Is Horse and His Boy Too...

K

kingcaspian

New member
Is HB too unpolitically correct to made into a movie into today's political correct society where "no one group or race of people can be offended" type of attitude. Many people have said that Lewis was depicting the Calormenes as Arabs, making it the most "controversial" book in the series. Now, these people may very well be speaking the truth, but they take it too far when they say he was making fun of Arabs that I don't believe. Lewis wasn't that type of person. Now, I do believe he was making depicting Calormenes like Arabs, like the similarities I find between Tash and Allah. Now, HB should, if the writers and producers make it write, should be a great movie. The book is great(it is my favorite of the entire series). However, a great book and great movie could simply be ruined by the fact that people say its too unpolitcally correct, and that's there's racism in it.
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I have had occasions in a different context to explain why accusations that Mr. Lewis was a racist CANNOT hold water. But with membership turnover here, it won't be amiss to revisit one of my main points.

BEFORE even thinking of "The Horse and His Boy," Mr. Lewis had not once but twice created villains who were as white as could ever be asked for by those p.c. police who insist that ONLY white Western people can be evil. Jadis was a fair-skinned white woman. And then the Telmarine kingdom was very clearly modelled on European countries; in the book, you even see that aspects of their society are unmistakably BRITISH in inspiration. ONLY after inventing these evildoers patterned on HIS OWN civilization, did Mr. Lewis create any "non-white" human villains.
 
Yes; Aravis being far more educated and sophisticated than Shasta/Cor, _plus_ the mare Hwin being wiser than the stallion Bree, still wouldn't be enough to satisfy them. They would _demand_ that Aravis be allowed physically to beat up Cor three or four times, and even Corin as well. They would also demand that _Susan,_ not Edmund, fight Rabadash with swords, and of course beat him easily. And they would insist on making the Hermit of Archenland female.
 
I find it pretty stupid to label CS Lewis a racist or sexist based on this book. Apart from the already well made points by Copperfox, let's not forget that this book portrays an INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE between white Shasta/Cor and dark-skinned Aravis Tarkheena. This even was at a time (in this world) when interracial marriages were more frowned upon (to say the least).
 
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If you look closesy at the Calormesse religon, you would see that it is a monothsitic faith, so not based on Islam. I see the Calormsses cuture being more like ancient Babaloinian or Perssia cutures, rather than Arabs, So the movie makers could go ths way.


BTW, I think this might be in the wrong forum, sould it not be in the forum about future narnia films?
 
I wouldn't say the Calormen religion is necessarily monotheistic, Emeth uses the phrase "by the gods." It seems to me that Calormen is no more making fun of the Muslims than Aladin did. The Calormene religion is manifestly not Islam, nor would I think that Lewis would ever imply that Allah was a demon if not Satan himself. As to the racial aspect, as CF points out, Lewis had villians that span across racial divides. He also had good guys come from Calormen. The viliany of Calormen always struck me as being more about a corrupt government and a religion that encourages such corruption than because they were racially different and therefore were inherently evil.
 
Narborg said:
If you look closesy at the Calormesse religon, you would see that it is a monothsitic faith, so not based on Islam. I see the Calormsses cuture being more like ancient Babaloinian or Perssia cutures, rather than Arabs, So the movie makers could go ths way.


BTW, I think this might be in the wrong forum, sould it not be in the forum about future narnia films?
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I didn't know where to put this thread, so I just put it here because of the racism factor.

Anyway, I have never heard of HB being sexist in any way, just the racist part. If the filmmakers decide for some reason to appease (like all the reason Copperfox mentioned,) the feminists then it would ruin the film. Who cares about feminists when the book fans should probably overrule them anyway?:confused:
 
K-C, the feminists are closer than you think. We have quite a few young ladies on this forum who (without admitting it) think Mr. Lewis made a mistake in describing Peter Pevensie as a young man of strength and courage and wisdom and resolve; they like SO much better the idea of a clueless, awkward Peter who doesn't know how to wipe his nose unless a girl tells him how.
 
Copperfox said:
Yes; Aravis being far more educated and sophisticated than Shasta/Cor, _plus_ the mare Hwin being wiser than the stallion Bree, still wouldn't be enough to satisfy them. They would _demand_ that Aravis be allowed physically to beat up Cor three or four times, and even Corin as well. They would also demand that _Susan,_ not Edmund, fight Rabadash with swords, and of course beat him easily. And they would insist on making the Hermit of Archenland female.
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True feminism would NOT require Aravis or Hwin to be physically or mentally superior to Shasta and Bree. In fact, HHB is already one of the most feminist Chronicles. It mentions Lucy going to war, and Aravis is very brave and savvy. And the WHOLE REASON she was running away was because she wasn't an empty-headed princess like Lasraleen. I could probably write a whole essay on how feminist Lewis' portrayal of Aravis is.

