Hi [tag]Caleb Fogg[/tag]–
How remiss of me – I didn’t answer your questions on films about Elizabeth
On this side of the pond the Tudors are very sexy indeed at the moment.
Yes I saw the two films about Elizabeth with Kate Blanchet – I don’t remember much nudity in either beyond what was required to make a modest point. I saw it some time back but perhaps you see a little bit of Kate Blanchet’s nude body when she’s in bed with Robert Dudley – I think. But there’s nothing super raunchy about it at all – and it certainly was not pornographic to my eyes; just an incidental part of the drama rather than titillation as such. I mean there are more graphic displays of cruelty in the film but even these are not excessive as far as I remember. I cannot remember hanging drawing and quartering being displayed graphically in the film for example – as became popular in to her historical drams for a bit and unnecessary and very revolting too. But it show you that some things have got better in that watching such cruelty was seen as a valid family outing for Christina folk at these times (although Elizabeth was revolted by it apparently)
It is difficult to do a film about the Middle Ages or the early modern period and be honest - and at the same time abide by Puritan expectations; because people in those days had very little privacy. Houses didn’t have inside doors – and people saw each other going to the toilet, washing, having sex, dying etc – without any concept of full privacy very often. For this reason you’ll find good Christian authors of the times having a far earthy and more accepting attitude towards the boy and bodily functions than we have today. Erasmus can be earthy and is always witty – but fastidious too. But Luther can be just plain filthy and violently, alarmingly obscene (one of the differences between the two). And I seem to remember that perhaps even the lovemaking scene in the first Elizabeth film is one in which servants are walking about and Elizabeth is most anxious about this.
Of course Elizabeth claimed she was a Virgin – this had symbolic clout; she was married to her people – the Virgin Queen and cautious about making a marriage of alliance that went sour (as her sister Mary had cone fatally). Whether or not she was a virgin is something we will probably never know – the film simply makes a conjecture there as if it is true. Certainly there is evidence that she may have been seduced by Catherine Parr’s second husband when she was a teenager – this was a charge put before her when Mary’s ministers tried to trap her and have her beheaded like her mother had been (but again it’s hard to say if this was true and even if it was true it sounds like she was very much manipulated). She was a young woman in her early twenties at this time when she was imprisoned in the Tower of London briefly – and she faced down her accusers magnificently.
As for her relationships with her adoring courtiers like Robert Dudley– well that was part of the conventions of time and was not necessarily anything sexual – so the modest sex scene in the film is all conjecture – although Elizabeth certainly knew how to use her sex appeal to get her own way in a man’s world (a bit like Margaret Thatcher did as first female Prime Minister of the UK– in some ways she was a notorious flirt with the boys in her government and even with Ronald Reagan only to put them in their place and make them feel like little boys when she felt like it – which they loved apparently; well some of them got tired of it – the ones that got rid of her)
A lot of the first film is very oversimplified and sometimes anachronistic – but hey it’s entertainment and it tells a good story (and gives you the gist of the real story ) :and it is full of the young Elizabeth’s courage and steel. And it is easy to fall in love with young Elizabeth with her red hair flowing free. She later became the mannequin doll Gloriana her face caked in white lead and rouge with a wig no her head (and black teeth too) . This person is less instantly attractive but still fills me with infinite sympathy.
The second film is about Elizabeth with Kate Blanchett now as Gloriana ( but without the period detail of black teeth) is less enjoyable – I think I fell asleep a couple of times. Sure it contains the high drama of the defeat of the Spanish Armada and her rousing speech to the troops at Tilbury Docks – I have the body of a weak and feeble woman but I have the heart of a King – yes and a king of England! ).
It also majors on another so called love interest of hers in her late middle age - the young Earl of Essex. She’d nursed him and coddled him as a baby as part of the Royal household and doted over him like a mother and spoilt him rotten. And when he grew to young manhood he was her so called suitor doing all the courtly love stuff on public occasions as if she were a young and fair Queen – but she didn’t; take this masque seriously. He thought that he had Elizabeth’s; special favour and lead some crazy hot headed rebellion with a group of dashing young firebrands which he thought was on her behalf because she was begin ill advised; but it was actually an act of treachery. Elizabeth could not prevent him being condemned to death and beheaded – she was not an absolute monarch – she had to govern with consent of her ministers and her Parliament. If broke her heart and tormented her last years and in the end death came to her as a relief to her I think. John Whitgift – her little black husband was at her side in her last hours and was kind to her. The Kate Blanchet epic film was not good at capturing these very intimate and personal dramas I think. Her early life deserved epic treatment as did the Armada victory - but not her last years
If you’d like to read a popular history book about young Elizabeth (when she’s most relevant to our story) – David Starkey’s book Elizabeth’ – that was a number one bestseller - is excellent. And the picture he presents of Elizabeth resonates with the one I am uncovering (although he doesn’t look at universalism as such). I was delighted to have read his book properly only after Id done my research here.