ABILENE CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY
THE FUNCTION OF ROBIN HOOD AS MYTH IN WESTERN CINEMA
SUBMITTED TO DR. JONATHAN HUDDLESTON
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF BIBL 640
BY
M. BARRETT DAVIS
28 MARCH 2012
THE FUNCTION OF ROBIN HOOD AS MYTH IN WESTERN CINEMA
“Classical myths have come down to us from multiple sources, in part because they
are so often alluded to by poets, essayists, and orators, meaning that the act of retelling is
central to the production and continued relevance of mythology.”1 In the many retellings of
the tale in the realm of modern Western cinema, Robin Hood has traditionally paid homage
to gender and authority stereotypes in Western society, with significant reinterpretations
born out of the major social movements through the 20th century. This fluidity gives
greater strength and broader function of the Robin Hood mythos. Utilizing its underlying
power, then, Robin Hood has acted as a myth in the culture of the West because of the
myriad forms that its interplay between civilization & nature, law & virtue, and gender
roles, among others, takes in its various retellings as both perpetuator and critic of society.
Analysis of this myth will also provide an effective point of reflection for churches in the
West to study their own beliefs about gender roles, power structures, justice and equality,
as will be shown in applying it to the Northside at the Crossroads case study. A group of
long-time members has pushed back against changes in the Northside Church of Christ, and
they have portrayed the authority of the new minister John as an oppressive force
threatening their traditional order, values, and identity.2
1
Michael Marek, “Firefly: So Pretty It Could Not Die,” Sith, Slayers, Stargates, and Cyborgs: Modern Mythology
in the New Millennium (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2008), 117.
2 Tim Sensing, “Northside at the Crossroads.” [cited 28 March 2012]
http://blogs.acu.edu/gstpathways/cases/northside-at-the-crossroads.
I. The Robin Hood Myth
The earliest mention of Robin Hood in literature dates back to 1377. Much of the early
literature depicts Robin as a chaotic force continuously provoking established social
structures and, in the end, being beaten down.3 Following the retellings of the Robin Hood
mythos through Western cinema, we will observe a very different Robin as he adventures
in the midst of changing power dynamics between men and women and between
traditional authority and common morality and justice.
The 1922 silent film Robin Hood actually resembles the ancient Robin, but he does
so as an Earl of the established social order, expressing his chaotic nature in relationship to
all women, going so far as to admit, “I am afeared of women.”4 King Richard acts as the
voice for social normalcy by continually telling Robin to take a maid for himself, and only at
the end of the movie does Robin marry Marian. However, even as the two walk into their
bedchamber, they are depicted as “a mother with child at her knee,”5 and Robin remains as
a boy who is hesitant to become a man in relation to his female counterpart.
In this same movie Marian is shown as a chaste woman, who has no agency
throughout the events of the movie and no purpose but to charm Robin into marriage.
Assuming Geoffrey Gates’ analysis that retellings often restrict the outlines of the story and
3
Richard Stapleford, “Robin Hood and the Contemporary Idea of the Hero,” Literature Film Quarterly 8 no. 3
(1980), 184. As the story was re-told through England over many generations and Robin Hood began to be
accepted as an English icon, the General Assembly even tried to have the ballads about him banned as they
might incite disorder among the peasantry.
4 Lorraine K. Stock and Candace Gregory-Abbott, “The ‘Other’ Women of Sherwood: The Contstruction of
Difference and Gender in Cinematic Treatments of the Robin Hood Legend,” Race, Class, and Gender in
“Medieval” Cinema eds. Lynn T. Ramey and Tyson Pugh, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 200.
5 Ibid., 201.
its values to established, conservative ideology,6 this would seem to support that the most
prevalent ideas about gender roles in the early 20th century valued a woman’s marriage to
a husband and her chastity above agency in either social or political realms. Also, Marian’s
servant offers an interesting point of contrast to Marian. This woman of the lower class is
often vocal, always sexualized, and seems to carry the social authority among her peers in
the many Robin Hood narratives, where Marian as the highly civilized and ideal woman for
the protagonist possesses none of these traits.7 This pattern of agency persists in
portrayals of Marian until the movies and television series made after World War II. 8 After
the war in which men went overseas and women entered into the economy, the factories,
and the business offices, we see a Marian as well as a Queen Eleanor who are the
representatives of King Richard’s power while he is away at the Crusades, defending it
from the chaotic and evil forces that would usurp it.9 Later in the 1976 Robin and Marian,
born in the midst of the feminist movement, Marian is given her own agency and freedom
to choose her purpose as she has become a nun and often chides an aging Robin (played by
an aging Sean Connery) for acting as a child in his attempts to chivalrously defend her—in
fact, Marian eventually murders Robin, an overt attempt to declare that this old icon of
traditional roles and power structure no longer has a place in society.10
The most iconic Robin Hood story of the 20th century is the 1938 film The
Adventures of Robin Hood starring Errol Flynn, and this Robin has remained the template by
which other Robins are interpreted in the air of the dominant culture. This story is the one
6
Geoffrey Gates, “‘Always the Outlaw’: The Potential for Subversion of the Metanarrative in Retellings of
Robin Hood,“ Children’s Literature in Education 37 no. 1 (March 2006): 69.
