Bond franchise is built on sexism; but that is one of the things which might make a female 007 and interesting proposition. Asking “What if Bond were a girl?” could illuminate the character, in a way that getting Anthony Horowitz or someone to flesh out another spy story out of Ian Fleming’s waste paper basket might not. (Should we imagine a Jane Bond who flirts with Master Moneypenny and gives Willy Galore a slap on the arse for interfering in woman-talk?) But perhaps we don’t want an action packed spy-thriller to be either interesting or illuminating?

Some people think that “respect” for the author demands absolute, literal fidelity to his work. “Adaptation” is simply a matter of transmuting the authorial words into moving pictures. A sufficiently perfect adaptation would give the person who has only seen the film precisely the same experience as the person who has only read the book. And, indeed, it has been said that some very popular novelists — Dan Brown and John Grisham, perhaps — compose “novels” which are no-more than descriptions of films, which readers then bring to life in their heads. And if you take this view, then to change the colour of a character’s hair or the timbre of their voice is to posthumously insult the writer and alienate the entire fan-base. Comic book fans are already in high dudgeon because it appears that in the new Fantastic Four movie, Mister Fantastic will have acquired an entirely non-canonical moustache. 

But some of us feel that adaptation is much more akin to translation. If a modern poet says he is going to translate Gawain and the Green Knight into modern English, I don’t  say “Well, hopefully, this time he will get it right and no-one will ever have to do another translation ever again.” I say “I am certainly looking forward to finding out how this particular writer, with the particular writer’s unique experience, creates a new poem based from the medieval source.” 

But some people go a lot further than this. Their problem is not just that bringing new ideas to an adaptation is an insult to CS Lewis. They think that saying that Aslan is, or might have been, a female Lion is the same as saying that Jesus is, or could have been, a female human, and therefore that God is, or could be, a female deity. And this, they think, is a calculated affront to Christianity. 

Now, for all I know, it may in fact be a calculated affront to Christianity. Greta Gerwig is nothing if not iconoclastic. Barbie was an unashamed celebration of all things pink; but it was also an unsubtle attack on the stereotyped notions of femininity that pink toys arguably promulgate. It would not be at all surprising if her Narnia movies both celebrate and subvert their subject matter: a faithful and inspirational cinematic recreation of a cherished Christian allegory which also stuck two fingers up at the  patriarchal conception of God. And that could be done well or badly: it could be interesting or it could be boring. If I heard that someone was translating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight into the language of hip-hop I wouldn’t say “That’s an insult to the author, to King Arthur, and to everyone who has ever studied medieval literature.” I would say “Weird idea. I’ll look forward to finding out how it works." [*]

There should be no possible objection to the use of the Lioness as symbol of Jesus. All sorts of things have been used as symbols of Jesus: unicorns and shamrocks and lumps of rock. Medieval allegorists said he was like a mother pelican, because the mother pelican will peck at her own chest to feed her chicks. Jesus compared himself with a mother hen. (And also to a burglar.) In the book of Proverbs the Divine Wisdom uses female pronouns. There is even (I have read) a tradition of depicting the wound in Christ’s side as a woman’s vulva. 

It only becomes a problem when you insist on the latter Narnia books and sat that Aslan is the [Son] of God, incarnated in the body of Lioness; just as Jesus was the [Son] of God incarnated in the body of male Jewish artisan. This clearly gets us into an absolute buffer zone between orthodoxy and heresy: even discussing it feels vaguely indecent. [*]

Continues

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[*]  Yo—way back when crowns were claimed with steel,
Kings rode deep, swords flashin’ like they real.
Legends born in the grime of the field,
Blood wrote truth, no fake, no shield.

From Troy’s fall came a fire, a new breed rose,
Rome got built, then Britain froze—
Cold land, brave hearts, story unfolds,
Where Arthur sits, and the Green Knight rolls.

[** ] It took the Church about a hundred and twenty five years (from 325 to 451) to decide what it meant for the Son of God to “become” a man. The answer could arguably be summarised as “he just did, okay?” It had taken the best part of three centuries, from the Crucifixion to the council of Nicea, to establish exactly what was meant by “Son of God”.