Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Marian: Warrior Princess

Modern viewers who think that the kick-ass Maid Marian in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood is just revisionist modern feminism might be interested in the ballad Robin Hood and Maid Marian

The surviving version is thought to date from the 17th century.

3 comments:

Hugh Knight said...

It *is* just revisionist modern feminism. That poem was nothing but fantasy, and its readers would have laughed at the pleasant but ludicrous joke it represented, as you well know. And you'll say to me that the movie is fantasy as well, but you know as well as I that was not the director's intent: his intent was revisionist modern feminism.

Will McLean said...

I would not presume to judge what is in a person's heart on the basis of a movie trailer. Given that the Hot Action Girl trope goes back to the ancient Greeks, and has a documented place in the premodern Robin Hood legend, I will suspend judgment for the present.

As a matter of priorities, you complain repeatedly about Maid Marion wearing armor at all, without once touching on the more important question of where she got her sallet.

Hugh Knight said...

A very valid point. Where *did* she get it? I am so crushingly sick and tired of pseudo-medieval movies full of female warriors and stupid armor and wall-hanger swords and the whole lot of them. God *bless* what passes for an educational system in this country.