I don't think changing the gender of the Hermit would even cross anyone's mind. And as for Susan, even despite putting her in the battle scenes from PC, they still made her the damsel-in-distress for Caspian to save, so I doubt she'd get to duel Rabadash herself.


As for the portrayal of the Calormens, it might be easy to make them caricatures of Arabic culture, but that certainly wouldn't be necessary. I think Lewis was probably inspired by that culture, given the descriptions of clothing and the like, but I wouldn't go so far as to say he was trying to portray all Muslims/Arabs as evil. And, like someone else said, Aravis MARRIED Shasta, which doesn't seem very racist to me.
 
MRW, there is a _very_ noisy and pushy segment of the modern feminist population which _won't_ be satisfied until _every_ male is treated as across-the-board INFERIOR to all females. And there are men in the popular culture who will pander to this.

Four words. Tim Allen. "Home Improvement."
 
A feminist is merely someone who believes women ought to be treated with equal consideration. Anyone who believes a woman ought to be treated SUPERIOR to a man is just as sexist as a male chauvinist. Yes, radical "feminists" are a noisy and pushy segment of the feminist movement, but they are also a minority -- at least among my generation. Radical feminism was a much more popular idea a few decades ago, and it did all sorts of irreparable damage to the movement, and how everyone else views it. But not everything that involves feminist ideas will end up portraying women as superior. The PC film has already proved that. Like Susan would have ever needed Caspian to save her when she's got her bow and a full quiver of arrows. *snorts*
 
Your snorting also proves something. Even an invincible super-being (synonymous with "woman" in the popular culture) may be simply _outnumbered_ and unable to shoot down _every_ adversary before they get in striking range. That's all that happened to Susan in the movie, and only a _very_ thinskinned feminist would get indignant over her attackers just being too numerous for her to kill them all in a forest setting with limited sight range and arrow flight. ABSOLUTELY NOBODY would get in a snit over an adolescent MALE archer character, facing the same conditions, needing help as the surviving foes came within weapon-reach.
 
I don't understand, how is depicting the Calormen as Arabs politically incorrect? What are we gonna do? Pull a "Freedom fries" on HHB?
I mean, that's what C. S. Lewis wrote them as.

I think if we put too much fear into being racist, we become racist.
I don't think there needs to be a debate about this.

If you mean because the big shot terrorists were Arabs, we shouldn't film HHB because of that. Well, Arabs aren't terrorists. Terrorists are terrorists.



And however feminists came into this, I do not know. And about Home Improvement, I really don't think portraying husbands as goofy people really has any insidious undertones. I doubt there was a council of women plotting a script for Home Improvement to help their plan for world domination.

I also agree with Lava on the racism and sexism part.
 
Jack of Blades said:
And however feminists came into this, I do not know. And about Home Improvement, I really don't think portraying husbands as goofy people really has any insidious undertones. I doubt there was a council of women plotting a script for Home Improvement to help their plan for world domination.

.
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actually that was Jill's actress wanting to portray the "90s" woman. She didn't want to be just a housewife, but show America woman could have her cake and eat it too with a career and family.
 
dayhawk68 said:
actually that was Jill's actress wanting to portray the "90s" woman. She didn't want to be just a housewife, but show America woman could have her cake and eat it too with a career and family.
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Yeah, but what does Tim Allen have to do with undermining men? I don't understand Copperfox's statement. But what I was saying, was that whatever feminist influence was made in Home Improvement, wasn't sinister as Copperfox had implied.
 
Jack of Blades said:
Yeah, but what does Tim Allen have to do with undermining men? I don't understand Copperfox's statement. But what I was saying, was that whatever feminist influence was made in Home Improvement, wasn't sinister as Copperfox had implied.
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yeah:rolleyes: I know he thinks we're out to get him lol
 
I think that even if they're worried about it being racist, all that's needed is to play up the good Calormenes/good parts of Calormene culture (which are lots. They study storytelling in school, how awesome is that?). We've already got Aravis, but Lasaraleen is pretty decent too; she may be silly, but she risked her life to help her friend do something she didn't even understand the need for, and for that matter--how silly is she? She devises a plan to get Aravis out. (There's also Shasta, who is a Calormene kid by culture.)

