Mobilizing meaning?: religious symbolism in film adaptations of C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Abstract

The aim of stories is often to socialize children into accepting certain dominant values held by the society in which they live. C. S. Lewis's fantasy fiction, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ([1950] 1998), may be a case in point: steeped in Christian symbolism, it uses linguistic means such as implied meaning, for example, to convey a particular religious message. It is with this ideological focus in mind that the article will seek to explore the processes at stake in converting Lewis's text to film. In the first instance, I will provide an analysis of how Lewis's narrative works on different planes: an explicit and an implicit plane where interpretation depends on the reader's knowledge of the Christian tradition. In more general terms, I will attempt to show how, in the process of converting the text to film, a significant shift in religious ideology occurs from that of general Christian symbolism to an American conservative evangelical perspective.