August 07, 2005

Watching Braveheart
posted by Skrik 19 years ago
  • Man.. how is this a good FPP?
  • There's sex, violence, pedantics, Mel Gibson... what else do you want?
  • Braveheart is a great movie.
  • I thought the rules didn't apply on the weekends. /snark
  • monkeyfilter: sex, violence, pedantics, Mel Gibson...what else do you want?
  • this is quite interesting. i was hoping for a braveheart drinking game. something like "each time the camera is specially position to make mel gibson look taller, take a gulp", "each time somebody mentions freedom, drain your glass".
  • "Braveheart" is tripe, but it's entertaining tripe, IMO. Heh, I like the crazy Irish guy. He's funny cuz he's crazy! And Irish!
  • I like the nitpicking. My biggest annoyance was the way they trashed the character of Edward II by making him a stereotypical mincing homosexual. Everyone knows he was a strong, athletic homosexual. But Mel Gibson has a pathological anti-English bias. I don't know my medieval history enough to pick apart the Scottish wars (aside from royal sex lives and knowing you can't life your pikes last minute and not be crushed to death), but his Patriot was slanderous.
  • I think this is great! I'm cheering along with the historical accuracy. Man I hate it when movies seriously distort people's understanding of history. I mean if they make it clear it's all made up and it's a fun story set in the past it's one thing, but Braveheart had pretentions to political relevancy.
  • Yeah, because the important things to gain from history are things like the date kilt use became widespread.
  • Braveheart is a great movie.
  • ps this is a rip-off of something they do at McSweeney's, except theirs is funny.
  • I'm afraid these folks just come off as well-educated enough to know the finer historical points, yet still dumb enough to carp about a movie that's obviously just entertainment.
  • Braveheart is filled with blaring and unnecessary historical inaccuracies, only one of many annoying components of a mediocre movie. so there!
  • Ok, so maybe this thing is just written by and for history nerds, but as a history nerd I found it absolutley hilarious. Yeah, I've read other commentaries making fun of movies before, but this one is particularly good, because the commentators are so well informed and so insicive and because it's about... well... history, which I care about, as opposed to plot holes or fasion or something I don't really care about. Now, aside from the fact that this is funny in and of itself, I'm also a little gleeful to see Braveheart sent up because it was such a nasty movie. You might say it's 'just entertainment', but Braveheart has become a real motivating factor behind a particular, noxious, brand of Scottish nationalism. There are powerful, influential, people enjoying great popularity and political legitimacy, who are systematically mythologising history in order to increase their power by spreading hate. That is wrong. Mel Gibson, himself a powerful and influential man, has aligned himself very strongly with this movement both in Scotland and in other countries, and I think he is wrong to do so. I think this sendup is extra funny because it undermines the main weapon of this movement: the systematic falsification of history as it is popularly understood.
  • "each time the camera is specially position to make mel gibson look taller, take a gulp" What?? You mean Mel Gibson isn't seven feet tall? He doesn't kill men by the hundreds, shoot fireballs from his eyes or lightning bolts from his arse?
  • Man.. how is this a good FPP? Are you serious? This might singlehandedly make me check MoFi more often.
  • I found this link funny, too. It's interesting: a lot of great art (Shakespeare's history plays for example) comes from the bastardisation of history. But Dreadnought's point about revisionist agendas is excellent too. How about: when historical revisionism (or just plain wrongness) produces something like Shakespeare's Richard III or Anouilh's Becket, we cheer and simultaneously mutter under our breath that it didn't really happen like that, and when it produces a vast steaming pile of asschunks like Braveheart, we mock it without mercy? And cheerily read FPPs on the subject? How's that for a plan?
  • >systematically mythologising history in order to increase their power by spreading hate. That is wrong. Amen to that. (I have the luxury of being pretty well insulated from any variety of Scottish nationalism, so as far as I'm concerned Braveheart is Lethal Weapon with kilts. And chopped-off heads.)
  • (or at least Popcorn & Chain mail)
  • I fail to see what this has to do with the Milk Ghraibifunk movie "The Fucking of the Donkeypottamus" in which seventeen robotic butterflies repeatedly bang their heads against a meringue made out of shit and peas. Now that's entertainment.
  • shoot ... lightning bolts from his arse Oh, is THAT why they didn't wear undies? Hey, bees. Nice tag.
  • Heh. Don't thank me, thank Skrik. I just found it irresistibly funny.
  • Wow, I think my husband and I have had almost that exact conversation about Braveheart. But I'm a history nerd and proud of it. Even though I'm not a physics nerd, I also enjoyed my best friend the physics Ph.D.'s rant on Lost in Space. So I guess I like ranting deconstruction of crappy movies. YMMV. ))) to Skrik for the post and to Dreadnought for a particularly insightful comment.
  • Skrik's link links out to a parody of Troy that is great. Far too long and involved, but very funny.
  • I liked the part where they mooned all the other guys.
  • I also enjoyed my best friend the physics Ph.D.'s rant on Lost in Space Ah, that does remind. I should post Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy list of movies for all to enjoy. It's not quite as funny as the Braveheart exchange, but if you enjoy railing against bad science in movies, you should enjoy this, too. (unfortunately, I think our poster chose the best off of Popcorn & Chain Mail; I found none of the rest to be that entertaining and informative)
  • As someone who cares more about literature than history, I think Pallas Athena's comment about Richard III is excellent. We willingly accept Shakespeare's politically motivated falsification of history, but slam Mel Gibson's. Pause for thought, methinks.
