Robin Hood Roundup: A Bajillion-Part Series (7/13/09)

I love, love, love Robin Hood times millions. Once upon a time, it was all about Walt Disney. Then, it was Prince of Thieves (urgh, Kevin Costner, could you be more American?), followed by Men in Tights (tight tights!), Outlaws of Sherwood (Robin McKinley’s fab YA retelling), and the BBC’s most recent Robin Hood (which alternated between being fabulous and sort of awful, but ultimately lost me in the sexist finale of series 2).


I obsessed over each of these in turn, though Prince of Thieves, it transpires, was a mistake. (Back in the day, I thought Christian Slater, aka Will Scarlet, was the hottest of the hot. But now, the combined draw of Slater’s [questionable] hotness, Morgan Freeman’s erstwhile awesomeness, Alan Rickman’s loathesome, love-to-hate-him Sheriff, and John Williams's lovely score cannot counterbalance Kevin Costner’s cringe-worthy Robin Hood, whom I would dearly love to punch in the kidneys...after sticking several arrows up his arse.)

Anywho, fast-forward to present: I am on a Robin Hood mission. A handful of the scads of available Robin Hood movies have been added to my Netflix queue, I’m adding bunches of RH books to my reading list (suggestions welcome!), and I just finished Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, about which more in just a moment.

Apparently Robin is quite the national hero over in Merry Olde England (as evidenced by not one, but three dedicated television shows, for starters), and I, too, have a weakness for a man in Lincoln green. I thought this was maybe a secret shame of mine, much like my other (not-very-secret) secret shame (a raging Harry Potter obsession).


But the nice folks over at the University of Rochester’s Robin Hood Project think the RH obsession has to do less with my obsessive personality and more with his wide appeal: He started out pretty shady in his initial appearance (in 1377), but his “motives have been made truly heroic: his villains are truly villainous, and Robin is portrayed as a moral figure who fights injustice. Most authors identify Robin as the dispossessed noble of the Tudor period, and this adds purpose to his rebellion. There are no inherent sexual connotations in the tale (such as [the] lust, adultery, and revenge in Arthurian literature), and the tale itself generally ends with the overthrow of oppression and the redemption of the heroes.”

In short: RH is straight-up good versus evil; Tolkien, Lewis, Cooper, Rowling, and Lucas have done him proud; and this is probs why I lurve him so. I’ll be periodically updating you on my Robin Hood studies, literary and otherwise (archery lessons, anyone?).


Now, Howard Pyle. For starters, reading Pyle’s Robin Hood was superfun for the following reasons:

1. The book is a highly educational excursion into all the ways in which the word “merry” can be used. A merry walk; merry weather; merry games; merry adventures; merry jests. Everyone and everything also has a great habit of being stout and/or lusty; and


2. Pyle’s version, though not the first, laid the blueprint for all the versions I know, most especially McKinley’s totally badass version, which you should definitely read, if you haven’t.

Unfortch, reading Pyle’s Robin Hood was totally lame for the following reasons:

1. Pyle’s Robin is an asshole who picks fights with innocent passersby for no fucking reason.


2. In addition to being an asshole, he’s not the brightest crayon in the box; and


3. I have a little trouble accepting that Robin and 140 other dudes could have lived undetected in Sherwood Forest for years on end. I like McKinley’s grim interpretation of an outlaw’s life, filled with struggle and fear, so much better.

That’s it for Robin Hood, Part 1. More to come!