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SCOTCHED MYTHS: FEAR AND SELF-LOATHING IN OLD CALEDONIA Michael Coyne Colin McArthur, Brigadoon, Braveheart and the Scots: Distortions of Scotland in Hollywood Cinema (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003), xi, 228 pp., 26 illustrations, ISBN No.: 1-86064-927-0. £29.95 hardback.
First, the good news: Colin McArthur!s new book Brigadoon, Braveheart and the Scots is meticulously researched, thoroughly readable and not merely witty but at times actually laugh-out-loud funny. It will be acclaimed as an engaging addition to the wealth of literature on cinema, and it is assuredly a lively, valuable contribution to ongoing debates about Scottish national identity. Here endeth the endorsement. Now for the bad news: Scots who cringe at Brigadoon!s "couthy! blend of kitsch and kailyard are pandering to intellectual snobbery, whereas those who respond positively to Braveheart are flirting, however inadvertently, with homegrown crypto-fascism. This is the indictment implicit in McArthur!s reading of Scots! responses to these two Hollywood confections – which, he argues, are the only two films representing Scotland and the Scots that have "continuing major resonance in Scottish culture and its diaspora! (p.1). Like McArthur, I!m a Scot with an abiding interest in the mythic power of Hollywood cinema. Yet Brigadoon and Braveheart are caricatures of a nation not recognizably mine. Modern Scotland, for all its discontents, doesn!t seethe with intellectual snobbery or fester with fascism. Perhaps McArthur!s contentions stem partly from a wilful desire to be controversial. Early in the book, he describes himself as "a notoriously polemical critic! (p.5); and, if there!s one thing worse than being talked about … The over-arching thrust of McArthur!s argument is clear from the book!s subtitle: Distortions of Scotland in Hollywood Cinema. He identifies the 1954 M-G-M musical Brigadoon as epitomizing "the Scottish Discursive Unconscious – the core of which is an ensemble of images and stories about Scotland as a
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highland landscape of lochs, mists and castles inhabited by fey maidens and kilted men who may be both warlike and sensitive– which serves internationally to signify “Scottishness”.! (p.6). The Scotland and "Scottishness! of Brigadoon belong to a mythic never-neverland that is part Walter Scott, part Harry Lauder – but filtered through those distinctly non-Scots prisms of Broadway in the 1940s and Culver City in the 1950s. McArthur!s production history of Brigadoon is exhaustive and excellent. He situates the 1947 stage show in the tradition of American theatre, focusing not only on the careers of lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe, but also on the input of producer Cheryl Crawford, director Robert Lewis, choreographer Agnes De Mille and set designer Oliver Smith. He scrutinizes Brigadoon!s success as a Broadway musical, in the process teasing out a variety of intriguing ideological inflections redolent of patriarchy, misogyny and, in particular, anti-intellectual undercurrents in Cold War America. He emphasizes this last subtext with reference to the sensitive yet hot-headed Harry Ritchie, a spurned suitor whose jealousy causes him to jeopardize the very existence of Brigadoon, and whose rash behaviour brings about his own (accidental) death: "Harry is, indeed, the malcontent who will endanger the existence of the village by attempting to cross the bridge into the “real” world…. Although the prime motivation for his wishing to leave is his rejection as a suitor, his description suggests that very rejection may have been symptomatic of his Otherness. Harry is constructed as an artist/intellectual, a figure of profound suspicion in popular art and – it might be added in relation to the “McCarthyism” unfolding in post-war American society – in the demonology of the Cold War. " … This suspicion of people who read books has a
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long history in Anglo-American popular culture. Intellectuals and artists have often been represented as crazed or effeminate as in, for example, the first film noir cycle of the 1940s and 1950s…. A remarkable number of villains were associated with producing, selling, collecting or writing about art or with intellectual activity more generally…. However, the popular cinema!s most vitriolic hatred was reserved for “political intellectuals”, as in The Fountainhead (1949), My Son John (1952) and Viva Zapata! (1952). If this seems to put an untoward weight on a figure who is not the most major character in Brigadoon, it indicates that there are massive hidden icebergs of ideology lurking underneath the seemingly