DIONYSIAN CHRISTIANITY & APOLLONIAN CULTURE
C. S. Lewis's word picture of the Narnian Bacchanal which
causes Nature to spontaneously spring to life on all sides in Prince
Caspian reminds me of similar imagery in
the Walt Disney-distributed Japanese
animé film, Princess Mononoke. In that 1998 Studio Ghibli feature, the forest buds
and blossoms in fast-motion wherever walks the majestic "Spirit of the
Forest." The two films will perhaps make for a marvelous double-feature:
Princess Mononoke and Prince Caspian. Then again, all that
might depend upon whether or not Disney and partner Walden Media can, in the
Narnian sequel, overcome their odd shyness about our friend Bacchus. Since
production on Prince Caspian has been postponed and the release date
pushed to 2008, we'll just have to wait and see. And while we wait, there are
some questions to ponder and ironies to savor. For on the one hand, we have
poor Bacchus and Silenus being chased out of Narnia by Ice Queens and
Telmarines — and Disney, too, apparently, who excluded them from The
Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. But on the other hand, the climax of the
next book in the series turns out to depend upon unleashing these very
party animals in a genuine Dionysian jollification. In print, the pagan
sensuality may pass over readers' heads; in visual depiction, however, it may
require a certain fig-leafing in deference to the target audience's
sensibilities.
How unsettling to discover that Narnia is not a tame place, nor a tame story,
nor Lewis a tame author! — and how much seems to come down to that
little word "tame". Apart from deals with outside studios like Ghibli and
Pixar, Disney has increasingly made its patented "touch" synonymous with
domestication: the manufacture of carefully focus-grouped product
designed to please a mass audience — with relentless maximizing of
profits in merchandising and exploitation via theme-parks. The collision of
Lewis's untameable lion and Disney's professional lion tamers restages the
very battles for Narnia they're presuming to depict. What a showdown! Will
Disney side with the suppressors and deniers of Narnia, who fear wildness and
impose sterile control — who pretend that certain mythic creatures never
existed? Or will they try to clean up the story to keep it safely within
audience expectation? Will the studio risk becoming perceived as "Dionysian
Pictures?" Or will they try to housebreak even Bacchus himself into a Happy
Meal Prize?
Until recently, such questions would be addressed to longtime Disney boss,
Michael Eisner, whose smothering reign at the company became in some minds
reminiscent of that of the White Witch over Narnia. With Eisner gone, many
hope for an end to winter and return of a Golden Age to Disney. In any case,
Eisner's successors would do well to remember the fate of King Pentheus:
those who refuse to recognize the divinity of Dionysus must pay their
own terrible price for it.
Of course, there will also a terrible price to be paid if Disney strays too
far from the expecations of those moviegoers they've identified as the core
audience for this film. Hollywood has placed major bets on the so-called
"Christian market". But like the Emperor Constantine, the Tinseltown moguls
may discover that rallying all who take that name under the banner of a
single orthodoxy is as problematic as getting involved in a land war in Asia.
Certainly the larger portion (or should we say in this case "the lion's
share") of the "Christian market" has always consisted of what used to be
called "bourgeois religion": middle-class values baptized in the name of the
local deity, religious language employed primarily to defend the status quo
and demonize any threats to it. That sort of religion is built upon risk
aversion: a faith that threatens one's safety, comfort or settled
assumptions has never attracted much in the way of a mass audience. And a
mega-corporation like Disney religiously believes in risk aversion, preferring
to do nothing more than give the largest slice of the demographic pie just
what it has been scientifically-determined that the people want.
It'll be interesting to see how they sand off the rough edges of this tale.
Here's one: as Bacchus and his dancing friends party across the countryside,
they invite others to join them. A young Telmarine girl, stuffed into the
choking uniform of her school, accepts the revelers' invitation — and so
they "helped her take off some of the unnecessary and uncomfortable clothes
that she was wearing." Oh, my. Considering the considerable sexual
overlay of the whole Dionysian myth, details like that will have to be
handled very carefully. (I imagined I'm quoting a Disney production memo
practically verbatim.) This story, however, is already out there in print,
and will be seized upon by that portion of the demographic (a considerable
portion of the "Christian market", BTW) who take delight in exposing the
"pagan roots" of everything. My suspicion is that the maenads who
whipped themselves into a lather to dismember Harry Potter will be on
Prince Caspian like a black cat on a witches broom. They already are,
though perhaps you haven't heard about it yet. You will.
