Posted by
VeeJay on Wednesday, January 10, 2007 3:06:39 AM
THOUGHTS ON CHARLOTTE’S WEB
By Father O’ Bother
Don’t tell the archbishop but I have a wife and children. In fact, last weekend my wife and I took our eldest daughter to see the new movie version of the E.B. White classic ‘Charlotte’s Web’. The film was roughly what one would expect from a Hollywood remake. The gentle Fern of the original was now a ‘strong’ young lady who bossed her Milquetoast father around like she was commanding one of the hired hands on her private ranch. He allowed her to do so of course. Meanwhile, two new characters were heavy handedly introduced into the story, one an understanding secular psychologist, played by Beau Bridges, and the other a hapless clergyman, played by who knows who. As one might expect, the latter was a bumbling, ineffectual little man with a half eaten pastry all over his face who could only stutter when asked a question about miracles. He was countered by Bridges’ character who, when the answer was not forthcoming from the good reverend, charmingly assured us all that ‘miracles happen every day’. (Just for the record, a miracle, by definition is a sign or a wonder and must, therefore, be quite out of the ordinary. If something happens ‘every day’ it could not, by definition, be a miracle. But that’s just millenniums of theologians speaking and who are they to stand against the popular culture of a vacuous age?)
At any rate, had I any high hopes for the average Hollywood fare, I might have been disappointed. As it is the story ‘Charlotte’s Web’ is a bit of a quandary for me anyway. On one hand, it’s the kind of tale that grabs a child’s attention while gently giving him or her an initial glimpse of the stark reality of death (Charlotte calls it ‘languishing’). Death is something the whole of humanity has in common, after all, a troubling eventuality with which all of us must ultimately come to grips. On the other hand, the story simply ends there, as though death were all there were to life itself Oh sure, there is a nod of the head to the grand hope of progeny but if one is dead and supposedly unknowing how is that a comfort? And if one is dead but still cognizant why would such an earthly comfort be needed? Would the activities of our children on earth really be more interesting than the afterlife in heaven? And if our kids on earth really were more interesting than the afterlife, what might that say about the evident mediocrity of heaven?). E.B. White’s tale is all right but I prefer a better, more ancient classic tale by the greatest Author of all time. It’s a tale of death defeated, a tale of resurrection and eternal life; one so wonderful in itself but made all the more astonishing in that it is all absolutely true. The imaginary Charlotte died and left nothing but imaginary spider babies. Jesus died and rose again, leaving a trail of life that even today rises up to forever; a trail that is continuously entered by a narrow but wide open gate. Its too bad Hollywood’s clergyman didn’t know about that; worse yet that those who remade the film did not evidently care.