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| You scored as William Wallace The great Scottish warrior William Wallace led his people against their English oppressors in a campaign that won independence for Scotland and immortalized him in the hearts of his countrymen. With his warrior's heart, tactician's mind, and poet's soul, Wallace was a brilliant leader. He just wanted to live a simple life on his farm, but he gave it up to help his country in its time of need.
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Monday, July 14, 2008
Braveheart
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4 comments:
Heh, the sons results were Indiana Jones and the Terminator. Can you tell who got what?
That film has a lot to answer for -
'William Wallace has attracted a great deal of attention from interested enthusiasts, but surprisingly little from historians. Of the several biographies readily available at the time of writing, not one has been written by anyone with a background in medieval history generally, let alone with any scholarly understanding of the society in which Wallace lived. The lack of an understanding of the context has led to the easy acceptance of material that is at best questionable and at worst fraudulent. This is most evident in the film 'Braveheart'. Not content with relying on Blind Harry's largely fictitutious poem 'The Wallace' as the sole source of material, the writer, Randall Wallace, simply changed the story to suit a script that made no sort of historical sense and has, in fact, deprived Scottish people of part of their history by effectively undermining the factual material. The benefit of the 'Braveheart' phenomenon is of course the extent to which it has heightened interest in medieval Scotland: an important consideration in a country where there is no viable programme of history in schools. Although 'Braveheart' did help to make Scots more aware of their past, the damage done to our perception of Wallace and of the early period of the Wars of Independence is incalculable. If it is true that a picture paints a thousand words, how damaging is it when the picture is a fantasy?
SOURCE: 'WILLIAM WALLACE - The True Story of Braveheart' by Chris Brown, page 125, ISBN 0-7524-3432-2,
'The success of 'Braveheart', with its bedaubed hooligans and a simple, one-dimensional Wallace, tells us more about its audience than the nature of the patriot and his role. For the director and scriptwriter of the film, the concern was not about liberty but the taking of liberties. Their Wallace was a noble savage, of the kind found in James Fenimore Cooper. The inaccuracies in the script are to be expected; Hollywood has in the past been free with the stories, among others, of Mary, Queen of Scots and Bonnie Prince Charlie. Our knowledge of Wallace, if derived solely from the facts available to us, is more than adequate to provide a film with all the elements Hollywood seeks. An opportunity to portray Wallace as he was, and at the same time, to bring his story, unadulterated, to the audience, was spurned.'
SOURCE: 'WILLIAM WALLACE' by Andrew Fisher, page 279, ISBN 0 85976 557 1.
The 'Sanitization' of Scottish History - http://follonblogs.blogspot.com/.
Lisa? Did that guy just call you shallow? He's saying I'm fat too, isn't he?
He *TOTALLY* called you fat!! ;o)
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