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intrikate88There was a post the other day on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
a2ashes about Narnia allusions and possible clues to the mystery of this world Alex and Sam have been trapped in while comatose/dead/batshit insane/whatever they are. While some symbols certainly are used, most notably Gene Hunt as a guide and associated with a lion, I think what comparisons there are to be made are not limited by the Chronicles of Narnia, but instead extend out to C.S. Lewis's theology as a whole.
Lewis came to Christianity and Catholicism from his studies in mythology, after studying the Christ story and discussing it with Tolkien and coming to view it as a "true myth". His ideas of the supernatural, as the basis of not only the Chronicles of Narnia but also in Miracles, Til We Have Faces, and The Great Divorce, echo some of Plato's Theory of Forms very deeply, talking about how the natural is only a copy of the supernatural. In Til We Have Faces, for example, he retells the story of Cupid and Psyche, telling the story of Psyche's revelation and how she tries to confront the gods; she learns that while one would like to see the gods face to face, one can't do so until one has developed a face and become more in tune to the world beyond the natural.
I just re-read The Great Divorce out of curiosity because of the parallels I saw with that and Ashes to Ashes, in terms of comments made and film styles used. Google Books has helpfully uploaded some of the book for anyone wishing to read it; I highly recommend it for its interesting ideas, and it's a fairly quick read. I can't say if I agree or not with all the doctrinal points asserted, but the concepts are certainly intriguing.
In TGD, the narrator is dreaming, and the book is very dreamy and disjointed as well. It begins in a grey town where the narrator is waiting to get on a bus; some people are fighting for a place in line, and some don't care. He learns that this city is where the dead have come, and everyone tends to fight with their neighbors; when that happens, they can just imagine a new house a few streets over and move into it. But this soon happens again, and as a result, the city is millions of miles across, and it would take a thousand years to reach the residence of someone who died a century or two ago.
The bus arrives in another place, a more natural place with grass and trees, flowers, streams, and mountains in the distance. Those riding the bus get off, but find that in this place, they are as insubstantial as ghosts; the grass is sharp enough to cut them, the moss is hard as a rock, and the narrator tries to lift a small leaf, but finds it so far beyond his strength that he can only hold it a second. It seems a very difficult, hellish sort of place where none of them belong.
Then people come along, people deemed the Solid People because unlike the ghostly bus riders, they have no problem with their surroundings. Some of them are known to the ghost people, and the Solid People encourage them to walk towards the mountains and they will grow feet real enough to live with this world. Some of the ghosts do, but many have reasons why they can't- some life back in the grey city, or that the child they lost is somewhere else and the Solid Person cannot guarantee that mother will immediately see her child. So these people that refuse to head further into the solid world fade away to nothing, or return to the grey city.
'But I don't understand. Is judgment not final? Is there really a way out of Hell into Heaven?'
'It depends on the way ye're using the words. If they leave that grey town behind it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory. And perhaps y had better not call this country Heaven. Not Deep Heaven, ye understand.' (Here he smiled at me.) 'Ye can call it the Valley of the Shadow of Life. And yet to those who stay here it will have been Heaven from the first. And ye can call those sad streets in the town yonder the Valley of the Shadow of Death: but to those who remain there they will have been Hell even from the beginning.'
[...]
'Then those people are right who say that Heaven and Hell are only states of mind?'
'Hush,' he said sternly, 'do not blaspheme. Hell is a state of mind- ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind- is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is the reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakable remains.'
a2ashes about Narnia allusions and possible clues to the mystery of this world Alex and Sam have been trapped in while comatose/dead/batshit insane/whatever they are. While some symbols certainly are used, most notably Gene Hunt as a guide and associated with a lion, I think what comparisons there are to be made are not limited by the Chronicles of Narnia, but instead extend out to C.S. Lewis's theology as a whole. Lewis came to Christianity and Catholicism from his studies in mythology, after studying the Christ story and discussing it with Tolkien and coming to view it as a "true myth". His ideas of the supernatural, as the basis of not only the Chronicles of Narnia but also in Miracles, Til We Have Faces, and The Great Divorce, echo some of Plato's Theory of Forms very deeply, talking about how the natural is only a copy of the supernatural. In Til We Have Faces, for example, he retells the story of Cupid and Psyche, telling the story of Psyche's revelation and how she tries to confront the gods; she learns that while one would like to see the gods face to face, one can't do so until one has developed a face and become more in tune to the world beyond the natural.
