The Eric Metaxas Show - #211 - Joe Loconte

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

Meryl Streep is officially set to voice Aslan in Greta Gerwig’s upcoming adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, and Eric has some serious questions about what the choice says about Hollywood’s approach to Lewis.Eric and author, educator, and filmmaker Joe LaConte discuss Aslan’s role in the Narnia stories, C.S. Lewis’s understanding of Christianity, masculinity and femininity, and why they believe modern adaptations often impose contemporary ideas on older works rather than respecting the author’s original vision.They also explore the friendship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, how both men emerged from the darkness of World War I without surrendering to cynicism, the literary pact that helped produce some of the twentieth century’s greatest Christian fantasy, and Joe’s upcoming documentary projects on Lewis, Tolkien, and the Venetian Republic.⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:🪙 Grace Precious Metals: https://www.metaxasmetals.com/🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/0:00 Joe LaConte Joins2:16 Meryl Streep As Aslan4:33 Would C.S. Lewis Have Approved?7:03 Why Eric Says The Choice Is Provocative14:54 Hollywood And The Battle Over Storytelling18:13 What Lewis And Tolkien Understood About Heroism19:03 The Tolkien Line That Shaped Lewis22:55 How World War I Changed C.S. Lewis27:23 Why Lewis And Tolkien Started Writing Their Own Stories34:47 The Forgotten Republic Of Venice- - -LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ericmetaxas#EricMetaxas #TheEricMetaxasShow #News #PoliticsChapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.

Hey, the folks, welcome to the program. You can tell by my glasses that I'm probably on the West Coast. I'm dressed like a mogul, not like a literary guy from the East Coast, but like, you know, I'm making films now. I'm Dino DeLorentis Jr. or something like that. And I have as my guest today are our friend, my friend, Joe LaCante. But if you don't know Joe LaCante, he's an author of many tremendous books. He's been my guest on this program many times. He's an educator.

He's a filmmaker. And today we're going to talk about any number of things. Joe LaCantee, welcome back. Great. Be back, Eric. Thanks for having me. Well, listen, in case people aren't impressed enough with who's this Joe LaCante guy, let me give the ultimate credential.

This is the ultimate credential. Go ahead. Socrates's in the city. You know, my daughter's pretty much running it at this point. And I think she's planning for my death by finding other people who could interview besides me. Because, you know, Pop takes a fall. He's not what he used to be. So we found two spectacular people.

And you've got to be way better than me to qualify for this. And we got Mary Harrington, who's done a number of spectacular interviews for Socrates in the city. And now we got my gumba, my friend, the educational. filmmaker, author, genius, Joe LaCante. Seriously, Joe, congratulations on being what we call officially a Socrates contributor. We're just so looking forward to these interviews you're going to be doing with people. Well, thank you, Eric. It's a great pleasure and privilege.

I am looking forward tremendously to the interviewing process with a constellation of stars, yes? Well, you got to step in because pops in the hospital. All right? Pops in the hospital. I'm waiting in the wings over here. Yeah, all right. Enzo is going to deliver flowers. Enzo the baker for your father, your father.

All right, enough. Vinny was no neck. You're going to be fine. You're going to be fine. Enough with the godfather nonsense. So, Joe La Cante, you have done a lot of work on a lot of things, but I want to talk to you today. You and I really bonded initially over C.S. Lewis. And I want to talk to you.

Evidently, there's a new version coming out. of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Hollywood has tapped Greta Gerwig to be the director. And Greta Gerwig, I would not have chosen her as the director of the Narnia films for reasons that will become immediately obvious when we find out that she has chosen Meryl Streep, who identifies as a cisgender woman, to be the voice of Aslan, the Christ figure. So, Joe, what happened? I guess it shows us the depth of the problem, this symptom.

There's another symptom of this cultural, moral, spiritual crisis that we're facing. And if you think about it, it's not even wanting to respect the author, the author's intent. You can put all the other stuff aside, cultural war issues aside. It's just, why not actually try to respect the author and what the author produced so that deliberate disrespect is put. Carter, will I find so maddening about this? Well, it's interesting you say that because there's a number of levels to discuss here, right? It's kind of like with the Christopher Nolan version of The Odyssey. There's levels, right?

