Hello Readers, it’s co-editor Gail here!
The news since the Biden-Harris administration took over has been lighter, but not any less wild or frustrating, By now, I am sure most if not all of you are aware of the GameStop Stock controversy. I vehemently hate math and the concept of money with a burning passion and I cannot even begin to understand how stocks work. But I do wholeheartedly support the little guy screwing over hedge fund billionaire capitalist ghouls.
And while I personally do not use any stock apps or have any stocks of my own, I understand who the figure of Robin Hood is in our culture. This whole GameStop situation made me want to take a closer look at the diverse ways Robin Hood as a character has been represented on screen and more importantly, how his mission of “take from the rich, and give to the poor” has been translated into media despite these movies being made by major corporations with massive budgets.
So, I picked 3 drastically different interpretations of the classic tale to see how they stack up.
- Disney’s Robin Hood-1973
While made by Disney, this Robin Hood was actually made before they were the massive franchise devouring superpower we know them as today. In fact this film actually is from the Xerox era of Disney in which they reused animation from previous films such as Snow White and The Jungle Book. This was probably the most nostalgic watch for me. I remember small things from this movie viscerally from my childhood. It was fun to revisit and enjoy some bits of humor that I didn’t pick up on as a kid.
Despite a good chunk of time being spent on Robin Hood and Maid Marian’s romance, this iteration of Robin Hood has most of his priorities in order. When questioned by Little John if they are good guys or bad guys for robbing the rich to give to the poor, Robin declares that they are the good guys because they are not robbing, they are just “borrowing” a bit of money from those who can afford to do without it. Much like how we today could tax billionaires their fair share and it wouldn’t make a dent in their level of wealth.
This stands in clear contrast to the babyish temper tantrum throwing Prince John and the heartless Sheriff of Nottingham who directly steal from the poor for their own benefit even if they are disabled, children, or even of the church. Robin is a hero amongst the people and by the end has returned every penny stolen through inventive trickery, much like the Reddit users with the GameStop Stock.
My only real critique is Robin and the rest of the Nottingham residents still being loyal to the crown in their support of the absent King Richard. My first gripe being that the whole reason King Richard is gone the majority of the film is that Prince John’s snake adviser Sir Hiss hypnotized him into going on a crusade (a crusade that Robin Hood and company audibly support) so immediately that’s minus points for ethnic cleansing.
The more on theme problem however, is that the writing implies that if the good king could just be in charge again, everyone would be happy and thriving. In reality this would not be the case. While there is nothing wrong in believing in a politician you think will change things for the better, (even though in this case it is a monarchy which is inherently unequal) they have to actually do something substantial to earn the people’s approval. While Richard does return at the end, the Rooster narrator only says that he “sorted everything out” and all we really see is that Robin has been pardoned and our cast of villain characters are now in prison. While I think it was good of them to show that we should punish those who would do horrible financial crimes, the film does not go further to say that Richard did anything more than this to actually help the poor of Nottingham. As far as we know, they are still very poor, they’re just not getting taxed like they were under Prince John. No real wealth redistribution was done beyond Robin giving them back the money that was rightfully theirs in the first place. This blind faith in a singular leader also undermines the mutual aid style work that Robin, Little John, Friar Tuck and the people of Nottingham were doing for each other as a community throughout the film. But given that this story does take place during medieval times and was made in the early 70’s, these ideas would be too progressive. It’s just a shame that it’s only starting to become a mainstream worldview right now.
- Robin Hood: Men In Tights- 1993
I am a huge Mel Brooks fan so it would probably surprise you that I have never actually seen this movie before. It’s even funnier considering the best explanation I have heard about this whole GameStop thing is that “they did The Producers but with stocks”. Unfortunately, a lot of the jokes in this movie do not hold up and are very problematic and cringey today. But my purpose in watching is to see how Robin Hood and his ideology is presented within the adaptation.
This Robin, known in the film as Robin of Loxley, starts off in jail for being on a crusade with king Richard (you know how I feel about that).
The inciting action for him is that he is the sole surviving Loxley and as a result of Prince John’s taxes not getting paid, his family castle of Loxley Hall has been repossessed. So not only does this Robin already come from wealth, his main motivation is to get it back for himself, not the poor.
Soon after he has an altercation with the Sheriff of, in this version “Rottingham”. Robin humiliates the sheriff as retribution for threatening to hang a young peasant boy. Robin then promises the boy that he will “end injustice, right wrongs, restore the throne, end tyranny, protect the forest”. He also goes on to say that he will “demand a four-day work week” (that would be nice) and get “affordable health care for Saxons and Normans” (so healthcare for mostly the ruling class and no one else? Hmm sounds familiar). But what I came to find with this film, is that this Robin is all talk and no real results.
