Aslan the Lioness?

Back in April, a rumor rounded the Hollywood extensions of Hell’s circles that buzzed like a nasty fly in Christian ears—a rumor that seemed a little too silly to be true. The venerable and versatile Meryl Streep, it droned, was in talks to play no less a part than Aslan in Greta Gerwig’s reboot of Clive Staples Lewis’ celebrated Chronicles of Narnia, with the first chronological story in the series, The Magician’s Nephew. But these buzzings were dismissed as a little too “out there” even for Hollywood standards.

As of this week, however, those outrageous rumors were confirmed as true, believe them or not. Meryl Streep will, indeed, be providing the voice acting for the Great Lion who has been hailed for generations as the center of everything that made Lewis’ Chronicles marvelous, and even mystical, fare for young Christian children. It has long become undeniable that there is no depth of silliness (or stupidity) that Hollywood will not sink to in the name of head-turning heterodoxy.

The face of Gerwig’s Aslan was released on the cover of Empire magazine, and it is strange, with scales, feathers, and rainbow whiskers. His bi-colored eyes evoke David Bowie, whose persona was one of gender-bending oddity. Of course, the Christian world is starting to muster vociferous objection. But the Catholic world should be clear about what is at hand here—and it isn’t, as most might immediately think and say, that it is a sacrilege for a woman to depict Aslan. That is actually far more acceptable than the lukewarm spume that this news actually communicates.

The first thing to say about this increasingly hot-button topic (it appears films need to preemptively cause outrage and scandal to ignite successful ticket sales) is that no one should be surprised about this with Greta Gerwig at the helm. Besides identifying as a “unitarian universalist,” she is an uber-feminist who has said she finds the worship of God the Father alienating, while the worship of Mary, the Mother of God, is attractive but pagan, yielding to Protestant condemnation.

Though Gerwig has commented about casting Streep, thespian goddess that she is, in the desire to have a voice that bore the wisdom of years without losing the wonder of youth—and she thinks Streep delivers on those levels—there is nothing more to this than a determination to be revisionist with a decidedly feminist and Christian-curious slant. Greta Gerwig is certainly not an artist who has, in her limited career, shown herself open to traditional tropes. Her bizarre, pop-culture sensation Barbie was, for all its acclamation, a pretty thin attempt at a patriarchal coup that seemed to reject the very essence of gender complementarity, pushing at an anti-Genesis thesis that, perhaps, it would be good if man (and woman) were alone.

According to Gerwig, Barbie doesn’t need Ken and Ken doesn’t need Barbie. In fact, they only get in each other’s way of being themselves, rather than finding the completion that man and woman were made to give to each other. It was ironic that Barbie was linked in those early post-pandemic days to Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer because it was a kind of nuking of common sense in pink and platinum.

So, again, no one should be surprised if Gerwig is messing with Aslan’s alpha-male-ism, since toxic masculinity has, apparently, no worldly bounds. But the thing that Christians are turning the volume up on is that it is a desecration to depict Aslan as a woman since Aslan is so clearly a symbol for Jesus Christ, who was, of course, a Man. These objections are being met with ready responses from the liberals such as, “Oh, so it’s not disrespectful to portray Christ as a lion, a lazy predator with smelly urine, but it is disrespectful to portray Him as a woman?”

Catholics should assume a sturdy side on this debate ahead of the film’s February theatrical release, which is already promising to be far-flung and fraught; and the problem is—as strange as this might sound on its face—not so much the use of a feminine element when depicting Christ as it is with a feminist-unitarian desire to eliminate the traditional notion of God completely. Gerwig would rather that The Chronicles of Narnia did not reflect a straightforward Christianity at all, and so she will adopt a weird, off-the-wall revisionist approach that throws things in a whole other arena by casting a woman as Aslan, and who knows what else. Brilliant.

Though incisive in intention and ideology, it is not brilliant, as it misses part of a larger intimation in Lewis’ delightful and provocative work. It was not Lewis’ intention to create simply an allegory of Christianity with The Chronicles of Narnia. Like his friend and colleague J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis had subtler ideas than a blunt-force allegory would be, if that were all it was. In the end, there is more to The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia than allegory. Sauron is not a one-for-one figure of Satan. And Aslan is not a one-for-one Christ figure—but rather, an imagined embodiment of Christ as Savior to another world. In short, Aslan is not Jesus, though he points to Him.

Lewis enjoyed this concept of the length and breadth of God’s creative and redemptive power and explored it with Perelandra; but somehow The Chronicles of Narnia came to be seen as a simple Christian allegory rather than a cosmic Christian thought experiment, where Christ would come in the flesh to other worlds as He did to our own. This idea is carried with particular force when, in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Aslan mentions how the children visiting Narnia would find him in their own world—but known by a different name.

Whether Aslan is a lion or a lioness is something somewhat up to the poetic imagination—and definitely up to God, should there actually be other worlds or planets for Him to offer salvation to in whatever form He sees fit. And it is not necessarily a blasphemy if a feminine aspect of God is courted in order to point to something true about God. There are limits, of course, to this concept on a human level. Cynthia Erivo playing Our Lord in Jesus Christ Superstar is not something that can be reasonably entertained or tolerated.

That said, there exists a collection of instances where God has, by revelation and tradition, been depicted in feminine terms. Christ compared Himself, or at least His Father, to a woman who loses a coin and sweeps the whole house to find it, creating a female version of the Good Shepherd. He also likened the Kingdom of Heaven to a woman who leavened three measures of flour with one measure of yeast. Then there is the ancient image of Christ as the mother pelican, feeding her brood with her own flesh. Or what to make of Wisdom as a woman in the Bible, which is clearly an image of the Holy Spirit? Or the nomenclature of Holy Mother Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ?

Though there is insightful and irrefutable theology about the masculinity of God as Father and Son, it is God alone who makes what is feminine feminine—and it is no accident that His most perfect creation was a woman. But though there may be a reason to entertain Aslan having a feminine feature (Aslan will still be a lion, it is to be presumed), no quarter should be given to those who miss the whole point, whether purposefully or pre-packagedly, in order to serve an erasing, whitewashing mentality that seeks to wipe away what has gone before because it hampers or denies what is going forward.

Making Aslan have a woman’s voice is far less objectionable, and even less traditional, than trying to make stories like The Chronicles of Narnia have no place in a Christian understanding of the world—or even worse, considering the Empire cover and Gerwig’s UU background, making God something unknowable, fluid, and relativist. Though Catholics hold that God is inscrutable, indescribable, unattainable, and a host of other things due to His perfection, He is not unknowable.

Greta Gerwig’s feminist, UU affinities are ready and riling to rewrite the story of creation according to a narrative of grievance and godlessness. In point of fact, Aslan can have a woman’s voice and maintain his directly symbolic godhood. But Greta Gerwig would strip him of that and only that—and if a woman’s voice helps, then so shall Aslan have Meryl Streep’s voice to throw the world into a confusion that might suppose that God is a woman, or God doesn’t matter, or God is everything (and therefore nothing), or the patriarchy is a dung pile—and that is the real, root-striking problem of having the Great Lion sporting a lioness’ voice.

In the end, Greta Gerwig may be like Shift the ape who, in The Last Battle, sought to control what Aslan was by controlling how he was seen and understood. But like that pathetic, manipulative ape, who only sought profit and power, Gerwig has no power to change who Aslan is—much less, Who God Is.