Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Living on medieval time.
Man, I loves me some Ladyhawke. How can you not? It's got Rutger Hauer. He's got a big damn sword. And a Friesian. There's Michelle Pfeiffer. The fighting is way above average for 1980s movies. The armour, clothing, and even music (no, not the Alan Parsons score, though that ain't bad) is fairly authentic for the roughly 13th-century time period. And real medieval armour from that time period make just that exact same creaking sound as does his - a nice and subtle touch that most people wouldn't think of getting right.
And it's got the perfect mystical, religious mindset for the Middle Ages.
Seriously, watch it. All the talk of "God's Will" and curses, all the prayers, all excuses for and to God, all the mystical mumbo-jumbo, is perfect.
And, sadly, all of it sounds entirely too much like the insanity that we constantly hear from the faithful these days.
Bertolt Brecht had a theory of theatre he called the Verfremdungseffekt or "distancing effect". The basic concept is that you can tell people the truth about some difficult topic (including themselves), if you tell your story in a way such that they do not readily identify with the people in the story. And that is exactly what director Richard Donner did with Ladyhawke. He told a good story, and he told it well, and he showed just how unconnected with reality the attitudes behind that story are. You come away from the movie thinking "man, that was great - but can you believe people actually used to believe shit like that?"
Or is it just me?
Jim Downey
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Quite a distance
Gene Roddenberry put distancing to good use in Star Trek. They were able to address issues that would have been difficult to approach head on at the time.
BTW, I own a copy of Ladyhawke on DVD :)
Well, yeah.
Well, yeah. And the entire ST:TOS. ;)
Jim Downey
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Like Science Fiction? Read *or listen to* my novel, Communion of Dreams, for free.
Oh, Yeah.
I loved it too. Matthew Broderick was unexpectedly stiff in a few places, but his character was a total hoot. The guy who played the evil cardinal: perfect. Michelle Pfeiffer, Rutger Hauer: Yowzah!
And that horse! My god, I haven't seen anything nearly as beautiful in a hundred art galleries. A horse that perfect, you could frame his SHIT and people would come miles to see it.
I hadn't thought about the religious parts -- I have the ability to tune in to fantasy of any sort and simply accept it for the story value for the duration of the movie. But you're right.
People back then had no ... technology ... for thinking.
Actually, I was thinking of something like this just today -- that there might exist a hundred better ways to use our brains, that once we find out enough about how they work, we can find delicious hacks that will make us smarter, faster, more at ease with ourselves at every age. AND WE CAN TEACH THEM TO EVERYBODY.
Human civilization has up until the past few hundred years existed at a complete amateur level when it comes to using our brains. We have ONE mid-level technique, reason, in which the vast majority (including me) are poorly trained, and ONE advanced technique, science, in which most of us are not trained at all.
Thus we can have people using COMPUTERS, the offspring of a science and technology so advanced that only a handful of us really have any idea how they work, to sell reactionary pre-Enlightenment philosophies that oppose reason itself.
For too many of us Stone Age mental savages, boogiemen still hide under our beds. Except now they have lasers and night vision goggles, and carry iPhones.