I mean, the first level for me is what I would agree with you is just pure disrespect. You know, to say that Helen is, you know, blacker than Wesley Snipes and so is Clytemnestra. and then one of the Homeric heroes on the battlefield is Ellen Page, who is a woman. You're already up front, in a sense, challenging traditionalists and viewers, people who just say, look, I just want, you know, I want Shakespeare, give me Shakespeare. Don't give me some, like, fancy version of Shakespeare. Homer, give me Homer. But this is a more dramatic example of that, isn't it?

Because Lewis wrote about the very very... issues that come up when when when in other words this is not as as though we're dealing with just some artist we're dealing with a guy who wrote essays on the very subject of why men are men and women are women and we shouldn't have women as priests and that kind of thing yes yes it's like we are now in a place where our various cultural elites will will use and abuse these great works from the past whether it's classical literature whether it's somewhat more modern 20th century literature, use these great works, these great themes, which they know have an appeal, and impose upon them their own postmodern sensibilities. That's a strange place to be as a culture.

So this is a frontal assault, no question about it, on some of the core tenets of the Christian faith. You know, Eric, you and I, both old enough to remember back in the 80s that flap over the, I hate to use this expression, but it's what they called it, Piss Christ. It was the putting a crucifix in a jar of urine, the so-called artist, Mr. Serrano. I mean, this kind of frontal assault on the Christian faith. It does need to be challenged. We can talk about perhaps how I'd like to challenge it

as you and I go along this conversation. I'd like to throw a jar of art in the artist's face, but here's the thing. Here's the thing. You and I also remember, I think this might have been the 90s that somebody created a portrait of Mary using elephant dung. Okay. Now, let's be clear, folks, that a lot of artists, including people that I would consider friends, people who are serious about their Christian faith, I think twist themselves around to try to defend this stuff in a tortured way. But I think you have to see things with simple common sense.

It is designed to be provocative. That's number one. It is not, oh, I didn't realize. No, no, they realize precisely what they're doing. When Andre Serrano immerses a crucifix in a jar of urine, he's doing it principally to be shocking and provocative. This is not somebody who is a talented artist on the level of Picasso who could do, you know, photorealistic, genius paintings,

but chooses to do cubism. No, this is somebody who does not have that talent. His talent is, how can I be shocking and provocative? So you almost wonder, you know, why they think of themselves as artists or it really underscores what's happened to the art world. So this isn't anything quite like that. But it seems to me the same thing that Greta Gerwig and whoever is producing this film is in a very calculated way. And I would say a cynical way, trying to be provocative. and, you know, just the fact that we're talking about it right now.

Now, I would say this to me is so offensive that people must not see the film. But I think most people would disagree with me on that. But I feel that. That it's kind of like that's strike three. Aslan, as a woman, I'm sorry, that's strike three. Yeah. And to add what you just said, it goes even deeper, doesn't it, Eric, in that what we're seeing across so many sectors of society is this fundamental rebellious.

against the moral order that God has created for us, for our good, for our blessing. So the idea of authority, of maleness and femalness as God-given things, a station in life to which you are asked to submit, a moral order that you are asked summoned to submit to, this is so offensive to so many people that they're going to do whatever they can now to rebel, to push back, and all kinds of art forms, music, etc. So this is simply, I see you've made another symptom of that fundamental rebellion against the natural order that God has created for our good, right? Well, as usual, you've homed in beautifully on the issue.

This is an attack. I would go further and say, it's an attack on. God because God is the author of this order, this natural order. Yes. And to attack him, you have to attack the natural order. So attack the very idea of male and female. I've noticed this a lot, Joe, as well. When, I mean, typically you see it put forward by taking every male figure and making it

a female figure or something like that. But another way it's subverted, typically, I guess, in the traditional order, the natural order, you have the man, the man, you know, Jesus is. is the man, he's crucified, he sacrifices himself, he's the hero. And then in tradition for forever, we have seen the mother and child, the mother and child, the mother and child. Women are traditionally portrayed in this way, nurturing the mother with the child. There was something sacred about the mother, the Madonna, and the child.

