In my post-wokenment action movies have become a skosh more sour in my mind, contemplating how they could fuel the kind of national pysche that thinks war is good, that police need to be less restrained. But I’m usually thinking about that in terms of guns. What about rapiers and longbows?

American cinema and TV through most of the 20th century, when boomer opinions were being formed, violence was largely bloodless and consequence free.  Cowboys shoot people, they fall down, and afterwards we are not treated to the scene of bodies dangling from every surface around town square.  But likewise, Robin Hood or Ivanhoe pushes his sword at a guy and he just falls over the railing, body magically disappearing from consideration after the fact.

Obviously painting guns as harmless fun is the more problematic notion, as evidenced by the libertarian fantasia Adam is reviewing, and as those weapons can cause more damage more quickly.  But still, medieval weapons are nasty things.  Particularly longswords like you’d see wielded in Arthurian legend.  And medieval people didn’t have the same illusions about that.  Maybe it’s easy to forget the longer you go without a war, without print media, but I’ve seen medieval illustrations where guys are split in half, insides looking like salmon filets, blood flowing out in ribbons or sprays of droplets.  Not realistic style, but realistic damage.

I mentioned Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves recently.  That movie was more able to put a bloody slash on a sword victim than in Errol Flynn’s day, but still wasn’t quite there.  To be realistic, head should be flopping, blood shooting like a fire hose, limbs falling left and right, guts strewn across the battlements.  A few edgier movies have pushed in those directions.  Is that a good thing?  Hong Kong blood opera never really got me to “say no to guns” before, because it still showed one side as being a bunch of disposable nobodies, showed heroes as having the most hit points, by merit of their towering will and virtue.

But that’s not my point today.  Mostly, I’m just feeling darkly amused by imagining suave old time swashbucklers steeped in gore and still stepping lightly, being quippy.  Freddy Krueger liked quips too.  Let’s see Robin Hood ending entire human lives in brutal agony, slaying mother’s sons, fathers, and men of honor, just trying to defend the king.  Robin Hood laughing while you hold your guts in and fall onto a pile of your writhing and mutilated friends.  Let’s see Robin Hood and the Ocean of Blood.

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