Morung #3 Narnia Truth Commission

published in The Morung Times
http://www.morungexpress.com/
or http://www.morungexpress.com/Columnists.html
(these links are temporary)

Narnia Truth Commission
by Patrick J. Pierce
February 10, 2006

“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the movie version of C.S. Lewis’ classic children’s book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, made it to theaters in time for Christmas. Often read as a Christian allegory, the book, as the film, is set against the background of World War II England. It tells the story of four children who are sent from London to the safety of the countryside, where they mysteriously find a gateway to the magical land of Narnia in the back of a wardrobe. The tensions that give the story its plot occur at a political level, between a king and a queen, and at the personal level, between the siblings. These tensions are inter-related. The family-level conflict has dire consequences and could impact the survival of many of the creatures in Narnia. As with any good Christmas story, it is a morality tale about faith, hope, and forgiveness.

Like the book, the film is aimed at kids’ audience, so perhaps it is unfair to expect it to address the complexity of such themes as justice and forgiveness. On the other hand, if films with such mass appeal as “Narnia” can help shape young minds, it is all that much more important that they handle these topics well. “Narnia” is worth seeing not only in the holiday context, but as a consideration of transitional justice.

The story opens in wartime London, with the four Pevensie children – Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy – racing for a shelter as the Germans drop their bombs. Edmund leaves the huddle to run back inside their home to snatch a photo of their father, who is off fighting in the war. Edmund’s independence and unwillingness to obey his older brother Peter and their mother set the stage for the family conflict that runs through most of the movie. They all survive the first scene, and the four children are soon packed off to a benevolent professor’s country home, presumably out of harm’s way. Soon after their arrival in the countryside, while playing hide-and-seek with the others, the youngest, Lucy, makes her way into a wardrobe filled with fur coats. She keeps moving back through the coats and, not finding the back panel, realizes that she is standing in a forest, deep in snow.

We soon learn this is the land of Narnia. Lucy encounters Mr. Tumnus, a faun – half-man, half-goat – who provides her (and us) with a glimpse of the ways of Narnia. Jadis, the evil White Witch who fancies herself queen, has cast a spell on the land, making it always winter but never Christmas. Narnia is inhabited by talking animals, fauns, giants, and other mythical creatures but no humans. We later also learn that, according to legend, the White Witch’s reign will end when humans sit on the four thrones at Cair Paravel. In addition, rumors of the return of Aslan, the awe-inspiring lion lord of the wood who has been long away, bode well for regime change. Lucy goes back through the wardrobe to her siblings, and she and Edmund both end up in Narnia on her next visit. Eventually, on Lucy’s third trip, they all end up in Narnia for a good-versus-evil morality tale.

C.S. Lewis published this children’s story in 1950 just after the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals. The conflict in Narnia parallels World War II, with the White Witch as a despotic, villainous ruler. She and her plan to destroy all the enemies in her realm serve as stand-ins for Hitler and the Final Solution. In today’s world, she ranks with tyrants such as Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, Burma’s Than Shwe, and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Her character is unambiguous: she is coldly evil, manipulative, and ruthless in her ambition to rule Narnia. In the film, we learn very little about how she’s come to develop such a despicable, immoral fiber; however, the book does tell us that she comes from bad stock, and that the age-old law of Narnia makes any traitor her “lawful prey.” That is, she used to be a hangman. From a justice perspective, the case against her is clear: guilty of turning her enemies to stone and causing great suffering among the creatures of Narnia.

The story builds toward battle, first with the Witch’s attempt to capture the four siblings before they can take their seats on the legendary thrones. Narnia and its legends are new to the children. They do not know about the prophecy, foretelling their arrival and their ascension to the thrones. They have no ambitions for the thrones or for political power at all. Their preliminary motive for staying in Narnia is personal: they hear from their hosts, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, that Lucy’s friend, Mr. Tumnus, has been captured by the queen. Feeling responsible for him, they launch a rescue mission. Through encounters with the inhabitants of Narnia they are eventually drawn into the great drama that will determine the fate of the land.

At dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, Edmund slips away and sets off on his own to the Witch’s castle. When everyone realizes that he has disappeared, Mr. Beaver suspects that he has joined sides with the Witch. At first the children balk at this explanation, but they are easily convinced of it because of what they know of Edmund’s character.

In the opening scene and during the stay at the professor’s house, Edmund is cast as the troublemaker, the source of conflict in the family. He is spiteful, independent, and cynical. In this family of shiny, perky people, he is glum and dark, an outcast. As with the Witch, we are given no real explanation for these character flaws, except that his older siblings Peter and Susan tend to boss him around, which he resents.

