by Stanley Anderson » January 9th, 2006, 9:56 pm
(I was going to start a separate thread with a subject line of Smell the Glove which is the name of a record album by the rock parody group Spinal Tap, but I decided my message really belonged in this thread, so here is it -- but I still wanted to make of note of my intended subject line:-)
I've recently heard clips from the Narnia movie on the radio, and one of them was the scene where the children first meet Mr. Beaver. Peter has extended his hand and is trying to attract the animal when it suddenly says something like "Well, I ain't gonna smell it if that's what you want".
This was a laugh-out-loud line when I saw it in the theatre, but as I noted on another thread, funny as it was, it seemed somehow out of place in what I consider Lewis' tone in the book, even though Lewis has some equally funny lines of his own for the characters in the books. Somehow this line from the movie seemed more "coarse" than Lewis would have written or something -- I couldn't quite put my finger on it exactly.
After hearing the clip again on the radio, I began thinking about it some more (in connection with some of my other thoughts on the movie that I've expresesd in this forum). First, it certainly has a "resonance" with another scene in the movie where Lucy first meets Tumnus and extends her hand in greeting to shake his, and Tumnus has no idea what to do with it. Again, that is a pleasantly humourous little scene, but has more of the innoncence or whatever it is of Lewis' tone in the books. So that connection between Lucy's and Peter's "beckoning" hands is an aesthetic plus I think.
But the other somewhat distastful aspect of the Peter/Beaver scene is what I was thinking about here. And I think it has to do with the way Lewis normally portrays talking animals in Narnia. Lewis gives the animals human speech and characteristics, but not so much "in place of" their animal characteristics as "in addition to". Thus, in The Last Battle we see the dogs being all excited and slobbery the way dogs are, even though they are talking dogs. When Mr. Beaver makes his sarcastic remark to Peter, the writers are, to my mind, "replacing" an animal "sniffing nature" with sarcasm rather than simply adding sarcasm into Mr. Beaver's character. Now I don't know if beavers are especially prone to sniffing hands the way we associate that activity with dogs sniffing an outstretched hand, but we clearly see it as an "animal" characteristic, and this is what Peter is appealing to when he stretches his hand out. And it is what Peter (and the audience) are shocked (and/or amused) by when the beaver doesn't exhibit this characteristic.
To be sure, Mr. Beaver's reaction is very funny and unexpected, and I laughed heartily at it. But I wonder if it goes somewhat against the spirit of how Lewis would have represented talking animals in Narnia?
--Stanley
…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
