Ridley Scott Goes Down on OBL

[John Uskglass]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...us18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/18/ixworld.html

ir Ridley Scott, the Oscar-nominated director, was savaged by senior British academics last night over his forthcoming film which they say "distorts" the history of the Crusades to portray Arabs in a favourable light.

The £75 million film, which stars Orlando Bloom, Jeremy Irons and Liam Neeson, is described by the makers as being "historically accurate" and designed to be "a fascinating history lesson".

Sir Ridley Scott

Academics, however - including Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, Britain's leading authority on the Crusades - attacked the plot of Kingdom of Heaven, describing it as "rubbish", "ridiculous", "complete fiction" and "dangerous to Arab relations".

The film, which began shooting last week in Spain, is set in the time of King Baldwin IV (1161-1185), leading up to the Battle of Hattin in 1187 when Saladin conquered Jerusalem for the Muslims.

The script depicts Baldwin's brother-in-law, Guy de Lusignan, who succeeds him as King of Jerusalem, as "the arch-villain". A further group, "the Brotherhood of Muslims, Jews and Christians", is introduced, promoting an image of cross-faith kinship.

"They were working together," the film's spokesman said. "It was a strong bond until the Knights Templar cause friction between them."

The Knights Templar, the warrior monks, are portrayed as "the baddies" while Saladin, the Muslim leader, is a "a hero of the piece", Sir Ridley's spokesman said. "At the end of our picture, our heroes defend the Muslims, which was historically correct."

Prof Riley-Smith, who is Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University, said the plot was "complete and utter nonsense". He said that it relied on the romanticised view of the Crusades propagated by Sir Walter Scott in his book The Talisman, published in 1825 and now discredited by academics.

"It sounds absolute balls. It's rubbish. It's not historically accurate at all. They refer to The Talisman, which depicts the Muslims as sophisticated and civilised, and the Crusaders are all brutes and barbarians. It has nothing to do with reality."

Prof Riley-Smith added: "Guy of Lusignan lost the Battle of Hattin against Saladin, yes, but he wasn't any badder or better than anyone else. There was never a confraternity of Muslims, Jews and Christians. That is utter nonsense."

Dr Jonathan Philips, a lecturer in history at London University and author of The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, agreed that the film relied on an outdated portrayal of the Crusades and could not be described as "a history lesson".

He said: "The Templars as 'baddies' is only sustainable from the Muslim perspective, and 'baddies' is the wrong way to show it anyway. They are the biggest threat to the Muslims and many end up being killed because their sworn vocation is to defend the Holy Land."

Dr Philips said that by venerating Saladin, who was largely ignored by Arab history until he was reinvented by romantic historians in the 19th century, Sir Ridley was following both Saddam Hussein and Hafez Assad, the former Syrian dictator. Both leaders commissioned huge portraits and statues of Saladin, who was actually a Kurd, to bolster Arab Muslim pride.

Prof Riley-Smith added that Sir Ridley's efforts were misguided and pandered to Islamic fundamentalism. "It's Osama bin Laden's version of history. It will fuel the Islamic fundamentalists."

Amin Maalouf, the French historian and author of The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, said: "It does not do any good to distort history, even if you believe you are distorting it in a good way. Cruelty was not on one side but on all."

Sir Ridley's spokesman said that the film portrays the Arabs in a positive light. "It's trying to be fair and we hope that the Muslim world sees the rectification of history."

The production team is using Loarre Castle in northern Spain and have built a replica of Jerusalem in Ouarzazate, in the Moroccan desert. Sir Ridley, 65, who was knighted in July last year, grew up in South Shields and rose to fame as director of Alien, starring Sigourney Weaver.

He followed with classics such as Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise, which won him an Oscar nomination in 1992, and in 2002 Black Hawk Down, told the story of the US military's disastrous raid on Mogadishu. In 2001 his film Gladiator won five Oscars, but Sir Ridley lost out to Steven Soderbergh for Best Director.

 

[Ashmo]

:: sigh ::

When will people ever learn that there are no "Good Guys" in war?

