I Wax Parenthetical On the Topic of Narnia

Hiya guys.

Didn't really know whether to put this on here or on my book blog, (cue shameless self promotion here) but my book blog's had more attention from me lately, so I'll put it here.

I own a tonne of Narnia themed books (there's a little section on my bookshelf where they hang out) and I've just acquired another one: The Narnia Code. Despite the incredibly lame title - which is actually an appropriate one, unlike most books with Da Vinci Code parody titles - it is pretty good and I am looooving it so far. Author Michael Ward's got a unique and fascinating thing to say.

Anyway... it got me thinking about Narnia in general and one particular Narnian controversy - Susan.

I never really liked Susan all that much - to be perfectly honest with you, I always prefered Peter and Edmund to their sisters... which isn't just to say that I had a little tiny crush on Peter growing up (heh heh, of course not...) or that I adored Edmund for growing up 'graver and quieter' and having that long bromancy chat with Eustace about their respective experiences of redemption. (And yes, I have lost my train of thought! Um...)

Lucy I always wished I could relate to more, chiefly because she's got such faith and such a close connection with Aslan. To my lasting regret I'm probably more of a Susan in some ways - not least because of the serious case of 'eldest sister syndrome' we've both got going. And I'm pretty sure that Aslan would be telling me "You have listened to fears, child," rather than "Now you are a lioness". Damn my insecurities!

Something secular adult readers usually have a problem with when they read Narnia is the way Susan develops (or rather doesn't develop) throughout the series. They say things like 'Lewis punishes Susan for growing up' and 'the author's issues with sexuality are blatantly shown in his portrayal of Susan'. Neil Gaiman apparently wrote a whole short story about the issue called The Problem of Susan (and if I learn that the title was meant to be a swipe at Lewis's book The Problem of Pain I think I shall be violently ill). I haven't read The Problem of Susan and I don't plan to; having read that there are disgusting violent and sexually explicit scenes involving Aslan. THAT IS IN NO WAY OK AT ALL EVER. (I just accidentally read the excerpt from a reviewer of the story. There is bile in my mouth.) GO RUIN YOUR OWN CHILDHOOD, YOU SICK SON OF A BACHELOR.

I say, if you want to read C. S. Lewis writing female characters badly, go read That Hideous Strength and leave Narnia alone. It's fine. But let me elaborate on that.

Susan's sin is not 'growing up'. All four Pevensie children actually grow up twice (I always wondered how they would feel about that - seems like a bit of a mixed blessing to me) - once when they're kings and queens in Narnia and once when they're back in 'our world'. And nothing negative is said or hinted about their transitions into adulthood either time - except perhaps for Susan. I grant you, she is a bit silly for considering Rabadash as a suitor in The Horse and His Boy, but I'm sure that's a mistake a lot of girls would make about a dashing foreign prince. And there are at least two other strong female characters in that book anyway, all you feminist Narnia bashers! What Susan gets called on is her retreat into superficiality. When Jill says 'she's interested in nothing now-a-days except nylons and lipstick and invitations' she means that Susan has become wrapped up in a chase for surface beauty and a desire to fit worldly standards. A bit of an easy trap for the 'pretty one of the family', I guess. When Jill does say that Susan 'always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up', Polly corrects her with 'Grown up indeed... I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she'll waste the rest of her life trying to stay that age.' Which is also a pretty good description of the whole of the modern attitude on age and beauty!
C. S. Lewis isn't attacking Susan's femininity. His sympathetic and human portrayal of Jill (I don't particularly like Jill, but she's very realistic and empathetic) shouts down any claims of misogyny from people who don't like Lucy or Aravis or Polly or any of the other fully fleshed out girls in the series.

And it is horrible for Susan that her whole family died together and left her alone - but I always saw that as a sort of hopeful thing: she doesn't end up cast out into utter darkness, she doesn't die lying to herself about her girlhood adventures and ignoring the rich spiritual life she knows she could have, so far as we know. I think that the loss of her entire family might just be the only thing that could jerk her away from the trap of superficiality. I mean, I could be wrong, but that's just how I like to think of it. There's still hope for Susan.

I Am Very Very Distressed In My Mind

Hey.

I know that of late I have not been a happy little blogger and that this has probably been displeasing to some or all of my dear readers (it displeases me also, if that's any consolation), but forgive me yet another rant of unhappiness.

If you have, by chance, encountered my mother in the last week: face to face or facebook to facebook (or whatever) you may have noticed that her topic of conversation has pretty much circled around one topic. This topic.

When something makes me angry I usually avoid talking about it or reading about it or listening to anything about it until I go mad, mad, mad in my strong emotional state... and write a blog about it. Which isn't terribly productive, I realise, in the end; considering that I have an audience of about three people who probably know or can guess what it is I have to say about said topic anyway. But it makes me feel better.

