King o' da Who?
Jul. 7th, 2004 07:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caraigSo, for by birfday, thought I would go and see a movie. Just to buck the Spider Man trend, I went to see Kinf Arthur. Read on for the Rant du Cinema. And yes, there are some spoilers.
Most people are most familiar with one of two images of King Arthur. They either know him as Nigel Terry's plate armor-clad, longsword-wielding, jousting chivalric (and horribly anachronistic) Briton of the lavish epic Excalibur. Or they know him through Graham Chapmain's only slightly mroe historical and much more hysterical portrayal on Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Despite the latter, the former -- and thus the Arthur that is in most everyones' imagination -- owes much of it's imagry to Le Morte d'Arthur, the chivalric romance epic by Thomas Mallory. Now, Le Morte wasn't written contemporary to the historic Arthur. It was written some thousand years later, during a time when chivalry and knightly virtue, and the European ubiquity of Christianity, was espoused. It was very common, especially in the latter Middle Ages, for authors and artists to portray their historical subjects in modern attire and weapons. Thus, many saints of hundreds of years past are depicted wear late Middle Ages clothing, and Thomas Mallory wrote the knights of King Arthur as having plate armor, engaging in jousts and courtly love, and upholding the ideals (such as they were) of Christian chivalry. And, of course, Arthur himself is at their forefront.
Le Morte d'Arthur, and by extension Excalibur, is neither the first time that Arthur has been 'reimagined' or 'reinvented' to match current or the author's values. Marion Zimmer Bradley is famous for The Mists of Avalon, which is a feminist/neopagan retelling of the Arthur myth through the eyes of Morgan le Fay. Arthur in that story is caught between two worlds: the growing Christianity of England and the Old Faith of the Celts. Morgan is a priestess of the Old Faith, and Guinevere is a (possibly Frankish?) princess.
Not long after the Mists of Avalon miniseries, there was one called Merlin which was somewhat less well-done, but was notable for thecostumes being quite accurate, and the presentation of Arthur wearing Roman armor (if not being Roman himself) fighting Anglo-Celtic barbarians for control of the land.
The latest Hollywood interpretation also has it's own take on the myth. It only goes as far as the marriage of Arthur to Gwynhyvar (she's a Celtic/Pictish warrioress in this one) and a lot of the tension in the Arthur/Guin/Lancelot triangle is glossed over. All right, it's completely ignored. There's no magic whatsoever that's so present in Le Morte and just about every other retelling. No Lady of the Lake lobbing Excalibur at future kings, it's importance is that it was a sword (long, but vaguely reminiscent of a Roman gladius with a Celtic hilt) forged from Briton iron in Britain. There's a tip of the hat to the sword-in-the-stone tale, but outside of that... it bears very little resemblance to the story we're all familiar with. This, I think, is going to make the critics kill the movie, but on the other hand I can see what the people making it were shooting for: they were aiming to tell a... sort of, historically accurate version, with enough Hollywood eye candy and cliches to make it undeniably modern Hollywood. And a big part of this was the emphasis on 'personal freedom.'
In the movie, Arthur was (ostensibly) a follower of Pelagius's teachings, who was apparently in Rome at this time preaching that all men are free to make their own way and need not bend knee to others. His rallying cry to his knights at the Battle of Baden Hill was that this was a fight for freedom, for now and for all time.
Very nice, and typically Hollywood. Typical in everything including inconsistences. I think the Catholic Encylclopedia has a slightly more accurate telling of what Pelagius was talking about. Pelagianism was one of those heresies that focussed on what to most people was a very minor bit of minutia in Christian dogma but which exploded into volumes of letters, councils of scores of bishops, and threats of excommunication being flung about He wasn't preaching freedom per se, or maybe Arturius was being a bit free with Pelagius' teachings. Pelagius taught a number of things that the Church disagreed with: he denied original sin, that the human race neither dies by the sin of adam, nor is saved by the resurrection of Jesus, and that resemption comes from not only divine grace but also internal grace. Very, very heretical stuff, and Pelagius has been callled a 'heresiarch' because of it. But he wasn't exactly a proponent of total freedom for everyone.