7 Stock & Gregory-Abbott, 206.
8 Ibid., 204.
9 Ibid., 205.
10 Ibid., 208.
that stained the wood of Robin’s arrows with moral purpose fighting against tyrannical
authorities; fitting that it was filmed in the years that Nazi Germany was invading other
European countries. After the Watergate scandal of 1972 and the erosion of naïve trust in
authorities, Robin was no longer depicted as a noble but as one of the peasantry, even in
the most recent Robin Hood in 2010 with Russell Crowe. Crowe’s Robin, however, is
adopted into nobility, and eventually speaks before the tyrannical King John on behalf of
the common man. Instead of the traditional “rob (wealth) from the rich and give to the
poor” Robin, this one seeks to take the absolute authority of the power-rich crown and give
the power-stripped common man: “Every Englishman’s home is his castle. What we would
ask, Your Majesty, is Liberty—Liberty by law.”11 This most recent Robin seeks for
reconciliation between the authorities and the commoners by a sharing in power and
responsibility for their kingdom.
II. Robin Hood & the Church(es) at Northside.
Reconciliation may be difficult to find in the Northside Church of Christ, as well as any
other North American church sharing similar struggles. A group of established members at
the church feels that their new ministerial authority, John, has been pursuing his own
agenda for the church at the expense of the older members.12 Their accusations are
partially true because John admits to focusing on inviting into Northside the growing and
changing demographic of the community around the church. The changes show up in
11
Robin Hood (2010), directed by Ridley Scott, perf. Russell Crowe & Cate Blanchett (Universal Pictures,
2010).
12 Sensing.
worship style, in John’s own view of his role as minister, and in the make-up of the church,
all of which seem threatening to the older members’ paradigm of Northside.
The Robin Hood mythos can critique the older group in its continuing message of
“rob from the rich and give to the poor”—that blessing should flow from the blessed to
those who have no blessing. In this case, the blessing is membership in a life-giving
community of believers in Jesus Christ, and the older group wants to keep all of its blessing
and not spend it upon those who do not have it. However, one study shows that the
majority of Americans may not hold as much value in “giving to the poor” as they might
admit. When given a chance to take what amounts to a free gift of money to save the lives
of starving people, most participants in this study would not take the money because they
gave higher importance to the idea of that money being another’s property then of saving a
human life: “Overall, subjects tended to prefer the inactive option, and that choice was
correlated with property preserving, not altruistic ethics.”13 This may give insight into the
older members’ motivation—they feel like what is “their church” is being taken from them
and would prefer to keep what belongs to them instead of losing it as a source of their
identity. Also, as a warning to the leaders of the church, Graham Seal’s “Robin Hood
Principle” states that anytime a group feels oppressed, a narrative championing their cause
will grow and create more tension between “oppressed” and “oppressor.”14 If John wishes
to reconcile with this disgruntled group, he will need to work with the entire church to buy
into and share responsibility for a common paradigm of the church and its mission.
13
Matthew Hirshberg, “Robin Hood Revisited: Theft, Charity, and the Ethics of Inequality,” Journal of Poverty
4 no. 3 (2000), 94.
14 Graham Seal, “The Robin Hood Principle: Folklore, History, and the Social Bandit,” Journal of Folklore
Research 46 no. 1(Jan-Apr 2009), 83.
Bibliography
Gates, Geoffrey. “‘Always the Outlaw’: The Potential for Subversion of the Metanarrative in
Retellings of Robin Hood.“ Children’s Literature in Education 37 no. 1 (March 2006):
69-79.
Hirshberg, Matthew. “Robin Hood Revisited: Theft, Charity, and the Ethics of Inequality.”
Journal of Poverty 4 no. 3 (2000): 73-97.
Knight, Stephen. A Complete Study of the English Outlaw. Boston: Blackwell Publishing,
1994.
—. “A Garland of Robin Hood Films.” Film & History 29 no. 3/4 (Sep-Dec 1999): 34-44.
Ramey, Lynn T. and Tyson Pugh, eds. Race, Class, and Gender in “Medieval” Cinema. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Seal, Graham. “The Robin Hood Principle: Folklore, History, and the Social Bandit.” Journal
of Folklore Research 46 no. 1, Jan-Apr 2009: 67-89.
Sensing, Tim. “Northside at the Crossroads.” [cited 28 March 2012]
http://blogs.acu.edu/gstpathways/cases/northside-at-the-crossroads.
Stapleford, Richard. “Robin Hood and the Contemporary Idea of the Hero.” Literature Film
Quarterly 8 no. 3, 1980: 182-187.
Whitt, David and John Perlich. Sith, Slayers, Stargates, & Cyborgs: Modern Mythology in the
New Millennium. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2008.