The Arabs weren't barbarians, but the crusaders surely weren't either. Raping and pillaging was common practice those days, we still get that a lot nowadays as well anyway.

How can anything be historically accurate tho? Especially if it's about events which took place centuries ago? I doubt there are many "objective" sources to rely on.

 

[victor]

IIRC from History lessons, most of the crusaders, at least the core of warriors, were unruly sons sent away by their fathers to learn respect in war, of course bringing along some peasant bodyguards. So they definitely didn't have anything to do there. And I can see why they were the "baddies" this time, as they were the invaders after all, and for a fake, silly cause.

As Ashmo implied, I doubt the British Academy knows a lot more than "Sir" Ridley Scott, as they weren't exactly there either. But if they're saying it's the other way around, that the arabs were uncivilized camel jockeys and the crusaders noble gentlemen, they're just lost in a shithole of disinformation.


In my opinion, they should ALL be savages, pillaging and murdering at will. It was the early Middle ages, after all. That French historian is right here.

"It's trying to be fair and we hope that the Muslim world sees the rectification of history."

What an ignorant bastard. Chances are they'll never see it at all, much less care what it's about. I bet he's never been out of his dusty University. Fucking bookworm.

 

[Voluptuous Pachyderm]

IIRC from History lessons, most of the crusaders, at least the core of warriors, were unruly sons sent away by their fathers to learn respect in war, of course bringing along some peasant bodyguards. So they definitely didn't have anything to do there. And I can see why they were the "baddies" this time, as they were the invaders after all, and for a fake, silly cause.

As Ashmo implied, I doubt the British Academy knows a lot more than "Sir" Ridley Scott,

So people who've spent large portions of their life studying the subject wont know more about it than a director?

And then you pull things from what you remember from history lessons?
hmmm

as they weren't exactly there either. But if they're saying it's the other way around, that the arabs were uncivilized camel jockeys and the crusaders noble gentlemen, they're just lost in a shithole of disinformation.


In my opinion, they should ALL be savages, pillaging and murdering at will. It was the early Middle ages, after all. That French historian is right here.

Isn't that pretty much what they are saying too?

"It's trying to be fair and we hope that the Muslim world sees the rectification of history."

What an ignorant bastard. Chances are they'll never see it at all, much less care what it's about. I bet he's never been out of his dusty University. Fucking bookworm.

That was from Sir Ridley's spokesman. Not some "fucking bookworm" who's "never been out of his dusty University".

 

[Murdoch]

Ditto what the fat elephant said.

Baboon, stop talking out of your ass.

 

[Zaij]

Meh. The past is fiction now. The movie shows promise though, even if it seems there will be too many love-love scenes.

 

[Jebus]

The Knights Templar as barbarians? Say what? The Knights Templar was a group of intellectuals, in the same vein as the Jesuits were. They permeated the entire European political and religious world, and had power and riches that even to this day cannot be accertained with certainty. When the Frech king (can't remember which one, sorry) in the end outlawed them because they were a threat to his power, they fled underground and built the entire Swiss banking system.

Knights Templar barbarians? My ass. It's a typical piece of moralistic Hollywood rubbish as has been swarming all over Europe for the last few years. I mean, what the hell is going on here? When did people decide to start making 'TEH EPIC' movies to futher the education of the Western citizen, giving you nothing but dramatised and overexaggerated bullshit?

No people in the entire European or Middle Eastern world in the Middle Ages can be branded as 'barbarian'. That makes absolutely no sense. Apparently, some people still believe in the distorted vision that the Middle Ages were a time of barbarism here, while that is *absolutely* not true. People were childish at the most, but culture in Europe was still quite refined.


And Baboon: stop talking out of your ass.

 

[Briosafreak]

The script depicts Baldwin's brother-in-law, Guy de Lusignan, who succeeds him as King of Jerusalem, as "the arch-villain".

Like he always has been depicted, this is not new, except for the english professor. More than a villain he was a greedy and ruthless mass killer. Sadam learned a few lessons from him, i`m sure.

A further group, "the Brotherhood of Muslims, Jews and Christians", is introduced, promoting an image of cross-faith kinship.

