Has anybody here ever heard of a famous live-stage director named Stanislavsky? He is best remembered for a book titled “An Actor Prepares,” which was the main textbook in an acting course I took long ago. Stanislavsky begins by telling a humorous anecdote at his own expense.
He relates that he was planning to portray the title role in Shakespeare’s “OTHELLO.” That character being a dark-skinned Moor, Stanislavsky says that he took pains to darken his own skin. He furthermore devised a Moorish-looking costume with a turban, and obtained a Muslim-style scimitar for himself to brandish. But he is inviting the reader to laugh at him for missing the point entirely. He should have been thinking about Othello’s _personality_ –how he dealt with issues of jealousy, prejudice, etc.
Dilettante fantasy writers who think they can imitate Mr. Lewis, or Mr. Tolkien, frequently fall into the same error. They concentrate on the external trappings–monsters, magic, swords, castles, etc.–and perhaps even pride themselves on having _more_ of these externals than are seen in the Narnian tales. But they miss the spirit; they fail to say anything nearly so deep as Mr. Lewis’ work said about faith, love, honor and sacrifice. They settle for Othello’s turban and scimitar without exploring the motivation.
Much of what is written by wanna-be’s is empty calories, but at least is not written in malice. What’s worse is when authors appeal to the externals of high fantasy–and use them for promotion of a definite message, but one which happens to be disastrously WRONG.
Decades ago, the Hildebrandt Brothers, along with a little-known co-author, undertook to write an epic titled “URSHURAK.” It absolutely creaked under the weight of all the externals piled into it, with elves and wizards and so on; but it was not only cinema-like flash with no idea content. The problem WAS its idea content: it was promoting that tired old brand new latest thing, New Age-style pantheism. All is one, and everything is everything else. As a history major, I can tell you that civilizations depending on some form of all-is-one pantheism NEVER EVER come up with a constitutional, representative form of government UNLESS they are influenced by Judeo-Christian civilization. And where Judeo-Christian civilization renounced slavery long ago, slavery is still officially allowed TO THIS DAY in some societies with a pantheistic worldview. This is no accident. If everything is everything else, you just can’t sustain an enthusiasm for distinguishing between good and evil.
Pantheism was the fly in the ointment for me in the otherwise outstanding TV series “BABYLON 5.” When the “wise” alien heroine Delenn gave her supposedly profound speech about all of us equally being “star stuff,” I wanted to jump into the story and say to her: “Have you _really_ thought about the implications of what you’re saying? If everyone and everything really belongs in the same undifferentiated cosmic stew, then there is NO reason why you should not be just as happy marrying a duckbilled platypus, or some similar creature from your own planet, instead of the hero of the series. Monistic philosophies inevitably saw off the branch on which all morality sits!”
I may seem to have strayed from the theme I began with; but “BABYLON 5” is also an example of taking high-fantasy externals while failing to embrace the Judeo-Christian thinking in which high fantasy has its true roots. Joseph Michael Straczsinsky, creator of that series, made his Tolkienian tastes obvious when he established a band of heroes called Rangers, and gave the name “Lorien” to a super-duper space alien; but he parted company with Mr. Tolkien on the things that really matter. To give credit where due, Straczsinsky did treat Christian characters with more courtsey and understanding than a Gene Roddenberry would ever do; but he still gave his allegiance to pantheism, which is absolutely incompatible with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I can just hear the chorus now, yelling at me: “You’re saying no fantasy can be any good unless it’s Christian! You’re calling for censorship!” No, I’m NOT calling for censorship. In our Biblically-based culture (as opposed to Marxist or Islamist societies), you’re allowed to write any kind of story you like. But I have equal freedom to critique the worldview and its implications for life.