So why have we mucked about with it? Films and TV series' have taken us away from the grit and the harsh 'reality' of the times and given us magnificent, pristine castles, polished armour varying from chain mail to full plate and gleaming swords. We are talking about the 4th or 5th Century AD - it rained then as now. People got spattered with mud, castles were weather-worn and they almost certainly didn't have any armour other than boiled leather. Are you getting where I'm coming from? They didn't wash much either, but we'll pass that one by. it seems that successive attempts have been made to upgrade the stories - which really means writing new stories using the same characters. And I don't like it. I want to see an accurate version of the proper story.....
Fortunately, books retelling the tales have fared much better with many excellent version and whilst it may be unfair to single any one out, I have to recommend Bernard Cornwall's trilogy, which captures perfectly that transitional time between pagan customs and the growth of Christianity and includes more plausible characterisations - especially of Lancelot....
I grew up with the definitive (children's) book of the tales of Arthur by a lady called Carola Oman - who also wrote one about Robin Hood.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, writers produced what were strangely termed 'romances' and I would like to talk about two of those now. Henry Rider Haggard wrote a number of such books, creating a wonderful character called Allan Quartermain. Quatermain was a hunter and guide working in what was then largely unexplored Africa. King Solomon's Mines is a tale of three adventurers - Quatermain, English Lord Sir Henry Curtis and a retired Naval captain, John Good who travel through an unspecified area of Central Africa in search of Curtis' brother who was chasing the story of the legendary King Solomon and his fabulous wealth, believed to be hidden and guarded by a tribe of African warriors. There have been at least two films - maybe three - and both of the two I know of have a woman travelling with them. Please note - there are but two women in the whole story: the beautiful African Foulata who falls in love with Captain Good but dies tragically, and the and the ancient witch Gagool, who dies gruesomely. And, needless to say, much of the original story is discarded.
Why?
So let us move on. To Edgar Rice Burroughs. Everyone knows of his creation, Tarzan the Apeman, but less are familiar with John Carter, soldier and gentleman of Virginia who made his bow in A Princess of Mars. A survivor of the American Civil War, Carter is trying to eke out a living as a gold prospector. Whilst escaping from angry Indians, he stumbles into a cave into which the Indians won't venture. He falls asleep and wakes up - on Mars. What follows are his adventures as the 'outsider' of two main species, the green men and the red men. The red men are completely humanoid, whilst the green men are completely alien and somewhat equine in appearance and sporting 8 arms and walking on two legs and riding beasts called thoats! Difficult, I imagine, to duplicate on the silver screen - although CIG could now provide the answer. From this you may gather that I have not seen the new-ish film "John Carter" .I certainly want to, if only to see whether they have stayed true to the original, or mucked about with it. There was an earlier version - no more than a couple of years ago - which shows on SyFy every so often, but I'm afraid Dejah Thoris did not live up to my (high) expectations. The jury, however, is out.
All of these stories were written in - or about - a specified period of time. Film or TV makers seem to ignore this and either transport the characters to a more modern world, or adorn them with clothing or accoutrements which clearly did not exist.
I have picked out just a few examples to illustrate my point, but there are many many more. I have headlined this blog with 'Traditional Stories' and I would very much prefer them to remain so.
