Margaret Wente
What explains the enduring appeal of Robin Hood?
I'm not talking about the new Russell Crowe movie, which in my view is a waste of time and $12.99. I'm talking about the Robin Hood of my childhood - a handsome outlaw-hero who robbed from the rich to give to the poor, and hung out in Sherwood Forest with his gang of Merrie Men.
Good guys who fight injustice were a staple of my youth, and no doubt yours as well. They appeal to a child's natural sense of morality and fair play. Everybody likes to see the honest, courageous underdog defeat the evil, crooked overdog - especially when the evil overdog is raping and pillaging and taxing the heck out of the defenceless populace.
Many cultures have Robin Hood figures. Japan has Nezumi Kozō, a successful burglar of samurai estates who was exiled and eventually beheaded. The Ukrainian Robin Hood is Ustym Karmaliuk, a serf who organized a series of rebel uprisings to attack rich landowners, and distributed the loot to the poor. He was captured many times, but always escaped, and was, as legend goes, impervious to bullets. There are Estonian, Hungarian, and Indian Robin Hoods. But nowhere is Robin Hood more celebrated than in the West, where he has endured through popular culture ever since medieval times.
The Robin Hood of my youth was a boyish and somewhat androgynous fellow who was a crack shot with a bow and arrow. He was closely bonded with his sidekicks and was always outsmarting the dim-witted Sheriff of Nottingham. Maid Marian didn't get very much to do. She was a love interest, but a chaste one. This tradition clearly didn't suit the makers of Robin Hood, who have turned Robin Hood into a grizzled, hyper-masculine fellow in middle age. They have turned Maid Marian (Cate Blanchett) into a proto-feminist who can out-shoot, out-ride and out-fight almost any guy. I am sad to say this device is a miserable failure. Even though Robin professes his love for her, it's pretty clear he'd rather ride back off to war with the boys as soon as possible. When she rides after him (in a full suit of armour), she almost screws up the entire battle. So much for the feminist angle.
Traditionally, Robin Hood is depicted as shy and tongue-tied with women. That's because the psychological model for Robin and his gang is a bunch of adolescent boys, loyal, brave and true, who are far more interested in camping, fighting, feasting, singing, and getting filthy dirty than in cleaning up for the womenfolk. Part of their lasting appeal is that they live an idyllic life in the forest, unburdened by the constraints of civilization (or women). They're like Huck and Jim on the river - outlaws and fugitives, but also free.
In recent times, this convivial homosociality has attracted a good deal of suspicion. What if Robin Hood is not merely homosocial, but out-and-out gay?
If so, he wouldn't be the first one. Huck and Jim were outed years ago by literary critic Leslie Fiedler. In 1948, he published a notorious essay called Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!, which argued that American literature is full of pairs of men (often interracial) who flee for the wilderness. The essay is now widely regarded as a breakthrough in literary criticism.
In 1999, the world's leading Robin Hood scholar, Stephen Knight, wrote a paper mischievously called "The Forest Queen." (There are entire conferences devoted to Robin Hood.) Although the paper was actually about Maid Marian, it prompted a call from a curious reporter for the Times of London, who thought there might be a gay angle. Were those Merrie Men, he asked, even merrier than we think? The answer was maybe. As Mr. Knight tells it, "I gave my opinion that one of the political meanings of the story was to read Robin's resistance to authority as being the resistance of the gay to the straight."
The Times story outing Robin Hood made headlines around the world, and Mr. Knight went on to defend the plausibility of this interpretation in dozens of interviews. "The medieval ballads are entirely male," he pointed out. "There is a fair degree of affect between the male characters, and even when, as in the Victorian novels, Marian has appeared as Mrs. Robin Hood she plays almost no part in the story." His thesis kicked up quite a fuss in Nottingham, where people were not amused by this reworking of their favourite (and highly lucrative) son.
Legends are always altered to reflect the ideals and preoccupations of the age. In the latest movie, Robin and Marian get married and wind up in Sherwood Forest (with the Merrie Men, of course), where they start an open-air orphanage and soup kitchen for the homeless.
Personally, I think he should ditch the girl, find his green tights, and ride off with the Merrie Men to smite the guys at Goldman Sachs. The honest yeomen of the world have been robbed and pillaged by greedy noblemen who have looted our grain and left us deeply in debt. No time for sylvan idylls now. There's work to do.
