"They sang as they slew..."

Some grumblings at Amy Wellborn's blog:

"The many children in the cinema actually burst out laughing when the older sister finally shot an arrow and killed the dwarf about to axe her injured brother. Why did they laugh?"

And ditto with Rock Wren:

"The most troubling scene for me was near the end when Susan, in some nod to feminism outside the text of the book, took up her bow and killed the Witch's drawf as it tried to crush Edmund (or Peter, I forget which). The children in the theater, mine included, laughed as the drawf fell over dead with an arrow in his chest. He was a mean and unlikeable character, but it bothered me that kids laughed at the death and that Susan appeared to have no remorse or tears or pain at having to take a life, even if it was a just killing."

Very anti-Lewisian, no? Ad fontes, citoyens!

"War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest pacifist, though I think he is entirely mistaken. What I cannot understand is this sort of semi-pacifism you get nowadays which gives people the idea that though you have to fight, you ought to do it with a long face and as if you were ashamed of it. It is that feeling that robs lots of magnificent young Christians in the [Armed] Services of something they have a right to, something which is the natural accompaniment of courage – a kind of gaiety and wholeheartedness."

- CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book Three ("Christian Behaviour: The Three Parts of Morality")