He doesn’t really interact with the poor very much and when he does finally gather a group of poor men to join his team, they are framed as dumb, slovenly, unskilled, and useless rather than as real people with meaningful lives actually being affected by Prince John’s policies. At one point, Robin even contemplates using dummies of soldiers in their place. Overall, these Merry Men seem to have been pulled into more of a political revolt over Robin’s personal problems rather than one of justice for all.
To get them in the first place, Robin gives a big Winston Churchill quoting speech about not letting Prince John “tax us into poverty” but it does not have the same power since Robin is rich himself. It has only been a day or two and he is hardly in poverty like his Merry Men must be, but we as an audience are never actually shown what their lives are like. Perhaps Brooks and his fellow writers are aware of this lackluster vibe given that this speech literally puts the peasant men to sleep and they don’t wake up until Dave Chapelle’s character Ahchoo gives Malcolm X style speech that actually gets them pumped up to fight. While most likely just meant to be a joke about well known political figures, it says something that the one that actually motivates the people comes from a marginalized voice inspired by a civil rights leader rather than a generic war time speech from a privileged white man.
There isn’t even any robbing from the rich so much as there is merely beating them up and making a dashing exit empty handed. There is never an on-screen take and tradeoff from Robin or his men to poor Rottingham villagers. He becomes more of a hero to the people for his archery skill rather than actually bettering their lives.
After finally “saving the day” I guess, Deus Ex Machina King Richard once again returns and knights Robin. He gets his family’s Hall and wealth back, power over Sherwood forest, and of course the hand of Maid Marian.
Ultimately, this adaptation of Robin Hood seems completely concerned with what Robin wants for himself and not what he does for the people.
- Robin Hood- 2018
Okay I’m gonna be honest, I only watched this one cause Tim Minchin is in it as Friar Tuck. I stan Tim Minchin so much I’d watch him in anything. It sucks that he is so niche in the states that his image and name aren’t even on the poster. But this is also the most recent big studio Robin Hood film so it was also worth checking out for that reason.
Definitely the most dark and dramatic of the three (though not without some humor) this iteration also starts Robin off rich and positions Maid Marian as the one initially robbing the rich to feed the poor. She surprisingly is not royal in this one and save for a few damsel moments is very empowered.
While rich, this robin seems aware of his privilege and permits Marian to take what she needs to help those in need even if it is just because he thinks she’s hot.
Soon after, he gets drafted into the third crusade and is the first Robin of the three I have watched to not be jazzed about it! Yay! Though I wish he was taking an actual moral stance against taking land that doesn’t belong to you and forcing people to convert to your religion through violence rather than just being sad about leaving his girlfriend.
However, he does speak up to his superiors that he thinks it’s wrong to torture and kill the unarmed captives and goes against them to attempt to save the son of Jamie Foxx’s Little John. While he fails to save the son, he manages to free Little John and many other prisoners before being non-fatally shot by his superior officer and sent back to England.
Like the Mel Brooks Robin Hood, he comes home to find his property seized and is told by Friar Tuck that the war taxes have driven Marian and everyone else out to the mines. Unlike the Brooks version, we SEE what the common folk are dealing with despite Robin’s current one-track mind of getting Marian back. They are all living in a dirty, cold, over-crowded city with hardly any food or water and mining fumes in the air. They even go so far as to show us a new looking child sized coffin.
Robin discovers that Marian has found a new man and runs off where he is found by Little John who stowed away on Robin’s hospital ship. Because Robin tried to save his son, Little John tells Robin he has chosen him for “this war all wars” because everything happening back in Arabia and in England is “as old as time. Rich men getting richer. Men of Power taking power from the blood of innocents”. It is honestly quite a moving speech that Foxx delivers excellently. Once again, an outside force is pushing Robin in the direction of helping those below him. Robin questions what only two men can do to change things. Little John answers “You’re only powerless if you believe you’re powerless”.
Our scene then moves to the Sheriff of Nottingham giving a very familiar speech about dangerous foreigners of a different race and religion coming to Nottingham to destroy everything the citizens hold dear and that’s why so much taxing is needed. Friar Tuck is able to stall the vote on the next level of taxes by revealing that Robin is alive and nothing can be passed until his vote is counted. Robin himself is hiding amongst the crowd with Little John getting full of the fury I had seeing our former president on TV every day. Robin wants to take him down! However, it is Little John who proposes stealing the people’s money back in order to do so.
