I can’t speak to whatever C looks like today, but when I first learned it, absolutely positively C was a kind of portable dialect of assembly for an idealized CPU architecture.

For example, the (in)famous equivalence between 10[p] and p[10] point to C being a kind of translator rather than an entirely new way to think about programs.

Interesting question. After some consideration, I think it depends on whether we are using an optimizing compiler(!) or not.