Blogging Kalamazoo: Thursday Afternoon
May. 8th, 2008 04:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjSession 116 - Neomedievalism I: Alternative Realities
These are much more simply impressionistic synopses of the presentations rather than analyses.
Reading Medievally: Rhetoric and the Art of Movie-Going (Lesley A. Coote)
(I'm trying to summarize and paraphrase here, but I may get a bunch of the concepts wrong.)
Medieval "reading" based on the technique of scriptural exegesis. The first level is the literal sense. E.g., if you look at a rose window, you're looking at the physical structure, the craftsmanship. If you watch a movie, you're looking at the images on the screen, hearing the score, interpreting the actions directly. E.g., a movie about a "historic" King Arthur (in this case, the Sarmation-Arthur-theory one from a couple years ago) using reproductions of Roman forts, military equipment, etc. This may be selective reading: a personal interpretation and focus. Your eyes pick out interesting details of the rose window; you take more detailed note of movie details with personal meaning.
The second level is allegorical. The literal forms of the experience are interpreted as standing in for other symbols and structures. E.g., the use of the Round Table to indicate equality. The use of broad symbols to identify characters: the "good ruler" employs compassion and justice; the "bad ruler" uses oppression and fear.
The third reading is tropological: the text/movie provides personal guidance for Right Action or creates a context for the examination of one's own potential actions in the same situations.
The fourth reading is anagogic -- meant to be seen through to find the underlying universal truth. So, for example, the "true" ending of the Arthurian matter must necessarily be positive, so we add a coda to the movie ending it not with Lancelot's death but with Arthur's wedding.
Alternative Chaucer: A Knight's Tale and Neomedievalist Perspectives (Pamela Clements)
The movie A Knight's Tale provides a very overt and in-your-face blending of medieval and modern accoutrements. But who is the intended audience? Is it just an action-adventure in dress-up for guys? Are the medieval elements merely window-dressing in a pastiche? Stunningly evocative medieval physical settings get elbowed out by modern music, dance, and interactions. The director claims the Chaucerian elements were an afterthought to a simple jousting flick. But the actual details of the movie belie this cavalier claim, showing a detailed grounding in medieval history, literature, and culture that go far beyond a generic pop-culture understanding of medievalisms. There are layers of humor in the playful juxtaposition of medieval and modern whose accessibility depends on what the viewer brings to the screen. A purely historic-based movie couldn't have this juxtaposition-based humor, but a purely modern-joke movie would not be as entertaining either.
Knights, Dykes, Damsels, and Fags: Gender Roles and Normative Pressure in Neomedieval Films (Wayne Elliott)
(Also based primarily on an analysis of A Knight's Tale.) Prototypical knight is man of noble birth elevated via military activities. But the character of William fails the noble birth test. On masculinity, is a lance just a lance? Or does the films point of view via the jousters force a hetero-masculine interpretation of the action?
Dykes: no medieval prototype, but the blacksmith character of Kate draws on the placement of a woman in a masculine role and given masculine (physical) power, breaking gender roles but -- unhistorically -- without social penalty.
Damsels -- Jocelyn fulfils the prototype perfectly.
Fags: again, no historic prototype but emerges from male failure to follow normative pressures towards traditional masculinity. Roland fills this role.
Characters as sexual/emotional beings: Kate is given no emotional depth or relationships. William bullies her into helping him with sexist teasing. William only saves the damsel but doesn't win her. Is he a traditional knight or a challenge to the status quo? Jocelyn acts out the traditional hard-to-get romance heroine with minor digressions into modern POV commentary on female roles. Roland is presented as asexual. Originally, Chaucer was the character with full emotional complexity, but much of this got cut in the final film.
But on the other hand, the jousting interactions (male-male) bring in a homoerotic element. While a comradely kiss between William and Kate is, peculiarly, a similar "male"-male interaction. In William's conflict wiht Adhemar, William attempts (but failes?) to break out of the woman-as-prize motif in their combat. With the climactic kiss between William and Jocelyn, the other characters are left out of the picture entirely with no resolution.
Fantasy within Fantasy: Xena in the Middle Ages (Natalie Grinnell)
The series presents an unprecedented challenge of masculine/hetero domination of historic-fantasy screen time, with the protagonists wandering through a pseudo-classical landscape. In three episodes, however, they inexplicably wander into the middle ages. In the episode "Gabrielle's Hope" we skip from Boudicca's Britain into a vaguely medieval setting with witch-burning peasants who attack Gabrielle for being pregnant with an Evil Child (Hope). Here, rather than the protagonists pitting themselves against a self-centered classical pantheon where the conflict is often inherently humorous, we're pulled into a dualistic good/evil struggle in deadly earnest. (Except for a briefly humorous Arthurian reference with a sword in a stone.) This episode heralds an extensive sequence of dark episodes drawing primarily from dualistic conflict and lean on medieval/Christian imagery: crucifixion, meeting with Archangel Michael, the Christian-oid prophet Eli, and the final destruction (more or less) of the classical pantheon. (The third medieval-ish episode blends the Niebelung and Beowulf stories and, again, erases the usual humor in the series.)
Alternative (Medieval) Realities: Going "Medieval" in Video Games (Kevin A. Moberly & Brent Addison Moberly)
I think my brain has started to shut down for the day. This is really incoherent.
Medievaloid video games ask the player to take on the rule of identifying, supporting, and carrying out the protocols of medieval romance. The game's rules/pov are relentless and the more the player strugglges against them, the less playable the game is.
On "labor" in particular: The "laboring" characters in medieval romance have limited roles, e.g., signpost and monster, and provide an enormous percentage of the NPC characters encountered in a medievaloid game. Little true labor seems to be performed -- instead, economic labor provides merely a context for interaction.
