Dear Sieveking

(Why do you ‘Dr’ me? Had we not dropped the honorifics?) As things worked out, I wasn’t free to hear a single instalment of our serial [The Magician’s Nephew] except the first. What I did hear, I approved. I shd. be glad for the series to be given abroad. But I am absolutely opposed – adamant isn’t in it! – to a TV version. Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare. At least, with photography. Cartoons (if only Disney did not combine so much vulgarity with his genius!) wld. be another matter. A human, pantomime, Aslan wld. be to me blasphemy.

All the best,
yours
C. S. Lewis

[ from boingboing, and, to some, indication that lewis might not approve of the forthcoming movie.

I, personally, think the text does nothing of the sort. From the perspective of 1959, and indeed all the way up to the millenium, he's right. There was simply no way to do anthropomorphic animals well until very recently. It's by no means perfect, but there can hardly be any question that the computer generated animals of the current movie are not appreciably inferior to those you'd get from animation. A high quality computer generated Aslan is hardly a human pantomime. Wether the film is *good* is another story, but i don't see that Lewis would oppose it in principle. -k]