Sklar Wayne State University

1 Le Morte d’Arthur: The Legend of the King, Films for the Humanities and Sciences, P.O. Box 2053, Princeton, NJ 08543-2053 (1-800-257-5126), 50 minutes, $89.95. Despite some serious reservations about this classroom video, my first reaction to it was something akin to wonder as I flashed back to the truly deadly documentaries to which I was subjected as a schoolchild: black-and-white films with dreary, ideology- laden scripts sadistically intoned by an inflectionless male voice, on topics of no conceivable interest to most adults, much less to a classroom full of captive youngsters. Set against these blessedly bygone ‘educational’ films, this video is a class act. It’s loaded with visual interest, featuring a lively succession of images and some stunning photography. The script, mellifluously narrated by Donald Sutherland, is unusually literate, even in comparison with the best contemporary documentaries; although it teeters on the brink of hyperbole, the narration is rhetorically effective and on occasion even rises to eloquence. The producers have assembled a bevy of Arthurian Big Guns: Geoffrey Ashe, Derek Brewer, Norris Lacy, and Peter Field, all of whom bespeak themselves admirably. Collectively, this quartet of authorities establishes a judicious stance towards the matter of Arthur in general, and Arthur’s historicity in particular, that appears to have permeated the script proper, which, rather than trying to ‘sell’ King Arthur as an historical figure, instead emphasizes the legendary nature of the matter of Arthur. Conceived as a kind of mini-course in Arthurian studies, it covers considerable chronological and textual territory in its scant 50 minutes, moving from the Roman and sub–Roman periods in England, to the requisite Arthurian ‘historical’ sites (Glastonbury and South Cadbury), through segments on chivalry, courtly love, and major figures and icons associated with the legend (Lancelot, Merlin, Mordred, the Round Table, Excalibur, and the Grail) to modern high and popular culture treatments of the matter of Arthur (Tennyson, Twain, White, Star Wars, Monty Python, and Prince Valiant). Unfortunately, in the name of coverage (and perhaps through some misguided notion of ‘relevance’ as well), both Malory and the Morte Darthur get unaccountably sidelined here. Although this documentary sails under the flag of the ‘Great Books’ series, ultimately there is precious little time accorded the title text. Aside from an historically misleading biographical segment on Kittredge’s Malory (the robber baron with a soft side) and a nice set piece featuring Peter Field discussing the Winchester manuscript, I noted only two other references to Malory in the entire video, both no more than glancing blows, and both, disturbingly, read through the Star Wars saga. Ultimately, Lucas and his oeuvre get more play here than do Malory or the Morte. The production is flawed in other ways as well. Thematic redundancy and the inclusion of tangential interviews, such as those with Elizabeth Montgomery, current owner of the South Cadbury property or contemporary armorer Robert Mackenzie, threaten to derail the mini-course structure. The ‘lively succession of images’ to which I referred earlier comprises a chronological and artistic hodgepodge, a skittish melange of images from the visual arts (predominantly nineteenth–century), film clips, random re-enactments, and nods to popular culture—tourist traps here, a Renaissance festival there. Additionally, the video tends to be error-prone. The narrator pronounces 2 arthuriana ‘Tintagel’ as ‘Tintagua’ (despite Norris Lacy’s attempt to remedy this). Derek Brewer’s name is misspelled on-screen, and he is not acknowledged in the final credits. The producers seem to have got the Kennedy/Camelot connection backwards. The assertion that ‘clearly Merlin is something more than just an evil sorcerer,’ and the depiction of Arthur as a ‘cattle boy’ who made good might give one pause as well. And this is the first I’ve heard that Malory was imprisoned in the Tower of London (have they confused Sir Thomas with Sir Walter, perchance?). I also find the underlying ideology unpalatable. Latent in the conservative, veritably Gibbonesque historiography of the production’s earlier moments, particularly in its treatment of the ‘Dark Ages’ and its touting of the Romans as heralds of Western Civilization (as opposed to the barbaric Celts, whose ‘primitive’ religion ‘included human sacrifice'), the ideological subtext emerges unvarnished in a disastrous finale, where narration and imagery collaborate to sabotage the relatively objective stance that has been heretofore espoused, and by the very nature of its positioning transforms documentary into propaganda. Excalibur becomes an icon of patriotism and imperialistic fervor through the bizarre visual collocation of Lincoln’s statue with film clips of tanks on the move (the Gulf War, perhaps?), while an attempt to render the Grail intelligible to modern viewers through a questionably protracted succession of Eucharistic and other identifiably Roman Catholic or High Church images effectively excludes what I would hope to be the majority of the target audience. Cap this off with two church choirs, one singing ‘God Save the Queen,’ the other ‘My Country ’Tis of Thee’ (with only one non-Caucasian face in the entire sequence) and you’ve got a message many of us would be reluctant to purvey to our students—only white anglophones need apply. As for classroom use, I’d label this package ‘handle with care.’ Preceded by a series of caveats (particularly concerning the anachronistic nature of the armor, the musical underlay, and most of the paintings), and followed by a discussion of the ideologies encoded therein, it might well prove productive. It’s sufficiently attractive in terms of narration, imagery, and pacing to keep most students from falling asleep, and sufficiently informative to provide, with adequate guidance, a reasonable entree into Arthurian studies. elizabeth sklar Wayne State University.

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