I'm doin' a throwback (both to the 80s and to our discussion of King Arthur)

I wanted to talk about my favorite version of the King Arthur stories. This may or may not be a particularly good version (I was a kid reading them so I can't vouch at all for the quality) and it’s very possible that I’m the only one in this class who has ever heard of these.

So, as a kid, I used to help my uncle out by helping him organize his comic book collection (there is an insane amount of comic books in there. Like boxes upon boxes upon boxes upon boxes.) Because of this, I used to see some old comic books that looked interesting and I'd put them off to the side so that I could read them when I took a break.

One of these comic books was Camelot 3000. The cover of the first issue is here in all of its 1980s glory:

(Sidenote, is Arthur wearing snakeskin stockings?)

So basically the plotline is that it’s the King Arthur legend set in the year 3000. All of the characters have been reincarnated into new bodies and they fight aliens. (yeah I told you, quality is questionable.) I believe they all retain their memories from their medieval selves, or they all eventually remember these memories over time.

I remember being really in love with the Tristan and Isolde storyline, which was the most changed part. And, looking back at how much I was fascinated by this subplot, it is very very VERY embarrassingly telling about my future. Tristan is reincarnated as a woman, and spends a large portion of the time struggling with gender identity and sexuality (as Isolde is reincarnated as a woman as well.) I can’t remember how Tristan ultimately identifies though.

Looking back I think this was one of the first ways that I was exposed to the King Arthur legend. Probably the one thing besides The Sword in the Stone. So I do think this helped shape my idea of the story. It's still one of the things I think of immediately when I think about the King Arthur stories.

Obviously some things are very different and the story is waaaaay darker than what I was reading (also something that went completely over my head as a kid was the Tristan’s reincarnation into a woman was supposedly punishment for the rape he committed. Which… has some terrible implications about what the writers thought about women as well as being really terrible.

What I Remember About King Arthur

I am very sorry to have missed class last Tuesday, but I wanted to add my King Arthur story.

My knowledge regarding King Arthur began when I was very young. While not my favorite Disney movie, I have watched the film The Sword and the Stone several times in my youth. I think the last time I watched it I was in elementary school, or there about. My favorite scenes, as I have come to find out, have absolutely nothing to do with the actual story of King Arthur. My favorite parts were when Merlin turned Wart (young Arthur) into animals to teach him life lessons and help him become a better man and a just ruler…or maybe just because Merlin was a crazy kook.

The saddest part for me was when Wart turned into a squirrel and that poor love-struck girl squirrel falls madly in love with him. Once he turns back into a human, the pain and sadness captured artistically is just beautiful.  

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http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs42/f/2009/114/8/3/sword_in_the_stone_squirrel_by_dex_drako.jpg

I, of course, enjoyed the magic fight scene between Madam Mim and Merlin...I now assume Madam Mim is in someway supposed to represent Morgana...

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Only a very few aspects of The Sword and the Stone are in any way accurate. The Disney movie has King Arthur, Sir Kay (though the wrong personality), Sir Ector (though wrong personality), and Merlin...which in some ways can be accurate, if abstractly. Oh, yeah, the sword in the stone that only Arthur can free is accurate.

Another movie, closer to the rendition we read for class, is the movie Excalibur that debuted in 1981. This version includes King Uther, how Arthur was conceived by deceit and magic (provided by Merlin). Merlin is slightly more sinister and tricky. This movie includes Morgana (as Arthur’s sister, not aunt) and Mordred…an extremely odd character no matter the version. Again, I feel this version did do more justice to the original King Arthur story, but for cinematic effect and time restraints, several things were still left out.

Perhaps one of my favorite parodies of King Arthur is a clip from the comedy group The Upright Citizens Brigade. They did a new age Lady of the Lake meets Frat boy that is so funny, odd, and so completely strange.

