Since the new King Arthur movie sounds like a clunker, skip the multiplex this weekend and return to Mark Twain's Victorian Camelot, with its reassuring nineteenth-century faith in congenital democracy:
"There it was, you see. A man is a man, at bottom. Whole ages of abuse and oppression cannot crush the manhood clear out of him. Whoever thinks it a mistake is himself mistaken. Yes, there is plenty good enough material for a republic in the most degraded people that ever existed -- even the Russians; plenty of manhood in them -- even in the Germans -- if one could but force it out of its timid and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in the mud any throne that ever was set up and any nobility that ever supported it. We should see certain things yet, let us hope and believe. First, a modified monarchy, till Arthur's days were done, then the destruction of the throne, nobility abolished, every member of it bound out to some useful trade, universal suffrage instituted, and the whole government placed in the hands of the men and women of the nation there to remain. Yes, there was no occasion to give up my dream yet a while."
Posted by Alan Allport at July 9, 2004 05:50 AMWow. Orwell was a big, big Twain fan. Some of the *1984* interrogation dialogue could almost be Orwell's depressed rebuttal to that. Especially the first couple sentences.
Y'know, it's a reminder that people shouldn't rhetorically over-gild goals like democracy and equality that are obviously good things to begin with.
It has to be said that Twain's optimistic vision eventually goes pear-shaped thanks to the machinations of the Church; Connecticut Yankee is his most overtly anti-religious book.
Posted by: Alan Allport at July 10, 2004 09:22 AMIt's a real pity that the new Arthur movie is supposed to be so dreadful. As a fan of Dark Age Britain, I think that there's huge potential in a movie set in the fifth century, but unfortunately we may need to wait a couple of decades before anybody attempts again.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at July 10, 2004 09:46 AMAnyone here seen Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac? Best Arthurian film ever made, in my opinion.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at July 10, 2004 01:14 PM- Yes, that ending section of Connecticut Yankee is dreadful -- it's almost a prophecy of WWI.
- Haven't seen the Bresson, but has anyone seen the cartoon version of *The Sword in the Stone*? I haven't & have wondered if it's any good.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at July 10, 2004 01:38 PMI saw the new Arthur movie last night. The only bit I liked was that the Saxons were portrayed as a biker gang, and their chieftan had an Alabama accent.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at July 14, 2004 09:24 AMIn that case I might have to see it.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at July 14, 2004 09:55 AMMight as well portray them that way: bikers are a recurrent phenomenon: after every relatively organized war, some veterans can't readjust and run around starting disorganized conflicts. Regardless of mode of transportation, I mean. The Wild West of the 1870s was full of Civil War veterans who couldn't settle down, wasn't it?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at July 14, 2004 09:49 PMThat was the case with Wayne's character in The Searchers. The veteran part, not the biker gang part.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at July 14, 2004 09:55 PM