In this case, I would really love it if writing this blog made some sort of difference, though I realise the chances of that are very slim.

Ismail is a young twenty-six year old man who fled Afghanistan when he was about fourteen years old. We all should know that Afghanistan (for a very long time) hasn't been the most peaceful of countries for a boy to grow up in and live out his dreams; add to this the fact that Ismail is an ethnic Hazara - a group systematically persecuted in Afghanistan for hundreds of years, and you might be able to piece together his reason for leaving. He fled to Europe and eventually ended up in Ireland, where he was able to complete a High School Certificate equivalent - but not allowed to seek higher education or employment. So, unable to make a life in Ireland, he obtained a false passport, got on a plane to Australia and handed himself over to the authorities in the belief that he would be treated with humanity in a country that prides itself on 'a fair go for all'.

He has been incarcerated in detention ever since. On Saturday he is going to be 'forcibly returned' to Afghanistan - the first person to be involuntarily deported after seeking asylum in Australia.

We, in Australia, are fed a lot of... bovine poo about refugees. The government parties use the 'boat people problem' as a scare tactic to try and win votes at election time - the media loves to tell us just how much the refugees cost our country in space and money and culture; everywhere our national predilection for racism and paranoia is fed like some sort of sacred flame.

Think of the films you like to watch. Any spy films, dystopian themed films, Holocaust themed films in that bunch? When you watch characters in these films steal away from dangerous enemy territory, clutching a false passport and sneaking their children through ditches, do you feel that they are selfish human beings? Do you feel that they are wrong for disobeying the law? Do you feel that they are cowardly or otherwise immoral?

Refugees aren't just people who didn't make good in their homeland and want to sponge off another country's government - refugee are, well, a good place to start would be refugees are people. Refugees are fleeing from places where bombs fall on their houses. Refugees are fleeing from places where their daughters can't walk to school without being raped, fleeing from places where they cannot make fundamental life choices about what they believe, where (or if) they will live or how they will make a life. Refugees are fleeing from places where they have no hope for a future. They leave places where trouble has come upon them unsought.

Can you imagine what it must be like to BE a 'boat person'? Floating for days and days on the ocean, packed in with other miserable, frightened people with minimal resources of any description on a boat that will probably be two leaks away from sinking to the bottom of the ocean? Besides the almost always nonexistent hygeine facilities and the awful food and the lack of defense against the ravages of weather, there are also pirates. Not jolly, yo ho ho pirates with parrots and peg legs: real modern pirates who steal any kind of material possession you might have managed to bring with you. Pirates who rape and kidnap wives and sisters before the very eyes of their families. I'm not trying to shock or scandalise you for effect - these attacks are real, documented. This stuff happens.

And then, when you reach Australia, a civilised first world country, where poverty means hand-me-downs and Centrelink payments for Australian citizens, we imprison you in a detention centre, give you hope and snatch it away; make you wait YEARS and YEARS without any kind of certainty about your future and without anything vaguely resembling the freedom, liberty and justice that a country like Australia has to offer. People in detention centres suffer from the worst kinds of mental illness and are never offered any treatment.

Not only is Ismail being sent back to a part of Afghanistan where he has never even been before (and he has not been in the country since he was a child) and where he knows no one - the authorities have handed him a bill for the expense of his unwanted journey - over $30,000. This, for a man who has been locked up for two years like a criminal - who came to Australia because he wished to seek education and employment!

Bear in mind, this is a person my mother and brother know (from visits to Villawood detention centre over the last few months). He is not a random money-grabbing opportunist or a scary alien from another planet. I am told that he is a patient, gentle man who is genuinely scared of dying. He has seen three suicides and a riot happen at the detention centre. When he confessed feelings of depression and anxiety he was put in isolation in a video monitored blood stained room.

Ismail left Afghanistan because he feared death. Australians are sending him right back to Afghanistan - and his case will create a precedent for other Hazara people to be sent back into the arms of death. Pray for Australia. Pray for Afghanistan.


Pray for Ismail.

Why I Don't Like Lady Gaga

Hi, I'm experiencing a lack of desperately important duties at present, so I shall now bestow upon you yet another opinionated rant. Because, of course, there aren't enough of those on the internet already. ;-) And of all the rants I have inside of me, the one you'll be getting today goes thus:

A Fun List of Reasons Why I Do Not Like Lady Gaga

I don't mean to say that I don't like Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, because I don't actually know her, as a person, and probably never shall. Buuuut for the spectacle entitled 'Lady Gaga' I have a deep and abiding dislike.