Moroever, for all his talk about freedom, I didn't see Arthur turning down the title of 'King,' or telling all the people kneeling to him to not do that.
So what does all this rambling mean? Well, only that we shouldn't dismiss this movie out of hand.
Every retelling of the Arthur story will, inevitably, have artistic license applied to it and reflect the culture it arose from. Thomas Mallory did it, MZB did it, and Jerry Bruckheimer has done it. Short of cursing all these people for muddling the Arthur myth, I think that something just as important can come of knowing and studying these reinterpretations. They are a mirror, in essence. How we view the myth of King Arthur tells us much of our culture and our values. To Thomas Mallory, the myth became a story espousing knightly chivalric ideals that the people of his time valued. MZB wanted to show the myth in the light of a woman's view, especially with the rising of the neopagan faiths, in opposition to -- perhaps rebellion against -- the perceived monolith of Christian dominance over thought and culture in the West. And this movie... well, what can we say of it?
The central, overriding theme is freedom, though freedom from what is never explicitly said. Freedom from the Saxons? Freedom from Rome? Freedom from hypocrisy? Freedom to choose? This is an important point and I think the makers of the film made an unwitting commentary on Western civilization. We want freedom, we're willing to fight for it and in many cases die for it. But freedom from what, freedom to do what? Ask ten people and you'll probably get thirteen answers. The United States was founded, we are told, on the principles of freedom. We can surely not believe that Arthur, who was made sovereign king of England well before there was the Magna Carta, espoused the same sort of freedom the founding fathers proclaimed. Yet in the movie Arthur speaks repeatedly of 'freedom.' The very nebulous nature of what this freedom is that Arthur talks about reflects our own confusion -- confusion shared by the makers of the film -- as to just what it is we mean when we say 'Freedom.'
Far from showing merely the confusion of our culture, however, it also underlines values that we as a culture also hold. Gwynhyvar is the picture of the Hollywood 'warrior princess,' in that she can hold her own in battle, is smart, witty, and capable... but also has a softer side and inevitably plays second fiddle to the male lead. Gwynhyvar, for her apparent skill, is unable to defeat the Saxon chieftain's son and it takes Lancelot to take out that one, and Arthur himself to defeat the Saxon chief. In the end it is Arthur who draws Excalibur, and the former woad-clad Gwynhyvar who, now clad in a white dress and veil, meekly puts her hand on his upraised one. This is strongly typical of major Hollywood films that only a few movies have done otherwise and succeeded financially. (There is some interesting byplay in the supporting cast, however, when Bors comments that he now needs to marry the mother of his children, and she comes back with, "Who says I want you?" While Gwynhyvar might be now the de-clawed and domesticated one, at least one small bit of the Britons remains undomesticated, if even only as a tip of the hat.)
The movie is also strongly secular, where Thomas Mallory's work was unabashedly Christian and MZB depicted the struggle between the Christian Church and the Old Faith of the Celts. Arthur is Christian, while his knights are Samacian (Dalmatian?) pagans. Arthur and his knights respect each others' faiths, even while Rome, in the unlikable person of the Bishop Germanicus, do not share that tolerance. This is very much representative of the Church's state at the dawn of Christianity following Constantine's conversion, but before the Church had become as integral as it did in later European affairs. However, very little is made of the faiths of the characters, outside of a handful of scenes and the obligatory "Why, God, why?" eulogy. It does, however, represent the current secularization of Western civilization, and in the lack of any sort of wondrous events or supernatural phenomenon, it also puts into harsh perspective the lack of focus in spiritual (not even neccesarilly religious) matters that Western civilization takes, though this can be debated considering the strong pseudo-religious leanings of many in the US government.
