Sewing the Scene: The Uses of Embroidery in Medieval Film
5th July 2016
Just to be clear, that’s ‘films about medieval society’, not ‘films made in medieval times’.
Well before any of us went to school and learned about the Middle Ages through academic text books, our conception of the era was probably established through more non-academic means, namely literature and film. It is impossible to know with the precision needed to create a film what the Middle Ages actually looked like. Thus, filmmakers more often than not, fall back on inaccurate tropes that we have come to equate with the Middle Ages, but which are really romantic constructs of the 19th century. And it is this very type of ahistoricism, according to historian Arthur Lindley, which obscures the reality of the Middle Ages and sentimentalizes it in a way that denies it any real independent existence. Filmmaker Andrew Elliot also noted that scholars are upset with Hollywood because, as he describes it, of the ‘filmmaker’s audacity to infringe on the serious scholarly domain of the Middle Ages.’ But if this is the way most people are exposed to the Middle Ages, then it behoves us to acknowledge medieval film as an important area of scholarship.
July 7th, 2016 at 18:39
Shouldn’t medieval film be considered an important area of “scholarship” here?