UCB Lady of the Lake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGFTCMHakR4

Knowing Nothing About King Arthur

 

            So as Dr. MB said, I have been working on a paper that involves Merlin, Logres, and Arthur. As I have been coming through various versions of the legends, I realized how much of it was new to me. I didn’t know that is how Mordred died, I didn’t know that was how Gawayne died, and I didn’t know that was how Arthur was born. Most of the specific adventures are still unknown to me and most of the ones I know now I have read for college. I attribute my interest in the Middle Ages to Lord of the Rings not Arthur. Yet somehow I knew the basic story quiet well. I have been trying to figure out where I got it from and have found that I have had surprisingly little exposure to it. And the things I did see I somehow knew to be wrong or only part of the story. I saw the Sword in the Stone once and I barely remember it. The only thing I really do remember is that I hated it because I felt it was getting the story wrong; it was far too silly to bear the weight of the legend. The only other thing I remember from childhood is that once my family spent a couple of days in Vegas and we went and toured the Excalibur Hotel. We didn’t see a joust or anything, but we did stop in the gift shop where we got some wooden swords with the sword in the stone inscription and mislabeled Excalibur. Still, I remember thinking that the hotel did not have it right, and that it was not fair that my brother found a 50 dollar bill on the floor. Molly brought up the medieval fair Arthur episode, which I remember watching in high school with my little sister. The only piece of Arthurian legend that I remember I felt good about was the Grail legend from Indiana Jones. That is all the direct Arthurian exposure I can remember getting before college.

            The best I can guess is that at least part of my idea about what the King Arthur legend should be came from the sense I got from hearing my parents and others talk about it. I know my parents never told me stories about Arthur; they say that now. But from them I must have gotten the sense that it was in fact a legend, and was important for being so somehow. My dad had to explain the mock middle English inscription of my wooden sword, and from that got that it must be fairly important thing to be king of England for someone to put it so official sounding on a sword. To wrap up this ramble then. It seems to me that much of what I and perhaps others got of Arthur was more roomer than content. By running into a lot of references to something one gets the idea that those little bits represent a much larger and important story. So maybe Arthur continues as a legend because that is sometime the first sense someone has of it. It is an important but ancient part of culture because that is how we grow up understanding it.

King Arthur for Children

Growing up, the most exposure I had to King Arthur was through children’s shows. Go figure. I watched Disney’s “The Sword in the Stone,” but not often enough to remember it for class. I’ll have to watch it soon. I vaguely remember an episode of Wishbone with the adorable dog in chain mail, though that may have been the Joan of Arc episode. There was a book, so I’m sure they made an episode of it. 

And I remember an episode of Arthur where they go to a Medieval Fair with contests and a sword in a stone. (I have found the episode!)

Sidenote: In class this past Tuesday, I realized that most of my knowledge about classic literature comes from Wishbone: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (by far the best and scariest episode there ever was), King Midas, Don Quixote, and Rip Van Winkle, among many more. If anything, I desperately want to watch the episodes that I have now read the books they were based on to see if they were done justice. I think shows like Wishbone were a great way to introduce children to literature, and maybe it played a part in my English Majorness. We need more television shows like this. It is also interesting to look at how certain books were adapted to be fit for television and children and to star a dog. It’s a pretty amazing example of crossing over. Like our discussion about Star Wars Uncut: Is it still Star Wars? With Wishbone, are those stories still those stories? Perhaps it’s a little different. But, with any adaptation it’s important to think about these things. We’ll be reading and watching various forms of Romeo & Juliet; are those still Romeo & Juliet? Adaptations are my favorite thing to study because there are so many variations for so many things. How far can we stray before it is no longer considered the same story? 

King Arthur. The first King Arthur reading I did was Geoffrey of Monmouth for British Literature. I was excited because, as we said in class, everyone (or almost everyone) knows the names King Arthur and Excalibur. We could probably throw in Lancelot and Merlin, too. After Geoffrey, I wanted to read more, but I didn’t until this class. I was surprised by how little Merlin was featured in our passages and by how much face time Lancelot received. I expected it to be about King Arthur and not the Knights of the Round Table. There is so much of King Arthur that doesn’t get show through other texts. I can’t say I’m surprised that these things are left out, but there is so much I did not know. Reading Malory’s accounts of King Arthur was enlightening. I would definitely like to read the rest. I also feel the need to power through the last few episodes of Merlin. I know. But, I like it. At least the earlier seasons.