most throwaway characterisations in Broadway musicals! (pp.44, 45). McArthur!s analysis of the film version is equally comprehensive, focusing on the respective contributions of director Vincente Minnelli, producer Arthur Freed and star Gene Kelly. This is as fine as we!d expect from the author of Underworld U.S.A. (1972) and the editor of Scotch Reels (1982). The problem is that Brigadoon is a national embarrassment – and one not created by, but rather foisted upon, Scotland. This damning verdict might also be dismissed as emblematic of that intellectual snobbery McArthur is at pains to deplore. He admits that his own "historical polemic against aspects of Brigadoon has eased to the point where he now better appreciates its charm and its far from negligible aesthetic qualities while still finding its representation of Scotland and the Scots problematic! (p.5). In other words, he is no longer hung up on the cringeworthy elements of Brigadoon which still cause such discomfort to the Scots intelligentsia. No doubt he knows the tale of the Scots mother who, watching a military parade, opines, "Everyone!s oot o! step bar oor Jock!. It!s not just a small group of intellectuals who find Brigadoon!s caricatures of Scotland and the Scots objectionable – and McArthur demonstrates this himself when he cites the opinion of a Scotswoman whose take on Brigadoon, I suspect, might be more representative than his own: "Brigadoon … is vital to the psychological stability of millions of exScots and their descendants who do not live here … As long as we allow ourselves to be created in the image of those who choose not to live here, we will continue to be seen as backward, quaint and comic! (pp.116-117). And there!s the rub. The fault lies not in Hollywood stars, but in ourselves. Anyone who has ever endured the embarrassing spectacle of "traditional! Hogmanay television will know we don!t need another country or culture to patronize us and make us look like a nation of kilted eejits who care only about guzzling whisky and cherishing every last bawbee. We can always do that for ourselves. When it
comes to self-degrading stereotypes, there is precious little difference between the eye-rolling antics of John Laurie and those of Stepin Fetchit; and, as a nation, we!re all in that "Lucky White Heather Club!. The Scots are a generous and tolerant people, and there are only two nationalities in the world we have a down on: one (all too predictably) is the English, and the other is the Scots. It!s high time we stopped defining our national identity vis-à-vis "the Auld Enemy!. There surely must be more substance to our sense of patriotism than "At least we!re no! English!! So, are we proud of what we actually are? The problem is not perfidious Albion but diffident Scotia. If self-deprecation were an Olympic sport, we!d lift the gold medal every time. Our national discourse regularly throws up wry, acute, self-lacerating observations that suggest how little we think of ourselves. Think of Irvine Welsh!s comment in Trainspotting that we couldn!t even get ourselves colonized by a decent country, or of the Scotsman correspondent who wrote on the official opening of the Scottish Parliament last October, "We know it!s crap being Scottish, but…! We proclaim "Whae!s like us?!; what we really mean is, "Whae!d want us?! This is, of course, the other side of the equation David Stenhouse highlighted in his article on Scottish Superiorism, published in The Drouth earlier this year – specifically, that "rhetoric of failure! he identified at the heart of the world-view of the Scots in Scotland. We just don!t believe in ourselves. Need proof? Go to a seminar at any Scots university, and observe how willing the students are to participate actively. Students from the South, from fee-paying schools, from overseas – they!re ready to pitch in. Nine times out of ten, it!s the Scots students educated at their local comprehensives who sit gazing at the floor in awkward silence. Selfconfidence isn!t taught in Scottish comprehensive schools. Scotland is still, in many ways, a "can!t-do! country – a "don!t-rockthe-boat, know-your-place, begrateful-for-what-you!ve-got! country. It!s the rubbish we!ve been fed by the political establishment for generations, and it!s the rubbish too many of us still accept with an impotent shrug of the shoulders. As I write these words, the items on tonight!s news include government initiatives to make people pay for plastic bags and a further crackdown on smoking in public to be enforced largely by "clyping!. "The greatest little country in the world!? Not while we!re led by "numpties! who devise dross like that. Our "can!t-do! culture is not due to any dearth of ability, but to the withholding of permission and approval.