I just re-read The Great Divorce out of curiosity because of the parallels I saw with that and Ashes to Ashes, in terms of comments made and film styles used. Google Books has helpfully uploaded some of the book for anyone wishing to read it; I highly recommend it for its interesting ideas, and it's a fairly quick read. I can't say if I agree or not with all the doctrinal points asserted, but the concepts are certainly intriguing.
In TGD, the narrator is dreaming, and the book is very dreamy and disjointed as well. It begins in a grey town where the narrator is waiting to get on a bus; some people are fighting for a place in line, and some don't care. He learns that this city is where the dead have come, and everyone tends to fight with their neighbors; when that happens, they can just imagine a new house a few streets over and move into it. But this soon happens again, and as a result, the city is millions of miles across, and it would take a thousand years to reach the residence of someone who died a century or two ago.
The bus arrives in another place, a more natural place with grass and trees, flowers, streams, and mountains in the distance. Those riding the bus get off, but find that in this place, they are as insubstantial as ghosts; the grass is sharp enough to cut them, the moss is hard as a rock, and the narrator tries to lift a small leaf, but finds it so far beyond his strength that he can only hold it a second. It seems a very difficult, hellish sort of place where none of them belong.
Then people come along, people deemed the Solid People because unlike the ghostly bus riders, they have no problem with their surroundings. Some of them are known to the ghost people, and the Solid People encourage them to walk towards the mountains and they will grow feet real enough to live with this world. Some of the ghosts do, but many have reasons why they can't- some life back in the grey city, or that the child they lost is somewhere else and the Solid Person cannot guarantee that mother will immediately see her child. So these people that refuse to head further into the solid world fade away to nothing, or return to the grey city.
In chapter nine, which I encourage everyone to read if nothing else in the book,(edit: unfortunately the online chapter is truncated more than I'd like) the dreaming narrator meets George MacDonald, a mentor of Lewis's and depicted here as a teacher and sort of Beatrice, introducing the narrator to the types of people in this world, and to explain where they are and how it exists:
'But I don't understand. Is judgment not final? Is there really a way out of Hell into Heaven?'
'It depends on the way ye're using the words. If they leave that grey town behind it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory. And perhaps y had better not call this country Heaven. Not Deep Heaven, ye understand.' (Here he smiled at me.) 'Ye can call it the Valley of the Shadow of Life. And yet to those who stay here it will have been Heaven from the first. And ye can call those sad streets in the town yonder the Valley of the Shadow of Death: but to those who remain there they will have been Hell even from the beginning.'
[...]
'Then those people are right who say that Heaven and Hell are only states of mind?'
'Hush,' he said sternly, 'do not blaspheme. Hell is a state of mind- ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind- is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is the reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly. For all that can be shaken will be shaken and only the unshakable remains.'
So! Let's compare with A2A and Alex's journey, and go back to a bit of Sam's experience in LoM as well.
In the opening sequence of Ashes to Ashes, Alex's real world in London is shot in cool blues and greys. It is a city where she probably knows the most about a former colleague that committed suicide; her daughter, for all that Molly is a goal to reach in Alex's struggle to get home, is not deeply characterized. The only other meaningful person in Alex's life is her godfather, but as the series goes on, we realize that he has more secrets than Alex ever imagined. Like the grey town of Hell/Purgatory, Alex lives in a cold, disconnected world.
Until she rides a bullet to another world.
Like Sam Tyler, she is struggling to get away; she has her daughter to return to, whose love she is guaranteed; she has a career, a life: her self. But like Sam Tyler, she realizes that there is some purpose in being in this other place, though she must put aside her own life and desires and issues in order to pursue that purpose (such as when Alex must set aside her bitterness towards her ex-husband to work on a case involving his family, or when Sam must face the truth of what his father really is.)