For myself, I found it interesting that both Lancelot and Galahad are killed at Baden Hill, considering the importance that Mallory's Lancelot would have in the triangle with Arthur and Guinevere. Morover, Galahad, the pure knight and the utter epitome of Christian virtue, who was the sole person fit in Mallory's tale to even touch the Grail, would be starkly missing from the future adventures of the knights culminating in the death of Arthur. Why would they be written out of the story so completely? In the film version, there is no need for them, apparently. The tragic triangle between Lancelot, Gwynhyvar, and Arthur, so core to the heart of Mallory's epic, is not even a minor subplot, consisting solely of a few furtive glances between Lancelot and Gwynhyvar. It was not as important as the overarching theme of 'Freedom.' And Galahad... his importance lay solely with the Grail portion of the myth. Again, though, with Galahad as a Samatian pagan, his "worthiness" to take up the Holy Grail (as Mallory and others describe it) would surely be inappropriate! With the secularization of the movie, moreover, the Grail has no place, even and especially if it were "reinvented" from earlier Celtic pagan roots.
I would hasten to say that the movie becomes a reflection of our culture as Hollywood sees it, not as how it actually is, and many communities will invariably have different values not reflected in this retelling of the myth. The makers of the film were quite unwitting in what they were saying between the lines, so to speak. Nevertheless, in how we view the different permutations of the Arthur myth throughout history, we are given a chance to see them as reflections of their authors' views of their culture, as values and mores are mapped onto and change the actions, feelings, and thoughts of the characters. In the end, the Arthur myth can have many facets, depending on how they are viewed, and so long as we remember earlier iterations of the story, and compare them to what comes after and what may yet come, we are given a chance to see how what we value changes throughout time, and morover how stringently, or nebulously, we hold those values.
Not exactly my finest work, I'm afraid, and it's a bit rambling and probably takes too many liberties. Nevertheless, please feel free to discus, criticise, tear apart, and otherwise comment. ^^
Most people are most familiar with one of two images of King Arthur. They either know him as Nigel Terry's plate armor-clad, longsword-wielding, jousting chivalric (and horribly anachronistic) Briton of the lavish epic Excalibur. Or they know him through Graham Chapmain's only slightly mroe historical and much more hysterical portrayal on Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Despite the latter, the former -- and thus the Arthur that is in most everyones' imagination -- owes much of it's imagry to Le Morte d'Arthur, the chivalric romance epic by Thomas Mallory. Now, Le Morte wasn't written contemporary to the historic Arthur. It was written some thousand years later, during a time when chivalry and knightly virtue, and the European ubiquity of Christianity, was espoused. It was very common, especially in the latter Middle Ages, for authors and artists to portray their historical subjects in modern attire and weapons. Thus, many saints of hundreds of years past are depicted wear late Middle Ages clothing, and Thomas Mallory wrote the knights of King Arthur as having plate armor, engaging in jousts and courtly love, and upholding the ideals (such as they were) of Christian chivalry. And, of course, Arthur himself is at their forefront.
Le Morte d'Arthur, and by extension Excalibur, is neither the first time that Arthur has been 'reimagined' or 'reinvented' to match current or the author's values. Marion Zimmer Bradley is famous for The Mists of Avalon, which is a feminist/neopagan retelling of the Arthur myth through the eyes of Morgan le Fay. Arthur in that story is caught between two worlds: the growing Christianity of England and the Old Faith of the Celts. Morgan is a priestess of the Old Faith, and Guinevere is a (possibly Frankish?) princess.
Not long after the Mists of Avalon miniseries, there was one called Merlin which was somewhat less well-done, but was notable for thecostumes being quite accurate, and the presentation of Arthur wearing Roman armor (if not being Roman himself) fighting Anglo-Celtic barbarians for control of the land.
The latest Hollywood interpretation also has it's own take on the myth. It only goes as far as the marriage of Arthur to Gwynhyvar (she's a Celtic/Pictish warrioress in this one) and a lot of the tension in the Arthur/Guin/Lancelot triangle is glossed over. All right, it's completely ignored. There's no magic whatsoever that's so present in Le Morte and just about every other retelling. No Lady of the Lake lobbing Excalibur at future kings, it's importance is that it was a sword (long, but vaguely reminiscent of a Roman gladius with a Celtic hilt) forged from Briton iron in Britain. There's a tip of the hat to the sword-in-the-stone tale, but outside of that... it bears very little resemblance to the story we're all familiar with. This, I think, is going to make the critics kill the movie, but on the other hand I can see what the people making it were shooting for: they were aiming to tell a... sort of, historically accurate version, with enough Hollywood eye candy and cliches to make it undeniably modern Hollywood. And a big part of this was the emphasis on 'personal freedom.'
In the movie, Arthur was (ostensibly) a follower of Pelagius's teachings, who was apparently in Rome at this time preaching that all men are free to make their own way and need not bend knee to others. His rallying cry to his knights at the Battle of Baden Hill was that this was a fight for freedom, for now and for all time.
Very nice, and typically Hollywood. Typical in everything including inconsistences. I think the Catholic Encylclopedia has a slightly more accurate telling of what Pelagius was talking about. Pelagianism was one of those heresies that focussed on what to most people was a very minor bit of minutia in Christian dogma but which exploded into volumes of letters, councils of scores of bishops, and threats of excommunication being flung about He wasn't preaching freedom per se, or maybe Arturius was being a bit free with Pelagius' teachings. Pelagius taught a number of things that the Church disagreed with: he denied original sin, that the human race neither dies by the sin of adam, nor is saved by the resurrection of Jesus, and that resemption comes from not only divine grace but also internal grace. Very, very heretical stuff, and Pelagius has been callled a 'heresiarch' because of it. But he wasn't exactly a proponent of total freedom for everyone.
Moroever, for all his talk about freedom, I didn't see Arthur turning down the title of 'King,' or telling all the people kneeling to him to not do that.
So what does all this rambling mean? Well, only that we shouldn't dismiss this movie out of hand.
Every retelling of the Arthur story will, inevitably, have artistic license applied to it and reflect the culture it arose from. Thomas Mallory did it, MZB did it, and Jerry Bruckheimer has done it. Short of cursing all these people for muddling the Arthur myth, I think that something just as important can come of knowing and studying these reinterpretations. They are a mirror, in essence. How we view the myth of King Arthur tells us much of our culture and our values. To Thomas Mallory, the myth became a story espousing knightly chivalric ideals that the people of his time valued. MZB wanted to show the myth in the light of a woman's view, especially with the rising of the neopagan faiths, in opposition to -- perhaps rebellion against -- the perceived monolith of Christian dominance over thought and culture in the West. And this movie... well, what can we say of it?
The central, overriding theme is freedom, though freedom from what is never explicitly said. Freedom from the Saxons? Freedom from Rome? Freedom from hypocrisy? Freedom to choose? This is an important point and I think the makers of the film made an unwitting commentary on Western civilization. We want freedom, we're willing to fight for it and in many cases die for it. But freedom from what, freedom to do what? Ask ten people and you'll probably get thirteen answers. The United States was founded, we are told, on the principles of freedom. We can surely not believe that Arthur, who was made sovereign king of England well before there was the Magna Carta, espoused the same sort of freedom the founding fathers proclaimed. Yet in the movie Arthur speaks repeatedly of 'freedom.' The very nebulous nature of what this freedom is that Arthur talks about reflects our own confusion -- confusion shared by the makers of the film -- as to just what it is we mean when we say 'Freedom.'
Far from showing merely the confusion of our culture, however, it also underlines values that we as a culture also hold. Gwynhyvar is the picture of the Hollywood 'warrior princess,' in that she can hold her own in battle, is smart, witty, and capable... but also has a softer side and inevitably plays second fiddle to the male lead. Gwynhyvar, for her apparent skill, is unable to defeat the Saxon chieftain's son and it takes Lancelot to take out that one, and Arthur himself to defeat the Saxon chief. In the end it is Arthur who draws Excalibur, and the former woad-clad Gwynhyvar who, now clad in a white dress and veil, meekly puts her hand on his upraised one. This is strongly typical of major Hollywood films that only a few movies have done otherwise and succeeded financially. (There is some interesting byplay in the supporting cast, however, when Bors comments that he now needs to marry the mother of his children, and she comes back with, "Who says I want you?" While Gwynhyvar might be now the de-clawed and domesticated one, at least one small bit of the Britons remains undomesticated, if even only as a tip of the hat.)
The movie is also strongly secular, where Thomas Mallory's work was unabashedly Christian and MZB depicted the struggle between the Christian Church and the Old Faith of the Celts. Arthur is Christian, while his knights are Samacian (Dalmatian?) pagans. Arthur and his knights respect each others' faiths, even while Rome, in the unlikable person of the Bishop Germanicus, do not share that tolerance. This is very much representative of the Church's state at the dawn of Christianity following Constantine's conversion, but before the Church had become as integral as it did in later European affairs. However, very little is made of the faiths of the characters, outside of a handful of scenes and the obligatory "Why, God, why?" eulogy. It does, however, represent the current secularization of Western civilization, and in the lack of any sort of wondrous events or supernatural phenomenon, it also puts into harsh perspective the lack of focus in spiritual (not even neccesarilly religious) matters that Western civilization takes, though this can be debated considering the strong pseudo-religious leanings of many in the US government.
For myself, I found it interesting that both Lancelot and Galahad are killed at Baden Hill, considering the importance that Mallory's Lancelot would have in the triangle with Arthur and Guinevere. Morover, Galahad, the pure knight and the utter epitome of Christian virtue, who was the sole person fit in Mallory's tale to even touch the Grail, would be starkly missing from the future adventures of the knights culminating in the death of Arthur. Why would they be written out of the story so completely? In the film version, there is no need for them, apparently. The tragic triangle between Lancelot, Gwynhyvar, and Arthur, so core to the heart of Mallory's epic, is not even a minor subplot, consisting solely of a few furtive glances between Lancelot and Gwynhyvar. It was not as important as the overarching theme of 'Freedom.' And Galahad... his importance lay solely with the Grail portion of the myth. Again, though, with Galahad as a Samatian pagan, his "worthiness" to take up the Holy Grail (as Mallory and others describe it) would surely be inappropriate! With the secularization of the movie, moreover, the Grail has no place, even and especially if it were "reinvented" from earlier Celtic pagan roots.
I would hasten to say that the movie becomes a reflection of our culture as Hollywood sees it, not as how it actually is, and many communities will invariably have different values not reflected in this retelling of the myth. The makers of the film were quite unwitting in what they were saying between the lines, so to speak. Nevertheless, in how we view the different permutations of the Arthur myth throughout history, we are given a chance to see them as reflections of their authors' views of their culture, as values and mores are mapped onto and change the actions, feelings, and thoughts of the characters. In the end, the Arthur myth can have many facets, depending on how they are viewed, and so long as we remember earlier iterations of the story, and compare them to what comes after and what may yet come, we are given a chance to see how what we value changes throughout time, and morover how stringently, or nebulously, we hold those values.
Not exactly my finest work, I'm afraid, and it's a bit rambling and probably takes too many liberties. Nevertheless, please feel free to discus, criticise, tear apart, and otherwise comment. ^^
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 04:46 pm (UTC)Yupyup....
Date: 2004-07-07 05:22 pm (UTC)This movie had about as much impact as a Nerf bat.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 05:00 pm (UTC)Scott
P.S. happy Birthday (and check same note in my journal. New info has come up)
Well...
Date: 2004-07-07 05:32 pm (UTC)And thank you! Yes, I read the information. I'm sending it off forthwith to them. Thanks! By the way, what's a good address to contact you through e-mail?
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 06:29 pm (UTC)That bugs me.
I haven't seen it yet, so I can't really comment further.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 06:35 am (UTC)