A new movie about Robin Hood and the Crusades was recently released. Elan-tima (who comments occasionally here at Gates of Vienna) has spared me the trouble of seeing it by sending this brief review with his permission to post it:
As a regular reader of Gates of Vienna I thought I’d write to you about the new Ridley Scott shclockbuster Robin Hood, which stars Russell Crowe.
Please make your readers aware that not surprisingly Mr. Scott has for the second time showed his dhimmitude by attempting to distort history and also by steering the blame and brutality of the Crusades squarely onto the heads of those Euro-trash from days of old.
In the opening of the movie it is written that Richard the Lionheart’s action in what was called the Holy Land is referred to as “his” crusade. As if it were the whim of one glory-hungry, misguided monarch willing to bankrupt England for a wrong cause (a not-so-subtle poke at the current adventures in the Middle East).
- - - - - - - - -
Then comes scene where Russell Crowe speaks of a massacre of thousands of Muslims by the Christian invaders, and describes how an old Muslim lady looked into the eyes of Robin Longstride “not with fear or anger, but with pity”. After hearing this, King Richard dismisses Robin’s statement as naïve, and then punishes Robin (Crowe) by putting him and others in the docks. The figurative finger of shame is overtly pointed again at the guilty Englishmen.
It’s obvious that Mr. Scott is a chronic apologizer for Europe’s “sins” against the noble Religion of Peace, and it sours the rest of the movie. I suggest that everyone at Gates of Vienna spread the word about this big screen propaganda exercise.
14 comments:
I just saw Robin Hood solely because Russell Crowe is in it (he's one of my favorite actors).
I too took issue with the way the Crusades were portrayed. I've got a fair share of guilt about the Crusades but not for the reason that the vast majority of other people do. The Crusades were an attempt, and an arguably successful one, by the West to destroy Byzantium. Fighting Islam was just a cover for the true, more nefarious reason. The irrational fear of Eastern Europe predates the Cold War quite a bit.
Hollywood is dominated by the Left and its cronies and as the Left is in alliance with the Islamists these days, so their propaganda gets the way all the time. This is well explained in 'Red Star over Hollywood' - Ronald Radosh. We should keep that in mind while watching movies or even serials.
I haven´t seen Scott´s Robin Hood yet, but if you want to see a real dhimmi crusade film, there is a two part film named Arn Tempelriddaren, which tells the story of a swedish templar knight in the crusades.
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0837106/>Arn</a>
The dhimmitude level of the film is astonishing: Saladin was a kind fellow, swedish medieval christian society was cruel and repressive, and muslim inmigrants ( at the 2nd film) were a true improvement to the lives of northern peoples. What a shame of a film, rewriting history for the sake of a naive PCMC babble...
http://newstime.co.nz
The ultimate dhimmi's dhimmi!
"SHOW ISLAM NO RESPECT ... It's all about the Koran stupid Kafir" (Page 271)
Chapter 21 "Teaching Islam To Children Is Child Abuse" PDF 1.3 MB
By An Unknown Kafir But Not Yet A Dhimmi of Islam
Apologize for the Crusades? Never!!!
“Apologize for the Crusades? Never!” By “New York Times” Bestseller Author Robert Spencer
Chapter 10, page 121 “… The Crusades were not acts of unprovoked aggression by Europe against the Islamic world, but were a delayed response to centuries of Muslim aggression, which grew fiercer than ever in the eleventh century.” ...
... “The Crusade,” noted the historian Bernard Lewis, “was a delayed response to the jihad, the holy war for Islam, and its purpose was to recover by war what had been lost by war — to free the holy places of Christendom and open them once again, without impediment, to Christian pilgrimage.”
Danios at the loonwatch blog, which I found after the Unpleasant Business lead me to similar business between Robert Spencer and Andrew Bostom at the same time, i.e. towards the end of April, and thence to loonwatch, has several long rebuttals of Robert's works. Whether they are valid or not I am not qualified to comment but Danios does make interesting points. Danios seems to have it in for Robert's integrity and it seems that he intends to refute the idea that the Crusades were a (delayed) defensive reaction to muslim invasions, or at least Robert's thesis on this matter. That might be worth watching.
My layman's reading of the popular histories available is that the Crusades were prompted in the first instance by the Byzantine defeat at Manzikert in 1071 leading to a loss of Anatolia to the Turks which lead the Byzantine Emporer to swallow his pride and ask the Pope to organise help but nothing came of this request until 1095 when the objective, in the West anyway, had changed from assisting the East push back the Turks to recovering the Holy Land.
I wonder if the eventual outcome may have been better for the West if the East's more limited objective had been pursued.
I'd recommend reading Rodney Stark's study of the Crusades, God's Battalions.
He goes into detail about what actually happened in the lead up to the Crusades, as well as what happened and who a lot of the leaders were.
I guess, according the the apologentsia, the Church should have just let the muslims overrun Europe and keep us in the so-called Dark Ages.
