Mmm, Vikings (Arthurian Vikings, but whatever, it's cool)

[ealgylden]

Okay, I know everyone was all giddy yesterday about the King Arthur pics of Keira looking fierce (but cold. Poor girl, that costume looks really uncomfortable) or Ioan looking terribly butch, or both. I was too, believe me. But I want to throw a little love in the direction of Stellan Skarsgard. Come on, is that not the face of a Viking who knows he's doomed to die, and wants only to die well? I've only seen Stellan in contemporary roles, so I had no idea he had such a great look for period pieces. Nice surprise. I also have no idea who this Cedric he plays is (Cedric the Saxon, kidnapped and sent back in time from Ivanhoe?), but I'll admit freely that the Arthurian mythos is not traditionally my thing. I had one Medieval Comp. Lit. class on it as an undergrad (Gildas to Mallory, yeehaw), and that's pretty much it. Anyway, Stellan has definitely made the cast of my fantasy Beowulf and/or Viking saga movie, along with Dennis Storhoi and Vladimir Kulich from 13th Warrior (not a great pic of Dennis, but Vladimir looks fearsome), possibly Rutger Hauer (he did "nobly doomed" wonderfully in Ladyhawke, but that was a long time ago, and he's not aging well) and pretty much all of the Rohirrim. Some of the extras in King Arthur seem to fit the bill as well, and who is that long-haired cutie? Him too. I'll make him Wiglaf or something.

And speaking of King Arthur, I’m not in favor of banning books, but damn if I'm not tempted when it comes to Mists of Avalon. Not permanently, but just long enough so that there's one generation of teenies that doesn't shriek, "But Guinevere was blonde! She was a pious Christian virgin! Why isn't it all about the women? Where's Morgaine/Viviane/Morgause/whotheheckever?" whenever something Arthurian arises in pop culture. And I like MoA, or at least I did when I read it at thirteen (haven't read it since, and from what I hear it often doesn't hold up well after adolescence). But kiddies, it is not the Arthurian gospel. It's certainly not very good history, Arthurian or not. Or, you know, history at all. It's just a novel. Honestly.

Comments

[ealgylden.livejournal.com]

that you think it's bad if girls see the Arthurian mythos as centered on the women.

Not bad so much as radically unbalanced. The female characters are interesting and I wouldn't want their stories to be excluded, but as part of the entire Arthurian mythos, not the whole. Arthur should at least get to be important, and he failed to be so in the post which triggered my rantlet. I feel the same way about Lancelot, Galahad and the subordinate male characters. They are subordinate. Galahad gets his own stories, Morgan Le Fay gets hers, and that's fine. But this movie is titled King Arthur, so presumably, it's Arthur-centric. Complaining that Morgan has been left out in favor of Arthur's screentime (which we know nothing about and cannot judge based on a handful of unauthorized photos, but that's a separate rant) seems to be missing the point. In this version, it doesn't appear that the women are central characters, and if it's telling the story of Arthur as warrior king like it sounds like it is, that's not a surprise. That would necessarily be a masculine-focused version, and a legitimate one. If the filmmakers had taken a different approach, perhaps a feminine-oriented stance like MoA's would be the requisite, but since they seem to be making a war/action movie, I won't be terribly surprised if the women characters are marginalized. Indeed, I'm pleased to see that Guinevere might be as proactive as she seems to be. And I'm not sure why anyone would want to make her meek and pious and fairly conniving again, like MoA Gwen, to diminish her in favor of a character who isn't even in this movie (I saw many complaints over the loss of Morgaine, which is fine except that she's absent from many, many versions of the legend and almost never is she as important as she is in MoA. And when she is, it's as a negative force). Yeah, she doesn't look like the mild, ladylike Gwen some of these girls were expecting (and considering that mild, ladylike Gwen is traditionally one of the most villainized or ineffectual women in legend, I don't see why that's bad). But we've only seen two out-of-context snips, and in one she's being a warrior! I just don't see how they can justify saying that "Guinevere is ruined" when we don't know yet. So far, to me, she looks like she might be able hold her own, even in a movie where women are marginalized because Arthur is the main character.

I was being ageist, I admit. And I did it without thinking, not unlike snarking about the squealing Legolas fangirls who post reams of giddiness in netspeak that I can't even translate. So I feel bad about that. And I'm glad that the women characters have been given a voice in the corpus of Arthurian and fantasy texts, thanks in no small part to MoA. But when anything that varies from that single revisionist text is decried as "wrong" and "a betrayal," I reserve the right to be annoyed.

[cruisedirector]

Okay, but that is not what your rantlet SAID. It said that you wanted the book to be banned, and even assuming you were joking, the idea that you want the feminist revision taken away from the so-called "teenys" until they have been properly force-fed the overwhelmingly patriarchal-based versions of the story (which you are privileging as a more authentic and vital version, when I think it's debatable that either the relevance of or the interest in Arthurian mythology has anything to do with British history or narrative development).

And I am now giggling at the idea that poor Arthur, Gawain, Galahad, etc. have been so "marginalized" by Bradley that they must be resurrected and given their due. I did not grow up with MoA; I grew up with T.H. White and 'Camelot' and Vixen Morgan le Fay and Bimbo Guinevere, who show up in various forms in hundreds and hundreds of other stories. If the price for Bradley's Morgaine and Viviane is that a teenage girl somewhere might not wish to see a movie focused on Arthur...all I can say is wow, five thousand years of women's stories appropriated into patriarchal history, and finally someone manages to reclaim one for women! Go MZB!