Plotinus said:
All I can say is that when I watched it I didn't get any sense that it was motivated by what you call "PC" concerns or anything similar. Even if it did present a distorted view of the period by portraying all Muslims as wonderful and all Christians as evil (which, as we've said, it did not do at all), then I don't see what's "PC" about that or what relevance it would have to the situation in the modern world.
The relevance to the situation in the modern world is in the PC message sir Ridley attempts to present to the audience. You are purposely evading that point. After watching Kingdom of Heaven the first thing my girlfreind said was "those Christians were evil," this coming from someone who has no historical inclination. If this was her observation, how many more people do you think would come to the same conclusion?
I cannot help if you did not see the blatant polarization between the "good" Muslims and the "bad" Crusaders, perhaps you simply find it acceptable for crusaders to be negatively portrayed even if it is a distortion of the truth.
As I understood it, the film was about the decent rulers of Jerusalem who were concerned to maintain peace between their lot and the Saracens. The decent rulers of the Saracens also hoped to maintain peace. The situation gets ruined by the Templars, who want war. I don't see how this is either anti-Christian or pro-Muslim. Neither do I see how it whitewashes one side and villainises the other. The people who are villainised are the Templars. And that's a distortion, of course - but still, they are not an entire "side" in this film. They are a faction nominally under the control of the peace-loving leaders of Christian Jerusalem.
I don't understand the claim that the portrayal of Baldwin IV is positive only because Scott was somehow constrained by history - on the contrary, although Baldwin IV seems to have been decent enough, no way was he the saint-like character who appears in this film. In reality he was much more warlike. The character of Saladin in the film was probably whitewashed to a certain extent, but still they did portray his brutality - killing a prisoner, wiping out an entire enemy army, etc. And the main event of the film's climax - the fact that Saladin allowed the civilian population of Jerusalem to leave safely when the city surrendered - was of course true.
In the movie, the "peace-loving" Christians are represented as the small faction, not the other way around. This "peace-loving" faction is represented by the likes of King BaldwinIV and the make-believe character Tiberius who are portrayed as liberal-minded men that strive to create an environment in Outremer in which all religions canl coexist in harmony. They are in collaboration with Saladin and the Muslims who share the same goal of peace. The rest of the Christians, from the cruel and sniveling bishop preaching hatred against the Muslims, the Templars to most of the crusaders and settlers, are equally stupid and fanatical.
Balian is a character who loses his faith and in the end becomes a champion of secularism who admonishes the fanatical Christian bishop.
I asked you in a prior post, which Muslim was villainized in the movie? none.
There was no dissonant Muslim perspective in the movie that brought balance to the evil Christians.
I note that Riley-Smith's comments in the cited article make it clear that when he made them he hadn't actually seen the film, which had then only just begun shooting!
I found an interesting article
here which argues that the main points of the film, including its portrayal of the Muslims and Christians, are actually backed up by Riley-Smith's own work...
Riley-Smith is not the only historian that criticised the movie Plotinus. There are many other prominant historians whos criticism of the film concur with Riley's.
Academics, however - including Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, Britain's leading authority on the Crusades - attacked the plot of Kingdom of Heaven, describing it as "rubbish", "ridiculous", "complete fiction" and "dangerous to Arab relations".
Amin Maalouf, the French historian and author of The Crusades Through Arab Eyes, said: "It does not do any good to distort history, even if you believe you are distorting it in a good way. Cruelty was not on one side but on all."
Dr Jonathan Philips, a lecturer in history at London University and author of The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, agreed that the film relied on an outdated portrayal of the Crusades and could not be described as "a history lesson".
He said: "The Templars as 'baddies' is only sustainable from the Muslim perspective, and 'baddies' is the wrong way to show it anyway. They are the biggest threat to the Muslims and many end up being killed because their sworn vocation is to defend the Holy Land."
That
interesting article you found is Elliotts attempt at derailing Riley-Smith for the purpose of pursuing his own PC agenda.
I read Riley's
The Crusades: A Short History and what Elliot did was take snipets from Rileys book and maliciously rehashed them to suit his article. The simple tactic of quoting out of context.
No where in his book does Riley polarize the Chrsitans or Muslims into two ethical groups.
In the conclusion of his article, Elliot says:
We cannot afford the catastrophically simplistic thinking that seeks to replace history with self-gratifying narratives of "good" ("us") versus "evil" ("them"). As Mahmoud Mamdani documents in his brilliant Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (Pantheon, 2003), reading the world as a "clash of civilizations" between "the West" and "Islam" is simply lousy history, however useful it proves for the purposes of modern propaganda.
Is what I have placed in bold not the point that
I have been adamantly stressing on this thread? However Elliott claims that it is the western academia which perpetrates the propagation of a "clash of civilization" which makes him not only very misinformed but a useful idiot as well.
Yes Elliott it is lousy history but it IS history nonetheless.
We cannot afford the seductive, but toxic, ideology of the Crusade. If Ridley Scott's film contributes to honest conversation about our actual history and to imagining, and practicing, communities of mutual respect, I, for one, will be grateful.
According to this useful idiot, apparently we cannot afford to romanticize the crusaders or present them in a positive light however it is perfectly fine to present Muslim jihadists in a positive light.
How about this Elliott, history should be presented and taught the way it happened, with dedication to the truth and honesty.
We can not afford to omit controversial history and compromise the integrity of the pursiut for truth in history.
Sir Isaiah Berlin once described an ideologue as somebody who is prepared to supress what he suspects to be true. Berlin then concluded that from that disposition to supress the truth has flowed much of the evil of this and other centuries. The first duty of an historian,
an intellectual, is to tell the truth. By supressing the truth, however admirable the motive, we are only engendering an even greater falsehood, an even greater evil.
You Plotinus, above all others on this forum, should know that. Sometimes I wonder if you even agree with the historians obligation to the truth.
