Welcome to a neocon Narnia

A review in two halves, by Colin Murphy, with Danny and Oisin Gilligan

Across Narnia, the forces of good are in retreat. The prophet has been exiled. Family values, as lived by the good Beavers, are under pressure. An ugly, permissive liberalism is on the march, epitomised by the White Witch's flathúlach way with her wand, magicking up Turkish delights to tempt the weak Edmund. Even Christmas itself is in retreat. (The White Witch's greeting cards, no doubt, offer best wishes for "the holiday season".)

An opposition is mobilising, but it is critically weak. Its dream of "a free Narnia" seems doomed.

Until the arrival of four children from a foreign land. And not just any foreign land – England. They have within them the qualities necessary to lead the oppressed of Narnia in revolt and to inspire them to glorious victory. As their titles, when they are each crowned kings and queens of Narnia, state, they are Valiant, Just, Noble and Magnificent.

Welcome to a neo-con Narnia. The Chronicles of Narnia is a film to gladden the heart of any "coalition" patriot losing sight of what the battle in Iraq is about: freedom for oppressed peoples, and the vanquishing of evil.

Narnia is explicitly a religious fable. But, more pertinently – and, perhaps, insidiously – it is also a political one. The film is not made with any transparent agenda to support America's aims in Iraq, or the broader neoconservative project, but it is a faithful rendering of a book that was steeped in an earlier imperial agenda, that of a Britain that saw itself as the vanguard of the free world.

To call it neo-con is, in fact, to award it greater theoretical sophistication than it possesses. More accurately, then: welcome to a neocolonial Narnia. A land of funny-looking beings is in peril because the rightful leader has been deposed by a corrupt and pernicious rebel. The rebel successfully cultivates followers with threat and reward, cruelty and favour. Opposition is chaotic and piecemeal. Until the arrival of the handsome, young white people, of formal manners and transparent nobility. The fledgling opposition army rallies to their leadership, and the evil despot is vanquished, whereupon the whites take their rightful places as benevolent monarchs. In the condensed form of the film, the plot is even more predictable, and more transparently jingoistic.

Village sought the opinion of fellow critics on this reading of the film. Danny (aged seven) and Oisín (aged five) each picked up instantly on the film's core messages of moral strength and just war, and the subtle symbolism that accompanies them.

"I liked Peter the best," said Danny ("me too", said Oisín), "because he got to lead a whole army." "Because he has a white unicorn," said Oisín.

Danny cut to the heart of the film's parable of human weakness: "Why did Edmund turn someone in for a Turkish delight?" he asked, rhetorically. Clearly, Edmund is a pathetic character. Oisín, too, had the measure of Edmund's moral weakness, reading his character on a level of even subtler semiotics: Edmund was the "worst character", "because he had a bad hairstyle". Danny spotted the deterministic conception of morality underlying the portrayal of Edmund: Edmund is so weak, he said, "because his brother didn't like him, (he) was always shouting at him."

The two were, though, less interested in Narnia as metaphor (neocon or otherwise) than they were interested in it as fact. Narnia couldn't actually exist, they concluded:

Danny: Because all of the orcs and minotaurs don't exist.

Oisín: And goblins that have wings and can fly. And dragons.

Danny: I think dragons existed.

Oisín: Santa exists.

Colin: But if Santa and the orcs can both be in Narnia, how do you know that Santa exists but the orcs don't?

Danny: Because Santa is a human; an orc is an orc.

Danny and Oísin rated this one of their favourite films, and were ready to sit through it again. Village, though, would not sit through it again: not because of the transparent jingoism, but because of the tedious moralism. The heroes of Narnia are less Valiant, Just, etc etc, than they are earnest, worthy and utterly dull. Even Edmund, who should at least be impishly entertaining, is bland and tiresome, drearily weak rather than refreshingly naughty.

The creatures of Narnia, though, are beautifully realised, and the land itself is as the book would have it. Aslan is, as Danny observed, "a realistic lion"; as Oisín said, "his mane was so big and his face looked very nice and he had big nice jaws". Village had to disagree with Oisín on the White Witch, though – he thought her "disgusting" – why? – "because she didn't have nice hair and she had a very big dress". Village suspects his reading of the moral semiotics, again, is spot on, but for this liberal relativist, the White Witch was the star of the show, a delicious ice maiden with a mean way with a wand.

"Do you think that I'll be alive to see all of the Narnia films?" asked Danny. He will, but by the last of them, he won't need Village to bring him.