Really beautiful, again, part of God's natural order. And you'll notice how that has gone out of the cultural vocabulary. The mother and child, it used to be everywhere. It used to be iconic. Yes. We no longer see the mother and child as though women have, as though whoever decides these things has tried to push women out of the category of motherhood, as though motherhood is demeaning.

Yes. No, I think you're absolutely right. And think about the impact it's having on young people. And this is what concerns me, especially as an educator, or someone who taught there at the King's College in New York City for a decade interacting with young people. The sort of confusion that it soes, we are so awash in lies and propaganda. And for young people who aren't grounded now, it absolutely is contributing, I think, to the sense of confusion, psychological trauma, stress, anxiety. there is a connection between medicated young people and the, I would say, amoral messages,

absolutely confused and nihilistic messages that they are bombarded with on a daily basis, right? Well, that's, again, you're hitting the nail on the head. It is fundamentally confusing. I mean, it's even more confusing to younger kids who, you know, they're, they're, I think almost of a, of an infant who, you know, at three months or whatever is trying to focus, trying to come into the world and what are colors and shapes and whatever. And as the human develops,

you know, at some point you realize that this is mommy, that's daddy. Daddy is strong and tall. Mommy is nurturing and soft and surrounds me. And daddy, you know, these are the most basic things as we're created in God's image and as we develop.

All that stuff is being challenged. So to talk to a little kid, about, hey, what gender do you pick is profoundly confusing. I mean, I see it as a kind of violence, actually. I hate when people use the word violence metaphorically, but in this case, it's very similar. It does a violence to the development of the child. And so here, you just have Hollywood piling it on with the woke nonsense, again,

by making Aslan using a woman's voice. Now, I don't know, maybe for all we know, you know, Merrill Street is taking up smoking. Maybe it's a gravelly woman's, but we don't know. But it's just a very strange choice. She's not going to have a Greta Garbo voice. And this is going to be a sort of gender neutral, a gender neutral aslo.

Set in a kind of 1970s psychedelic mode. I mean, it's just so bizarre. You couldn't have really just imagined this kind of story happening, even just 10, 15 years ago. But here we are culturally. So it's like, it's almost, as if they broke through a dam. The moral norms were violated

and then the water is just gushing faster and faster and faster. And it's not clear how you put on the brakes. And again, well, it's interesting. One of the traditional things, too, is this idea of the man as the sacrificial hero, right?

When you watch a movie, I just watched the movie pressure about World War II. Those are boys dying on the beaches. Those are boys dying on the beaches. There's no women dying on the beach. There's no women dying on the beaches. Those are boys going into German machine gun fire.

Those are boys. Those are young men sacrificing themselves. They're the ones that die. Women suffer in childbirth. So this is not to say one group suffers more than the other, but these are traditional ways we've perceived men and women. And the travails in life of men and women are usually quite different. But again, you see this blurring of the line here because Christ as the sacrificial figure, as this heroic figure, to say that, well, maybe it could be Meryl Streep, you know, a 74-year-old, however old she is, woman could be there. It deliberately confuses those fundamental norms or boundaries, I should say.

And I guess the thing, too, is the scripture is pretty clear that women, God wants women. to be tough and strong and resilient and courageous. And they'll express those qualities in different ways than men will. But the Bible is filled with women who are absolutely admirable and tough and courageous, more courageous than I tend to be. I can tell you that. So by not appreciating that fact, it just further, just further confuses the whole story. You know that lie from G.K. Chesterton, if you go against the grain of the universe,

you're going to get splinters. And we are so going against the moral grain of the universe now, and we're seeing the damage right before our eyes in one generation after another of our young people. But Hollywood is just, they are all in on this, all in. So we need to push back. I'm working on a film project as we speak, a Tolkien Lewis film project trying to get this thing off the ground,

a documentary about these two remarkable men, authors, Christian friends, and how they face the greatest cataclysm of the 20th century, World War II, how they did that in friendship and use their Christian imagination to push back. That's a film that needs to be made. We're hunting around right now for our supporters, but that's another discussion for another day. I want to see the Christian community invest in films like that and to do more than simply critique. We've got to push back with an alternative vision for the... the human story, don't we, Eric? When we look at the headlines coming out of Iran and Israel right now,

the fog of war is real. It's hard to know whom to trust. That same feeling of confusion often hits home when you're trying to navigate Medicare. There are so many bad actors in this space looking to capitalize on confusion rather than provide clarity. That's exactly why I am proud to partner with Chapter. Chapter acts as a trusted advocate, helping you cut through the noise to understand your Medicare options. Unlike most agents who only show you a few plans, Chapter looks at every plan nationwide. They're completely unbiased and focus on what's best for you, not the insurance companies. If you're turning 65 or just have questions about your current coverage, give them a call at 571-421-1253. That's 571-421-1253. It's free, it's quick, and it's the kind of honest guidance we need more of today.

