Robin Hood–The Revised Version

Consider this for a movie plot. An former P.O.W. comes home from an unpopular war. He discovers that his country has been taken over by corrupt politicians. He joins a group of environmentalists in the woods. With the help of a feminist girlfriend and a Black Muslim, he works with the homeless and organizes the poor people of the community. Sounds like a 90s sort of movie, doesn't it? It has the Vietnam syndrome, multiculturalism, and all the politically correct poses. But surprise!--it isn't a movie about the 90s, it's about the Middle Ages. It's Hollywood's latest version of Robin Hood, recently released in video. In the original tale, Robin is branded an outlaw because he accidently kills one of the King's deer. In the new version, he is an escaped prisoner-of-war from the Crusades, a thinly veiled parallel to the Vietnam war. The original Maid Marian was a damsel in distress. The new version is a feminist--tough and assertive. She'd probably prefer to be called Ms. Marian. In the old tales, Friar Tuck was an important Christian symbol, representing down-to-earth Christian faith. The new Friar Tuck is a drunk and a lush. His faith is depicted as superstitious ignorance. Not content with changing the old characters, Hollywood has added a new one: a black man named Azeem, who is a Muslim. Azeem helps Robin escape from the P.O.W. compound and becomes his sidekick. In fact, Azeem is the real hero of the movie. Repeatedly, he demonstrates the superiority of Muslim culture to those backward Christians. When they help a woman through a difficult childbirth, Friar Tuck solemnly says she must die because it is God's will. But Azeem rolls up his sleeves and delivers the baby by C-section. There are other historical revisions. In the movie, Azeem brings gunpowder to England. But this is 200 years before gunpowder was really invented. And Azeem makes noble speeches about tolerance and democracy, as though these were Muslim inventions. Tell that to Saddam Hussein. Now, there's no Muslim in the original Robin Hood. So what's he doing in Sherwood Forest? The answer is that in the 90s, White Males are not allowed to be heros. Multiculturalism dictates that the true heros be "people of color" from non-Western cultures. So new Robin Hood is not an idealistic swashbuckler, he's a guilt-stricken liberal. And it's not the Christian characters in the film, it's the black-faced Muslim who demonstrates the highest moral stature, who exhibits the energetic ideals that transform society. Some might say the new Robin Hood just updates the old one. But it does so by falsifying the story's basic themes. This is part of a bigger pattern of the cultural elite rewriting history--and slamming Christianity in the process. It's legitimate to disagree with the past, with things people did or said. But it's not legitimate to rewrite the past. Today, people are revising history books, literature anthologies, and time-honored folk tales to make them conform to modern attitudes. The result: History is lost. Our traditions and heritage are erased. We drift without the perspective or the wisdom of the past--at the mercy of those with the cultural power to define the present.

09/24/08