Also, from this ongoing analysis of HHB:
Arsheesh is a greedy man who has probably never freely done a thing in his life that he didn’t believe he could profit from, but still: he did of his own free will rescue a baby from starvation and cold; he did take care of Shasta in his infanthood at his own inconvenience and long before he could get any service out of the boy. I like the fact that the meanness of Arsheesh – and the fact that he sings his own praises – doesn’t diminish the innate goodness of that action.
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There's also Aravis's mother/older brother/that one servant guy from the beginning--we never see them, but they're there; there may be a way to bring them in. And there's plenty of opportunity to show that there are good Calormene people among the bad. (And I wouldn't object to some Calormenes among the Narnians, either; all those people had to go somewhere in the hundred years of winter, and I doubt Archenland could take them all.) And as was pointed out, Aravis and Shasta get married and have a child.

ETA: Er, wow, where did that sexism argument come from? I do think this is possibly the most feminist of the Chronicles; Aravis is awesome, Hwin is love, Lucy and Susan are fairly decent. Lewis's problems are not with writing girls IMHO, especially in the later books where he lets them fight and generally be awesome; for a man of his times I think he did rather well (though there is a rather odd lack of *women* in the books, which I keep meaning to go through and think about, but I've never gotten around to it), and this is not the book to be complaining about it. I do think that one of the problems in film/TV/literature in general is that a lot of times you get *one* girl with a large group of boys, and so she becomes "what the writers think of girls" instead of herself, while the boys are taken collectively as "what one thinks of boys". The boys can have flaws because there are enough of them to be clear that, say, stupidity isn't "what the writers think of boys", but a girl gets flaws and it seems sexist--but if she's perfect it's just as bad. This might be solved by having more female characters--then the patterns get analyzed, and problems are usually recognized only if they show up, like, all across the board.
 
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Read my lips:

In "Home Improvement," the husband was ALWAYS wrong. Not sometimes wrong, not often wrong, not usually wrong, ALWAYS WRONG. Name one TV show in current production where the WIFE is always wrong where her husband is right, or EVEN frequently wrong where her husband is right. My complaint IS NOT about the wife in "Home Improvement" having had a career; that's just the dishonest old evasion about "You don't like strong women," which is not true of me. The point is the RELENTLESS claim of moral and otherwise total superiority of women.
 
Copperfox said:
Your snorting also proves something. Even an invincible super-being (synonymous with "woman" in the popular culture) may be simply _outnumbered_ and unable to shoot down _every_ adversary before they get in striking range. That's all that happened to Susan in the movie, and only a _very_ thinskinned feminist would get indignant over her attackers just being too numerous for her to kill them all in a forest setting with limited sight range and arrow flight.
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No, that's not what happened. What happened was, Susan fell and then was too frozen with fear to shoot the man riding her down, which was contrary to the battle-savvy warrior queen the movie took such care to highlight during the raid on the castle and the final battle with Miraz's army. In both big battles, Susan is perfectly capable of holding her own, even in close combat, amonst a greater number of adversaries. She stabs people at close range with arrows, uses her bow as a staff, and she doesn't even take time to think about it. She wasn't overwhelmed in the forest. There were only two men left, and she had plenty of time to shoot them, but in this one scene, in order to further their ridiculous romance, the moviemakers had her act completely contrary to her established character by hesitating, thus necessitating Caspian's intervention. The situation was completely contrived, and that's what annoyed me. If they had portrayed Susan as being hesitant to engage in battle in other scenes (like she is in the books), it would have made sense.

Name one TV show in current production where the WIFE is always wrong where her husband is right, or EVEN frequently wrong where her husband is right.
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South of Nowhere, for the first 3/4 of the series. Paula is severely criticized for being a largely absentee and over-critical wife/mother.
You definitely have a point about Home Improvement and other sitcoms of its ilk, though. The Simpsons, King of Queens, Still Standing, etc. all have buffoonish husband/father figures. It's a ridiculous overcompensation.

Back OT:
I think the Calormen culture is fabulous, and if they do it right, it's going to make for some really pretty scenery. I'm looking forward to seeing all of the parades and the convoys going through the city, and it'll be a fun change from the medieval "European" setting we'll have had through the rest of the movies.

I don't think race will be an issue. I mean, the Telmarines in the movie version of PC weren't northern European, and nobody cared. And it's not like the whole of Calormen is evil -- LB is VERY CLEAR about that. The problem is with RABADASH and his father. It's an instance of the man in power being the evil character, and everyone else following orders because they have to. It's not like the Pevensies wiped out all of Miraz's citizens and made Caspian start over because Miraz was evil.

I think the race/culture of the Calormens will only be a problem if the moviemakers try to turn it into something it's not.
 
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