Both Sam and Alex wake up again in lives that look like the ones they left, and both quickly discover that they are disconnected and that they cannot feel; the world around them is pallid and insubstantial compared to 1973 and 1982. That's when they return to the world they thought was less real, now able to leave more of themselves behind, to embrace the possibility of a greater purpose, and to deepen their connections with those in the other world. To use the terms of The Great Divorce, they have decided to journey towards the mountains and take the hand of a Solid Person; to quote The Last Battle from Narnia, they are going "further up and further in" towards a greater understanding of a deeper reality. Sam has already made the journey to whatever is next; he died in the world he came from, and now he has died in the world he fell into. And who knows what direction Alex will go next?
Thoughts?
In the opening sequence of Ashes to Ashes, Alex's real world in London is shot in cool blues and greys. It is a city where she probably knows the most about a former colleague that committed suicide; her daughter, for all that Molly is a goal to reach in Alex's struggle to get home, is not deeply characterized. The only other meaningful person in Alex's life is her godfather, but as the series goes on, we realize that he has more secrets than Alex ever imagined. Like the grey town of Hell/Purgatory, Alex lives in a cold, disconnected world.
Until she rides a bullet to another world.
Like Sam Tyler, she is struggling to get away; she has her daughter to return to, whose love she is guaranteed; she has a career, a life: her self. But like Sam Tyler, she realizes that there is some purpose in being in this other place, though she must put aside her own life and desires and issues in order to pursue that purpose (such as when Alex must set aside her bitterness towards her ex-husband to work on a case involving his family, or when Sam must face the truth of what his father really is.)
Both Sam and Alex wake up again in lives that look like the ones they left, and both quickly discover that they are disconnected and that they cannot feel; the world around them is pallid and insubstantial compared to 1973 and 1982. That's when they return to the world they thought was less real, now able to leave more of themselves behind, to embrace the possibility of a greater purpose, and to deepen their connections with those in the other world. To use the terms of The Great Divorce, they have decided to journey towards the mountains and take the hand of a Solid Person; to quote The Last Battle from Narnia, they are going "further up and further in" towards a greater understanding of a deeper reality. Sam has already made the journey to whatever is next; he died in the world he came from, and now he has died in the world he fell into. And who knows what direction Alex will go next?
Thoughts?
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Date: 2010-04-12 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-04-12 04:55 pm (UTC)I did like the Gene Hunt = Aslan parallel too, but I must admit I'm not quite believing in it. Gene Hunt (and his world, and possibly Alex's purpose within it) doesn't seem - to me - to be such an obvious force for good.
Don't get me wrong. I love me an antihero, and if the big reveal at the end of the show is that Gene Hunt is some self-serving villain with no redeeming features then I'll be one disappointed viewer.
But I do think I need some moral ambiguity in whatever Gene Hunt and his world end up standing for. I'm not quite seeing that with these allusions, since they are by their very definition wrapped up in concepts like heavenly reward.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-13 01:15 am (UTC)But yes, I mentioned Gene's parallels with Aslan as a guide and lion (and maybe even the entity bringing them into this world) because I had seen it mentioned elsewhere, but he just really doesn't work as Aslan on a detailed level.
This is what problemetizes my comparisons; while as an idea of onion-like worlds growing closer to Plato's ideal forms, that could be something, but as a concept of heaven and rewards? There's murders and rapes and kidnappings and Gene being really derogatory about anyone not him, ffs, this isn't heaven or even the shadow thereof. This world needs ambiguity, as do Gene and the rest of the characters as well. I doubt Gene is a complete villain; he's been characterized as a person of strength and trust and justice too many times for that, and all the current dark hints seem like a repeat of all Sam was being told in s2 of Life on Mars. Whatever the truth is, it's not a simple thing, I don't think, and I don't think they're going to answer all out questions, either.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-14 03:40 am (UTC)Thoughts?
Not a clue! But I love this post. I think this definitely adds a lot more to the Lewis connection, which is referenced overtly in the show so it's not a stretch at all to apply these notions to where the LoM/A2A universe is headed. I dig.
no subject
Date: 2010-04-14 04:27 pm (UTC)