June 8, 2010 at 11:36 A.M. "Errors" inserted overnight that were not found in earlier versions of this essay have now been corrected. Don't stop now, boys. New mafia arrests in New Jersey as various police chiefs and other officials have been asked to "retire." I expect additional cyberwarfare at these blogs, every day. I can never be sure of writing at my computer, but if blocked at my home computer I will move to public computers in order to continue writing. ("How Censorship Works in America" and "What is it like to be censored in America?")
June 7, 2010 at 6:55 P.M. "Errors" inserted since I posted this essay earlier today. Deleting words again? Keep 'em coming.
The new Robin Hood movie is fun. It is always a pleasure to see Russell Crowe leading men into battle. Cate Blanchet is regal in a role set in exotic locations and time periods. Ms. Blanchet possesses the gift of seeming to fit into such places with ease or naturalness. The selection of Ms. Blanchet to play Maid Marian is wise because Ridley Scott is exploring some of the mythological themes also featured in the Lord of the Rings, where Ms. Blanchet was an ethereal elf princess. (The Shire is Sherwood Forest.)
It was a joy to discover Max Von Sydow in a supporting role -- Mr. Von Sydow steals every scene in which he appears -- and his performance alone justifies the cost of the "movie experience" as they say in Hollywood. A blind man presents a tempting target to those who relish the opportunity to strike from behind a victim's back. "Error" insertions?
One is immediately reminded of Igmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal where Mr. Scott's theme in Robin Hood of political obligation as a duty owed to others, notably posterity, is explored by the great Sweedish director and where Mr. Von Sydow offers an early star turn. ("'The Reader': A Movie Review.")
The plot of Robin Hood concerns two symbols used by the British (or is Mr. Scott Australian?) film director for purposes of clarity and simplicity: the sword (law) and the crown (sovereignty). A third symbol that appears in this cinematic text will be discussed at the conclusion of my essay.
Robin Longacre (Russell Crowe) attends upon the king, Richard the Lion Heart, whose death during the siege of an unimportant castle on his journey home from the crusades -- after being ransomed from Leopold of Austria -- opens the narrative. Errol Flynn's classic performance gets a nod in Mr. Crowe's friendships with Tuck, "Little John" and Will Scarlet.
The Castle of Charlus (or Chalus) in what is now called the south of France would have been located in what Richard would know as langue d'oc. Nation states were not invented until a period from about the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Germany was not a unified country, for example, until the Franco/Prussian war of 1871.
The castle most likely would have been named for "Charlemagne" ("Charles" and "lux," or the "light of Charles"), long before Richard I, "the Lion Heart." Readers interested in this period are directed to William Manchester's and Desmond Stewart's popular histories of the so-called "Dark Ages."
The murder of the good knight, Robin of Loxley, is witnessed by Robin Longacre (Mr. Crowe), even as the murderer is the bad knight, Geoffrey of Monmouth. I am unable to supply the name of the actor playing this dastardly villain, at this time, but I will make it a point to add his name to this review later. Incidentally, there is a Monmouth, New Jersey where "Slim Jim" McGreevey may be found hatching evil plots to regain the monarchy. Mr. McGreevey has been heard to mutter: "My kingdom for a horse!"
Identity and questions of nobility arise immediately in the story which forges an association with the classic fable "The Return of Martin Guerre." Robin Hood is the essential English myth because the story is about Englishness, as a quest for moral identity through "hiding," that is, by way of metaphors conjured through the use of the English language. ("Metaphor is Mystery.")
It is this magical language which is the true Sherwood Forest in which we reside and must be "persons," free persons and equal in the words of our English common law.
What does it mean to be "noble"? Who is a "subject" of law? How is law connected to words, especially written texts, like Magna Carta? Is this movie also a set of metaphors? What are these strange things called "rights"? Most importantly and uniquely in political history, this idea of "liberty" that emerges, falteringly and dangerously, during the medieval period becomes the subject of violent struggle and is associated with English earth, with "each man's" -- and woman's -- home being "a castle."
Please refer to Professor George Santayana's great essay, "English Liberty in America." I also direct the reader to Harold J. Berman's Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 262-263. (Conveyances of land were legally certified by having the owner transfer a handful of earth to the purchaser and new owner.)
Chronology is slightly off in the movie since Richard became king in 1189 and died ten years later. This first great charter of rights dates from 1215. However, there were several predecessors for this document, Magna Carta -- not only in Ireland, but also in Iceland and in Islamic Spain -- which was destroyed by the barbaric Christians of the Iberian peninsula, notably in the form of "El Cid." (Charlton Heston in the dreadful movie with the great, Sophia Loren.)
Magna Carta had very little to say about rights -- there weren't any! -- of ordinary people and all women. Philosophy teaches students that containing radical ideas is impossible. The notion of a constraint on the divine power of kings was radical enough to produce, in time, the revolutions of modernity -- including the British people's indulgence in occasional "bloodless revolutions" such as the world witnessed recently with the election of a new Prime Minister, David Cameron, who has (generously) agreed to free his serfs upon entering number 10 Downing Street. Any more "errors" to be inserted by New Jersey morons?
