The Outlaw Hero As Transgressor in Popular Culture
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DOI 10.6094/helden.heroes.heros./2014/01/10 Andreas J. Haller 75 The Outlaw Hero as Transgressor in Popular Culture Review of Thomas Hahn, ed. Robin Hood in Popular Culture: Violence, Trans- gression, and Justice. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000. A look at the anthology Robin Hood in Popu- All articles in the anthology but one (by Sherron lar Culture, edited by Thomas Hahn, can give Lux) describe Robin Hood or his companions as some valuable insights into the role and func- heroes or heroic or refer to their heroism. Nei- tions of the hero in popular culture. The subtitle ther can we fi nd an elaborate theory of the pop- Violence, Transgression, and Justice shows the ular hero, nor are the models of heroism and direction of the inquiry. As the editor points out, heroization through popular culture made ex- since popular culture since the Middle Ages has plicit. Still, we can trace those theories and mo- been playful and transgressive, outlaw heroes dels which implicitly refer to the discourse of the are amongst the most popular fi gures, as they heroic. Therefore, I will paraphrase these texts “are in a categorical way, transgressors” (Hahn and depict how they treat the hero, heroization, 1). And Robin Hood is the most popular of them and heroism and how this is linked to the idea of all. Certainly, the hero is a transgressor in gen- transgression in popular culture. eral, not only the outlaw and not only in popular culture. Transgressiveness is a characteristic Frank Abbot recalls his work as a scriptwriter for trait of many different kinds of heroes. Several the Nottingham Robin Hood Centre. With Tales articles in the previous issue of this journal dis- of Robin Hood he created a narrative for a site cuss this; one even mentions Robin Hood explic- which is a mixture of theme park, museum and itly (Lüdemann 77). multimedia entertainment. As it gives the hero a place, a face, and a voice (Giesen), this can The reviewed volume resulted from a confer- be regarded as a perfect example of heroiza- ence at the University of Rochester in 1997, tion. Confronted with the elusive nature of Robin which Mr. Hahn organized. This conference was Hood, he admits “that even as a ‘teacher’s study the fi rst meeting of the International Association pack’ in the digital age, the transgressive nature for Robin Hood Studies and thus marks the start- of Robin Hood is still intact: he still remains a ing point for the recent research on the famous hero” (Abbot 19). English outlaw. As the expression of a revived interest in and a hallmark of Robin Hood stud- The resemblance of the DC Comics superhero ies, the fi ndings in it are worth reconsidering, al- Green Arrow to Robin Hood seems obvious. But, though it has already been more than a decade as Sarah Beach argues in her essay, besides since it was published. This collection of articles, the fact that the former is an archer as well, it many of them by renowned scholars of the fi eld, was not until the 1960s that the almost forgotten contributes to the question we are dealing with DC char acter was re-furbished as an anti-au- in this journal’s current issue. Robin Hood has thoritarian hero. From this moment on, “Robin been a hero of popular culture since the late Hood motifs began informing everything about Middle Ages and a fi gure of public imagination the char acter of Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow” who produces “multiple, continuous and contra- (Beach 24). Much as the yeoman Robin Hood dictory meanings” (Hahn 9). What holds true for became gentrifi ed in the seventeenth century as Robin is also a problem with many other heroic the fallen Earl Robert of Huntington, the broke fi gures. We do not encounter them as fi xed, but millionaire Oliver Queen became a non-con- as an “elusive, labile [...] multiplicity that makes formist rebel fi ghting crime and injustice. Beach the hero so hard to capture” (ibid. 10). wonders why “an upper class claims an under- class outlaw hero as one of their own” (ibid. 21). She explains it as the desire of all segments of helden. heroes. héros. Rezension: Andreas J. Haller – Robin Hood in Popular Culture: Violence, Transgression, and Justice 76 the population to have contact with a fi gure as Hood is “no longer [...] a merely English hero” but soon as it takes on a mythical quality. She calls “a genuinely universal fi gure” (Dobson 61-62), this the “social aspects of mythology” (ibid.). comes forth when R. B. Dobson quotes his own Pop ular myth transgresses the bound aries of seminal work Rymes of Robyn Hood (together class and creates something of universal in- with John Taylor) of 1976 in his article