Films about the Middle Ages are inherently modern creations. They tend to reflect the concerns and concerns of their modern context rather than those of the people who lived throughout the Middle Ages. One could argue that it is natural for contemporary issues to influence the cinematic decisions of a film's creator. However, this in turn leads to the overall concern and message of the film being misleading. The perspective of medievalism – the ongoing process of reconstructing the Middle Ages – will be considered throughout this essay. Films about the Middle Ages allow medievalists and historical researchers to imagine the past, thereby enabling historical imagination, even if through depictions that fail to fully represent what the Middle Ages actually were. Since the term "misleading" is defined as "to give a false idea or impression", it is appropriate to examine the factors which contributed to the creation of films about the Middle Ages in order to determine to what extent the public is being misled. Say no to plagiarism. . Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an Original Essay There are essentially two different types of cinematic depictions of the Middle Ages. The first involves representing the reality of the Middle Ages and the second is more self-aware. This poses problems when it comes to understanding how misleading they can be. The first attempts to depict the reality of the Middle Ages, including fiction films and historical dramas. They claim to directly or indirectly describe how things really happened to their audience. Recent examples of such films include Braveheart (1995) and The Name of the Rose (1986), as well as the many films about Joan of Arc. The second films, more self-aware, do not claim to describe the Middle Ages as they really were. For example, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1991), the knights, instead of riding horses, pretend to ride them like one hits coconut shells to imitate the sound of hooves. Similarly, in First Knight (1995), during the games, the crowd participates in "the wave", like the crowds in modern American football. These two examples confirm the argument of this essay: films about the Middle Ages can only mislead. Medievalists, as mentioned in the introduction, acquire to some extent the ability to imagine the past through cinematic depictions of the Middle Ages. However, the first type of films discussed – those which attempt to produce a certain form of historical realism – compared to scientific articles, essays and books, have many flaws. The first flaw is a lack of transparency resulting from an increased difficulty in determining whether or not a film is historically true compared to already existing sources. The public does not have additional materials such as footnotes or appendices that could validate historical accuracy. While medievalists and historians routinely contextualize their arguments and opinions while making their own biases explicit, films about the Middle Ages are more often imprecise and indistinct in their sources of information, often making it more difficult to verify reliability. of a film. However, to this criticism it can be disputed that any historian or medievalist curious enough could quite easily research the film and verify its production. An example of this would be various Joan of Arc films. We don't know for sure if Joan witnessed a rape – it's possible she diddid – but the available documents about it don’t tell us. Although the story of The Messenger (1999) may not be 100% reliable, the story of Joan of Arc is so accessible that the film can quickly be verified. Furthermore, films about the Middle Ages are misleading in their distortion due to the limitation of time. Cecil B. DeMille's The Crusades (1935) was meant to depict the entirety of the Crusades, however, the film only focuses on a single campaign. DeMille himself called this "telescopic history", whereby the historical fact of several crusades spanning centuries is neglected due to the impossibility of telling the whole story in a two-hour film. Additionally, another problem with films about the Middle Ages that attempt to depict medieval life and culture is that their historical accuracy is often questionable. Specifically, less effort is made to represent the Middle Ages reliably and consistently with existing written sources for the period. For example, in Braveheart (1995), Mel Gibson's character William Wallace is depicted with clean, shiny hair – something unrealistic for someone who lives without indoor running water or proper shampoo. Additionally, in A Knights Tale (2001), the armor is mostly from several decades/centuries later. This clearly shows the discrepancies in historical accuracies, as these are done purely for aesthetic reasons. Additionally, films about the Middle Ages take liberties with the historical sequence or reproduce events in an inconsistent order or manner as the textual historical record records them. As Robert Rosenstone says: Most historical films "are almost guaranteed to leave the historian of the time crying foul." This reiterates the argument of this essay: that films about the Middle Ages are misleading. As in Game of Thrones (2014), the duel between Oberyn Martell and Gregor Clegane is arguably one of the most memorable scenes in the series, but it is in no way realistic as to how a battle would have turned out. place during this period. Fighters in the Middle Ages had to conform to a set of rules, particularly regarding skills and weapons. Even though both men were considered skilled fighters, the significant difference between their weapons and armor would have prevented them from fighting. Of course, modern written records and accounts are also guilty of ignoring and altering history as it “really was,” because each media outlet is limited in its knowledge of the reliability of each previous source. Yet it cannot be denied that many films about the Middle Ages have limited reliability, making them misleading. Furthermore, a problematic aspect of films about the Middle Ages is that they usually tell stories, not about the Middle Ages, but about modern Western life in period costume. A film about the Middle Ages can never be truly authentic to existing sources. This is not only due to the fact that knowledge of the era is sometimes limited, but also to the fact that today's society, namely the creators and the audience of the film, live in a very unknown world of Middle Ages. Accustomed to the conventions of modern storytelling, we have very different expectations of a story than people would have had in the Middle Ages. In other words, if Europeans in the year 1100 had the ability to make films, their cinematic depictions would be very different from a Martin Scorsese film made about life in the year 1100. Perhaps talk about the intention of the film in terms of entertainment. or the strengthening of societal norms and how this is extremelydifferent from the norms of the medieval period. A main characteristic of a historical film is the presentation of a different world to