 | 'To paraphrase brother Wallace, they can take away our lives but they'll never take away our sense of humour. The Standard, Sunday Times and, by extension,
Observer, seem not to grasp how deeply comical they make themselves. Some of us get a small kick from the irritation Braveheart causes, rather than from any inspiration it offers. Its a bit like saying Boo! to an unsuspecting maiden
aunt.' Ian Bell in the Scotsman, 12 th January 1999. |  |
Oh yes, I'm very fond of Robin Hood. Having him played by Kevin Costner - presumably in the absence of a suitable Australian - was a bit of a nuisance, of course. Granted, too, there were a couple of doubts (OK: a couple of dozen doubts) about the historicity of the thing. But in the interests of amicable relations between nations I did not once let cultural stereotyping spoil my enjoyment.
You will recall the scene: the Middle Ages, Tuesday, just after lunch. Celts? says the scowling Sheriff of Nottingham at the suggestion of a surprise plot device imported from up north. "They drink the blood of their dead!" Still: "Hired thugs? Brilliant!" Indeed, the extras hired in for this traditional role acquitted themselves admirably. A better bunch of hairy, howling, half-naked, painted, semi-devolved savages you could not have hoped to see. Pleasingly, too, the barbarians got exactly what they deserved from Kev's stout Saxon bow.
But that's gullibility and thinly-disguised propaganda for you. Just when I should have been writing to the Commission for Racial Equality to complain about the insidious poison of quasi-fascist ethnic nationalism dressed up as entertainment, there I was studying the video of Prince of Thieves to spot Costner's computer-generated hair-piece.
Clearly, I'll never get a job on the London Evening Standard, that distinguished contributor to constitutional affairs. No sooner was Braveheart off the airwaves last week than the Daily Mail's diverting sibling was in print with an incisive analysis of the film's corrupting influence. By the weekend the Observer had picked up the piece while the Sunday Times found space for a critique of its own.
Jings, as we are supposed to say in these parts, that Mel Gibson, eh? According to the Standard's correspondent from the northern marches, his "work of entertainment ... has done more than any other to bring about the demise of Britain". Apparently the film "revived the tradition of romantic nationalism ... put backbone into the sentimental impracticalities of the SNP and fired the natural Anglophobia of working-class Scotland." Crivvens.
I liked the "natural" bit. Not so long ago it was supposed to be a worrying tendency. Then it was a trend, identified by a pandemic of anti-social behaviour easier to pronounce upon than to prove. Now it's a genetic defect among the proles.
As is now customary, of course, the Standard's correspondent took the absence of any useful historical record involving William Wallace as reason to accuse Gibson of making things up - or rather, of making up the wrong things. They'll be telling me next that Kevin Costner didn't restore the Lionheart to the English throne, or that Edward I didn't assert an actually fictitious claim to be Scotland's feudal overlord. Except he did.
It also seems to have been the case that a Mr W Wallace, unemployed of no fixed abode, won a large battle, lost a large battle, and was hung, drawn, disembowelled and quartered for said breaches of the peace. But let's not worry about the truly fabulous fictions in the film, given that most of the people who fret over Braveheart don't actually know enough Scottish history to be able to name them. Let's fret over politics, instead.
If you follow the Standard's lunge at logic towards its end (as opposed to conclusion) you find that as a consequence of Braveheart "another £4 billion has been thrown to the Scottish Office" - as opposed to Scotland's usual percentage share of a Treasury disbursement. You also find that "trying to quiet the Scots with English gold is a tradition older than Wallace and more effective than making war on them".
So: it's the Barnett formula or air-strikes, then. And if only we had known, all those years ago, that Longshanks just wanted to give us money rather than loot the place, a good deal of bother could have been avoided.
The Sunday Times, for its part, took a more direct route. Braveheart was enrolled in its Enemy of the People column, suggesting a certain confusion over who, precisely, was being addressed. It was defined as a "malodorous film", one responsible, among other things, for opening up "poisonous ground" between England and Scotland while causing English football hooliganism. (Someone should have told the Marseilles riot police, surely).
This is fatuous stuff, of course, but it is fatuous with a passion. Clearly, the suggestion is that the BBC had no business showing so disreputable a film at this politically sensitive time. Bad enough that the ignorant Americans gave a chippy colonial like Gibson an Oscar; now the Scottish rabble were being roused by a film most of them had already seen.
In fact, the real mystery about the BBC broadcast was slightly different. It is not customary, to say the least, to run the highly-expensive terrestrial premiere of a blockbuster movie on a miserable Thursday night well after the holiday season has ended. Could it be that the Corporation was being, shall we say, judicious? But what of it? And what is it about one historical romance that causes such bitter attacks, so many rancorous noises? If Braveheart is an unmitigated farce, why worry? Are we seriously to ascribe so much power to one film? Or might it be that this is a case of trying to hang, draw and quarter the messenger?
The outbursts are symptomatic. They suggest, first, that elements of metropolitan opinion have woken up, yet again, to the facts of political life in Scotland and are not enjoying the experience one bit. They point, secondly, to a number of deep-seated dislikes and prejudices. This writer, for one, is getting a little tired of being told how much he and five million other people dislike all things English.
Still, to paraphrase brother Wallace, they can take away our lives but they'll never take away our sense of humour. The Standard, Sunday Times and, by extension, Observer, seem not to grasp how deeply comical they make themselves. Some of us get a small kick from the irritation Braveheart causes, rather than from any inspiration it offers. Its a bit like saying Boo! to an unsuspecting maiden aunt.
But that, one way or another, is about all it is. Alex Salmond and the SNP have not actually based their campaign strategy on the film, astonishing as that may seem to the Standard. Equally, the idea of Scottish self-determination is neither a "cynical travesty of history" (S Times) or anything to do with a "gut hatred of the English and all their works" (E Standard). Get a life.
Better still, get a grasp of how national histories - and national myths - evolve. Some of us have spent a lifetime watching dodgy movies which aimed to tell the British story, even when they involved Errol Flynn winning the war in Burma, Steve McQueen escaping from a British PoW camp, or the boy Costner showing off quite the oddest Nottinghamshire accent you'll ever hear. Didn't do us any harm. Honest.
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