They call chapter and get the peace of mind you need. Well, you know, and not only that, but we're the only ones that have a true, beautiful version of things. This other version is confusing. It's enervated. I keep talking, because I keep talking everywhere about my book on the American Revolution, I keep saying that, listen, the true story of the American Revolution,

it's an amazing story. The good guys win against all odds. And the job of the viewer or the real. reader is to celebrate and to go along for the journey, like if you're watching a Rocky movie, right? Yeah. But when I watched the PBS version, Ken Burns, you know, did his 12-hour documentary series on the American Revolution.

It's like what we're talking about is enervated. It doesn't feel free to celebrate in the traditional way. It has to tell the other side of the story in a way that muddies the whole thing. And you walk out thinking, so was America coming into the, uh, into, to the world. Was that a good thing? You don't know that it is. And I keep saying it's like watching, if they get a remake of Rocky, instead of doing a remake of the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, if they did a remake of Rocky and you kind of walked out of the theater, like, I don't know who the good guy was. It was kind of, you know, they both had their stories. And you think, well,

you've completely gutted the story of Rocky, you know. I mean, at this point, they probably would make Rocky, I don't know, a humpbacked female boxer or something like that. Or I, I don't really, or a wrestler. But what happens is it muddies the narrative, the heroic narrative. And we need the heroic. And this is why you and I love Lewis and Tolkien. Boy, did they understand that. But they understood it at the very time that it was already going away.

So, in this here we are talking about it, you know, in 2026. But you know and I know that in the 1930s and 40s, these two great men, we're already pushing against this narrative by creating their own heroic narratives, traditional heroic narratives. That's exactly right. And let me supplement that with this. Lewis and Tolkien, reflecting, I think, the scriptures, there is a realism that they bring to their stories. These are heroic stories, but there's a moral realism. The characters are flawed. They're not cut and dry. They're not black and white characters. There's good and there's radical evil. But the good has to struggle, right? The good isn't perfect good. The good is flawed.

So there's a moral realism to their stories. You know, there's a line that Lewis wrote in a letter to Tolkien. And he said, my entire philosophy of history hangs upon a single sentence of your own. Wow. What sentence do you want to know? I'm sorry, I'm running out of time. No, I'll tell you what it is. Oh, come on.

It's from the Lord of the Rings. And I've got it in my head pretty close. He says, according to the Lord of the Rings, This is Gandalf speaking to Frodo about the struggle for Middle Earth. There was sorrow then too and gathering dark, but great deeds of valor that are not holy vain. Great deeds of valor that are not holy vain, right? These two men, just like the scriptures before triumphalism, right? On the one hand, and they avoid cynicism.

There's a middle ground, a Christian middle ground, recognition of her law. You have to repeat that what a beautiful sentence, even if you didn't get every word exact. That's pretty close. But please repeat that. That's a beautiful. So this is a line from Tolkien that Lewis said it meant everything to him. So say it again. His entire philosophy of history was summarized in this line.

There was sorrow then too and gathering dark, but great deeds of valor that were not holy vain. That's pretty close. It's not exact, but it's pretty close. And that is what's thinking about. That were not holy. We're not holy vain. Holy in vain? No, that were not holy vain.

Not somehow useless. Not holy vain. Not useless. They meant something. They brought about a good. Yes, there was struggle. Yes, there was failure. But boy, this did not lead to nothing.

