Popular Culture Review Vol. 3, No. 2, August 1992 | Page 45

Robin Hood's Pervading Faith

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witch with a milky eye; same witch spitting hockers in dish and
mixing with blood; an attempted rape played for laughs; servant's
eyes plucked out; frequent bloodshed; stitching of facial wound;
assorted sexual innuendos; a perpetually tanked Friar Tuck; and more
people than we can count being impaled with arrows and stabbed
with swords." I do not necessarily concur with any of the reviews
quoted.
The Pittsburgh Press's Ed Blank asks some interesting
questions: "Is it not possible to take anything seriously? Have we
lightened up so much that we no longer draw any satisfaction from
characters relating to each other in a realistic way? In looking for
the joke in everything, are we really illuminating it or kissing off
what it used to be?" In retrospect, I find those questions led me to the
paper I now present, the one I have written from my own assessment of
the film after realizing that what I hoped the reviewers would do
for us, considering the task they are assigned, was more than they
could fairly be asked to do.
I
find that Robin Hood. Prince of Thieves is not what Ed
Blank fears—does not "kiss o ff things of value—but is instead a film
about faith. And my deduction is that it speaks for American culture
in 1991.
We might expect to see the religiosity of the film in its
treatment of the churchmen, and we do. In earlier film versions of the
legend. Friar Tuck is rough, tough and careless of his vocation to a
degree, but still a performer of religious rites. Often a contradictory
figure, he will bless a fallen enemy after he has knocked him out. (In
fact, if memory does not fail me. Friar Tuck is the least likely of
Robin's men, in earlier versions, to deliver fatal strokes, more often
hitting his adversaries over their helmeted heads.) In 1991's
version. Friar Tuck is even more dedicated to his vocation. Granted
he is a heavy drinker, in fact a lover of alcohol who implies that
good drinking cleanses the soul, yet he is unfailingly attentive to his
association with God, always doing his best, even when he is
incorrect, to advance God's cause as he understands it.
Attempting to escape Robin when he first reawakens in
Sherwood Forest, Tuck cries that he "is a braver, holier and wiser
man" than Robin. After his initiation, he says, "Thank you. Lord, for
teaching me humility." Robin shows him the camp. "Well, Tuck, are
these not the meek of the earth. We are in need of an honest man to