  • I don't like Shakespeare's Richard III, though the play is cracking. One of the best monologues written for a female character - for Margaret - of Anjou?
  • Oh, Margaret of Anjou ROCKS. (or at least, Shakespeare's version of her does.) It's her speech at the death of York in 3 Henry VI that I love. Maybe Shakespeare's fictionalisation is more acceptable because it's done more in the name of entertainment than politics-- he was required to toe the Tudor-friendly line, but within those limits he seems genuinely concerned to question why and how the events of his histories came to pass. He doesn't allow anyone to occupy the moral high ground for long, and even his villains are, at times, sympathetic and human. (I'm thinking more of Richard II, the Henry IV and Henry VI plays here than of Henry V or Richard III.) Whereas (as Dreadnought rightly says) Braveheart and its ilk mythologise and bend history to show William Wallace as a Hero surrounded by the Weak, the Unworthy and the Just Plain Nasty. This genre doesn't ask questions, it spoon-feeds easy answers. And when those answers add up to a given political agenda, I think both storytelling and history are the poorer. Sorry, I'm pontificating and waffling. Feel free to poke holes... go on, poke away!
  • I agree very strongly. I'd add two further points, however. Firstly, I think that Braveheart and its ilk will have lost some of its objectional qualities in a few years time when the political causes they it serves are as dead as Tudor loyalism. Secondly, when we think about Shakespere we frequently tackle, head on, its historical innacuracy. When you talk about the context of Tricky Dick III as a Tudor play people go 'ah, yes, very interesting'. When you talk about Braveheart as a work of propaganda people go 'don't be such a nerd; it's just a movie!' That retisence to engage with what it means on a critical level gives it extra power. It gives it, if I could put it this way, something to hide behind.
  • This LJ is hilarious - I'm totally into movie snark - thanks for sharing the link, Skrik.
  • I've enjoyed this debate, and must confess to having never watched Braveheart (I pride myself on the ability to spot an obvious crock at one glance), but are we not overdoing it on the agenda here? I feel Hollywood's failing is to encourage the myth of the efficacy of violence as a solution and to play up the possible role of the 'one good man' in the resolution of complex junctures in histories. Naturally this kind of bollocks does no harm to the vested interests of the world we live in, but I personally - loonie leftie as I am - don't see it as any more insidious than that.
  • Furthermore I would submit that Scots nationalism is NOT part of the Hollywood agenda, unless dear old Sean Connery has more pull than I previously gave him credit for :).
  • It's funny when they all moon the Brits! Cuz that's what I'd like to do!
  • Abiezer, I don't think it's so much the Scots nationalism that is the agenda, as the idea that English = bad.
  • Neddy - I took the fashion for English villains to be because a) we have an extremely dodgy history to mine for material, b) we have a bunch of cheap, good actors, and c) no defence league in the US to complain about stereotyping. And we really are perfidious in Albion, don'tcha know? Plus I must say those Jocks, Micks and whatever were asking for it.....
  • poke poke poke pokepokepoke pokepokepokepokepokepokepokepokepoke poke Gee, Pallas, hope this is as fun for you as it is for me!
  • MonkeyFilter: Pontificating and waffling *wipes tear Beautiful. Just Beautiful.
  • Furthermore I would submit that Scots nationalism is NOT part of the Hollywood agenda No, but it is part of the agenda of Scotish nationalists, some of whom (but by no means all!) have used this movie in an unethical way. It's also, in a back-handed sort of way, part of the agenda of Mel Gibson himself. Judging from his movies, I would guess that Gibson isn't so much interested in Scottish nationalism per se, but in the notion that places like Scotland and Australia were unwilling and largely blamelses victims of English (as opposed to British) colonialism. In this belief - if indeed it represents his true beliefs - he shares common cause with certain Scottish nationalists.
  • Tehee. Lightning bolts out his arse. I still remember the TBS/TNT/Whatever promos with the chimps. It is 2 funE 4evar.
  • Digging the Bad Astronomy site, Rorschach. Reminds me of Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics. Both of which I find insanely freakin' cool, learning is fun, etc.
  • There are powerful, influential, people enjoying great popularity and political legitimacy, who are systematically mythologising history in order to increase their power by spreading hate. *GASP* NOOO!
  • Heehee! BlueHorse, that tickles!! Abiezer, I think that it's not so much a question of Scottish nationalism per se (though as Dreadnought says, they've certainly gotten plenty of mileage out of it) as one of giving validation to nationalist extremists in general. Think of all the funding the IRA got from Americans who viewed them as freedom fighters. That sort of thing.
  • I would guess that Gibson isn't so much interested in Scottish nationalism per se, but in the notion that places like Scotland and Australia were unwilling and largely blamelses victims of English (as opposed to British) colonialism. Ironically enough, the reason the Scottish wanted the union of 1707 was to get in on that English colonialism, and make it British. Their own colonial endeavours has failed. And you can just see from the names of famous merchants, explorers, soldiers and generals, etc, how invested the Scots and Anglo-Irish were in the colonial project. Toronto isn't a Scottish city for nothing. Of course, the reason the English wanted the union of 1707 was to keep the nasty Catholic Stuarts away, and didn't especially like this British thing honing in on their ground. Imagine if Canada and the U.S. joined, and we insisted on getting in on all their markets, and that everyone now had to be called Canadamericans instead of Americans.