This was about something that really mattered. There was real heroism. But think of the equation there, right? In other words, this is to me, you know, why Lewis would key into it and why Tolkien would write it. But so sorrow and gathering dusk, so there's darkness, there's evil in the world, but great deeds of valor that were not wholly in vain. In other words, many great deeds of valor on some level are in vain. But the very idea that someone. is doing them is not in vain and then some of them are not in vain in other words we're in a struggle

we're in a war it's not easy to win uh even when you win i keep saying this constantly with the american revolution if you said to washington in 17706 hey you're going to win he would say okay and meanwhile men have to suffer and die and bleed and suffer and die that's this that's a reality but it's worth the struggle. We have to struggle. And anyway, that's so beautiful and so important. Yes. I'm so...

No, I'm sorry, Eric. I'm so glad you responded to that quote the way that I did when I first read it. I was stunned. You know, in my work on Lewis and Tolkien, I encountered that letter. And that his entire philosophy of history, he said, hinged on that sentence from the Lord of the Rings.

It helped to explain his own approach to thinking about our civilization, Western civilization, worth defending with all of its problems, not in vain. That's a moral realism that I think, especially when young people are exposed to that, it helps to inoculate them from cynicism. And look how cynical so much of our culture has become because they've lost sight of these truths, right? Well, and actually, to bring it back to Lewis and Tolkien, you talk about them in World War II. But, I mean, you've, you've, you've, you've, You've written about this and thought about it infinitely more than I have. But the idea that both of them experienced the horror of the first war, the horror of the trenches.

If anybody had been teed up for cynicism and nihilism, it would be they. That's right. And yet somehow they dug deeper than, you know, many of the shallow poets and artists of that era went deeper than simply. complaining about, oh, you know, we, yeah, we were led to war, whatever. They went deeper than that. They didn't get stuck in cynicism. So that's to me why they're great, because they were tempted to cynicism and nihilism, tempted to say, oh, yes, it is in vain. It's all a sham. It's all nothing. That's right. They were tempted to that, but they came out the other side and created what I would argue is the greatest art of the century, which is an extraordinary statement. Yes, no, and I think

the faith perspective is crucial on this, and you don't have to be a Jesus believer to see this at the end of the day. What is Lewis writing when he's in the trenches in the First World War when he's an atheist? He's writing incredibly cynical poetry. Let us curse our master, ere we die, the good is dead. Let us curse God most high. That's Louis. in 1919, but he has a great change in his life. I cannot believe I've never heard that, that line. Wow. I mean, we know, I said he was tempted in that direction. That's made obvious by what you just quoted, that he was not a believer.

That's right. He saw the horror of it all. And we have, I mean, you know, I feel like the 20th century is a record of people who got stuck there. And of course, there are many at the end of the 19th, middle and the end of the 19th century who got stuck there, who cursed God, and who came, you know, to a very dark calculation. Yes. But Lewis somehow moves past that.

Obviously, Tolkien has passed that. And they give us this heroic literature. So that's why, you know, in the hands of Hollywood and the Greta Gerwig, to take Aslan, who's the ultimate example of this, heroic sacrifice. Yes. And to say, oh, it could have been a woman. And it's like, well, you're missing a few things here. Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure they will not even get the basic story right at the end of the day.

They'll misconstrue what the story is even about, right? So we've got a huge challenge on our hands. I think part of the way that Lewis and Tolkien were able to come out of that very dark time and not become disillusion, yes, there's the faith perspective. That's crucial. But the other thing, too, Eric, is their education. These guys were grounded in that classical medieval Christian literature, philosophy, and that gave them a kind of moral bedrock as they're now evaluating the world that they're living in. So Beowulf is probably Tolkien's most favorite piece of literature, the story of this great ancient hero, right, going up against Grendel's mother of the dragon, right?

Heroism, heroic sacrifice for a noble cause. And for Lewis, his favorite work, I think, from antiquity is Virgil's Aeneid. So we have these stories that are really realistic about the problem of evil, the temptations, the personal moral failures. But heroism is still a, it's a true and valuable and noble thing. It's not for nothing. And they hung on to that, I think, in the teeth of the 1920s and 30s when they're just awash in cynicism and gloom. I mean, there's no doubt about it, which, I don't know if I mentioned earlier, but it makes them all the more heroic because they are, you know, each of them single-handedly going against everything, going against the tsunami of what would become the woke nonsense we're living in today. But it was the same thing.

