SOURCE: LIBERTASBy Govindini Murty. This past Memorial Day weekend we all paid homage to the brave men and women who have fought to defend America and Western democracy. As I reflected on their sacrifice this past weekend, I thought that while our troops continue to make every effort to physically protect America and Western civilization – there is no-one out there making a comparable effort to protect our cultural and artistic traditions from their anti-Western attackers.
For example, in the past two months alone we have had two major Hollywood movies – Robin Hood, directed by Ridley Scott, and the remake of Clash of the Titans – that have brazenly sought to undermine two beloved Western mythic figures who represent freedom, heroism, and individuality: Robin Hood and Perseus. To understand how deplorable this is in the midst of a War on Terror, in which Western civilization itself is under attack, one need only compare the remakes of Robin Hood and Clash of the Titans to their originals. Both the original Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and the original Clash of the Titans (1981) affirmed Western freedom and democratic values against the backdrop of totalitarian menace – the original Robin Hood against the growing threat of the Nazi menace in Europe, and Clash of the Titans in the dark years of the Cold War against the Soviet Communist menace.
Michael Curtiz’s The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) – starring the dashing Errol Flynn and the lovely Olivia de Havilland – is a colorful, joyous version of the Robin Hood myth that is also a stirring paean for freedom and democracy. England and America may not yet have been at war with Nazi Germany, but the threat of fascism was growing on the European continent, and Warner Brothers – perhaps the most socially and politically prescient of the Hollywood studios – felt this threat and made films to challenge it. Looked at today against the backdrop of European fascism of the ’30s, it is easy to see how Robin Hood and his Merry Men represented the freedom-loving British people, while Prince John represented the Nazi and Fascist dictators who operated outside the law to enslave democratic nations. When Errol Flynn as Robin Hood gives his rousing speech to the English people urging them to stand up and fight for freedom, it takes on a special poignance when one considers that a year later England would be at war with the Nazis and facing invasion of their homeland.
Medusa, from the original "Clash of the Titans."
Moving forward several decades, the 1980s featured some extraordinary films that celebrated Western freedom and individuality in the dark days of the Cold War. 1981, the year Clash of the Titans was released, was just two years after the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan and Iran had fallen to a radical Islamic theocracy. The Western economies were still mired in inflation and malaise from the leftist mismanagement of the ’70s, and even though Ronald Reagan had just been elected the American president in 1980, no-one knew what a spectacular success Reagan would be in standing up to the Soviet threat. The Soviets seemed as strong as ever, and the Western media daily claimed that the West was doomed to nuclear war with Communist Russia if it didn’t unilaterally disarm. Indeed, all seemed gloomy, but in the popular culture – in a sort of intuitive artistic response – George Lucas was making his spectacular, optimistic Star Wars films (which were widely understood to be an allegory for America’s struggle against the Soviet Union) and Ray Harryhausen made his magical and inspiring Clash of the Titans. Continue reading »
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