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 NEWEST
WORKING PAPER PUBLISHED
From State and Local Censorship to Ratings: Substantitive
Rationality, Political Entrepreneurship, and Sex in the Movies,
written by Richard A. Brisbin, Jr., of the University of West
Virginia, is the latest publication in the Political Film
Society's Working Paper Series. Click
here to obtain a copy.
QUEEN
ELIZABETH REIGNS IN FILMLAND
Many films have been made about Queen Elizabeth. Our images
have perhaps already been shaped by the portrayal of Bette
Davis, who made the queen out to be almost a tough Lesbian.
Along comes sensitive Cate Blanchett, who shows how an unprepared
not-so-virgin princess achieved maturity as a queen through
bitter experience. In Shekhar Kapur’s Elizabeth: The
Virgin Queen, which was released in 1998, we find
intrigue and betrayal in which the various interests represented
at the court are selfish, shortsighted, and vain. In the beginning
of the film, the year 1554, Elizabeth is imprisoned, refuses
to renounce Protestantism, but the dying queen mother, a Catholic,
allows her to live. After Elizabeth ascends to the throne
in 1558, she is welcomed as a possible advocate for various
interests at the court and nearly overthrown because of the
rivalries. But the factions at the court are contradictory
and do not have the greater interests of the country at heart.
After her "Bay of Pigs," in which English youth are cannon
fodder in a battle with Scotland, she comes to the realization
that her advisers are treacherous fools. Ultimately, she decides
upon a "Saturday night massacre," in which all her self-centered
advisers are fired. Her awareness that the national interest
must prevail over petty court politics comes slowly but is
firm in the end. Although most biographers believe that she
was fickle in bestowing favors, prejudiced, and vacillating,
we see little of this aspect in the film. The film also reinvents
a history: Mary of Guise died of dropsy, Dudley's marriage
was well known, Walsingham became a significant figure considerably
later in Elizabeth's reign, and Norfolk was not arrested until
1571, as the events have been rearranged for dramatic purposes.
We see that she used contemplation of marriage with the French
and Spanish courts as means for postponing war until England
was strong enough to become a real power in Europe. We leave
the theatre, with a tear or two forming on our cheeks, as
we realize how her idealism and desire for personal (and even
sexual) happiness had to be abandoned for the good of her
country and her own conscience.
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The best
part of the film is how this personal transformation develops
step by step. We reflect that politicians, including former
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whom the film seems to glorify
subliminally, are inevitably caught with the choice of either
pandering to special or personal interests or rising above
them. Elizabeth’s choice of career over family and sensuality
is an important feminist theme of our times but not common
in the sixteenth century, when women were considered unfit
to rule. Was Elizabeth the first feminist? Perhaps so, but
the film tells both men and women what is required for political
statesmanship, though the tagline of the film lectures "Absolute
power demands absolute loyalty," indicating perhaps that those
who made the film should look again at the feminist message
disseminated so eloquently.
In the
1998 film Shakespeare in Love, Queen Elizabeth
is played by Judi Dench, who won an Oscar for best supporting
actress. The premise of the film is much less serious than
Elizabeth: The Virgin Queen, namely, that Shakespeare
must have written love sonnets and the play Romeo and Juliet
because he was himself in love at the time. Very little is
known about Shakespeare, so the film is pure fantasy, with
a lot of feel-good twists and turns. However, the law at the
time prevented women from acting in a public performance.
One star in the film was a woman secretly dressed as a man
in order to play a part in the first production of Romeo and
Juliet. When authorities find out, the dramatic troupe is
unable to proceed. Ultimately, Shakespeare's lover (Gwyneth
Paltrow, who received an Oscar for best actress in the role)
substitutes in the performance, but Queen Elizabeth emerges
from her disguise in the audience to pardon the woman for
the infraction, as if Queen Elizabeth was an early feminist
trying to remove barriers for women in English society. Whether
you buy the plot or not, and there is no reason to do so,
the film does make a statement about discrimination against
women. However, most of the film is delightful fantasy, and
the thought is unfortunately lost. MH
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