Reason 1: She is neither a 'Lady' nor is she 'Gaga'
When I say 'Lady', I mean it as a distinction from mere 'person of the female sex'. I believe that the term 'lady' (apart from its traditional use as a handle for female members of the peerage) should be a term of respect earned by those who bear it: i.e., 'Mother Teresa was such a great lady'. I may be just underinformed, but of all the behaviours Lady Gaga is famous for I can't think of a single one that could possibly be described as 'ladylike' by anyone's standards.
When I say that Lady Gaga isn't 'gaga', what do I mean? According to the Oxford Dictionary of English, gaga means 'slightly mad, typically as a result of old age, infatuation, or excessive enthusiasm'. To a completely unworldly spectator, Gaga's actions, dress, whatever, might seem to be correctly described as more than 'slightly' mad, but to anyone who has ever heard of a PR stunt (or anyone who has thought about it for a moment) it becomes completely obvious that her madness is the result of a sanity so calculating and cold that it freezes the mind. And it isn't even original. David Bowie, Kiss, Madonna and hundreds of other musicians have all used elements of the bizarre and shocking to get public attention and sell music. She isn't mad, not really. It's an attention seeking ploy. Which brings us to

Reason 2: Her 'Art'
Another weird thing about Lady Gaga; she actually has talent. I won't say she's just a hyped up starlet (that too, though) because she is in possession of an actual talent. The woman can sing. She can write songs. Successful songs, too. She has more style than, say, Kei$ha (who blatantly rips her off at every turn), though I can't admire her aesthetic. What I find so depressing about Gaga's talent though, is her hideous abuse of it. Art is power. With great power comes... you guessed it, I'm going to quote Spiderman like a boss... great responsibility. I won't argue that she shouldn't make dance music - some of it is darn catchy and I can respect the enjoyability quotient of dance music, even if I don't like it. What frustrates me about Gaga is how she takes her own ability to create a successful product and uses it to create successful things that are ugly and expressive of ugliness: "...when art is not in the service of heaven, it is almost always in the service of hell." Her creations are always skillful - but does she ever create anything expressive of untainted beauty? No.

Reason 3: Pandering to a sexualised culture
Lady Gaga has many, many fans Without them she could have no success as a performer. And many of these many fans happen to be young girls. Her 'little monsters'. As a famous, successful woman who has the ear of so very many young girls, does Gaga use this (yet another great power in her possession) to give them anything useful? Is she an acceptable role model for these young women? I'll let you answer that one for yourself.
But, continuing with the ranty rant, let's discuss another factor in her massive sellout. We've already talked about her use of cheap shocks, (exhibit A: dress made of meat) and her abuse of talent (exhibit B: every video in which we are given that which is grotesque and stomach turning, rather than that which is exquisite and wonderful), now let us touch upon her bizarre and ghastly use of sex in this, her art. Personally, and I know this is a whole other rant that I can give you some other time, I believe that sex is a brilliant, wonderful gift. For two people to completely give themselves to each other and unite to make each other happy and express their love - that's great! But sex is a complex creature. For instance, it creates babies. And when used in the correct capacity it creates a mighty bond between a man and a woman that should not be broken. My stance is a teensy bit predictable. Only between married people who are permanently committed to one another and the children they might create. I also believe that sex is an intimate and private thing. Of course, the culture in which I dwell prefers to differ. Sex is cheap now, like the life of an unborn child. Sex, not the beautiful expression of love, but the quick, forgettable solution for a selfish lust, is everywhere. Plastered all over everything. And used to sell everything. Including music. I have seldom been as disgusted by the use of this cheapened sad sex as I have in Lady Gaga's music and videos. Uuuuugh.

Too depressed to go on. Besides, you can probably finish this yourself, based on what I've already said. I do hate to be predictable, but there it is.

Music and art, unlike truth and faith, are things that are subjective and ephemeral, so don't feel bad if, for whatever reason, you like Lady Gaga. I actually don't dislike her music very much, apart from its meaning - I've done an embarrassing head bop to Just Dance more than once, just like everybody else... but, like truth and faith, music and art are great things to discuss. Yay!

"There must be a remedy even for such a crying evil as this. But where shall it be found... if not in the enfranchisement and elevation of women?"

Hi all.


Been doing some thinking lately. Occasionally with this blog I like to sit down and have a crazy opinion fuelled spiel about something that’s been on my mind - and this is one of those times.

Tonight I’m going to talk about an issue that is never very far from the back of my mind - purely and simply because it fills me with anger and terror and a very awful sense of helplessness and sorrow. Please don’t stop reading when I say I’m going to talk about abortion.



