I came across this video and wanted to offer a few comments…
3:23 Which Christians of the medieval era thought that Islam worshipped three deities? John of Damascus and Thomas Aquinas seemed to have a pretty accurate assessment.
3:52 The evil of Calormen culture doesn’t stem from jealousy of white skin. Were that the case, we would expect to see an otherwise better society
4:37 How does the fandom disrespect Aravis? I really don’t like how you seem to call something racist just because it doesn’t match racial sensitivities of the world half a century later.
I also saw this amazing comment:
I’m afraid that while you mean well in this video, there is something major that you need to acknowledge…
….understand that I am coming at this as a black South African-born Brit living in manchester, England, a city I have proudly called home since I was 6 years old back in 2008….
…You have to understand that even if the [Calormen] were supposed to be representative of Arab stereotypes they are not Arab. In canon they are descendants of King Frank of Narnia, who was a white Englishman… they are not Arab standins, they are descended from Narnian humans, [specifically] King Frank as they do not have Telmarine blood in them…
… you look at this from an American bias, where you treat racial issues of the Narnia universe the same as you would U.S. racial issues…
…if we were to use an American POV and we were to critique an author telling about the story of a slave girl named Lolita who escapes a slave plantation in Tennessee, and all she has known for the first 12 years of her life from white people is abhorrent abuse, what else is she going to think of them? Should we condemn the author of the story because the white guys are the villains?
Scorbunny, YouTube Comment