The true meaning of Robin Hood
What explains the enduring appeal of Robin Hood?
I'm not talking about the new Russell Crowe movie, which in my view is a waste of time and $12.99. I'm talking about the Robin Hood of my childhood - a handsome outlaw-hero who robbed from the rich to give to the poor, and hung out in Sherwood Forest with his gang of Merrie Men.
Good guys who fight injustice were a staple of my youth, and no doubt yours as well. They appeal to a child's natural sense of morality and fair play. Everybody likes to see the honest, courageous underdog defeat the evil, crooked overdog - especially when the evil overdog is raping and pillaging and taxing the heck out of the defenceless populace.
Many cultures have Robin Hood figures. Japan has Nezumi Kozō, a successful burglar of samurai estates who was exiled and eventually beheaded. The Ukrainian Robin Hood is Ustym Karmaliuk, a serf who organized a series of rebel uprisings to attack rich landowners, and distributed the loot to the poor. He was captured many times, but always escaped, and was, as legend goes, impervious to bullets. There are Estonian, Hungarian, and Indian Robin Hoods. But nowhere is Robin Hood more celebrated than in the West, where he has endured through popular culture ever since medieval times.
The Robin Hood of my youth was a boyish and somewhat androgynous fellow who was a crack shot with a bow and arrow. He was closely bonded with his sidekicks and was always outsmarting the dim-witted Sheriff of Nottingham. Maid Marian didn't get very much to do. She was a love interest, but a chaste one. This tradition clearly didn't suit the makers of Robin Hood, who have turned Robin Hood into a grizzled, hyper-masculine fellow in middle age. They have turned Maid Marian (Cate Blanchett) into a proto-feminist who can out-shoot, out-ride and out-fight almost any guy. I am sad to say this device is a miserable failure. Even though Robin professes his love for her, it's pretty clear he'd rather ride back off to war with the boys as soon as possible. When she rides after him (in a full suit of armour), she almost screws up the entire battle. So much for the feminist angle.
Traditionally, Robin Hood is depicted as shy and tongue-tied with women. That's because the psychological model for Robin and his gang is a bunch of adolescent boys, loyal, brave and true, who are far more interested in camping, fighting, feasting, singing, and getting filthy dirty than in cleaning up for the womenfolk. Part of their lasting appeal is that they live an idyllic life in the forest, unburdened by the constraints of civilization (or women). They're like Huck and Jim on the river - outlaws and fugitives, but also free.
In recent times, this convivial homosociality has attracted a good deal of suspicion. What if Robin Hood is not merely homosocial, but out-and-out gay?
If so, he wouldn't be the first one. Huck and Jim were outed years ago by literary critic Leslie Fiedler. In 1948, he published a notorious essay called Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!, which argued that American literature is full of pairs of men (often interracial) who flee for the wilderness. The essay is now widely regarded as a breakthrough in literary criticism.
In 1999, the world's leading Robin Hood scholar, Stephen Knight, wrote a paper mischievously called "The Forest Queen." (There are entire conferences devoted to Robin Hood.) Although the paper was actually about Maid Marian, it prompted a call from a curious reporter for the Times of London, who thought there might be a gay angle. Were those Merrie Men, he asked, even merrier than we think? The answer was maybe. As Mr. Knight tells it, "I gave my opinion that one of the political meanings of the story was to read Robin's resistance to authority as being the resistance of the gay to the straight."
The Times story outing Robin Hood made headlines around the world, and Mr. Knight went on to defend the plausibility of this interpretation in dozens of interviews. "The medieval ballads are entirely male," he pointed out. "There is a fair degree of affect between the male characters, and even when, as in the Victorian novels, Marian has appeared as Mrs. Robin Hood she plays almost no part in the story." His thesis kicked up quite a fuss in Nottingham, where people were not amused by this reworking of their favourite (and highly lucrative) son.
Legends are always altered to reflect the ideals and preoccupations of the age. In the latest movie, Robin and Marian get married and wind up in Sherwood Forest (with the Merrie Men, of course), where they start an open-air orphanage and soup kitchen for the homeless.
Personally, I think he should ditch the girl, find his green tights, and ride off with the Merrie Men to smite the guys at Goldman Sachs. The honest yeomen of the world have been robbed and pillaged by greedy noblemen who have looted our grain and left us deeply in debt. No time for sylvan idylls now. There's work to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment