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ACF Critic Series #19: Jody Bottum, ‘The 13th Warrior’
Here’s an unusual podcast. An epic, a flop, a small gem — Michael Crichton and John McTiernan’s The 13th Warrior, or Beowulf meets a Muslim poet. Jody Bottum and I talk about this rare look at the origins of civilization, freedom and empire, faith and fatalism. It stars Antonio Banderas; Omar Sharif has a good cameo in it. He hated the movie — everyone did. But your loyal critics are here to rescue it.
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@bossmongo you will love this one.
Oh man, I really liked this movie.
It may be related to the fact that I liked the book, which may be related to the fact that I loved the premise of the novel, which may be related to the fact that I liked studying Beowulf in school
Either way, I own this DVD and break it out every so often because I like the film.
Man, I have mixed feelings about this movie, but I will say the book is such a fun little premise. And there is a good bit of historical accuracy shoved into the book, which gets lost in the movie. To this day I find it hard to accept the 15th century armor of some of those vikings.
Antonio Banderas… /swoon
I liked this movie.
I know, right?
@matede, thanks for the heads up.
Morning Titus,
Do you think that in the Greek epics and later players where the hazards men face are not external monsters or peoples who are not considered human represents different understanding or insight or do you think that those insights come as a civilization becomes might materially secure? More simply are monsters more likely to be a part of a literature of a people whose lives are more at risk?
Monsters were banished by the arrival of the living God of the Bible. It’s not just that before that, life was more dangerous–it was more chaotic, which is a deeper, more fearful thing; it makes people fatalistic. Think of Biblical monster-slayers: David & Samson before him. The Bible isn’t in love with them–they’re too manly.
Of course, the arrival of the philosophers in Greece also banished monsters, wherever their influence spread.
To speak a bit more abstractly, after war is separated from peace, the monsters begin to disappear; then the heroes, too. Think of the Mexica people–why couldn’t they stop with the human sacrifices!
Jody called him very, very pretty, too!
Since the books in the bible mentioned here (Judges and Kings – events 1400 – 1000 BC) predate the myths (Theseus v the Minotaur for example 500 BC, based on a king in 800BC) Not to mention Beowulf (story dated 700-1000 AD) Titus’ premise that the bible “banished” them is far more wrong than usual.
Comic books today further refute this supposition.
Mornng again Titus,
Could you comment further on the Aztecs and human sacrifice. Even in Biblical times, this type of sacrifice was common. I am wondering if this is a behavior of a society which is rather new to the cultural structures which supplanted tribes. Within tribal groups human sacrifice including executing witches has a limit, and if the limit is exceeded the tribe falls apart. In the Aztecs the sacrificial victims were not Aztecs but groups under their control, more like slaves to the Aztecs, the Aztecs seemed to be overwhelming dominant. We have recorded the sacrifice of hundreds of children in the groups of North Africa, I assume the children are theirs, this is also self limiting. Monsters are not part of the lore of the primitive tribes we find today, they are more like spirits.
I will make an exception to a wise rule & answer this needless provocation. Read my comment again, but assuming that I am not so stupid as to be unable to put dates to books. It may give you pleasure to think yourself so far my superior, but if you forego it, you might learn something…
This is not a serious statement-
Jim, hello again! I’ll make some reading suggestions, so you know what I’ve been reading–but first of all, yes, what you say seems sensible to me. I can suggest Rene Girard on the scapegoating mechanism, whom Jody mentions on the podcast, but we did not get a chance to talk about. Good book. Meanwhile, here’s an essay on the Mexica by Eva Brann that I rather liked. Of course, there’s also Prescott’s History of The Conquest of Mexico, which I also rather like!
This is a somewhat difficult question, since our sources are unclear, not least because of the banishment which I have mentioned. Even figuring out what people think like who are not civilized is very difficult. The movie we talked about suggests that freedom is coeval with awareness of monsters. I believe this is true.–But if you wish to see a primitive tribe, below freedom, there is the book called, I think, Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, by an anthropologist who lived for a couple of decades with an Amazonian tribe that even at the time–a generation back–did not make almost any use of tools.
Dude – the living God of the Bible has not yet done this.
Also, this next statement is not true
Life was not “more dangerous” or “more chaotic”.
Those times (800 BC – 1000 AD) have nothing on the 20th Century.
Also Comic books and their heroes were invented in the 20th century and their monsters and villains are more monstrous and villainous than the fables of yore.
Lay off the hyperbole for a while.
Moderator Note:
Massive overreaction. Please engage your fellow members in good faith. You may disagree with the member's comment, but there is no need to be insulting about it.Mr. Instugator, please go away. You have nothing to contribute to this conversation, beyond those dates, for which I thank you, & you seem incapable or unwilling to learn anything either. If you dislike the things I say or the way I say them–just go away. I will not impose my company on you. You can see my name & face on my conversations–just steer clear, I won’t ambush you.
I loved the book and the movie. Good show Titus. I think the take away is, you can’t beat a good story well told (see Homer and William Shakespeare). I wish our cultural overlords in Hollywood and New York could figure that out.
Yes, but the guy wearing the gladiator helmet is cool.
Monsters were banished by God? @titustechera?
I think I will listen to these great men:
C.S. Lewis believed in the Living God and he believed in monsters. I think the Screwtape Letters were most predictive
Love that one.
Of course, we can go to the source on the monster:
Thanks for the kind words! Glad to see there are people who love the movie. Wherever I’ve shared this–it’s been well received. One guy told me, he just caught the movie by accident, in a hotel, & was hooked! It’ll be a cult hit by the time I’m done with it!
I know that Chesterton & Lewis are held in high regard. But unless everyone has been mentally reduced to childhood, we Christians should know that Augustine & Aquinas are far greater authorities for us. & they didn’t babble.
The idea that the temptation in the desert could be compared to the Minotaur or the Hydra; or Jormungand; or anything one might read about in the adventures of Gilgamesh–seems utterly implausible to me. The man who can read Genesis & the Gospels & come away with the idea that there are monsters out there–well, I would like to meet that man, if there’s a chance of learning what might be on his mind.
Wait. There’re people out there who like this movie? Inconceivable! Watch this and tell me it’s not just a little slice of cinematic awesomeness:
Morning Titus,
To pick a nit, we can see Satan being made a monster and not just a tempter trying to loose the evil in our hearts; 1 Peter 5:8, “your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”
A bigger potato(e), in thinking about monsters, are monsters the part of our imagination where we create out of the unknown or the strange what we most fear (awiens), and are we in a way trying to deal with that? Or are monsters an external arena where we can place our purpose, dragon slayer. For a group, having a monster might be a unifying force, we are the people who are good, because we fight the monster who is bad, we are the people who are surviving under the threat of the bad monster and live in fear of the monster.
Contrasting with the fear of external threats is a belief that the harder battle between good and evil is within our own hearts (Solzhenitsyn). MacIntyre writes that the wisdom of Sophocles lies in has presentation that there are crucial conflicts in which different virtues appear as making rival and incompatible claims upon us. At the level of the individual, Jewish and Christian view all individuals as sinners and who are fighting against their own worldly desires. This view seems close to the Greek views, that flaws within men lead to their disaster. I wonder if our tendency to crate (a little slip there, I had intended to write create, it maybe a telling slip) monsters is not only just a natural part of our imagination using our fears to build a dreaded thing, but our natural desire to run away from examining our own evil hearts. How do you see this and do you think our current passion for comic monsters is a running away from moral maturity, (he smugly says, because he is a geezer and does not like the current movies).
I find it amazing that you, of all people, would accuse these men of “babble”. Their writing is concise and for a broad audience. I cannot say the same for your long and overblown essays. Also, you don’t start sentences with “and” and you sure don’t start them with “&”. Neither Lewis nor Chesterton would have made that mistake. I find it highly unlikely you have read much of either man. Maybe you think Lewis just wrote some books for Children. Go read Mere Christianity and tell me that is for children.
Or don’t. I expect you will go on spinning your distorted views on all things American.
If you have read the Bible, and I doubt you have studied it all, you would understand the monsters within the Bible: The most real monsters are us. We are the greatest monsters. History has born that truth out quite well. You mention St. Augustine? He well knew the monster in his own heart.
I’m not sure what any of these things have to do with America. You probably are aware that neither Chesterton nor Lewis were American.
You have a sickness in your soul, if you feel compelled to think I am ignorant because I say things you are incapable of dealing with. Mere Christianity is a good statement, though nothing more. But the things you quoted are mere babble. The writing of literature for kids is not much better. If this is what Christianity had to rely on, it would have been over before it started.
I see you have taken a long, pointless road to what I said to begin with. There are no monsters, once God reveals a law. This childish, sentimental, mindless “we’re the true monsters” is worthless playing with words. No adult should behave this way while pretending to be very moral & very learned.
See underlined. Proves my point.
Of course I have a sickness in my soul; all humans do. You can tell me human beings are not monsters all you want. I know better. I have worked with them for a quarter of a century. Real life monsters. I don’t need impose that construction on a myth. I understand that we must fight our monsters to be fully us.
Monsters in myths tell us something about fighting them. Adults and children can relate to metaphor. Monsters take many forms. To say that the Living God banished monsters is simple wrong. We know monsters are real. People in the Middle Ages sure thought dragons existed. That is well after God spoke to Moses. Well after Christ walked the Earth.
I have worked humans dealing with their monsters for most of your life. You are not wiser than me, young man.
The Christian teaching is that evil is a permanent feature. If you think about the devil, then you have gone beyond anything like a monster. Further, evil is tied to the human heart. It is only involved in the world in a derivative fashion.
Both seem to be true. All foundations seem to have had a hero at the origins. Even the pacifists of our world, the philosophers, build their fame–really, why there still are philosophers, once in a century, among us–on the death of Socrates, a man who was fearless, which is one heroic trait.
On the other hand, there is this matter of dealing with the unknown. It seems that civilization withdraws from people almost any ability to deal with experience. Instead, the rules of manners & mores taught to very young children dominate. What happens when people realize, individually or in communities, that that’s not good enough? They tend to have recourse to their imaginations & memories…
The tragic poets were uniquely capable of bringing out the contradictions inherent in our manners & mores. But inasmuch as they bear a resemblance to the teaching of the Bible concerning sin, or human fallibility in relation to mortality, especially–tragedy threatens to live people hopeless. You can see this, of course, with Christians, too. In the Middle Ages, there were periods of religious hysteria when self-flagellation or things like human sacrifices occurred.
In America, in the last century, several times, apocalyptic Christian sects convinced people to surrender their property…
I think there’s something to what you say about the movies. But there is also a desire to study things that are impossible to study in America. Nobody reads Plato’s Republic to learn from it. But some of the movies teach parts of it. American culture had been aggressively normal before the arrival of these kinds of stories. They have been trying hard to bring back some of the storytelling typical of tragedy, which was banished for a long time… Just think about the life American parents so piously wish to offer their kids: There is no room there for the dark passions of the soul…
In “The Coddling of the American MInd” Haidt and Lukianoff have noted that the parenting style of the millennial’s parents being overly protective, has led to fragility of the millennials. Are you suggesting that these youth are, on their own trying to grow and trying to experience the darker part of life through movies? I was having so much fun being smug.
Afternoon Boss,
In the clip you included the warriors were recalling their history and were pledging to keep the tradition going. Do modern warriors have anything like this to encourage themselves and each other? As I read WWII warriors, they did not have a way to connect themselves to the past. I think the sense that one is responsible to the past and our parents and their parents is something we have lost, and this is our loss.
The incapacity here is your inability to accept criticism.
The ability to both give and take criticism is what makes America exceptional. The inability to do either or both defines the rest of the world.
I wrote about the unique components of American Exceptionalism here.