I feel that, as a young woman, I really do have a right, nay, a responsibility to say how I feel about this complicated and controversial issue (I think men have a right to an opinion also, but hearing an opinion from a man can really make some pro-abortion campaigners angry because they feel that the issue doesn’t have the same implications for men. I mean, all this is obvious, but I digress.) To put it pure and simple, I cannot see abortion as anything but out-and-out, brutal, clinical, government-sanctioned murder. Murder of the innocent and helpless, which wrenches my heart when I contemplate it. I’m not ashamed to say that I’m crying physical tears as I write this. There is no way that any scientist or philosopher could ever find a way to convince me that a developing child in the womb, an embryo, foetus, whatever, is not a human being. A human being, a person, with all the right to life that any person in the world ever could be said to possess.

But this issue is not limited to the silent and invisible holocaust of the unborn.

In his book What’s Wrong With The World, author G. K. Chesterton says:

‘Now (to reiterate my title) this is what is wrong. This is the huge modern heresy of altering the human soul to fit its conditions, instead of altering human conditions to fit the human soul.’

 The suffragettes certainly had a point in their insistence on votes for women. Because it isn’t as if the decisions and laws made in Parliament have no effect on women: oh, no! As well as subjecting women to the same punishments and limitations as men, laws took legitimate rights away from women; such as the right to not be abused by a spouse, or the right to see and care for their children if a marriage broke down. I think no right minded person could now say that women should be barred from a democratic vote - though at the time many people, even sensible and kind-hearted people, thought that giving a vote to women would mark the beginning of the apocalypse.

Of course, these people, however good-hearted they may have been, they were wrong. In this modern, enlightened Western hemisphere it is almost universally recognised that women and men possess equal human rights under God, or the law, or whatever it is that binds them. (I am, of course, speaking distinctly within Western culture - I am aware that in other parts of the world and ways of thinking women receive no such acknowledgement.)

But, bizarrely enough, what Western culture seems to have entirely forgotten with its inclusion of women into all the rights and privileges of society, is that men and women are not exactly alike, and what may have functioned well for a male-dominated culture simply cannot be found workable in a world of sex equality.

Back in the day, feminist views on abortion were quite different. Alice Paul, author of the original Equal Rights Amendment (1923) in America is quoted as calling abortion “the ultimate exploitation of women." What could be less natural and more invasive than a culture that expects a woman to have a growing infant cut out of her womb simply for the sake of convenience? I say, if we live in a culture in which a woman’s unexpected pregnancy can prevent her from completing her education let’s blooming well change that culture! Don’t chop and change people to fit conditions - change the conditions! Pregnancy is not a disease, it is a natural and expected consequence of sexual relations. Speaking of which…

I know I come across as a massive prude when I say I believe in total celibacy outside of marriage. Since the sexual revolution people (again, in the West) celebrate the right to do whatever they like with their sexuality.

I won’t pretend to believe that everyone thinks, as I do, that sex is an intimate and beautiful expression of love between a man and a woman, though I’m sure there are a lot of people who would like to think so. From this perspective, I cannot see promiscuity as anything but an exploitative and degrading use of sex. Sex without total trust and commitment is a sad, sad use of a good thing: and is not in the smallest instance ‘loving’. Promiscuity does hurt men as well as women - STDs, emotional damage, etc: but the consequences for women (including the aforementioned STDs, etc) can often be much more severe, even without bringing pregnancy into the equation.

I’m no conspiracy theorist, but I think that, when weighing the damage done to women by our culture (and I haven’t even mentioned body image, weight issues, objectification, discrimination or any of the myriad of other problems the world throws at women) one will quickly realise that society is disproportionately difficult for a woman to navigate.

Why then do we get lumped with the horrific option of ‘kill your baby’? Why not ‘let’s support you through your pregnancy’ ‘how about the thousands of couples waiting to adopt?’ ‘motherhood is an honourable state’.

Pro-’choice’ advocates ignore such choices as those I have above listed. They also say that the choice should be left up to the woman, whom, I think, in her fragile hormonal state, with no other options offered to her and heavy pressure from friends, family, school, work and society at large, will see no other path before her. I can’t describe the guilt and pain that these women often suffer for the rest of their lives - you can find testimonies from such women here. And here.

Plus, as I'm sure most pro-abortion feminists don't realise; in other countries, particularly developing countries where women do experience significant deprivation of rights, a common practice is to kill unborn baby girls, specifically because of their gender. This is not right. This is not giving women choices and rights, this is murdering girls before they even have the possibiliy of becoming conscious of them.

Why don’t we teach people the self respect they need to be able to say no to noncommittal and unloving sex? Why don’t we teach our young people to be responsible for their actions? Why don’t we consider the thousands of childless would-be parents?

Why do we devalue the unborn child?