Robin Hood

Turner Classic Movies showed “Robin Hood” again last week. A great movie! Errol Flynn, handsome and virile in green tights, swinging through the trees in Sherwood Forest, shooting arrows into the bull’s eye, and sword fighting up and down castle stairs against the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham. All in beautiful technicolor!

“Robin Hood” is a four-star classic. Robin fights against Evil Prince John, who usurps his brother Richard’s throne and gouges the poor with taxes in order to enrich himself. In the climax of the movie at a jousting contest, Richard the Lion-Hearted rides into the arena to reclaim his throne and restore Robin to his estates as the Earl of Huntington.

I was a small child when I first saw “Robin Hood.” I loved the movie. My brothers and I used to play Robin’s merry men on the gym set in our back yard. As I grew up and studied history – and also learned to read and think as an adult – I realized that it is all a piece of historical propaganda.

Look again at the movie’s message. “Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor.” Robin is not a peasant. He is an aristocrat who has been defrauded of his inheritance. In the end he regains his title and his estates, where presumably he will live as a lord and benefit from the labor of serfs who are his slaves.

Then look again at the absent king. Richard the Lion-Hearted, remembered as the perfect knight and ruler, in a ten-year reign spent no more than two months in England. He was either off on a Crusade, in prison in Germany, or battling subservient lords over his territories in France. In addition to England, Richard inherited half of France; he controlled more land than the French king.

His younger brother John was left to handle things in England. The English idolized the king who was not around to interfere with their lives; they hated the prince who raised their taxes, even though he did it to raise money for the enormous ransom to free Richard from captivity in Germany.

Furthermore, Richard died without leaving an heir. Most historians conclude that he was a homosexual. Our hero knight was gay!

John became the legitimate king of England. Although he reigned for a number of years, he proved unequal to the job. John lost all the French lands and faced a revolt of the nobility in England. If you remember your high school history book, the barons met King John at Runnymeade and forced him to sign the Magna Carta. That established the rights of the aristocracy. It was hundreds of years before common men gained those rights in England, the rights we fought for in the American Revolution.

Poor John! He receives a bad rap in the public mind. Shakespeare wrote a play, “King John”, which is seldom performed. In it John is a hard-hearted schemer who murders his nephew to gain the throne. It is not one of Shakespeare’s masterpieces. The bard did a better piece of propaganda against regicide (murdering a ruler) in “Macbeth”.

John was not evil. He was simply incompetent.

Incompetence is not a sin. Our country has survived a number of mediocre presidents. Who remembers Franklin Pierce, John Tyler, or Benjamin Harrison? A hundred years from now perhaps someone will produce “The Tragedy of George W. Bush”. Let’s hope President Bush will be remembered as a sincere man who did his best but who led us into an unnecessary war which destroyed our country’s reputation in the rest of the World and cost thousands of American lives.

“Robin Hood” is still a great movie.