Narnia

[Schlobin at aol.com]

from the NY Times


Marketing 'Narnia' Without a Christian Lion


By DOREEN CARVAJAL

 

or more than a half century, "The Chronicles of Narnia" captivated
children with tales of Aslan, a tawny lion who ruled a wintry
Narnian kingdom of dwarfs, fauns and occasionally errant English
schoolchildren.

 Mixing fantasy with Christian allegories and imagery, the author
C. S. Lewis, one of the 20th century's most influential
interpreters of Christianity, created a saga that spanned seven
novels, beginning in 1950 with "The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe," which have sold more than 65 million copies in more than
30 languages.

 Now, borrowing a page from a literary upstart named Harry Potter,
the Lewis estate and its publishers have started shaping a
marketing makeover of Aslan and assorted Narnian habitués to expand
readership and extend the brand.

 They have struck deals to license plush Narnian toys. The series
publisher, HarperCollins, revealed plans to create new Narnia
novels by unidentified authors, to the outrage of some devoted
readers. (What next? "Narnia Barbie in a school uniform?" asked one
fan in a Lewis electronic forum.)

 Most striking of all, they have developed a discreet strategy to
avoid direct links to the Christian imagery and theology that
suffused the Narnia novels and inspired Lewis.

 "They're turning Narnia into a British version of Mickey Mouse,"
said John G. West, co-editor of The C. S. Lewis Readers
Encyclopedia and an associate professor of political science at
Seattle Pacific University. "What they've figured out is that Harry
Potter is a cash cow. And here's a way they can decompartmentalize
the children's novels from the rest of Lewis. That's what is so
troubling. Narnia is a personal creation, and they're turning it
into a corporate creation."

 The publishing strategy surfaced in a HarperCollins memo.
"Obviously this is the biggie as far as the estate and our
publishing interests are concerned," wrote an executive from
HarperSanFranciso, an imprint of HarperCollins involved in the
Lewis publishing program. "We'll need to be able to give emphatic
assurances that no attempt will be made to correlate the stories to
Christian imagery/theology."

 The memo was written in connection with the development of a
public television documentary about the life of Lewis. The
producer, Carol Dean Hatcher, had negotiated contracts to create an
illustrated companion book and teaching video for Zondervan
Publishing House, the Christian publishing arm of HarperCollins.
Zondervan was also poised to donate about $150,000 for the
production.

 HarperCollins and its publishing arms were in the midst of
ambitious expansion plans for Lewis's works. They repackaged nine
classic titles, organized two Web sites (www .cslewisclassics.com
and www .narnia.com), developed an essay contest and asked
contemporary authors to write new forewords. By the fall of 2003
they expected to publish simpler picture books for younger children
and a new Narnia novel.

 The negotiations over the documentary unraveled, Ms. Hatcher said,
amid pressures from the publisher and the estate to eliminate
references in the script to Christian imagery in the Narnia series.

 "I was appalled," said Ms. Hatcher, who is still trying to
produce the documentary, "C. S. Lewis: An Examined Life," with
Oregon Public Broadcasting as the presenting station. "I think
there are ways to approach C. S. Lewis and Narnia that have nothing
to do with religious background. However, it is astounding to
minimize that part of this; it's like doing a video biography of
Hank Aaron and refusing to acknowledge he was a baseball player."

 For its part, the Lewis estate insists that there is no calculated
plan to reshape the author's image. Simon Adley, managing director
of the C. S. Lewis Company, noted that the publishers had
successfully increased sales of Lewis's "Mere Christianity," an
adult title that explains and defends Christianity.

 "It's fatuous to suggest that we're trying to take the Christian
out of C. S. Lewis," Mr. Adley said. "We wouldn't have made the
effort that we have with `Mere Christianity' if we felt that way.
It's just crazy. I suppose you could get a little depressed by
this. I'm trying to get more people to read."

 But the response from Harper Collins was more ambiguous. Lisa
Herling, a spokeswoman, issued a written statement noting that Ms.
Hatcher had revealed "confidential in-house correspondence that was
part of the incomplete process" involving Ms. Hatcher's projects.

 "One of the issues the correspondence addressed was whether the
project would appeal to the secular as well as the evangelical
market," Ms. Herling wrote. "The goal of HarperCollins is to
publish the works of C. S. Lewis to the broadest possible audience
and leave any interpretation of the works to the reader."

 As a series, the Narnia books are valuable property for
HarperCollins, which recently acquired the rights to publish all of
Lewis's works.

 Lately, the Narnia series has flourished anew because of the Harry
Potter halo effect on young readers searching for something else to
read. In the last two years, sales have increased 20 percent
annually.

 That renewed attention brought new focus on an author untouched by
marketing and image-making. Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland,
Clive Staples Lewis was a professor of medieval and Renaissance
English whose Oxford literary circle, the Inklings, included J. R.
R. Tolkien.

 In Lewis's imaginary kingdom, the inhabitants are fauns, talking
animals and children who find their way into a secret land by means
of a hidden door in a wardrobe. Some plot lines are allegories for
Christian themes. Aslan is the Christ figure, the "Son of the Great
Emperor Across the Sea," who defeats the devil figure — the White
Witch — through his death and resurrection.

 Since Lewis's death, two movies, both called "Shadowlands," have
explored his life. One starred Anthony Hopkins as the writer and
examined his late-blooming relationship with and marriage to Joy
Davidman Gresham, an American poet and Jewish atheist who converted
to Christianity. Her sons, David and Douglas, ultimately inherited
the copyrights to their stepfather's works after the 1973 death of
Lewis's brother, Warren.

 A blunt-spoken, nondenominational Christian preacher, Douglas
Gresham lives in Ireland, where he runs Rathvinden Ministries, a
country home on 20 acres near Dublin. His brother, David, has
played a less active role in the estate and, according to Mr.
Gresham, lives in India and has embraced Judaism.

 With Mr. Gresham as an adviser, the estate for years generally
rejected requests to create sequels or spinoffs to the Narnia
series. But that policy shifted as the C. S. Lewis Company took a
more active role in managing the copyrights. The company is led by
Mr. Adley, formerly a marketing executive at Scholastic, which
publishes J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series in the United States.

 In May Mr. Gresham posted a message in an electronic forum for
Lewis fans.

 "What is wrong with trying to get people outside of Christianity
to read the Narnian chronicles?" he asked, adding, "The Christian
audience is less in need of Narnia than the secular audience, and
in today's world the surest way to prevent secularists and their
children from reading it is to keep it in the Christian or
Religious section of the bookstores or to firmly link Narnia with
modern evangelical Christianity."

 HarperCollins is still developing the new Narnia novels and has
not announced potential authors. Mr. Adley, of the C. S. Lewis
Company, said they would not publish an eighth volume in the
series. But they will "fill in the gaps" with the reappearance of
some existing characters.

 "Increasingly, we've found that working in the marketplace we're
competing against new stuff," he said. "The whole children's market
is geared toward anything new. You can only keep rejacketing
something a certain number of times, and in the end you have to
produce something new."