Destroying Our Myths

Within the past week or so I had seen advertisements around for a new series about Robin Hood. My initial thought was positive, since Robin Hood is one of those figures with a lot to teach us, especially in a time when the rich are getting richer at the expense of the poor. But, as revealed in Robin Hood takes different paths in Sherwood Forest, that absolute opposite is happening.

There are two separate rapings of the Robin Hood story coming soon. One for TV depicts Robin Hood as a pacifist who only robs from the sheriff of Nottingham ... and not from the myriad other parasites who put the sheriff into office to prop up their exploitation of the poor. The writer for this series actually said, "I don't think it's interesting or sympathetic anymore to have your supposedly heroic characters robbing people just because they're rich." Well, if you are talking to Hollywood executives, you are probably correct.

The seconds script, slated as a film staring Russell Crowe in the part of the sheriff, attempts to depict the sheriff is a "working-class cop". Historically, sheriffs were overseers for the serf system, working for the local lords to make sure that serfs kept at their work and didn't steal from the lord.

This certainly isn't the first time this folk hero has been maligned or distorted, but it is interesting that we see two such stories hitting the media plate at the same time. This degenerate society of ours, with the huge chasm between rich and poor growing constantly, has nothing to offer those at the bottom but a "rotten apple" theory of corruption or a request to sympathize with their torturers. Robin Hood is a story that poor folk have been telling for centuries because it speaks to them. The message of robbing back from the rich (what they robbed from us) is apparently a little to apt these days, so the story must be corrupted.