This was the beginning of that deconstruction of the deep narrative of West. civilization. Yeah. So I think you could argue that partly what explains what's happening now with this travesty of a Narnia film being produced by Hollywood, you could argue that a lot of these creative types, they've become disillusioned with Christianity, with faith, with religion, and substitutes. You want to substitute religion. However you want to define that, it's nihilistic, It's self-absorbed. It's deeply materialistic. It's transgender.

It's a substitute religion, in part, I think, because many of these guys would just become disillusioned with Christianity. And maybe it haven't ever experienced authentic Christianity, the authentic gospel. So that's a problem. Disillusionment opens the door to all kinds of radical ideologies, just as we show in the 1920s. Fascism, communism, socialism, Freudianism, substitute. religions, right, Eric? Absolutely. And it just occurred to me on top of that, they're ashamed of the Christian narrative. In other words, well, because they have taken in usually a somewhat false version of it or a caricatured version of it. They're ashamed of it. But you have noticed,

and I have noticed, that they can't invent a new reality. So they have to twist reality. They have to subvert. So instead of coming up with a new epic story or a new fairy tale, a new narnia, they take Lewis's narnia and they subvert it and they twist it to their own ends. It's what Christopher Nolan did with Homer's great epic. Although it's, I think probably it will be worse than that. It'll be more of a travesty than that if we're starting with this. I mean, it's interesting because to lead with the idea that Aslon is going to be voiced by a woman, it's really to telegraph your punch, basically, to say this is where we're coming from, get ready for a rainbow-colored fantasy.

And it's a stunning lack of creativity for supposedly the creative types, you know, in Hollywood and elsewhere. Where's the creativity in that? It's just propaganda. And propaganda is never interesting and entertaining, almost. never let's put it that way right so we're going to get this propaganda this vision go ahead go i know i'd love to know the backstory and maybe we'll get it in the months ahead of how it is that hollywood makes these decisions because uh the line the witch in the wardrobe that came out i don't know

is it 15 years ago now or or yeah something uh it's it's a while ago it was really wonderful uh it was really quite wonderful it was made by waldon media uh which was back by phil an who's a Christian who wanted to make these kinds of things. So you kind of have to wonder how this came about, how they got the rights to do this. That's to me scandalous right there. How do they get the rights to do this? But then who made that calculation at?

Well, we got nothing else. Everybody's heard of the Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Most people are aware of it. So let's make that. You know, there's a lot of this remaking going on in Hollywood. They don't seem to have the creativity to come up with anything new. So there's a lot of this going on. But just to get the backstory of why they felt they wanted to make it in the first place

if they're only going to subvert it. Yeah, there's some kind of ideological agenda, which is clearly at work because they know there's a large audience, Christian conservative audience, that would love to see a film, a Narnia film that's faithful to the story. That movie would make plenty of money. I mean, they know that, but they're doing this instead. That tells me they're driven by an ideology, and that's worth reflecting on. So we need to push back respectfully with a right spirit, with a Christian spirit,

and offer the alternative Christian vision, the Christian story in film, in literature, etc., which you and I are both engaged in in our own ways, right? Well, that's exactly right. And, you know, to go back to this idea that Lewis was himself fighting against this in his day, So it is ultimately or more fundamentally disrespectful to him than anything because he wrote, even in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, even in the Narnia Chronicles, he is being explicit about gender roles. Men are men, women are women. That's even in Narnia. It's not just in essays that he wrote, but it's right baked into the story of Narnia.

and it would be very important to him. This is not, you know, a side issue. This is not, oh, well, you know, you could, you know, there's times when you can quibble. This is not quibbling. This goes to the very heart of his vision. So again, you have to wonder how this came about. What rooms in Hollywood? What were they talking about?

Who's making this decision? Yeah. And let me just emphasize your point. It's a good one. Really important. Lewis and Tolkien both, they are deletive. deliberately pushing back against these destructive ideologies that are showing themselves in the 1930s. In 1936, Lewis and Tolkien had this, I think, now famous conversation, where Lewis turns to Tolkien.

And they're very upset with the modernist literature and all the gloom and doom and cynicism. Lewis turns to Tolkien. His nickname for Tolkien was Tollers. And he says, well, Towers, if they're not going to write the kinds of stories we want to read, we'll have to write some ourselves. And they make a literary pact. Lewis will write a space travel story. Tokum will write a time travel story.

