The following is my article on Ava DuVernay's A Wrinkle in Time
that I wrote for my church newsletter.
The irony is almost too much. Upon its initial release in 1962, Madeleine L'Engle's young adult sci-fi epic
A Wrinkle in Time was roundly attacked and condemned by conservative groups for a panoply of preposterous reasons. Some claimed that it promoted witchcraft by featuring three female-passing immortal characters with seemingly supernatural powers to teleport and shapeshift. Some objected to the text’s referring to Jesus as a historical figure who, alongside other luminaries like Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, helped push back the forces of darkness in human history. And some even argued that the book somehow made young readers challenge their religious beliefs. The result was the book’s being banned from schools and libraries throughout the country. In one of the more flatly preposterous examples of censorship gone amok I’ve ever encountered as a film writer and cultural scholar, in the 1990s
A Wrinkle in Time was banned and publicly challenged more times than Bret Easton Ellis’
American Psycho, a book which describes in hideously graphic detail the exploits of a sexually perverted serial killer. And now with the release of Disney’s new cinematic adaptation of the novel by Academy Award-nominated director Ava DuVernay, those same groups that picketed the novel in the 60s are indignantly protesting the film’s excision of its Christian influences. It seems the late Mrs. L’Engle cannot win.
I have no intentions of poking a stick into the proverbial anthill of public discourse surrounding DuVernay’s
A Wrinkle in Time, particularly seeing how it has already received its fair share of scrutiny on the part of critics and audiences. (At the time of writing, the film currently has a 42% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.) But the subject of the film’s depiction of faith or lack thereof bears examining. After all, for all her critics’ claims of religious subversion, L’Engle was a passionate, outspoken Christian. Serving for years as the official writer-in-residence at New York City's Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, L’Engle blended explicit Christian theology into science-fiction and fantasy stories geared towards younger audiences with a fervor and skill rivaled only by C. S. Lewis.
Consider
A Wrinkle in Time itself. The book follows the four Murray children and their friend Calvin O’Keefe as they are spirited away on an intergalactic adventure to rescue their scientist father from the clutches of IT—a bodiless telepathic brain from the planet Camazotz that seeks to dominate the universe through fascistic conformity. IT is an avatar for The Black Thing—the literal embodiment of all the universe’s evil that wages an endless war against the forces of good and light. Helping the children are Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Witch, three mysterious beings with great powers posing as bag-ladies who are revealed to be servants of the light. They inspire the children to defeat the darkness, not through violence and fighting, but through pure, self-sacrificing love. The references to Christianity are direct and deliberate. The three Mrs.’s can be read as angels, saints, or even aspects of the Holy Trinity—one of them even directly quotes 1 John. One of the planets visited by the children is named after the Archangel Uriel while the planets controlled by IT and The Black Thing are named after real life pagan gods like Ixchel, the Mayan jaguar goddess of medicine. And Jesus is indeed mentioned as one of the light’s greatest champions against the darkness.
But the movie removes all the Christian theology and replaces with with mealy-mouthed New Age humanism. All quotations of scripture and references to Jesus are removed (yet curiously Buddha still gets mentioned in passing). The Mrs.’s have much of their dignity and gravity as emissaries from a benevolent, all-loving creator replaced with manic quirkiness that draws easy laughs from the audience. The essential thrust of the film is one of personal empowerment for confused young people, particularly Meg (Storm Reid), an emotionally conflicted thirteen-year-old paralyzed by low self-esteem and social awkwardness. The oldest Mrs.—Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey)—gives her a rousing speech about believing in herself and finding the light within. This is, of course, a fine and noble sentiment for young people, particularly those from disenfranchised minority backgrounds. But it saps the film of its rigor, draining all of the poetic lifeblood of its original allegory. What’s left is a moral that has been echoed by countless kid’s movies and television shows.
I want to emphasize that I don’t believe this stripping of Christian influence was some sinister ploy on the part of Disney or the filmmakers to subversively secularize America. Certainly DuVernay shouldn’t be attacked—throughout her career she has proved herself a filmmaker of great insight, respect, and compassion on the subject of religion, most particularly in her 2014 biopic of Martin Luther King Jr.
Selma (2014). I think if anything, this was a decision made by higher ups to make the film more digestible for general audiences, particularly international ones in Asia where Christianity isn’t the majority religion. But doing so seems to have been a fatal mistake. Faith in the Christian God was essential to L’Engle and her work. Removing it leaves a scar that cannot be healed by any amount of CGI.
