Why C.S. Lewis Says We Should Watch TV Differently
What does C.S. Lewis say about art and criticism? Part 4
In An Experiment in Criticism, C.S. Lewis argues that we must give ourselves to the artist and their art. “We sit down before the picture in order to have something done to us, not that we may do things with it,” he writes. “The first demand any work of any art makes upon is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.” He frequently repeats this advice in the book. “The necessary condition to all good reading is to ‘get ourselves out of the way.’”
Yet, this is not how most of us engage with art like books, movies, or TV shows. We want to use them to make our points, either by praising the artist's choices or, more likely in our current context, criticizing the creators and everything about their work.
Since this is most common, Lewis may need to convince us to do something so contrary to the norm. Why should we give creators the benefit of the doubt and engage with their work on their terms? Why “get ourselves out of the way”?
After outlining all the wrong ways people read literature and pointing out the consequences of engaging from a skeptical starting point, Lewis sums up the reason for his preferred method. “The nearest I have yet got to an answer is that we seek an enlargement of our being,” he writes. “We want to be more than ourselves.”
We are limited
Instead of starting from a place of skepticism, Lewis encourages us to begin from a place of humility. “‘What is the good of reading what anyone writes?’ is very like the question ‘What is the good of listening to what anyone says?’” he writes. “Unless you contain in yourself sources that can supply all the information, entertainment, advice, rebuke and merriment you want, the answer is obvious.”
If you’ve read Lewis, you’ve read warnings about pride. In Mere Christianity, he calls it the chief sin and compares it to cancer. The demons in The Screwtape Letters constantly try to lead their humans to embrace arrogance. Pride weaves its way through Narnia, the Ransom Trilogy, and Till We Have Faces. As Lewis says, pride is the complete anti-God state of mind, and he spilled gallons of ink warning us about it.
If that is the case, why would we believe entertainment is exempt? We are prone to pride and how we read a book or watch a TV show is not immune. Engaging a show under the assumption that you can learn nothing from the artist or their work reveals how much pride has impacted your perspective.
Because we are not God, you and I are limited. We read what others write. We listen to what others say. We watch what others produce. Because we are not self-sufficient.
Culturally, we are limited, which is why Lewis advocated for reading old books. None of us can fully escape the blindness common across our age, he says, unless we engage with thoughts outside of our context.
“The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My eyes are not enough for me, I will see through the eyes of others.” — C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism
“The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only be reading old books,” Lewis writes in his introduction to Athanasius’ On the Incarnation. “People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes.”
Modern works may not provide all the corrective we need. Old books will always have that added value. But works from someone else can still give us insight and vision we would not have had otherwise.
For Lewis, humility demands we go beyond ourselves. “The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison,” he writes in An Experiment in Criticism. “My eyes are not enough for me, I will see through the eyes of others.” Not because those eyes are perfect, but because they are different from our own.
Others are also limited but in different ways
Again, we can take what Lewis says about old books and apply them in a limited way to the art of anyone besides ourselves. “Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible,” he writes, “but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.”
It’s not that we cease to be ourselves or that we cede our thinking to the culture around us, quite the opposite. We go against the pull of pride that dominates our culture by acknowledge our own limitations and the need for others.
In An Experiment in Criticism, Lewis says that “in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself.” We aren’t looking to extinguish the unique way God made us and is remaking us in His image. This is not about being undone but about how the vision of others can help us grow. “Literary experiences heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality,” he writes.
Think about what makes a great show or movie. Often, those that resonate with us the most are the ones in which we can get lost. We feel a deep connection with the characters and their world because a deep desire is being met, even if we don’t realize it. “We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own,” Lewis says.
Having gained the additional perspective doesn’t mean we should assume it is entirely true anymore than we should assume our own perspective is entirely true. We can enjoy the vantage point without agreeing completely with the tour guide. “We delight to enter into other men’s beliefs,” Lewis writes, “even though we think them untrue.”
From Lewis’ perspective, we aren’t going to a book or a TV show for agreement or even for solely for entertainment. We are going for perspective, to give us a new way of seeing in hopes that it will allow us to grow. The idea of growth is part of why Lewis wrote and why he chose specific forms of writing.
“[I]n reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself.” — C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism
In “On Three Ways of Writing for Children,” he rebuffs the charge that fairy tales makes young readers dull to the real world. It’s the opposite, Lewis says. “He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all the real woods a little enchanted.”1
Walking in the enchanted woods of someone else’s mind helps us expand our own mind, helps us grow. We only grow when we go beyond our limitations. Adopting, even for a brief time, the eyes of another lifts us past the confines of our perspective, while maintaining our identity.
This is why we should engage with art the way Lewis suggests because, paradoxically, we get the most out of it when we receive, not use the work. In this way, art mirrors our relationship with God.
In Mere Christianity, Lewis says that we must give up our self and surrender our identity to Christ, but in doing so, we will find a real self, our true, unique self. “Sameness is to be found most among the most ‘natural’ men, not among those who surrender to Christ,” he writes. “How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints.”
As we receive works of art and surrender ourselves, even for fleeting moments, we grow. Not because the artist is better than us. Not because the artist is more right than us or even “right” at all. No, we grow because the artist is different from us. “Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself,” Lewis says, “and am never more myself than when I do.”
Next week, to conclude the series, we’ll take about applying this on a practical level. What does it look like to watch a show and engage with it in the way Lewis describes?
Previous articles:
Not Safe But Good
C.S. Lewis quote of the week
How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshiping an imaginary God.
The Lamp Post
Additional recent articles from me
Americans Are OK With IVF, but Divided Over Embryo Destruction — Lifeway Research
More Behind The Wardrobe Door
Recent pieces published here:
From the archives:
Interestingly enough, this is what Greta Gerwig says is her goal for her Narnia adaptations. She alludes to this essay and says that she wants to enchant the world.