During Edmund’s first visit to Narnia, by chance he met the Witch, who immediately perceived that he could be of use in capturing the others. She addicts him to Turkish Delight, a snack that he’s already fond of. The Narnia version of the treat (the book tells us) is laced with the witch’s magic, making it nearly impossible for him not to do her bidding when she tempts him with the prospect of more. The drug analogy is obvious, and it is hard to fault him on this addiction; he is duped into it. The Witch also picks up on his jealousy of his older brother’s leadership role in the family and tempts him with the prospect of being a prince in Narnia. She plays to his character flaws – this jealousy, and his desire for power and revenge. As the audience, we can see how this happens. His siblings, on the other hand, have no idea.

Bad from birth, non-conforming, constantly criticized and derided by his siblings, Edmund’s character flaws are exploited by an evil leader. In terms of the battle for Narnia, his outcast status makes him vulnerable to the manipulations of the Witch. He is the Jew coerced by the Nazis to police his fellow Jews. He is the ambitious but inept East German activist, unable to rise through the ranks of the underground leadership, who begins informing on his colleagues to the Stasi for personal gain.

Edmund never really has a game plan for turning over his siblings to the Witch. In fact, he is mostly of a mind to get more Turkish Delight and to hold some power in Narnia, an antidote to the inferiority he feels as Peter’s and Susan’s younger brother. He has deluded himself into thinking that the Witch would not harm the others.

Upon arriving at her castle, Edmund reveals to the Witch that he has failed to deliver his siblings to her. She imprisons him, keeping him as bait for the others, and will likely kill him eventually with her wand. Through her clever manipulation, she tricks Edmund into revealing bits of information about his siblings’ plans, which were discussed at the dinner with the Beavers before he slipped away. The Witch sends wolf-assassins to hunt down the other children and kill them. The children evade the wolves and make their way to meet Aslan, the lion lord, who has arrived in Narnia. Peter, Susan, and Lucy, empowered for battle, fend off an attack by the wolves, and Aslan sends a rescue mission to bring Edmund back to his siblings.

The reuniting of Edmund with his family wraps up the sub-plot of the personal-level tension and prepares us for the battle between Aslan and the Witch. This part of the story line holds great potential for addressing issues of truth, reconciliation, forgiveness, and justice. Edmund is the only interesting character, really, throughout the film. The White Witch has some appeal because she is just so evil, in a delicious sort of way, and Lucy gets gap-toothed-smile cuteness points. Edmund’s appeal, on the other hand, is the prospect of some ambiguity in an otherwise un-nuanced tale of good versus bad. Unfortunately, the potential for Edmund’s character development is squandered.

At the build-up to Edmund’s reunion with his siblings, I was convinced Edmund would tell them he was sorry, and a magical Oprah Winfrey-like creature would orchestrate an airing of all the family issues that led to his betrayal. This does not happen. The siblings first glimpse their brother as he’s off having a serious, muffled talk with Aslan. The lion lord then approaches Peter, Susan, and Lucy, and says (in the movie) “what’s done is done. There is no need to speak to Edmund about what has passed.” It is their duty to accept him. (In the book, Edmund does apologize, but the matter is then dropped.)

In either version, what was going through the siblings’ minds? Is an acknowledgement of the truth of what happened irrelevant? Did they understand he’d been addicted to Turkish Delight? Did they know of the Witch’s power to exploit his character flaws? Had he really reflected on his role? Is there any room for self-growth? Most importantly, how are we to trust that Edmund will do the right thing from now on, that he won’t betray them again? We are only to trust Aslan’s wisdom. As a Christian allegory this may work, but from a socio-historical perspective, it is a disaster.

Surely this amnesty, imposed by Aslan, would not be effective. For a multiplicity of motives, Edmund collaborated with the Witch. What are we to make of collaborators? What is to be done in conflict areas with people who are found to have aided major war criminals, even though they have not carried out the crime themselves? What of the neighbor who told the Nazis where Anne Frank was hiding? What about the Argentine military officer who infiltrated the pro-democracy Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and passed information on their inner-workings and planned activities to the military junta?

It seems unlikely that Edmund was so willing to re-enter into the family, and that the family was so willing to accept him, with no mechanism to deal with the past. An airing of people’s views of the conflict and a common acknowledgement of the harm done are prerequisites for Edmund’s reunification with his siblings. In the film, he jumps right from being a traitor and collaborator to being a war hero in the battle that ensues.

As a lesson in family relations, the message is about the power of forgiveness at a personal level. Political forgiveness is another matter, and fraught with many other considerations. Dealing with the past would do wonders to ensure that the conflict doesn’t arise again. In this case, we’d learn that Edmund needs to steer clear of Turkish Delight (probably even the non-Narnia version). With the family as a metaphor for the State, the power structure needs to give him some kind of role (i.e. institutional reform). For any of this, we need to hear from Edmund, and from his siblings, to understand how he came to be so vulnerable to the Witch’s evil influence. I propose a sequel that strays from the C.S. Lewis version, and let’s see what a Truth Commission in Narnia reveals.