Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 13:16:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: Cathy Green <dalek_cag at yahoo.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Anti-Potterism
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Maybe because the Narnia Chronicles are not seen as
anti-Christian.  Aslan can easily be interpreted as a
Christ figure.  And The Last Battle stands in pretty
well for Armageddon and the unbelievers don't get to
go to Heaven (Susan doesn't get in with the rest of
the now grown children because she denies the
existance of Narnia).  That's the sort of stuff that's
likely to appeal to at least a portion of the book
burning crowd.  And it probably helps that C.S. Lewis
was a well known mainstream theologian (I added the
mainstream bit because Mary Daly is a fairly well
known theologian, but I don't even want to think about
the content of, let alone the reaction to any
children's books she may be thinking of writing)

--cathy

--- "Strong, Lee" <StrongL at MTMC.ARMY.MIL> wrote:
> 	Sam had some very thoughtful and productive
> comments about why Harry
> Potter and the Wizard of Oz are controversial while
> Frodo and Conan are not
> (or, at least, are less controversial than the fomer
> pair).  First,
> children's books are more likely to be controversial
> because many parents
> believe that children are more sensitive and deserve
> a higher degree of
> protection than adults.  Second, the worlds of
> Hogwarts and Oz are more
> closely connected to our own universe and imply that
> magic works in the real
> world, while Middle-Earth and the Hyborian Age are
> more clearly separate
> from our own universe despite their common theory of
> being prehistoric eras
> set in Earth's past, and therefore do not imply that
> magic works in the real
> world.
> 	I find these arguments powerful, particularly the
> first one.
> However, the logic of these arguments suggests that
> C.S. Lewis' The
> Chronicles of Narnia should be very controversial
> but that series does not
> seem to be controversial.  Narnia is explicitly
> aimed at children, the
> Narnian universe is very close to our own, people
> travel back and forth
> between mundane England and Narnia fairly regularly,
> and at least one of the
> books has Narnian magic and characters operating in
> our own universe, very
> much like Mr. Potter's parallel universe.  Yet, any
> attempts to ban the
> lion, the witch and the wardrobe have escaped my
> attention.  So, why are
> Hogwarts and Oz controversial while Narnia is not?
>
> 	In related news, The Washington Times and CNN.com
> carried a news
> story that a Federal court ordered the Cedarville,
> Arkansas school board to
> restore Mr. Potter to the general circulation
> section of the school library
> after the school board had voted 3-2 to remove him.
> The US Constitutional
> system solves the problem.
>

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