Narnia is sugar-coated "White-man's Burden"

Rating: 6/10 (9 December 2006)

...First of all, Narnia is a world of animals. Being devoid of humans, it can be understood as the idealized realm of the natural, despite being nothing but fantasy. What is interesting, is that the natural is not conceived as mere existence, but rather presupposes a certain moral value-system. CS Lewis thus is able to take his morality and paint it onto the idea of nature. He therefore justifies his beliefs by embedding them into the firmament of existence in a fictionalized world. The animals of Narnia are therefore divided into good and badÂ—and this world is wrought by a moral battle between the good lion and the evil witch.
The entry of the four children is something like the "white man's burden". The four are somehow fated by the scripture of some manifest destiny in the prophecy to overthrow the evil witch and save the natural kingdom. What is even more perverse is the superimposition of British schemes of royalty and nobility onto the scene, echoing the arguments of "divine right" of old...
For more: themeasure.blogspot.com, Where I wrote this critique entitled Latent Ideology in Entertainment