Token never finishes the time travel story, but he publishes The Hobbit, starts working on the Lord of the Rings. Lewis writes the first of the space trilogy out of the silent planet, deliberately pushing back against the ideologies of their aids. I think you're right. Lewis would be appalled at this movie adaptation, appalled. Yeah, you just, you really, you really have to wonder if the people who control the Lewis estate, you know, I hope they got

a lot of money to sell the heart and soul of Lewis's artistic vision to people who would do a thing like this. I really wonder what it is that's going on there. But it's fascinating. Joe, unless you have any further thoughts on that, we can talk about other things as well in the remaining few minutes. Sure. I'm ready to go anyway. Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, first of all, how can people find you to help fund what you're doing on Lewis and Tolkien or to know of your work? What's the best place people can find you? Go to my website, www. josephlocanti.com.

Locanti, L-O-C-O-C-O-N-T-E, Josephlocanti.com. And you'll see the film projects that I'm up to over there. And this is one of them now. And thank you for that invitation, Eric. It would not take a lot of money to make a great feature-length document. about Lewis, token, and war, the Second World War. We could do it for probably $1.2 million. We priced it out, and we're ready to go.

You priced it out. Well, okay, so are you working on anything just in the minutes we have left having to do with the Venetian Republic? Can we talk about the Venetian Republic? Yes, let's start that. We can pick it up in another setting. I just came back from sunny Italy, from Venice with my film team, and we're going to have out next year a one hour, one hour, one out, one hour.

and a half hour feature-length documentary about the Venetian Republic and its amazing achievements that we need to recall. I'll name the three of them. First of all, it's a republic. So there's a measure of political freedom, government by consent, right? Longest Republic in history. Second, intellectual freedom. It's the center of publishing in the 1500s in the Middle Ages, intellectual freedom. And third, economic freedom. I mean, this is a maritime republic. So free market capitalism is the engine driving this thing. So it's no accident that Venice alongside Florence are leading the Renaissance, this great explosion of artistic intellectual achievement. So we'll tell that story. Laconte running around in a gondola over there in Venice. What could go wrong?

Plenty, actually. So I have to ask you, we've talked about this a little bit on this program some months ago. But what are the roots? You know, because when I, you know, wrote about the revolution, I'm looking at the Reformation and the Puritans that everything comes out of there. Yeah. But of course, we have a foretaste. We have four tastes of these things in previous eras. And this is a singular example of that. Where do the Venetians get these ideas? From where do they get their ideas about liberty, we would call it liberty of various kinds? That's a terrific question. We'll unpack it in the film, but one of the sources, believe it or not, is ancient

Rome when it was a republic because the mythology, part true, part fact of the Benetians, these are Romans who are fleeing the barbarian invasions, and they wind up in this lagoon, and they do kind of almost the impossible. They build homes on top of stilts in this marshy lagoon. there's a sense of independence. They were never conquered. And a great sense of freedom and independence. They reinvent themselves as a people. And once they do that, that's key. They're not going to let anybody rob them of their political or economic freedom. They're very determined to hang on to it. So there's an example of Rome. And then also we have to say quickly, it's associated with the evangelist

Mark. You'll see in Venice, all over Venice, this symbol of the lion holding a book. The lion is a symbol of Mark the evangelist, power, strength, courage. The book he's holding is the scripture. It's Mark's gospel. So the city always identified with the evangelist Mark and the gospel's story at some level, the sense of, hey, we're on a divine mission here to maintain our independence, our creativity, et cetera. That's a piece of the answer. I'm always fascinated with the idea that, you know, if God created the universe and reality, there's no escaping him. And there's There's only, you can discover truth in various ways. Sometimes it's explicit, but other times it's just, you know, if I'm reading Homer,

Homer is not a Christian world, but to the extent that it reflects reality and truth, which are unchanging, it is Christian or it's pointing to the Bible, even though it's existing apart from the Bible, because the world of reality was created by the God who gives us the Bible. So it's fascinating to me when you see these, you know, kind of echoes of truth in a world where maybe they weren't explicit about it. They wouldn't have spoken maybe in the same way that the founders, the men of the revolution, John Adams, and all of them would have spoken about inalienable rights. But they're still coming from a point of view that somehow we know freedom is better than slavery. We know it's just, it's just fascinating to me how you get these echoes throughout history,

but then for reasons unknown to us, they culminate in these, in these moments, the founding of this country. And at other times, it becomes more explicit. But I'm, I'm fascinated with the Venetian. So what was there? How long did their republic last? It lasted about a thousand years. And then really it comes to a crashing end in the 18th century with Napoleon.