These are much more simply impressionistic synopses of the presentations rather than analyses.
Reading Medievally: Rhetoric and the Art of Movie-Going (Lesley A. Coote)
(I'm trying to summarize and paraphrase here, but I may get a bunch of the concepts wrong.)
Medieval "reading" based on the technique of scriptural exegesis. The first level is the literal sense. E.g., if you look at a rose window, you're looking at the physical structure, the craftsmanship. If you watch a movie, you're looking at the images on the screen, hearing the score, interpreting the actions directly. E.g., a movie about a "historic" King Arthur (in this case, the Sarmation-Arthur-theory one from a couple years ago) using reproductions of Roman forts, military equipment, etc. This may be selective reading: a personal interpretation and focus. Your eyes pick out interesting details of the rose window; you take more detailed note of movie details with personal meaning.
The second level is allegorical. The literal forms of the experience are interpreted as standing in for other symbols and structures. E.g., the use of the Round Table to indicate equality. The use of broad symbols to identify characters: the "good ruler" employs compassion and justice; the "bad ruler" uses oppression and fear.
The third reading is tropological: the text/movie provides personal guidance for Right Action or creates a context for the examination of one's own potential actions in the same situations.
The fourth reading is anagogic -- meant to be seen through to find the underlying universal truth. So, for example, the "true" ending of the Arthurian matter must necessarily be positive, so we add a coda to the movie ending it not with Lancelot's death but with Arthur's wedding.
Alternative Chaucer: A Knight's Tale and Neomedievalist Perspectives (Pamela Clements)
The movie A Knight's Tale provides a very overt and in-your-face blending of medieval and modern accoutrements. But who is the intended audience? Is it just an action-adventure in dress-up for guys? Are the medieval elements merely window-dressing in a pastiche? Stunningly evocative medieval physical settings get elbowed out by modern music, dance, and interactions. The director claims the Chaucerian elements were an afterthought to a simple jousting flick. But the actual details of the movie belie this cavalier claim, showing a detailed grounding in medieval history, literature, and culture that go far beyond a generic pop-culture understanding of medievalisms. There are layers of humor in the playful juxtaposition of medieval and modern whose accessibility depends on what the viewer brings to the screen. A purely historic-based movie couldn't have this juxtaposition-based humor, but a purely modern-joke movie would not be as entertaining either.
Knights, Dykes, Damsels, and Fags: Gender Roles and Normative Pressure in Neomedieval Films (Wayne Elliott)
(Also based primarily on an analysis of A Knight's Tale.) Prototypical knight is man of noble birth elevated via military activities. But the character of William fails the noble birth test. On masculinity, is a lance just a lance? Or does the films point of view via the jousters force a hetero-masculine interpretation of the action?
Dykes: no medieval prototype, but the blacksmith character of Kate draws on the placement of a woman in a masculine role and given masculine (physical) power, breaking gender roles but -- unhistorically -- without social penalty.
Damsels -- Jocelyn fulfils the prototype perfectly.
Fags: again, no historic prototype but emerges from male failure to follow normative pressures towards traditional masculinity. Roland fills this role.
Characters as sexual/emotional beings: Kate is given no emotional depth or relationships. William bullies her into helping him with sexist teasing. William only saves the damsel but doesn't win her. Is he a traditional knight or a challenge to the status quo? Jocelyn acts out the traditional hard-to-get romance heroine with minor digressions into modern POV commentary on female roles. Roland is presented as asexual. Originally, Chaucer was the character with full emotional complexity, but much of this got cut in the final film.
But on the other hand, the jousting interactions (male-male) bring in a homoerotic element. While a comradely kiss between William and Kate is, peculiarly, a similar "male"-male interaction. In William's conflict wiht Adhemar, William attempts (but failes?) to break out of the woman-as-prize motif in their combat. With the climactic kiss between William and Jocelyn, the other characters are left out of the picture entirely with no resolution.
Fantasy within Fantasy: Xena in the Middle Ages (Natalie Grinnell)
The series presents an unprecedented challenge of masculine/hetero domination of historic-fantasy screen time, with the protagonists wandering through a pseudo-classical landscape. In three episodes, however, they inexplicably wander into the middle ages. In the episode "Gabrielle's Hope" we skip from Boudicca's Britain into a vaguely medieval setting with witch-burning peasants who attack Gabrielle for being pregnant with an Evil Child (Hope). Here, rather than the protagonists pitting themselves against a self-centered classical pantheon where the conflict is often inherently humorous, we're pulled into a dualistic good/evil struggle in deadly earnest. (Except for a briefly humorous Arthurian reference with a sword in a stone.) This episode heralds an extensive sequence of dark episodes drawing primarily from dualistic conflict and lean on medieval/Christian imagery: crucifixion, meeting with Archangel Michael, the Christian-oid prophet Eli, and the final destruction (more or less) of the classical pantheon. (The third medieval-ish episode blends the Niebelung and Beowulf stories and, again, erases the usual humor in the series.)
Alternative (Medieval) Realities: Going "Medieval" in Video Games (Kevin A. Moberly & Brent Addison Moberly)
I think my brain has started to shut down for the day. This is really incoherent.
Medievaloid video games ask the player to take on the rule of identifying, supporting, and carrying out the protocols of medieval romance. The game's rules/pov are relentless and the more the player strugglges against them, the less playable the game is.
On "labor" in particular: The "laboring" characters in medieval romance have limited roles, e.g., signpost and monster, and provide an enormous percentage of the NPC characters encountered in a medievaloid game. Little true labor seems to be performed -- instead, economic labor provides merely a context for interaction.
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