Of course, if we were stagnating under islam, they'd be real dark ages indeed.
I'm a Rusty Crowe fan, and have been since Romper Stomper, but I think I'll wait for the dvd on this one.
I think this review does a disservice to the movie. The phrasing of 'his' crusade is ambigious; it could simply be an acknowledgement that there were many crusades, and they often had multiple people operating independently, either in cooperation or seperately. To interpret it as as veiled anti-Bush drive is speculation that cannot be proven or refuted.
As for the dialogue between Robin Hood and King Richard regarding the the massacre, that is a throwaway exchange that couldn't have taken more than five minutes, and has nothing to do with the actual plot. You could remove every reference to crusades, and the film would be unchanged. Richard would still have put Robin Hood % co. into the stocks for starting a fight in the camp, and from there the plot would have gone on as it did.
The actual message of this movie is very conservative, it's very much a tea party movie. All the good guys want King John to sign the Magna Carta; they're angry about excessive taxation and unnecessary regulation, such as how the king claims ownership of all the dear in England and outlaws their hunting without his permission.
The central theme of this movie is that it is important to have a limited government that's responsible to the people. It's not about apologising for the Crusades.
To believe that any phrasing in this movie, in relation to Islam and the Crusades, is not intended to make political statements is truly naive. I made these conclusions based on Mr Scott's previous visual piece of tripe--Kingdom of Heaven--which if you can stomach it is a overt insult to the Chatholic Church and the Crusades in general. To believe that Mr. Scott would suddenly become a "Conservative" before doing this movie and change his attitude is a insult to everyones inteligence.
That short scene when Crowe is put in the docks after fighting and giving his little speech is hardly a throw away. From that point on Crowe perpetually shows a cynical derision for the cause, and further for the kingdoms authority. From that point on his actions revolve around helping the cause of the "noble working peasant" and his lot. If you take that as a "Tea Party" view I suggest you read up on the Socialist propaganda thats been spewed for the last hundred and fifty years since Marx's Das Capital. I don't live in the USA but if the Tea Parties pandering the cause of the proletariate like this movie I worry for the future of the Land of the Brave.
Finally, there is another scene wear Richards brother is arguing in the royal court about how his sibling has bankrupted the kingdom for Richards adventure in the Holy Land. This whole movie revolves around how the comman man just tries to live his simple life while the guys on top go to foreign lands and waist lives and money for a percieved greedy and illigitimate end. I'm not an American but even to me this reeks of the Americans (and the worlds) lefty views concerning the wars in the middle east. Oh if life were so simple that a movie could be free of ideological intent.
Any and every attempted distortion of the historical reality concerning the pox of Islam must be exposed and assaulted.
Can someone make a list of dhimmi movies?
Don´t forget that in "Robin Hood: the prince of thieves", there was again portrayed a "nice muslim", that proved to be crucial to the plot of the story, besides the fact that never in the original Robin Hood history had been any muslim between his little band of outcasts.
And again in that film it´s showed the myth of the "superior" arabic civilization in full bloom: lenses, gunpowder, cleanliness, awesome fighting ability, and-have a seat before hearing this-tolerance! O_O
So, our list of dhimmi films is growing...
I wasn't particularly interested in seeing this movie even before these comments. Not sure where RS picked up his fascination with dust, dirt and blur-o-vision. Granted "Black Hawk Down" was excellent, but I miss the Ridley Scott who gave us "Alien" and "Blade Runner" :(
I believe and the history shows that Its not only Islam that faught battles In the name of God but even if you study bible or torah alot of wars were faught in the name of God at that time aswell.It is forbidden in islam to take women children and old people even as prisoners when theres a war....so forget about killing them.....but in crusadors innocent women children and old people were slaughtered regardless of their religion and were converted into christians but islam never forced religion and Islamic rule in europe and east is an example...the parts of europe ruled by islam were never part of dark ages but yes the ones which were not were certainly goin through the darkages.This is the reason why the history books in the west never tell about the islamic empire cause they know it would change the Image of islam in the eyes of west, and that people will get to know the the true birth of renaissance took place during islamic rule of europe.do your research and you will know.If romans were resposible for rainaissance...how come the places outside islamic empire were in dark ages?
Saleena,
The crimes of Christians do not excuse the crimes of Islam either in the past or in the present.
The crimes of Islam's past are continuous with the crimes of its present because of the imperatives toward violence in the scriptures of Islam itself.
A continuous view explains Islam and the conduct of Muslims in the world, and is honest instead of multicultural.
Post a Comment
All comments are subject to pre-approval by blog admins.
Gates of Vienna's rules about comments require that they be civil, temperate, on-topic, and show decorum. For more information, click here.
Users are asked to limit each comment to about 500 words. If you need to say more, leave a link to your own blog.
Also: long or off-topic comments may be posted on news feed threads.
To add a link in a comment, use this format:
<a href="http://mywebsite.com">My Title</a>
Please do not paste long URLs!
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.