In the meantime, Disney and Walden Media have themselves a tiger by the tail.
Or should I say... a lion.
Evangelicals would also seem to have a lion by the tail.
The appeal of C. S. Lewis to this large slice of "the Christian market" has
much to do with the professor's astonishing ambidextrousness: the combination
in Lewis of a scarily-brilliant Defender of the Faith with a writer of
children's stories and fairy tales. That's something akin to a superhero who
rids the galaxy of Evil, but also rescues kitties from trees. Or a
multi-sport megastar who coaches Little League in the off-season. Or perhaps
a mighty King of the Forest who lets the children stroke his mane and ride
his back. Occasionally, I've wondered how many of those Lewis books
Evangelicals are buying in such quantities each year are being read, or read
carefully. Or whether his biggest fans are reading beyond the list of usual
suspects to get a larger picture of a faith which often pointedly challenges
Evangelical assumptions and culture. People love Screwtape and
Narnia and Mere Christianity. But have they read Lewis's
Experiment in Criticism, for one example, and seen how his literary
and theological views in many ways actually coincide, and how a frequent
target of his antipathy is a way of looking at the world which is supremely
characteristic of Evangelicals' approach to both art and faith?
It will be interesting, if any eventual Disney-sponsored version of Prince
Caspian does manage to generate controversy, to observe the ways the
discussion develops among ordinary Evangelicals — as they consider
Lewis's "fine print" (so to speak), specifically any implications of a more
Dionysian sort of faith. To be honest, I'm not sure I understand all the
implications. But it is a fascinating, and potentially paradigm-shifting,
problem to consider.
For instance, given the age-old pairing of Dionysus with Apollo, and their
endless tug-of-war, one question that comes immediately to mind after
considering Lewis's vision of Narnia restored is this: Where's Apollo?
From my perspective, it looks an awful lot like Lewis has identified Apollo
— the god of order, clarity, and control — with the enemies
of Narnia who must be defeated to set things right. That puts him on the
side of Nietzche, who was also pledged to the downfall of Apollo. And then
when you consider Lewis's self-proclaimed love of Norse mythology, and that
both Nietzche's and Lewis's favorite composer was that notorious Dionysian,
Richard Wagner, well, you gotta wonder to just what Ragnarok is all this
über-pagan machismo is finally going to take us to...
...Until you remember the crucial difference between these two Dionysian
visions — which I may have neglected to mention. Note this: Lewis
doesn't oppose Dionysus to Christ, but rather he makes Bacchus the
servant of the lion Aslan. In other words, Lewis doesn't loose Dionysus
on Narnia unchaperoned, in all his wild, frankly-sexual, bodily-indulgent
excess, but rather only in the company of Narnia's Christ-figure. My
suspicion, however, is that it's even more important to keep in mind that
Lewis equally refuses to exclude Bacchus from Narnia, nor does he seem
all that inclined to tame him. We recall the young Edmund's comment
that Bacchus seemed like a chap "who might do absolutely anything." And Susan
nervously admits: "I wouldn't have felt safe with Bacchus and all his wild
girls if we'd met them without Aslan." Susan can sometimes be a tad prissy
and uptight, but in this case, even brave Lucy agrees: "I should think not."
The upshot: Bacchus is allowed only in the company of Aslan. That seems an
arrangement both sensible and prudent.
On the other hand, it does seem rather odd — from a Christian
perspective, or at least from an Evangelical perspective — to
exclude Apollo from a vision of ideal humanity. How can you exclude Apollo
— the god of boundaries — as opposed to Dionysus, the destroyer of
boundaries? Isn't Christianity first of all about order, clarity, law and
absolutes? Isn't that generally what we mean when we talk about morality,
goodness and truth? Pilate's question ("What is 'truth'?") is
generally taken as a dodge, or an opening to relativity and anarchy. So
perhaps a better way of putting the question might be "What do we mean
by 'truth'?" And, in fact, an Apollonian brand of truth, especially in the
light of its frequent association with the scientific enterprise, would seem
to suggest an impersonal absolute that can be manipulated by those who know
the formula. This view of truth becomes problematic for Christians as we
consider the assertion of Christ that "I am the Truth." Or it
should become problematic. Yet the fact that Lewis has to insist
— repeatedly — that Aslan, his Christ-figure, is not tame
indicates some people — stubbornly — think otherwise.