This is too ridiculous for me to comentate. The author must have been brainwashed by Wolfowitz or it´s too dumb to be allowed to write. They did had friendly relations for a long time in that region, but turning that into a Brotherhood is Chucky Cuevas at his worse.

The Knights Templar, the warrior monks, are portrayed as "the baddies" while Saladin, the Muslim leader, is a "a hero of the piece", Sir Ridley's spokesman said. "At the end of our picture, our heroes defend the Muslims, which was historically correct."

Prof Riley-Smith, who is Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University, said the plot was "complete and utter nonsense". He said that it relied on the romanticised view of the Crusades propagated by Sir Walter Scott in his book The Talisman, published in 1825 and now discredited by academics.

Entire villages went to the crusades, second sond of the nobility were there too, with monks and adventurers following them, and Kings often were the leaders of the campaigns. The knights of the temple, the Knights Templar were the best warriors and the closest thing to intelectuals that existed at the time, they weren`t the motivators of the great massacres from the Cruzades, they would keep them apart from the others, in an asceptic way of life, and were more defenders than atackers. Their demise helped the financing of the discoveries in the south, mainly with the Order of Aviz in Portugal, or the scientific and capitaist development in the north. The tracks of their legacy can be found from Scotland to Portugal, and put them as the bad guys is the regular Hollywood black and white aproach, not surprising, although unfortunate.

Now someone please tell Professor Riley-Smith that The Talisman didn`t invent any myth, but just picked up the romanesc tradition of Chivalry in the Midle Ages.

Saladin was a myth to the west, the last great knight that fought the crusaders with honour and courage, or so the legend said, and it was sanged by the travelling musicians of the time, and his imaginary or real actions were written time and time again to be read to a chevalry hunger audience.

Now for Muslims the idols were others, almost unknown in the west, the ones that got rid definitely of the westerners.

Dr Philips said that by venerating Saladin, who was largely ignored by Arab history until he was reinvented by romantic historians in the 19th century, Sir Ridley was following both Saddam Hussein and Hafez Assad, the former Syrian dictator. Both leaders commissioned huge portraits and statues of Saladin, who was actually a Kurd, to bolster Arab Muslim pride

Saladin was brought up again since he was born in Tikrit and helped arab nacionalism, but he ultimately wasn`t the real idol to arabs in general and never was, because of this:

Despite Saladin's relentless military and diplomatic efforts a Christian land and naval blockade forced the surrender of the Palestinian stronghold of Acre in 1191, but the Crusaders failed to follow up this victory in their quest for Jerusalem. In 1192 Saladin concluded an armistice agreement with King Richard I of England that allowed the Crusaders to reconstitute their kingdom along the Palestinian-Syrian coast but left Jerusalem in Muslim hands. On March 4, 1193, Saladin died in Damascus after a brief illness.When he died in Damascus in 1193, he had almost no personal possessions, but he earned himself a remarkable place in history.

So there were British crusaders after all, by the way but more importantly he failed in expeling completely the westerners from the region.

Anyway the more important thing is to say that yes the Cruzades were devastating blood baths, Saladin wasn`t the worse guy around, but ultimately this movie is just politically induced fiction, and the Professor isn`t as knowledgeble as he thinks.

More on the crusades here
http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/endmiddle/bluedot/crusades.html

 

[Jabbapop]

And what of Gilligan?

 

[Ashmo]

What I was trying to point out is that "barbarian" is and has always been a term or idea applied to the "bad guys" (i.e. the enemy, no matter which side /you/ were on). Caesar described cultures as barbarian of whom we nowadays know that they have been at an equal or higher level of cultural complexity as the Romans of that time.
"Barbarian" hardly means anything more than "outsider" if you take that into consideration.

Raping and pillaging may be immoral, but it still happens in modern wars (raping more than pillaging tho). Just as other war crimes still happen. Whether they can mostly be avoided or not depends solely on the tightness of the chain of command and the level of control.

