POLITICALLY CORRECT KING ARTHUR

"Jerry Bruckheimer's most recent rendition of King Arthur raises a fascinating question: is the political correcting process implemented intentionally, or does such revision simply occur by momentum once patterns of thought start heading in a certain direction?

The newest King Arthur purports to tell the "real story" that inspired the legend of Camelot. The Cliff's notes version is this: King Arthur was really the Roman commander named Lucius Artorius Castus, leading a group of conscripted "eastern knights" charged with repelling Rome's enemies at Hadrian's Wall in Britain. These "knights" are pagan cavalrymen from the Central Asian region that lies between the Vistula River and the Caspian Sea, known as Sarmatia.

Guinevere and Merlin are actually "Woads" (named for the blue dye used to paint the body before battle that gained notoriety in the movie Braveheart). These Woads are pagan barbarians who constitute Rome's primary enemies beyond the Wall to the north. Merlin is not really a magical wizard but a mystical Shaman-like freedom-fighter leading the Woads; Guinevere is not a queen in flowing robes, but rather a proto-feminist archer who goes to battle in William Wallace-style face paint.

The Woads simply want to be left alone after facing great persecution and torture by the Catholic Romans, who are willing to implement any hideous means to convert and enslave the natives. With the exception of Arthur (who is part-Woad), the Christians are almost uniformly duplicitous, and dare I say it, evil. Meanwhile the real enemies are coming down from the north, and they are the blonde-haired Aryan-looking Saxons. The ruthless Saxon leader's most notable quotation is along the lines of "don't breed with the locals, you'll taint our blood.".....

And so we have it. It wasn't noble Christian British knights who sat around Arthur's round table and forged the legendary Camelot. It was the combined ingenuity of pagan Woad face-painters and Central Asian cavalrymen. It was not a refined queen who embodied the ideal medieval Lady, but an arrow-slinging Goth chick. And for good measure, don't forget, it was the technologically advanced barbarians who brought sophisticated artillery into battle, not the Romans. I'm sure glad that Hollywood has set the record straight. I was worried we were being fed a bunch of rubbish.

More here