on “The terest. In this sense, the “laughter of an outlaw Genesis of a Popular Hero”. Dobson doubts that hero, challeng ing convention and social stric- the Robin Hood legend can be traced back to tures” (ibid. 28) also means that it is more to him its origin. Although all attempts have been futile, than a class standpoint, but that he deals with he admits that the mystery of its origin is part of “issues that are humanly important” (ibid. 21). its appeal. Instead he tries to present a genea- logy of the Robin Hood discourse. Because The class aspect of the Robin Hood myth is most remaining sources are transformations of enforced in Laura Blunk’s analysis of Richard the Tudor era, we must avoid reconstructing a Carpenter’s 1980s TV show Robin of Sherwood. sup posed original medieval form. Dobson con- Despite all the “mutability of its hero“, the story of cludes that “it certainly remains more open that Robin Hood is about resistance, and he remains [sic] it once did at what particular point of time the a rebel (Blunk 29). More than other adaptations outlaw hero began to be deliberately projected of Robin Hood, Carpenter’s version depicts the as an exponent of social radicalism and subver- “genuinely revolutionary behavior of its heroes” sion, as a yeoman hero for a yeoman audience” (ibid. 30). Blunk argues that because “Robin (ibid. 65). This shows that the process of heroi- and his companions consciously choose to be- zation is made by deliberate projections and by come outlaws and, fi nding strength in their new responses from a specifi c audience. Dobson’s community, reject the authority of a ruling order” plea to give up the search for the historical Rob- (ibid. 33), the focus is on freedom, solidarity and in Hood has been heard. Indeed, contemporary the foundation of a new and alternative social or- scholars hardly bother with the historical reality der. The hero as a single fi gure functions merely of Robin Hood. This has opened up the possi- as a symbol, but to act successfully he needs his bility of investigating the semantics of mythical fellows, followers and supporters. In the end it is narratives and the imaginative potential of the the community that makes the hero, who is an outlaw hero today. expression of a collective effort. In the essay “Which Way to the Forest?”, Ste- Another essay in the book deals with the radical phen Knight, certainly one of the most productive politics of Robin Hood. Yoshiko Uéno intro duces and best-known contemporary scholars of Rob- a littleknown play from 1927 by the Japanese in Hood, sketches out the “Directions in Robin avant-garde author Tomoyoshi Murayama to Hood Studies”. As Dobson has shown, the re- a broader Western audience. In Japan, Robin construction of a historical fi gure is off the agen- Hood “is generally considered a pastoral hero da. Knight approaches areas and methodologies enjoying merry adventures in the forest, rather which promise new insights for future inquiries. than as a political one” (Uéno 266). In a quote According to him, “materials elusive to classical from Murayama’s autobiography, the conscious historiography and literary criticism” (ibid. 119) heroization by the Marxist playwright for a dis- could be explored through cultural studies, new tinct political purpose becomes obvious: “I had historicism, structuralist folklore studies and psy- to use my old familiar Robin Hood, a chivalrous chological readings. In general, he advocates robber in the forest fi ghting against a ruler, and reading “the context in the text and the text in to make him a revolutionary intellectual backing the context” (ibid. 120). He also lists quite a few the peasants’ revolt” (ibid. 268). Once again the desiderata, from gender issues to the forest fact appears that the polymorphous outlaw hero myth. Of course, the arguments he outlines build is open to “kaleidoscopic readings” (ibid. 272), on the academic discussion of the late 1990s, which also points to the universality of the leg- and the progress of this research program could end. In light of the popularity of Robin Hood in most likely be reviewed in the work conducted Japan, Uéno can refer to Eric Hobsbawm’s fa- by the International Association for Robin Hood mous studies on primitive rebels and social ban- Studies in the last 17 years. dits (c.f. Hobsbam Rebels and Hobsbam Ban- dits) and claim that “Robin Hood does not remain Hahn’s volume already presents some essays a national hero of England but an archetype of a which contribute to this change in focus. The chivalrous outlaw all over the world” (ibid.). most exciting article in the book in this regard is probably Stuart Kane’s “Horseplay: Robin Hood, The repetition of this simple truth, that Robin Guy of Gisbourne and the Neg(oti)ation of the helden.