false stories near the truth
let's not take the way stories work for granted + some new year's asides
I intended to start the year with a much meatier post for you, my fellow secret keepers. But I’ve put that off due as much to me feeling incredibly averse to hard thinking coming out of the holidays and a heady semester as it is to me feeling annoyed and needing to vent a little.
While writing the last (meaty) post—this one about Narnia and Laura Miller’s Magician’s Book, I came across a sentiment I find to be hypocritical. This sentiment was expressed by Guillermo del Toro, the incredible filmmaker and writer who shied away from the opportunity to direct Narnia film adaptations because he didn’t feel comfortable relating to C.S. Lewis’ faith as an adult despite “really enjoying” the author as a child.
A 2006 Associated Press article draws comparisons between del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth and the Walden Media adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which were released within a year of each other. Regarding his film, Del Toro says:
I’m not proselytizing anything about a lion resurrecting. I’m not trying to sell you into a point. I’m just doing a little parable about disobedience and choice.
Maybe I’m nitpicking, but I think del Toro is being contradictory. It’s fair to argue that Narnia is “proselytizing.” But everything else is proselytizing too, especially if it’s something you’d describe as a “parable about disobedience and choice.” After all, the point of a parable is to illustrate something about morality, religion, or common sense. Every parable has a point, or several.
And if I’m nitpicking, I’m not nitpicking that much. Del Toro takes issue with stories the AP writer calls “innocuous children’s fare,” which the filmmaker deems bad parables. He makes an example of Free Willy, the uplifting 1993 film about a boy befriending an orca:
I do think there is far more an immoral position in creating a movie like Free Willy, where I’m telling a kid, you know, ‘If you swim next to a…killer whale, she’ll become your friend.’ …No! She will eat your…guts and spit you out! [minus the expletives]
Whether you agree with del Toro’s opinion about Free Willy or not, he has a point—and he’s disingenuous to insist that his stories, like Pan’s Labyrinth, don’t. He even says:
If my child watches my movies by accident, they will not try to think the world is a safe place, which it’s not. Children should know the dangers of the world and not be neurotically isolated from them.
Children knowing the dangers of the world is one of the points of fairy tales.
Whether the storyteller intends it or not, the story she tells says something about the world and the place she and her audience have in that world. Even things that are fun and “feel-good” still say something consequential. Often, these “consequential” things are hard to articulate because, in a good story, they are felt more than stated. And what-it-means depends as much on the audience as it does the creator. This is why we argue about meaning and whether it’s okay to like a work of art that some think is questionable or problematic.
(That being said, I think we live in an era of pointless art: people making things just to make things, duplicating others, grabbing for cash, extending works long beyond their ‘best by’ date, and spitting out stuff just to fill quotas set by corporate or political interests. And with AI tools, this era of pointless art will only get worse.)
So, relax, Guillermo del Toro. All intentionally created art has a point or a parabolic element to it. Even if the creator can’t tell you what that is. (And, possibly, especially then.) Like Gaiman says of Lewis (and Tolkien and Chesterton), “[Without them] I would not have understood that the best way to show people true things is from a direction that they had not imagined the truth coming.” Stories, images, films, symbols are the direction from which truth can’t possibly come, yet comes all the time.
Lewis said of Scripture:
…if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth…
Let’s not take the nature of stories for granted. We must be responsible. And that means telling tales of boys and killer whales being friends and tales where the killer whale rips the boy apart. Different parables abound within the same story elements.
As false as all our stories are, they are very near the truth.
“Remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as inducing them.” (C.S. Lewis)
asides + signal boosts (new year edition)
Happy New Year, if I haven’t wished you one already! I hope your time of reflection, prayer, planning, and (hopefully) rest is healing and fruitful.
I always consider writing a year-end/year-beginning reflectional—most people who write publicly probably do, but I usually don’t for a few reasons: (a) I have too many thoughts and tend to just ramble, (b) I don’t want the pressure to make a product of my own quietude, (c) other people do it far better than I can. My sister is one of those people, and I agree with her: If I could relive 2023, I totally would. On balance, the year had more highs than lows, and the lows came with lessons. (Although I remain abysmally mortified by the car wreck I got into two days after buying a new car in February.) I guess that’s my recap.
I did write a poem about the places between the places we intend to go. A lot happens in the in between places, things we take for granted if we aren’t careful. But the journey is where we spend most of our time; it’s the journey that prepares us for the destination.
I’ve been listening to The Atlantic’s new short podcast series, How to Keep Time. The months ahead are very busy, and keeping time well is hard. I can easily flip a switch and turn into a machine, living by the clock to reach my goals; while that’s necessary at times, it’s not always healthy. So, I’ve been reflecting on better ways to manage my time, check boxes, and still not feel like an automaton, having space to rest, eat, read for fun, worship, play, and chill. Give the podcast a listen; you might realize you’ve become a slave to the clock. (We have monks to thank for that, by the way.)
I’ve also started re-reading Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl, by N.D. Wilson because I always need to be reminded about my place in the Story. It’s as excellent a place as any to start the new year.
And if you’re a reader, check out this piece against counting the books you read this year.