Things Done

[bunn]

Went up on Dartmoor to watch our local stage of the Tour of Britain.  It was exciting, although I have to confess my grasp of what was going on was a bit shaky.  Fortunately philmophlegm was packed with relevant knowledge.

Comments

[carmarthen]

Ha, I am glad I am not the only one who find Tristan and Isolde irritating in general. And if it's the version I'm thinking of, Mark was definitely more interesting, although it's been a while and I don't recall the Irish maid.

[bunn]

It was the 2006 movie version with Sophia Myles and some pouting moody-looking bloke. T & I are irritating at best, but in this particular version they made Mark so all round jolly *nice* that T & I's behaviour seemed incomprehensibly selfish and brutal.

This is the Irish maid, she spends most of the movie making this face at Tristran & Isolde :-D

[huinare]

I remember this film, and recall liking the music and scenery. As for the characters, the only thing I remember is that I despised Tristan because he was an inconsistent jerk. First he was all: "You need to marry this other guy because it's honorable and blah blah," and then he was all sneering at her and saying something like "do you like seeing me suffer?!" when it was his bloody idea in the first place. Useless character.

[bunn]

Oh, he totally was. MAKE UP YOUR MIND, POUTY TRISTRAN!

[carmarthen]

Haha, right, THAT movie. Yes, geez, I love that Mark. I want to give him a million hugs and a puppy. And Irish maid has the best WTF ARE YOU THINKING face.

I mean, Tristan and Isolde can't help being in love, but seriously, some honesty upfront might have averted the whole fiasco (I actually have the beginnings of a Five Things That Never Happened to Mark of Cornwall story buried in the depths of my hard drive).

[bunn]

Frankly, I'm dubious about the whole romance in, I think, ALL versions of the legend I have seen/read. I always seem to end up wanting to shout 'PUT YOUR PANTS ON AND GROW UP, YOU BARELY KNOW EACH OTHER!' at the sulky pair.

Sutcliff's retelling makes marginally more sense than the movie because at least her Mark is a bit grumpy and jealous, unlike 2006 movie Mark, who as you say is so lovely it makes Tristran look like an idiot for not just *talking* to him about the whole situation. She does keep the '2 Isoldes' thing though, which is just very confusing, good decision to take that out, moviemakers.

[carmarthen]

I guess in some versions there's the love potion error and/or Mark is a horrible person, but...I still feel like a lot of disaster can be averted by grownups using their words.

I read a weird Diana L. Paxson version ages ago where Isolde's maid is secretly in love with Mark and substitutes for her in some pagan virginity ritual thing. And then got blackmail-raped a lot by some random guy, because apparently it's just not historical fiction without rape, sigh. I can't recall how it ended, but I was unimpressed.

it's just not historical fiction without rape, sigh

[bunn]

:-/ I guess people did get raped... but historical fiction writers, why so much more often than ALL the other horrible things?

Rape happens far too often in historical fiction, and random health and safety type accidents happen far too rarely. Nobody is ever horribly injured by a falling roof-tile or a misplaced goat, and I don't think I have ever read of a fictional example of Death By Cow, which given the safety figures for people who work with cattle even nowadays, must have been a regular thing...

[king_pellinor]

Well, because it's Well Known that women had a much harder time than men did back in History. So in the interests of verisimilitude, as an author you have to show Bad Things happening to women or people will think you don't know anything about History.

What Bad Things happen to women but not men? You only really have rape or domestic accidents to pick from.

Now obviously you don't want to show women doing domestic chores more than you have to, which means that in order to show how tough life was for women in History (and thereby establish your bona fides as a serious author who knowsthese things) they have to get raped a lot. QED.

[carmarthen]

What king_pellinor said.

Also, rape is a quick way to add angst or motivation...somehow revenge for a terrible cow accident doesn't have the same ring to it, and cow-related trauma, no matter how sincere, tends to be played for laughs.

You see rape-as-angst a lot in fiction written by teenagers and Mercedes Lackey novels as well. It's a shortcut (IMO a cheap and problematic one).

(I'm also not a fan of the grimdark, and I think it wildly misrepresents history.)

For some authors it's probably a kink, too. From my vague recollections of reading a low of Paxson novels, I wonder. And it's easier to put rape in historical fiction and not have people complain about it being gratuitous, because Everyone Knows the past was so terrible for women.

...now I kind of want to parody grimdark historical fiction, only with farming accidents and spoiled food instead of rape and bandits.