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Jun. 13th, 2007 04:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerI was struck the first time I started watching The Tudors on Showtime, and again last night when Neta and I watched the first espisode together, by the use of the terms 'humanist' and 'humanism' by King Henry and by Sir Thomas More. I vaguely recalled something about Erasmus that I had read a long time ago.
Wikipedia has a short article on what it refers to as 'Renaissance humanism' (to distunguish it from secular humanism--I rather imagined the gnashing of teeth among the Catholics in the audience at More's advocating 'humanism' which might have seemed to some like a future saint decrying the existence of God! :-)
I'm reminded that there's an awful lot of interesting stuff out in the world of philosophy, if only I had the time and intellect to read and understand it properly.
Wikipedia has a short article on what it refers to as 'Renaissance humanism' (to distunguish it from secular humanism--I rather imagined the gnashing of teeth among the Catholics in the audience at More's advocating 'humanism' which might have seemed to some like a future saint decrying the existence of God! :-)
I'm reminded that there's an awful lot of interesting stuff out in the world of philosophy, if only I had the time and intellect to read and understand it properly.
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Date: 2007-06-13 09:35 pm (UTC)They've done things that have made ME crazy...and I'm nowhere near as fussy as you.
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Date: 2007-06-13 10:16 pm (UTC)It has some conflation problems, some telescoping problems, and some social history problems (besides the occasional clunky dialogue and some of the atrocious casting choices--Stephen Waddington, with a gutter accent from Oop North, for the greatest landowner and most well-descended nobleman of England?), but it *is* trying to hit up some interesting points, and I've been surprised at the effort they went to to try and do justice to some elements. Yes, Whitehall Palace wasn't the seat of the court until after 1530, but it's cool that they went to the trouble of building such a handsome CGI shot of it. Yes, the Field of the Cloth of Gold was far more extensive than they show, but it's pretty neat that they bothered to try to depict it, including buildign the great faux palace.
I'm bothered by a lot of the artifacts, by some of the clothing, by some of the customs portrayed (I find it hard to believe that even Henry required peers of the realm to act as table servants), but I like the way they portray the constant presence of servants, the rivalries and factions within the court, and the vitality and athleticism of the king (it would, as Wikipedia points out, have been good if they had gotten someone a bit bigger to play Henry, but I'm sure that was an economic decision).
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Date: 2007-06-13 10:32 pm (UTC)That being said, I loves me some Jonathan Rhys-Myers.
Like I said, I'm not near the historic buff that you are and when one thing happened (you haven't seen it yet), I got *pissed* because it was so blatant. The other thing is, I always was under the impression that Anne Boleyn was not that beautiful...Henry loved her because she was so smart. And yet the chick playing Anne is just *gorgeous*.
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Date: 2007-06-13 10:53 pm (UTC)I can only imagine with dread what the blatant thing was that set you off. I understand why they combined Princess Mary and Princess Margaret, but I don't understand why they made up a fake former husband for her.
Anne was not accounted hugely beautiful at the time, but she was reckoned to be quite good-looking and tremendously charismatic. She was very "accomplished" (in singing, dancing, fashion) and got a good practical education in courtly life, languages, etc. as the daughter of a very high-flying diplomat.
Natalie Dormer has the vivaciousness and the smallness; she's not dark like Anne, and she's quite lovely (N's already decided that she must be the spawn of Satan, because I said something admiring about her ;-) instead of being pretty but not over the top, so she's OK but maybe not perfect.
OTOH, I haven't noticed, but I bet they don't make Queen Claude of France VERY homely, which she was.
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Date: 2007-06-13 10:56 pm (UTC)And Queen Claude is smokin' hot, so no, not homely at all.
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Date: 2007-06-14 12:03 pm (UTC)Queen Claude was, among other things, a hunchback, poor lady. She was very devout, and morally strict (not a popular position in the Valois court). Judith Merkle Riley's "Serpent Garden" has a good portrait of her (and of the French court of the period and its English visitors). I don't recall whether she gets mentioned in Dorothy Dunnett's "Queen's Play", but that book does an *excellent* job of portraying the court of Henri II, her son. Wild livers, those noblemen. There's a scene in QP which involves a chase over the rooftops of Blois in a scavenger-hunt-like pursuit of clues to a riddle, all of which came to mind when I hear an NPR story about parkour the other day.
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Date: 2007-06-13 10:37 pm (UTC)I would love a link to a thorough critique of the show, if one exists online.
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Date: 2007-06-13 11:05 pm (UTC)I've not read all of them, but a few useful links:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0758790/
http://www.tv.com/the-tudors/show/69029/summary.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/arts/television/30tudo.html?ex=1332907200&en=00c0ee1be0be477d&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9242135
http://www.metacritic.com/tv/shows/tudors
BTW, it's worth noting that the writer and producer also did thye movie "Elizabeth" which I had some HUGE issues with in the way it distorted and perverted history for dramtic effect.