the audience, allowing them to experience this world as if it were their reality. The effect of a photographic image gives the impression that what the audience is witnessing is an already reliable and objective record of reality. By adding sound, movement and expression, the images become a film. This illusion is heightened to such an extent that the audience can be led to believe that they are actually witnessing what actually happened. This is ultimately misleading as the audience becomes passive, believing the depiction of this period to be historical truth. Cinema is often criticized for being a medium unsuitable for the presentation of historical arguments. Film being an audiovisual medium, conveyed by images and sound, it is more difficult for the public to interpret the meaning of a film, whereas written texts can explicitly state what they want their audience to take away from their work. This highlights that, as the meaning of an image or sound is more debatable, films about the Middle Ages can only mislead. This part of the essay focuses on the relationship between known historical facts and their audiovisual content. translation. Mainstream films about the Middle Ages tell their period of history as a story, with a beginning, middle, and end. Regularly, these stories leave their audience with a moral message often anchored in a progressive vision. This is true for the story of Robin Hood where the context surrounding the story is important. This is because stealing is morally wrong, but like all things, morality is subjective, leaving the overall result of Robin's famous theft from the rich to give the poor challenges to immorality. This example fits into his own progressive view since he examines morality in a situation created entirely by man's own flaws and describes how morality can be completely situational. Another way in which films about the Middle Ages cannot help but mislead is by emoting, personalizing, and dramatizing the subjects they explore. He delivers the story to us in the form of triumph and heroism like Braveheart, through William Wallace's bravery in the face of danger and his confidence in his compatriots. As well as suffering and despair. The creators of these works use special effects: close-ups of human faces conveying emotion, the rapid juxtaposition of dissimilar images, and the power of music and sound effects to intensify the audience's feelings and reactions to the events depicted on screen. Each of these is used by creators to fulfill their cinematic desires, which often compromises historical elements. This is seen in Kingdom of Heaven, the original release of this film in 2005 was widely criticized for its misrepresentation. the coronation of King Baldwin V, making it clear that the film's historical accuracy was not the result of a lack of research, but of deliberate creative decisions. Cinema thus asks the following question: is it beneficial to link emotion to a historical category like the Middle Ages? Subsequently, films depicting the Middle Ages are often modernity in costume and, apart from evoking a certain medieval atmosphere, they are rarely concerned, as Arthur Lindley notes, with "reconstructing the past, at least not with detailed manner”. the stories and concerns of films about the Middle Ages are resolutely contemporary. The subject of these films is “the present, not the past”. Lindley offers an admirable example: in the opening sequence of The Seventh Seal, we see Antonio, the returning crusader, playingplaying chess on a stormy beach with a metaphorical figure of death. Although the date is supposed to be 1349, the film's stakes, Lindley proposes, are those of "the subatomic beginning of the 1950s, with the imminent universal death of the northern skies." Peter Cowie similarly states that The Seventh Seal "reflects the anxiety of the Cold War era." From an aesthetic point of view, films about the Middle Ages often combine attempts to reproduce authentic works with 18th and 19th century ideas about this period in order to create an idealized medieval image. world. This is evident in films such as The Adventures of Robin Hood and Camelot. It could be argued, however, that films about the Middle Ages are not only misleading due to the fact that they do not claim to be historically accurate, meaning their audience is not led to understand. believe they are reliable. Braveheart, for example, has several inaccuracies that are widely accepted by its viewers and studying historians.[footnoteRef:26] For example, King Edward II is presented as an adult, when in reality he would only be thirteen years old. . Likewise, the Scottish rebels wore kilts throughout the films, which they would not have worn. In this way, films about the Middle Ages can be of great use to the medievalist or historian. These films may not have references like scholarly works, they may be historically inaccurate, and they may also be decidedly modern in their perspective and views of the era. Much like Disney's more recent film, Brave, the progressive views on female independence and feminist theory throughout the film depict more of a 21st century perspective than that of the Middle Ages. That being said, films about the Middle Ages are highly regarded and sometimes considered more engaging for audiences than other scholarly works. While films about the Middle Ages are enjoyable, even if unreliable, they can encourage questions about what really happened, thereby arousing historical curiosity about eras that seem so foreign to the world in which we live in today. Of all the factors contributing to the making of the historical film, the element of invention proves to be one of the most problematic from the historian's point of view, serving to highlight the argument that films about the Middle Ages can only mislead. To accept invention is to significantly change the way we think about history – by changing the fundamental elements: its textual and empirical aspects. To seriously approach films about the Middle Ages, we must accept the idea that the empirical aspect is only a way of giving meaning to the past. Accepting the inventions and changes of the Middle Ages that we see through mainstream modern films is not about ignoring all standards of historical truth, but about accepting another way of understanding our relationship to the past. Cinema does not replace written history but is adjacent to it. On the other hand, what are the alternatives? Insisting that films about the Middle Ages must be made 100% historically accurate is not only financially impossible, but the most historically accurate films are criticized for being tedious. This is due to their poor use of the visual and dramatic possibilities of the medium. Furthermore, another alternative would be to completely ignore films about the Middle Ages. However, this would mean giving up a deep sense of connection with the sense of the past, as films about the Middle Ages are widely received by such a wide audience. Even if historical films are misleading about the time period they depict, they should still.5 (1988)