During the crusades the chain of command was loose and the control was mostly non-existant. The majority of the soldiers were mercenaries and they were paid with a part of the things they could loot off the villages they invaded.
The templars may have been an intellectual elite, but not every crusader was a templar and there has been more than one crusade in history -- the only thing that made a war a crusade was the official motivation (namely, spreading Christianism and converting infidels by capturing their territories by force).

War has always been a dirty business and no matter how much you romanticize it it's about killing people before they can kill you. It's an immense level of physical and psychological stress and you don't need to have studied psychology in order to figure out humans can end up doing very wrong things in such a situation.

The middle ages haven't had much less "culture" than the present day, but many conditions were more inhuman and many things would be described as "uncivilised" by a modern spectator. The people haven't changed an awful lot since then, but the circumstances have.
If you're going to claim it weren't so, just take a look at the average couch potato and think again.

 

[Member of Khans]

What I was trying to point out is that "barbarian" is and has always been a term or idea applied to the "bad guys"

You should have know that "Bar Bar" is a ancient greek term for non-greek or non-latin speaking peoples.

 

[Ashmo]

What I was trying to point out is that "barbarian" is and has always been a term or idea applied to the "bad guys"

You should have know that "Bar Bar" is a ancient greek term for non-greek or non-latin speaking peoples.

Seriously?
I know "barbarian" was a term loosely applied to any non-Roman by the Romans.

 

[Member of Khans]

Barbarian was originally a Greek term applied to any foreigner, one not sharing a recognized culture or degree of polish with the speaker or writer employing the term. The word expressed with mocking duplication ("bar-bar") alleged attempts by outsiders to speak a "real" language

I knew my Latin lessons would have some sense someday.

 

[John Uskglass]

Knights Templar barbarians? My ass. It's a typical piece of moralistic Hollywood rubbish as has been swarming all over Europe for the last few years. I mean, what the hell is going on here? When did people decide to start making 'TEH EPIC' movies to futher the education of the Western citizen, giving you nothing but dramatised and overexaggerated bullshit?

Oh yeah baby, you know I like it when you talk drity like that. Yeah, baby, makes me feel SO good.

Surprising understanding of the situation you have there, Jebus.

CCR says RESPEKT

 

[Jebus]

Surprising understanding of the situation you have there, Jebus.

I still don't know wether to take that as a compliment or an insult...

Hmmm...

 

[Zaij]

You really can't make any comment on history with any kind of accuracy anymore. All records are biased. Like I've already said, the past is fiction now(let's hear it for irony).

 

[Jebus]

You really can't make any comment on history with any kind of accuracy anymore. All records are biased. Like I've already said, the past is fiction now(let's hear it for irony).

That's not true. There's a discipline called 'historical criticism', aimed at seperating the good sources from the tainted, and distilling the objective information from subjective texts. While all sources are biased, they all contain information that can be verified by other sources, who sometimes even come from the opposite side of the bias.

You can still comment on history accurately, if you are critical enough.

 

[calculon000]

I've always wondered somthing about history. How is history "stored"? I would think there's just a bunch of books in a bunch of libraries around the world written by people alive at the time about thier own time and events, right?

I think there should be a giant database established somewhere that's just used to store the facts of history as they happen.

 

[Jebus]

I think there should be a giant database established somewhere that's just used to store the facts of history as they happen.

That already exists, basically.

Powerweb
Historical Abstracts

And so on. Everytime a historical work is published, wether it be about ancient, medieval or present times, abstracts are stored here. Especially the second database is truly gigantic.

I've always wondered somthing about history. How is history "stored"? I would think there's just a bunch of books in a bunch of libraries around the world written by people alive at the time about thier own time and events, right?

There's more to history than that. What you mention here a primary written sources. You have different sources than that too: secondary sources (more recent works written by historians), archeologic sources and oral sources. Those added together give us the full view of history.

 

[John Uskglass]

Surprising understanding of the situation you have there, Jebus.

I still don't know wether to take that as a compliment or an insult...

Hmmm...

It's a compliment, you are actually entirely correct. Don't mean to be insulting, but I expected something along the lines of OMFG IT WAS MUSLIM LAND AND CRUSADERS WHERE BARBARIANS.

Ever read Runciman?