Narnia's Aslan as a Female?
“Apparently an offer has been made to Meryl Streep to portray Aslan, as in the Christ figure in the Narnia stories, in an upcoming Chronicles of Narnia movie” - Gavin Ortlund
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Disney's remake of the "Snow White" story isn't going very well. Audiences do indeed care when beloved stories are remade in the modern image, so if you want to write a different story, do so, but give it its own name.
But that gives away a lot of what's going on; movie-makers and others know that a "woke" story isn't going to resonate with most fans, and so they're attaching the old name to the new story. We just need to be wise to them. A light-hearted way of phrasing things, IMO, is that too many new college graduates with a B average in English think they are better writers than Shakespeare, Twain, and so on. Hopefully dismal ticket sales will help to disabuse them of this.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
When I first heard this, I thought it was a joke. I still half-hope it is, or at least a publicity stunt.
As an English teacher, I go one further, Bert: most of these are new college grads who don't actually believe in talent at all. Not as an measurable category, at least. They believe in power and prejudice.
"Talent" therefore isn't about nature or nurture (hard work/good tutelage), it's about who society says or picks to be "talented"--which conveys who is currently favored or holds power.
There's almost a kind of nominalism to it.
So for many, in my experience, they believe that Shakespeare, Twain, and so on, eclipsed more talented or equally talented female and minority writers, due to being "white" and "male." Now it's "the subaltern's turn..." or something to that effect.
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