Evangelical religion, it should come perhaps as no surprise, has been as a
historical phenomenon almost precisely coterminous with the Modern era, the
age of Enlightenment, of Rationalism, of Apollo. With the nearly
universally-proclaimed end of Modernity, the onset of the "post-Enlightenment
period," its no wonder that so many Evangelicals think its the end of the
world. "There is a Lilliputian quality to Evangelical faith," writes Fred
Clark on this subject,
It seems to imagine God lying on the beach of our little kingdom, bound up
with the cords of our propositions about him. That which is transcendent
— truth, beauty, goodness — is too large for our categories and
propositions. Too large for our idea of God. The idea that God might be
bigger than we think — bigger than we can know or imagine or — can
be terrifying. What if God should arise from the beach, shrugging off our
tiny chains? Then we would no longer be in control. What I'm calling
"Evangelical anxiety" is all about this fear of losing control. The nagging
sense, lurking just below the surface, that we are not in control after all,
no matter how much we insist we are. One result of this anxiety is a
reflexive need to reassert that control, to interpret the world and respond
to it in a way that reinforces the illusion that such control is possible.
Of course, it's not just Evangelicals who have exhibited a chronic tendency
toward trying to maintain control, or the illusion of control: to tame or
else exclude and deny elements that don't fit their ordering system, even at
tremendous personal and societal cost. From a certain perspective, that
behavior might be classed as "the American Way" — if it isn't a general
human characteristic (that, nevertheless, seems especially pronounced in
Americans, Evangelical or otherwise.)
Indeed, an argument might even be made that Lewis himself finds yet another
means taming untamed reality. After all, his version of the story does not
degenerate into the bloodthirsty orgy of violence of the original. So
perhaps the place to begin criticism of "domestication" is with any Christian
vision that turns the dark side of our human nature and condition into
anything other than the tragic and absurd reality it actually is. Perhaps
instead of submitting to Aslan, Bacchus remains the real god who is not tame;
Lewis's hypocrisy would be that he founded his happy ending upon a wishful
domestication of Dionysus. Perhaps Narnia really is a Happy Meal
Prize.
That would certainly be the conclusion of most Apollonian science. And
it was certainly the conclusion that laid the blanket of ice over the Western
world which Lewis aimed to melt with his Dionysian Narnia. And certainly
there are plenty who, like the Telmarines, would deny every old myth that
presumed to resolve the tension that is being half-human, half-animal in such
neat fashion. Faith in such a vision, as Lewis well knew, is like the faith
of children in Narnia, and is liable to seem plausible only to those who
have had some equally miraculous glimpse of it — perhaps even by means
of Lewis's stories. Such faith would see in Lewis's myth, not a betrayal of
the blood and indulgence and ecstasy of Dionysus, but fulfillment of
it in the life and person of Jesus Christ.
At least, that's the way Peter Leithart reads the story:
The Dionysus of the Greeks offered only wine of death. Mad with
the wine of Dionysus, the women of Thebes tore king Pentheus limb from limb,
and Pentheus' mother blindly bore her son's head back to the city in
triumph.. The wine of Dionysus leaves a trail of destruction, insanity,
murder, cannibalism, warfare and rape… But Jesus, the true God of the vine,
offers the wine of blessing and abundance, a thank-offering to God. The wine
offered by Jesus cheers God and man, marks the renewal of covenant, and is
shared by lovers. It is the wine of the new creation, drunk by the new Adam,
Noah, after the flood cleansed the world. It is the wine of victory that
Melchizedek brought to Abraham after his battle. It is "the wine of agape and
the feast of fellowship," the wine of mutual joy. It is the wine, as Solomon
said, that makes life merry.
Of course, there is a certain fine print on this joyful invitation to life:
the relinquishing of control. Christ never promises his followers the sort
of safety or certainty most hope for. Indeed, he promises quite the
opposite. Most of us who think we've read the fine print keep discovering
more all the time: so much of the ambiguity, uncertainty, discomfort, danger
and lonliness we signed on to be "saved" from turns out to be precisely what
we are called to. Indeed, I'm just as fearful and desireous of
control and avoiding risk as the next Telmarine. And Apollonian analyses
like this one can be one more attempted means to domesticate a reality that
will just not be house-broken.
Life itself is a tiger by the tail. Our very natural fear is that releasing
our grip is a bad idea, so we clamp down harder — on what we know, or
what think we know, on what we have or own or command. But the lesson of C.
S. Lewis's Dionysian Narnia, especially for those of us who have not only
life but the King of Beasts by the tail, is that the most prudent course
is actually... to let go.
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