Christian Slater Can’t Do a British Accent
My first experience with the Robin Hood story was with the Disney animated version. My first experience with the Robin Hood story when I gave a shit was the BBC series, which ran from 2006–2009. To put it into perspective, I sobbed so hard when Allan-a-Dale died at the end of season three¹ that I had to ward off an errant phone call and call the person back later. I think I was twelve.
I don’t know what my mother’s first experience with the Robin Hood story was, but I do know that her favorite is Prince of Thieves. Post-BBC series, I was just hungry for more Robin Hood, even if Jonas Armstrong wasn’t going to be Robin. Suddenly, Allan was lame², and I was throwing myself into every adaptation I could get my hands on. Naturally, Prince of Thieves was one of those — it came pretty highly recommended by my mother, who not only loves Alan Rickman but also Christian Slater.
It should be mentioned that I also really love Christian Slater.
I recently rewatched Prince of Thieves, and this is what compelled my spiral back into Robin Hood. In rewatching, I noticed a couple of things. First of all, it’s long as hell. Seriously, this bitch is two and a half hours long. It’s got some good action scenes and some funny bits, but if a movie outlasts my computer battery, it’s probably too longa³. There’s also the matter of Kevin Costner and Christian Slater’s accents or lack thereof. Sometimes. There’s the very 90’s soundtrack. Didn’t you know? Every movie from the 90s had to spawn a hit song about a woman wailing about something.
As you can tell, I loved it.
And it made me think. I started asking, “You know, what draws us to stories like Robin Hood?” Seriously, what makes us tell this story over and over and over, with varying degrees of seriousness⁴, with varying degrees of success?
If somehow you’ve gotten through life without hearing about Robin Hood, the basic premise is this: a nobleman returns from the Holy Land after fighting in the Crusades. Oh shit, he realizes his home country of England is a shithole now. He becomes an outlaw. Robin Hood starts up a merry band of outlaws, including Will Scarlett, Allan-a-Dale, and Little John⁵. It’s a tale as old as time. Steal from the rich, give to the poor. There are various subplots and other things going on (the love affair with Maid Marian, Will betraying him at one point, and so on), but the main thing is just to steal from the rich and give to the poor.
Most of us are not what we would call wealthy. Even if you’re comfortable right now, you probably wouldn’t be doing so hot if suddenly your house burned down, or your health took a drastic turn for the worse⁶, or you were unable to work. The fact of the matter is, even though we do live in the best time period in all of human history, and we are not nearly as fucked as medieval peasants were, the one percent is the one percent no matter the time period.
There are some people who are strictly law-focused. It doesn’t matter if it’s morally right. All that matters is if it’s according to the law or against the law. But, I think most of us aren’t law-focused. Most of us are justice-focused. If, say, Jeff Bezos’s house burned to the ground, he would be fine. He owns Amazon. If a Kardashian got cancer, they would be fine⁷. They have the kind of cash to pay for top-level treatment. All of this security is because they do something that people give them a lot of money for. This isn’t just relevant with people I’m not a huge fan of. I’ll do someone I really like. Say Kirk Hammett⁸ shattered his hands and couldn’t play the guitar anymore. This would be a tragedy, and I would be really sad, but if he couldn’t play in Metallica anymore, he would not be out on the streets. He would probably be watching old monster movies or something. I dunno what he does in his free time.
Most of us aren’t that lucky. I don’t own a house, but my parents own theirs — and one of the main reasons why they’re doing well financially is that they don’t have to pay rent or mortgage payments. If that house that they got for twenty-four thousand dollars in 2001⁹ burned to the ground, it would hurt them¹⁰. If I or one of my family members got cancer, the bills would suck ass. If my father, the primary breadwinner of the family, was unable to work, that’s like eighty thousand dollars a year they’re out. Could they keep going on my mom’s regular teacher’s salary¹¹? Well, they live in rural North Dakota and have their house paid off, so probably, but they wouldn’t be as comfortable. And if they lived somewhere with a higher cost of living with their three kids¹², things would look bleak.
So if, say, some weird vigilante rich person went and robbed Jeff Bezos and got away with it — would we really be all that upset about it? Say you opened up Twitter one morning and
you saw that Danny DeVito had robbed the fuck out of Jeff Bezos, and then walked along the streets and gave out cash to everyone he passed. Wouldn’t that just be the tightest shit? That would be so cool. We would all hardcore support Danny DeVito in this situation. We would hide him if he came through our towns, the FBI on his tail. We would support him because we knew that he cared.
The thing about a folk hero like Robin Hood, who was born a nobleman who had all the privilege in the world, is that he gave all of that away. Beyond the fact that most adaptations have him rub the new sheriff the wrong way, he leaves his place of privilege for two reasons: justice and freedom. He lives among his men in Sherwood Forest because together they’re free. They’re pretty much a commune, to be honest, which does speak to the wish that communism would just work, man, but once you get bigger than the commune stage it ain’t gonna work ever, and there will always be people who want more power. But anyway, there’s a freedom in that outdoor living. It speaks to the romanticism of living in the forest, away from rules that don’t make any sense and away from people who try and keep you under their boot.
More than that, Robin Hood is someone from inside the system pushing against it. Maybe Danny DeVito isn’t the best example here because I don’t think Danny DeVito’s ever been a part of the system in the first place.
The reason I think Robin Hood has lasted so long is because people know that the system is broken. People have always known that the system is broken, and if someone who benefits from that system realizes this and leaves the system — well, then there’s hope.
1. Whoops, spoiler alert.
2. The BBC series pretty much made Allan the traditional Will Scarlett. Will was still a character, he was just different.
3. Or maybe my computer battery is just shit, but po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
4. Hello, Men in Tights.
5. Little John is never little. That’s the irony of his name. Though I would like a version where Little John is played by Peter Dinklage.
6. Especially if you’re in America with its health insurance hellscape.
7. Like, assuming they didn’t die from cancer.
8. Lead guitarist for the band Metallica.
9. Thanks 2001 housing market and also rural North Dakota.
10. This is also kind of likely, considering my family is full of idiots and we have a wood burner.
11. Somewhere around 40k, I think.
12. Though I’m hopefully gonna be outta there soon.
Aurora Dimitre is a young author from rural North Dakota. She likes heavy metal, horror movies, and Keanu Reeves.