So the plan is for Robin to be bandit by night and Lord Loxley by day to charm his way into information. A different more intrigue driven direction than the other versions. I like the idea of leveraging his privilege to get information. After that it’s training montage time and then Robin makes his first few robberies. At first, he leaves a bag at Marian’s door, but overhears her saying she wished “The Hood” as folks have been calling him, would give it to the people instead. Robin then goes on to do just that.
Later Robin has a chat with Marian’s new boyfriend Will and asks him what he thinks of The Hood. Will answers that The Hood means nothing to him. That he will be caught and forgotten while the work he, Marian and the other commoners are doing is much bigger than the shenanigans of a petty thief.
This inspires Robin to want to go big and rob the treasury itself. This does not go well in terms of coinage, but they get the people’s attention and they begin nailing black hoods on the outside of their houses in solidarity. It also gets the attention of a Cardinal who is now coming to Nottingham to speak with the Sheriff regarding The Hood. A party is being held in his honor that both Robin and Marian are invited to. At a gambling table, Robin coyly asks Marian who she thinks The Hood is. She answers, “he is all of us, that’s what matters”.
This whole time, Marian and Friar Tuck have been working on their own scheme to take down the sheriff and they put their plan into action at the party starting with Friar Tuck stealing a noble’s keys. Robin sees this and convinces Tuck to trust him and uses the theft to his advantage. Robin pretends to have caught Tuck red handed and gets enough clout to finally be at the big boy table with the Sheriff and the Cardinal who then reveal to him that they have been funding he Arabian army in order to defeat the British army and usurp the king. The money that they owe must sail in four days to officially buy them absolute power.
This sends the sheriff into full evil rich oppressor mode. He announces he will send his soldiers to the slums to take everything that’s left from the commoners and then burn it down to “remind them they’re not the people, they’re my subjects”.
Back at the mines, Marian has used the keys Friar Tuck stole to get the documentation proving what the sheriff and cardinal have been doing. Will freaks out because she did not get these papers “honestly” and it will jeopardize his political future. Marian claps back telling him that his politics aren’t changing anything. She wants action, he wants only to pull himself out of the gutter for the life he wants separate from the people. She tells him that he is afraid of the people rising up because then he’d lose their support to The Hood.
I like that this movie calls out performative politics vs. true action as I feel it is something we are very much dealing with today. Many of our leaders on both sides of the aisle are more than willing to do small performative actions that look and sound good and maybe help a bit, but it’s nothing compared to the bigger actions that could be taken that would be of real benefit. For some examples: putting Harriet Tubman on the twenty but no talks of reparations or other racial equity solutions, rejoining the Paris climate accord but no green new deal, or negotiating ever lowering stimulus checks rather than just paying people to stay home and other substantial aid that they don’t want to give for fear of *gasp* socialism!
After the mines are destroyed, Robin reveals himself as The Hood and gives an actual rousing speech from the people declaring that the rich are the true thieves and that they must work together to stop the shipment of money to Arabia. With Marian’s help, he convinces them to fight.
The revolution ensues, Robin and Little John kill the sheriff, get the money back and safely guide all their new outlaw pals into the Sherwood forest. The end! Except for the set up to a sequel that I am not sure we are ever going to get given how poorly this film did back in 2018.
I honestly think this movie was my favorite of the three because it speaks to the activist in me. Robin begins the story as just a guy who wants a nice life with his girlfriend but is awakened to the injustice around him by those he cares about and other outside influences and then makes the choice to take a stand. I like that he had to interact and learn from others to become the legend the Robin Hood is rather than just being born a 100% righteous person with all the plans. It makes me think of how all activism has humble beginnings about who and what we love.
This version of the story felt the most realistic and timely to both our pre- and current pandemic world and it feels definitely intentional. From the anti-capitalist language choices to the scenes of the peasant’s vs the guards that visually look a bit like Black Lives Matter protests. Yeah the villains are a bit over the top but not any more over the top than the billionaires currently crying on Fox News about normal folks “manipulating” the stock market. Maybe this film wouldn’t have flopped had it come out in 2020 or 2021. I hope with time people will appreciate what this movie was trying to do and say.
So yeah, I still don’t know anything about stonks, but I had a good time deep diving into these films and learning that Robin Hood is a story with core values that can still be useful to us in our own fights for equality right now.
Please forgive the irony below:
Gail Bello is a poet and playwright from Waltham, Massachusetts. She graduated in 2019 with a BFA in Creative Writing and a minor in Theatre from The University of Maine at Farmington. Find her previous publications at https://thaumaturgedramaturge.wordpress.com and follow her on Twitter @AquajadeGail