Ahead of the release of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader next Thursday, Neeson said: ‘Aslan symbolises a Christ-like figure but he also symbolises for me Mohammed, Buddha and all the great spiritual leaders and prophets over the centuries.A mentor figure? Hey, wait a minute! Maybe Aslan is just some schlub working on the Head Start program for HHS.
‘That’s who Aslan stands for as well as a mentor figure for kids – that’s what he means for me.’
Update: There's something tragic about this story. By all accounts, Liam Neeson is a swell guy. It's like he's been marinated for so long in the fetid stew of multiculturalism that reflexively he comes out and says stuff like this. C. S. Lewis was an unapologetic Christian. Aslan is a Christ figure and that's that. There's no doubt that Liam was trying to say something nice and inclusive, but it's just wrong.
Shoot, Aslan is so obvious that he's part of the running argument Tolkien had with Lewis-- Tolkien preferred organic realms built on the Catholic world view, Lewis liked chimeric stories that echoed Christianity.
ReplyDeleteActually, I see echoes of the Native American spirit of Sacajawea, trapped in a Nietzschean regard of The Other.
ReplyDeleteBefore being too hard on Mr. Neeson, I think we should remember: this isn't Liam Neeson discussing religious philosophy with his reporter friends over a beer. This is Liam Neeson shilling like crazy for a movie that he wants to make lots and lots of money worldwide. Which means that he wants more than just the 2 billion or so nominal Christians to see it - he also wants a crack at the 1.5 billion Muslims, 1+ billion Hindus, 500+ million Buddhists, and maybe a couple billion "others".
ReplyDeleteI'm sure his publicists told him to make his statements broad and to toss in a sop to the other major religions (and not to state that this was a movie by Christians, about Christians, and for Christians) if he wanted to see those international grosses come in high.
I rather question the by and for aspects there-- if this were an isolated incident, I'd think you might be right, but this is the pattern of Hollywood. They take a great Christian movie, try to change it, and the actors go out and try to be offensive to its Christian origins. (Gay Samwise, gay Gandalf. I could care less that Sir Ian himself is homosexual, but those two twits announcing, at different times, that they tried to "play" their characters as homosexual... simple genuflection to Hollywood's idols.)
ReplyDeleteFoxfier: I think that your example is actually the same sort of thing I was talking about. Here they are, movie has been out for a while, interest is flagging and DVD sales are down . . . Hey, one of the actors just said he played his role "as if the character were gay"! Sudden attention to the movie by the news media! Renewed public interest! Sales spike! And it doesn't have to be much of a spike to still be worth a million dollars or so. Plus, it gets people talking about the actor, making it easier for him to get other roles.
ReplyDeleteThese people mostly hire publicists, and probably spend as much time speaking from a script between jobs, as when they are on the job. Sure, some of the things they say are unscripted, but most of them are just going through their paces to get the media exposure that they need to keep their careers going.
Again, I might buy that if it wasn't always against the same target.
ReplyDeleteAnd Sir Ian said it before the movies were all out, while Samwise said it in the cast interviews on the DVD specials.
Tim's point may well be the proper explanation with a twist - the guy is just talking off the top of his head and isn't trained to watch every word he says like professional athletes are. Maybe he just let his mouth run away from him.
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