Aslan Must Be Male. This Is Why

 Aslan Must Be Male. This Is Why 

Netflix's adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia is reportedly gender swapping the title character who is a picture of Jesus Christ 

I can’t believe I’m having to do a post about this but here we are. 

Hello lovelies and welcome to Fable Rose! 

Over the weekend I saw an article that had my jaw drop to the floor. Aslan, the great Lion, the King of Narnia, the son of the Emperor over the Sea, Aslan who C.S. Lewis himself says is a picture of Jesus Christ is reportedly going to be gender swapped into a woman. (I pray this ends up being a joke). 

The way I feel so angry about this is just…wow. Like I have no words. Well, actually, I have a lot of words which is why this post is being made. 

Aslan must be a male. 

From a story perspective, being a male is integral to his story. From a Christian perspective, who Aslan and who and what he represents, it is vital that he is male. Aslan at the core of who he is cannot under any circumstances be a woman and the story work. As a Christian woman who grew up with these stories, I can attest to this fact. Here is why. 

Aslan’s Mane 

First, a silly but important point as to why Aslan must be male and not female. Aslan’s mane. Aslan is the King. When you think of a king lion, you are most likely imagining a male lion with a majestic mane of gold, yellow, white or brown hair fluffy dramatic and dancing proudly in the wind. Only male lions have this feature. Female lions do not have long luscious manes like their male counterparts. 

Aslan’s mane plays a very important part in the books. He is this great lion, feared by the enemy. When Aslan takes the place of Edmund, he is bound, jeered at, mocked, kicked, hit, muzzled and stripped—his hair shaved off from his body. Without his mane he looked smaller. That made the creatures of the White Witch cheer and mock him and feel like they really did have victory over this great lion. It was his humiliation. All the while Aslan took it without complaint. He was brave and patient. 

In the 2005 movie (which will always be a favorite and iconic) the White Witch takes it a step further. She takes Aslan’s mane and turns it into a coat that she wears into battle. In this act she shows she has defeated the great lion (though it was not a permanent death) and all his followers see it. This was her cruel victory. This is not canon to the books but it is powerful storytelling. 

The King 

Throughout the books, Aslan is called the King. To my knowledge, only men are called kings. If Aslan is gender swapped into a woman then does that mean she is now the Queen? 

Being a king is important to Aslan’s role. It is important because of who he is. 

Jesus and Aslan 

The most important reason as to why Aslan must be a man is because of who he represents. It is because of who he is. 

Lewis once said of Aslan that:

“If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however, he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, ‘What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?’ This is not allegory at all.” 

Basically what Lewis is saying is that Aslan is the real life “Christ” in Narnia. A picture of who Jesus is but in this magical world. Aslan himself agrees with this in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. 

“But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” 

Jesus is his name in our world. The true king and savior. The great lion of Judah (even Aslan being a lion is very symbolic of who Jesus is in the Bible). 

Aslan is a picture of Jesus. A way for us—even as children reading these books—to get to know Jesus in a new way that we can know Him better in our real lives. 

The Sacrifice 

Then we come to arguably the most important part. The crucial scene that shows us the sacrifice Jesus made for us. 

Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is us. He looked after his own gain. He traded his siblings’ lives for mere sweets (how have we done such things? Traded away our family, time, energy, focus onto nonsense things that don’t really matter?). He was a traitor and deserved death (all of us are sinners and deserve death). Edmund is human. He is us.

Aslan is beautiful, fierce and good. Aslan is the great lion. The king. The son of the Emperor over the sea. Jesus is our king. The lion of Judah. The son of God. 

Aslan took the place of Edmund. He was mocked, beaten, humiliated. He was killed. Aslan rose again and fought against the evil one. 

Jesus took our place—taking on our sin and paying the price that we should have paid like Edmund. Jesus was mocked, beaten, humiliated. He was killed. He rose again and defeated death. O death where is your sting? 

Aslan is a picture of Jesus. 

What does this imply? 

By having the creators so blatantly change who Aslan is—and by consequence, who he represents—this implies one of three things in my opinion.

One, the creators of this movie series are oblivious and are following the way of Disney and countless other movie companies that gender and race swap for politics and woke ideology rather than creating a quality story. That's possible. 

Two, they have never read the books and are making up their own stories using the names from the books. This is unlikely. 

Three, this is intentional and the writers and creatives do not like or appreciate the faith of Christianity and want to burn it out of The Chronicles of Narnia. Seeing how well known this series is as a Christian story—even articles I read even from non conservative or Christian sources all wrote how The Chronicles of Narnia is Christian—it feels intentional to take out the story of Christ from the series. 

I am curious, why is this allowed? Why when something is Christian do people have to take that away? If any other religion made a story that was a picture of their faith, do you think they would be okay with that story being turned into a movie and taking out ALL references to their faith? Isn’t that disrespectful and discriminatory? If someone made a story that was a picture of Buddha and gender swapped him into a woman, would that be alright? 

Why is it that we can take a character like Snow White, who in the animated Disney film, had Christian values, was kind hearted, pure, and prayed and “girl-boss” her into something she isn’t? Well…2025 remake is rated a 1.6 on IMDb and lost millions in making this movie. Yes, the politics and controversy really made this story flop, but from the start I feel like this was destined to fail with them taking out the heart of faith in this film. It didn’t work. Like countless other stories this has happened too.

I hope this can be a lesson to stop making movies like this. Stop making every woman a girl boss who doesn’t want love and wants to be a rebellious socialist leader. There are so many different kinds of women with different wants and desires and I wish movie companies wouldn’t box us all into one thing. Let women have different wants and desires. Let people want to find love. Let us have strong male characters again. Let us have Christian themes in movies and shows that are built on Christian values like The Chronicles of Narnia. 

While it seems that Netflix and Greta Gerwig are set on gender swapping Aslan and taking away the Christian themes and values, I hope there is still time for them to change. I hope they uphold the values of this beloved book. I hope they can see that Christians and even non Christians don’t think this is right what they are doing. It has actually been pretty cool to see some non christian articles and accounts talk about this in favor of keeping Aslan male. 

C.S. Lewis was a Christian and this was a huge part of his storytelling. The countless readers of faith know this to be true. This is very important to Christians and our culture. Having Aslan be gender swapped is wrong. 

I hope they change course and keep Alan male and don’t disrespect the books, culture and faith this story represents. 

 

Thank You For Reading   

Thank you for being here and for being a part of my life! I hope you are all having a wonderful rest of your day! I’ll see you in the next one!

Yours Truly, Moriyah