But I love the point you just made. Eric, about, it's a generous approach to the Christian faith, that there can be aspects of the truth, pieces of the truth, pointers to the truth in all kinds of cultures at all times of history. The light I love from J.R. Tolkien when he's describing other myths, ancient myths that point to the great myth that became fact, Christianity. The phrase he uses is splintered fragments of the true light. splintered fragments of the true light. I think that's a good, healthy, biblical way to approach, you know, just our modern life. There are all kinds of signposts to God, to the gospel, to truth.

And as Christians, it seems to me part of our task is to identify those and lead people to discover them as well, right? Well, because I've been rereading Homer, I keep noticing it. I keep thinking, my goodness, in something that was written many centuries BC, and that didn't have any direct connection to the Israelites in Israel. You have people talking about what is noble and what is ignoble. I mean, maybe not using the word ignoble, but what is noble, what is right? And to be generous, to be kind, to be known for that. I mean, Odysseus is known for that.

And it's why they say he's kingly, noble. And it's interesting that, you know, if you're human being, whether you like it or not, or whether you acknowledge it or not, or whether you're explicitly, consciously aware of it or not, you're created in the image of God. Yes. And that's going to be reflected. It's simply inescapable. And so we see this in some ancient literature.

And I'm just fascinated with that idea because some people, of course, we have to say, would say, aha, these ideas are not Christian ideas. We see it in all these other cases. And I would say, well, that doesn't really, that doesn't solve the issue. The truth is truth. Yes. I mean, just think about Dante's great epic work, you know, the divine comedy. Who is the guide taking him to the underworld?

It's Virgil, Virgil, who gave us the Aeneid and other great works, the splintered fragments of the true light. They can take us up to a point, but at the end of the day, grace is required. So, but we can, as a scripture says, God speaking to the Jews in Egypt. You can plunder the Egyptians. Plunder the Egyptians, sure, but don't set up idols. That's interesting.

Acquire what's possible. Acquire what you can. Yeah. And then there are some people would say, Virgil, come on. Virgil was never baptized, therefore he's in hell. Very simple. Socrates, never baptized. He's in hell.

Homer, you know, it's kind of funny. It's that simplistic, I would say, hidebound theological view of things that misses it. And it's important that we talk about that sometimes, that people, people, we want to be generous. We don't want to be foolish. We don't want to be ecumenical to the point that we say, well, there is no truth and who's to say, of course, there's a truth.

But I think that when we're talking about some of these things, we, it takes, I guess the word is discernment, to just have discernment to try to, you know, parse what is good. true and beautiful, and how far that goes, and where does it come from? Absolutely. Discernment is a great word to use here. And think about it for our Christian friends who love the works of Lewis and Tolkien. It's good to emphasize they could not have produced those works had they not had the perspective that you just described. A generosity of spirit and discernment drawing from the ancient world, the medieval world,

as raw material for the worlds they're going to create. take all that away. There is no Chronicles in Arnia. Take away the classical medieval world, and there is no Lord of the Rings. Well, as usual, I've found this very enjoyable and edifying. Joe LaCante, people can find you at Joseph LaConte, L-O-C-O-N-T-E, Josephlaconte.com. Joe, I look forward to seeing more of you in person, not in person, however I get to see you. Thanks for coming on this program.

Congratulations on being I can raise to the level of being a Socrates contributor so that, you know what? Should I die? No one will notice. They can be who? Eric, who? Oh, yeah, I think he used to do Socrates once upon a time,

but now we got these other folks. Seriously, I'm just so excited to have you aboard. People will see your interviews with various illustrious figures at Socrates in the city. Thank you so much, my friend. Thank you, my friend. Great to be part of the team. team. Look forward to more conversations.

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