Judeo-Christian Update: Daily Wire Defends Gerwig’s Narnia

Christians have been unanimous in their opposition to the Netflix adaptation of CS Lewis’s Narnia series, in ways fans have similarly opposed Amazon’s Lord of the Rings, the latest Star Trek series, and the Black gay samurai Assassin’s Creed game. The fan backlash has been the free market checking Hollywood wokeness, and while it is not always successful at tanking the box office, ie The Odyssey, it is persistent enough in the long run. Narnia is an upcoming fans vs studio battle, and the Daily Wire has declared for Netflix in a middle finger to Christian fans.

In an article titled, “Aslan Isn’t Jesus. He’s A Lion,” Tim Rice defends Netflix and Greta Gerwig. The main argument of the article is that Aslan is not Jesus.

Based on how conservatives reacted to this news, you would think that Ms. Gerwig dug ol’ Clive Staples Lewis out of his grave and used his bones in an X-rated puppet show.

It’s woke! It’s an attack on Christianity! It’s poisoning the youth! Aslan is Jesus and Jesus is a man so the lion has to be a boy!

Do you hear yourselves?

Before I really get into it, let me clarify a few things this piece is not. This is not some self-righteous argument that we shouldn’t care about the adaptation of a Christian fable because Christians are being persecuted in China (although, come to think of it, that’s not a bad argument). But no, culture is important. The stories we tell ourselves matter. I actually much prefer talking about culture than about things like macroeconomics. But that’s not why this is silly.

Nor is this a Christian apologetic in which I point out that, no matter how much Greta Gerwig tries to blaspheme Our Lord, He remains the King of Kings. Although, again, the latter is definitely true. But I don’t think Greta Gerwig is trying to subvert Christianity; I think she just wanted to cast Meryl Streep. And, even if she were, having a symbolic Christ voiced by a woman is at least the fourth worst thing ever to happen to Jesus, after Piss Christ, Godspell, and, you know, the Crucifixion.

I agree that Aslan is not actually Christ, and that it should not be treated as a deity, and therefore; Streeps adaptation is not deicide.

But that’s as far as the agreement goes. Genderswapping Aslan’s voice is inherently woke, like race-swapping a ginger maid for a Black girl. (Save the gingers.) 

I want to say this again, because I really don’t think conservatives who like “The Chronicles of Narnia” have internalized this. The lion is not Jesus. So, when commentator Kangmin Lee says the Gerwig adaptation is “a desecration of Lewis’s work,” I say: No, it’s not! You can’t desecrate that which isn’t sacred. And a fairy tale, no matter how inspired it may be by Christian teaching, is not holy.

So, no, you can’t get this mad that Greta Gerwig’s riff on Narnia is a David Bowie-inspired, gender-bent kaleidoscope. That’s what happens when you write fiction that enters the public domain or, as is the case here, is licensed to directors by the corporation that manages your estate.

It’s baffling to me that conservatives don’t get this. We Republicans are the party of reason, of reality, of “facts don’t care about your feelings.” We stand up and say that men can’t be women and criminals should go to jail and countries need secure borders and all these important things — and then we threaten to kill ourselves on social media because a hipster cast a lady to play a lion.

This isn’t just about this particular adaptation. Conservatives of a certain stripe are bafflingly obsessed with all of Lewis’s novels, as well as his pal J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” franchise. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as nerdy as the next guy, and I like these books fine. But folks on the Right have imbued these retellings of the Bible with such meaning that they have a news cycle’s worth of a meltdown whenever someone dares change or criticize them.

This is dumb, just like it was dumb to freak out that “Hamilton” said our first Treasury secretary was a rapping Puerto Rican. Artists are generally liberal, and liberals love to do things like this. Some, like “Hamilton,” are good. Others, like most modern adaptations of Shakespeare, are bad. I don’t know where Gerwig’s “Narnia” film will fall, but I’ll tell you this: I would much rather my children watch a movie with a female Jesus lion than see any of the tantrums my fellow conservatives threw about said big cat.

Rice defends the woke Hamilton musical while chastising Americans who viewed genderswapping Aslan as woke. He views the turn of phrase “desecration” as unhinged. But his whole defense of Greta Gerwig’s Narnia is that the fans have no right to complain about the creative direction of the artist. It’s retarded that The Daily Wire went full Gospel Coalition.