The other thing that’s particularly galling

is the way he wants to run down the original sources for his research (on which, by the way, modern historical research is based). Yeah, it wasn’t a bestseller in 1187 because less than 1 percent of people living in Ireland could read, and there was no printing press. But those of us who have actually researched theses (oh my, Jamie Hannigan, you’re right, it’s so much work, so much more than you ever bothered to do — actually the amount of research you put into this film would not suffice for an undergraduate research paper, it has so many errors in it) and written history does rely on those sources. Like it or not: that’s where it comes from. Medieval writers were not literalists. Somehow you missed that in your research.

Now, excuse me, I have to get back to my history classroom. Where we do real research and ask what twelfth-century authors meant when they wrote about fantastical animals instead of condescending to people who didn’t have the amazing scientific knowledge of the twenty-first century. Something that the film, Pilgrimage, does as well.

Over nine centuries later, people still read Gerald of Wales. You know why? Because that is one of the places where Wales got its Yojimbo. Nine hundred years from now, they won’t be watching your film. But they’ll still be telling Welsh folktales and they will still be referencing poor “stupid” Gerald. Gerald wasn’t so nice about Ireland. But I bet you have no idea why mythical details appear in that work. It was because of his imitation of classical models. In short, Gerald was quite a bit more educated for his time than you seem to be for yours — and he had to work a lot harder at it than you do.

So, yeah, Jamie Hannigan, you’re an ass (is it ass in Ireland or arse? or something else? oh, wait, I should do some research I guess, but I don’t feel like it, so I’ll just wing it, nothing important about being exact on the details, like eels in boxes or whatever, as long as they are picturesque, so that’s pretty picturesque), but hey, as long as it sells. It’s not like anyone who’s reading this blog might know the answer to that question or anything.

(This is a rant, which I don’t do that often, at least not in the last two years when I had a brief phase of it. I could go on, but I really do have to grade. Talk about this wretched interview at Perry‘s where I saw it first.)

~ by Servetus on August 5, 2017.