Monday 12 July 2010

Pantomime History


I love history and I love movies, my twin passions, if you like. I’ve seen some truly excellent films that deal with historical subjects, using a high degree of verisimilitude. For example, I think that Michael Caton-Jones' movie Rob Roy is a reasonable depiction of political and social conditions in early eighteenth century Scotland. There is only one small point I would take issue with, where Rob is shown riding a horse wearing a kilt. Now anybody who knows anything about riding, about the male anatomy and about how kilts were worn, will understand why the Scots gentry invented trews, the narrow trousers worn as an alternative to the kilt!

But it’s really another movie dealing with a Scottish historical subject I have in mind, Mel Gibson’s much-lauded Braveheart, which purports to tell the story of William Wallace, the great William Tell-like hero of the medieval Scottish Wars of Independence. Andrew Carson, a fellow blogger and friend, made some fairly damning criticisms of this movie in a discussion on BlogCatalogue, criticisms which I fully agree with. I’m glad he did because he’s also a Scot and I was under the impression that all Scots loved this depiction of their national epic, an impression I gathered in visiting the country over the years. But now he’s broken the ice, so to speak, an Englishwoman can, at her peril, enter the waters!

I know it’s only a movie, it’s only entertainment. Right, now I’ve got that out of the way I can say what I really think, and what I think is that the history is dramatic and exciting enough without this awful pastiche. The English soldiers, draped in some comic opera armour, are just pantomime villains. Yes, I know, I was bound to say that. But what I don’t understand is why the Scots, most Scots, allowed themselves to be seduced by this caricature. It’s almost like black people seeing their own history through the medium of the nigger minstrel shows of old.

The inaccuracies are too numerous to mention. The whole movie was clearly aimed at confirming the preconceptions of a chiefly American audience; and when the Americans think of Scotland what they think of is Highlands, tartans and clans, what I call the Brigadoon image. But the men who fought with Wallace, and then Robert Bruce, were mostly drawn from the Lowlands of the south and the east. They were not clansmen at all and they most assuredly did not wear tartan. Indeed some of the staunchest enemies of Bruce in particular were Highlanders.

Perhaps the most ludicrous suggestion was that Wallace had a sexual relationship with Isabella, princess of Wales; that he was the father of her child. It doesn’t really matter that he was dead before she came to England. What does matter, what Scots should be aware of, is that this would make Wallace the father of Edward III. In other words, one of Scotland’s greatest heroes is suggested as the father of one of its greatest enemies!

I really don’t want to belabour the point and it is possible to enjoy the movie at the simple level of cartoon-style entertainment; all good on one side, all bad on the other. I’m blessed, or cursed, you chose which, with a kind of sensitivity to historical subjects that makes such uncomplicated enjoyment all but impossible. Still, I’ve been fairly mild here, pulling my punches where I can pull punches. You don’t really want to know what I think about To Kill a King, set in the English Civil War!

24 comments:

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  3. Yes, Adam, I did see that movie. The politics are awful but Alec Guiness was a very presuasive Charles I.

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  6. I saw it as pro-Cromwell rather than pro-Parliament. The understanding of Parliament was pretty bad, as was the understanding of the history of the period. Harris played Cromwell as some kind of crypto-democrat, which he was not. Robert Morley played the Earl of Manchester as the most awful fop. Why he was on the side of Parliament at all I have no idea. The real Manchester was a Presbyterian and a Puritan. You see- the disadvantages of knowing history!

    I did get the references; don't worry. :-)

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  8. I do managed on occasions to suspend disbelief. But I need a decent horror or romance for total escapism. :-)

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  10. I might very well drink a spot of Mahler. :-)

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  12. Bruckner, oh, no, but of the assumption that you are referring to the German Strauss I really like Salome and Electra, especially the latter. I could also drink quite a lot of Borodin, Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, or as my boyfriend calls him, rip your knickers off. :-))

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  16. It's really pretty funny that Americans are so fond of Highlanders, because some of the greatest enemies of America as well were Highlanders, like my family, who burned down the White House in 1812 while they were on a 130-year hiatus in New Brunswick before the Great Depression found them in the same position as the producers of Pokemon, bringing my Grandpa MacRae to Texas, where he proceeded to fight honorably (for America, not the commies, though I'm sure he considered it till he had a look at what a Communist kilt looks like) in Korea, and came home an alcoholic. (They also are lions of Africa - Boer War heroes baby!) By comparison, Lowlanders like Carson are what, in America, are referred to as the Scots-Irish, who actually vastly outnumber people of Highlander origin in all regions except the Northwest (Gordon and Fraser being common names there) and New Enlgand. They fought loyally in every American war.

    Although there were many loyalists in the American colonies during the Revolution, the Highlanders stand out as the only group who by and large actually FOUGHT AGAINST the Americans as supposed to crying and moving to Canada. But I can tell you why Americans would normally think of Highlanders when they think of Scots:

    Remember how I called people like Carson "Scots-Irish?" In general, Lowlander Americans (like, Ronald Reagan) are considered a separate ethnic group, and they aren't called Scottish. The only people in America who are called 'Scottish Americans' are the former Jacobites forced out of Scotland to North America after the various revolts, mostly from the Highlands. The people like Carson who moved here, usually due to poverty, are called "Scots Irish", in part because many of them went to Ireland first. They are totally separate groups with totally different histories, and it would be the Highlanders who by and large would still be very proud of their Scottish heritage since they didn't come here volunatrilly any more then the African Americans did (though with better fortune once they got here.)

    Also, Scots Irish in America were generally small landowning farmers on marginal land while Scottish were much more often explorers and cowboys, a large percentage of them eventually ending up defining the cowboy culture of the Northwestern US (ie Montana) and bringing it a lot of its reverence for the land.

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  17. Adam, Khachaturian, yes and also Balakriev. His tone poem Russia is really special. But I'm going to say something more about Rimsky-Korsakov a bit later. I agree that Till Eulenspiegel is quite impish. :-)

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  20. Jeremy, it's so interesting that you have such detailed information on the history of your family. I, too, have information on my own, going right back to the Napoleonic Wars and even before that, including details of one ancestor who served with Wellington in India.

    I think the Scots-Irish epic is particularly fascinating. I'm going to add a post on this on the basis of some of the notes I have after I get back from my pending vacation.

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  21. Adam, it's not so much a blog about R-K as a whimsical reflection on a dimension of my childhood.

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  23. @Ana: Going further back then that in many areas, and I only (for obvious reason) included the relevant Scottish side. I was mostly stating it to make a point about how pecuiliar Americas fascination with Highlanders is. My fathers side is almost purely Scandinavian farm folk in the Midwest. We study our geneology a lot in part because my parents both lost one of their parents when they were very young, and I think for them this was a way of closing the gap in themselves.

    It's very intersting that you're studying Stuart England, arguably the period and time of history that by and large defined North America.

    A really good book about the Scots-Irish in America titled "Born Fightin'" was published a few years ago here - my dad read it and very much enjoyed it and he's quite a history buff.

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  24. Thanks again, Jeremy. I'll see if that's available here.

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