Although the plight of women, nicely underlined for the audience by Ms. Blanchet, was not much helped by this great document of feudal rights, women did make use of political authority and hold power in every age, usually through their husbands by way of "marriage alliances," even becoming in one unusual case, a Virgin Queen, wielding ultimate religious and political authority over the British isles. (See Ms. Blanchet in "Elizabeth" and my story "Master and Commander.")
Robin is charged with two missions: return the dying knight's sword to his aged and blind father's estate and the dead king's crown to his brother John, the new king. This plot device takes liberties with history since Richard forgave his brother's plotting. This "symbolic discourse" (Paul Ricoeur) indicates that the law belongs to the people whose welfare defines legitimate authority. The return of the crown to the king, sovereignty to royal government, suggests the burdens of monarchy which is also one of Shakespeare's great themes. I believe that the attempt to impeach Mr. Clinton was a threat to the franchise of voters that then President Clinton had no choice but to resist. In America it is the people who must wear the crown. Jeffrey Toobin, A Vast Conspiracy (New York: Random House, 1999).
A third symbol in the film, then, is the archer's bow and arrow, intentionality or directedness of speech towards truth, law towards justice. The twelfth century saw the rediscovery of Aristotle and Aquinas, teleology in politics and law. The aim of the archer must be true. Power must be exercised in favor of the people's welfare. The result is the "happy shire" or forest of Sherwood where our story ends.
The forest is a place where the viewer of this film meets the artists who create it -- language, verbal and visual languages, the community of this "text," English and American Constitutions, Englishness, the word, speech and thought. ("Is it rational to believe in God?" and "Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")
Mr. Scott is clearly warning of the dangers of abandoning due process and habeas corpus rights in America's concentration camps or in the "War on Terror." These rights were painfully won. They must never be abandoned or thrown away by rulers, like King John (George W. Bush), in pursuit of fleeting or momentary goals of the nation. Point taken.
The mythological text is much richer than this political theme suggests because it concerns the very encounter offered by this film. All of us live in Sherwood Forest with Robin and Marian. Winston Churchill refers to the "English-Speaking Peoples" as the residents of this forest who are always held together at their "darkest hour" by such things as commitment to the rule of law, decency, due process and unshakable commitment to liberty. These English farmers and soldiers are the ancestors of the characters in the television show, "Justified." ("'Justified': A Review of the FX Television Series.")
This brings me to a final image not noticed in any review of this movie that I have seen, including the surprisingly inadequate review in The New York Times. Upon the shield carried into battle by Richard cour d'leon is an image of Britain's "Lion and Unicorn." Hitler's mistake was to see only the unicorn; Mr. Churchill introduced Hitler to the British Lion. America's eagle and bear serve the identical archetypal function with one slight variation that I will discuss on another occasion. For now, let us refer to this image still seen in many British buildings and monuments:
"The Lion is an actual beast, the Unicorn is a chimera; and is not England in fact always bouyed up on one side by some chimera, as on the other by a sense for fact?"
Please see "G.E. Moore's Critique of Idealism" and William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
"Illusions are mighty, and must be reckoned with in this world; but it is not necessary to share them or even to understand them from within, because being illusions they do not prophesy the probable consequences of their existence; they are irrelevant in aspect to what they involve in effect. The dove of peace brings new wars, the religion of love instigates crusades and lights faggots, metaphysical idealism in practice is the worship of Mammon, government by the people establishes the boss, free trade creates monopolies, fondness smothers its pet, assurance precipitates disaster, fury ends in smoke and in shaking hands. The shaggy Lion is dimly aware of this; he is ponderous and taciturn by an instinctive philosophy. Why should he be troubled about the dreams of the Unicorn, more than about those of the nightingale or the spider? ... Leonine fortitude makes the strength of England in the world. ... But England is also, more than any other country, the land of poetry and of the inner man. [His castle; her castle.] Her sunlight and mists, her fields, cliffs, and moors are full of aerial enchantment; it is a land of tenderness and dreams. The whole nation hugs its hallowed shams; there is a real happiness, a sense of safety, in agreeing not to acknowledge the obvious; there is a universal conspiracy of respect for the non-existent. English religion, English philosophy, English law, English domesticity could not get on without this 'tendency to feign.' ..." (English literature and all art is "feigning"?)
George Santayana, Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967), pp. 41-42.
To keep it real in the English-speaking world, we must dream together. Our most important dream for centuries is called "freedom with equality for all." We must make that dream real, every day.
Suggestions for Further Reading:
Noel Annan, Our Age: The Generation That Made Post-War Britain (London: Fontana, 1990).
Anthony Burgess, Any Old Iron (New York: Washington Square Press, 1989).
John Fowles, Daniel Martin (New York: Signet, 1978). (Fowles should have received the Nobel Prize.)
Howard Pyle, The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (New York: Charles Scribner's, 1903).
Edward Rutherford, London (New York: Fawcett, 1977).
Gore Vidal, A Search for the King (New York: Ballantine, 1978).
