In addition to being angry that TV shows aren’t right-wing enough, the Media Research Center is also upset about the idea of women performing in traditionally male acting roles. Alex Christy huffed in an April 4 post:
Sometimes there are early April stories so absurd that you hope they are just April Fool’s pranks, but unfortunately the idea that Netflix might decide to go with a female Aslan in their upcoming adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia appears to be very real.
The rumor had been percolating on the internet for a few days, but Deadline confirmed the news on Thursday, “Oscar winner Meryl Streep is in talks to play Aslan the Great Lion in Greta Gerwig and Netflix’s Narnia movie, we have confirmed with sources.”
Andreas Wiseman goes on to report, “We understand that they’re not quite at the offer stage yet, however.”
Weisman observed, “In the novels, Aslan is a talking lion who serves as Narnia’s guardian and a guide for the human children. Generally portrayed as a male, Aslan was created as an allegory for Jesus by author C.S. Lewis.”
[…]Aslan is not a symbolic representation of Jesus; he is Jesus, and Jesus is the Son of God. He literally lived as a male. Turning Aslan into a female isn’t like rebooting Ghostbusters or the Ocean’s series; it is fundamentally changing not just Lewis’s work but the Christian religion. It would be like turning Lucy Pevensie, one of children’s literature’s greatest female characters and someone who was possibly modeled after a real 15th century saint and has similarities to Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus, into a boy.
There is no reason for Gerwig and Netflix to turn Aslan into a female.
[…]If Netflix chooses to turn Aslan into a female, it will have missed the entire point of the book and the series. The good news is there is still time for them to stop this plan before it wrecks the whole series.
Christy was similarly put out about another woman playing a Jesus role in a June 6 post:
The questionable sincerity of CBS’s Stephen Colbert’s devout Catholicism was on display for the second straight night as The Late Show host welcomed actress Cynthia Erivo to hype her upcoming role as Jesus, telling her that her casting as the “first woman to play Jesus in a major production, long overdue.”
Colbert began, “One of my favorite musicals of all time is Jesus Christ Superstar. I love that—and I’m so excited that in August you’re going to be playing Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar. At the Hollywood Bowl.
Apparently, the Hollywood Bowl saw all the criticism Netflix got for rumors it is considering casting Meryl Streep as Aslan, C.S. Lewis’s lion supposal Jesus character, in its Chronicles of Narnia adaptation, and decided to take it one step further.
As for Colbert and Erivo, the former added, “First woman to play Jesus in a major production, long overdue, I’ve said for years I’d love to see a woman in that part” before asking, “What does that mean to you?”
[…]Gender-swapping characters in reboots or adaptations is highly controversial, and it is hard to talk about with identity politics, but whatever one thinks of the concept generally, everyone, especially CBS hosts who like to use their Catholicism to make political points, should be able to recognize that the Son of God is not Ghostbusters or Ocean’s 8.
You will not be surprised to learn that the MRC’s resident right-wing movie critic, Christian Toto, absolutely hated that all-female “Ghostbusters,” and he also despised the recent “Indiana Jones” movie because it set up a woman to take over the franchise. So it seems that it’s not just about Jesus roles being sacrosanct — the MRC hates any woman taking over any role that has been previously male.