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In that context, to borrow a few of David Stenhouse!s own words, it!s hard to imagine that the "colourful, innocent patriotism of Scottish Americans! might survive very long if suddenly transplanted smack into the middle of "glum … modern, civic, devolutionary Scotland!. It!s easy to cherish a misty-eyed, mythic version of the old country when you don!t live there. Stenhouse describes "an uprooted bit of Scotland which seems to have come straight from the glens of Brigadoon! – although it!s actually in Illinois. This example dovetails perfectly with the observation McArthur quotes about Brigadoon being "vital to the psychological stability of millions of ex-Scots and their descendants who do not live here.! Stenhouse!s article is, in effect, a rallying cry to rekindle and strengthen Scottish patriotism by learning from the filiopietistic devotion of emigrants. Of course, this begs the facile question, if they!re so devoted to Scotland, why aren!t they here? As the Bard might have said: O wad some Pow!r the gift tae give them, to see the land they dinnae live in! "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country! will play in Peoria, but might not go down so well in Pilton or Possilpark. Any politician tempted to indulge in such Kennedyesque rhetoric in Scotland would most likely be met by a collective and utterly derisive two-word response – (4, 3), as they might say in the crossword clue.
Brigadoon was designed as innocuous entertainment, and it would be overstating the counter-argument to assert that it is pernicious. It!s merely patronizing, and it is precisely the kind of stereotype that makes many Scots cringe with embarrassment. This is not the way we see ourselves, and certainly not the way we wish the world to see us. In early twenty-first century Scotland, Brigadoon is likely to evoke the "Whae!d want us?! side of Scots! feelings about our national identity rather than any vaunted sense of "Whae!s like us?! This artefact depicts "Numpty Nation! rather than Scotland the Brave. If the village of Brigadoon only comes to life for one day in every hundred years, then that is quite enough. So a more appealing filmic "self-image! – or at least one more worthy of aspiration – wouldn!t hurt. Yet McArthur is uncomfortable with one cinematic representation of the Scots that has provoked such adulation within the last decade. He condemns Braveheart (1995), directed by and starring Mel Gibson, as "the modern “Ur-Fascist” text par excellence. This … is not to accuse the film!s makers of being fascists, rather of having delivered a film which is a godsend to the proto-fascist psyche! (p.5). His examination of Gibson!s epic is exhaustive and thought-provoking. He details attempts by political parties, sports journalists and the Scottish tourist industry to appropriate Braveheart for their various purposes, all of which reminds us there are few things more tawdry than glory by
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association. The attempts at political appropriation ranged from the understandable (the Scottish National Party) to the ludicrously ironic (the Conservatives), but this movie had especial resonance for Celtic nationalists: "There are in Scotland diverse Celtic nationalist groups … and there is much quasi-theological disputation about the legitimacy of one group over another.... [T]hey are united in several beliefs which read like a gloss on the Scottish Discursive Unconscious: that Scotland is a Celtic country which ought to be free of English rule; that Scots of today have lost touch with what the Celticists allege is a particularly Scottish tradition of resistance to oppression; that the “true nature” of Scotland, materially and culturally, lies in the Highlands; and that Scotland has been betrayed by its academics in general, and its historians in particular, who are seen as spineless apologists for the political status quo in the UK. Braveheart was clearly manna from heaven for such groups! (p.128). There are many pleasures in McArthur!s reading of Braveheart, not least a hugely entertaining chapter in which he deconstructs the film scene-by-scene by way of a Barthesian interpretation, deftly illustrating that Gibson!s epic saga is intertextually indebted to dozens of other movies, among them Triumph of the Will, Seven Samurai, The Vikings, Spartacus, Lawrence of Arabia and Major Dundee. He engages in an almost forensic examination of Braveheart!s "Gift of a Thistle! sequence, and takes exception to its emotional manipulation. If his indictment of this scene is overly solemn, the same accusation can!t be levelled against the chapter!s title: "No! a Fuckin! Dry Eye in the Hoose! (p.160). A chapter is then given over to major discrepancies between the William Wallace of historical fact and the movie!s hero. Rather than nit-pick, McArthur concentrates on "how the systemic pressures of the Hollywood milieu …combine to produce the mindset wherein accuracy to known historical facts becomes secondary to delivering the normative product! (p.191). So far this is all pretty impressive, but McArthur has actually just been warming up for the big one. He reserves his greatest scorn for Braveheart!s appeal to a plethora of ultra-right-wing movements in Europe and America, declaring "it is precisely the fault of the film that it has been so appropriated, its protofascism being woven (largely unconsciously) into the warp and woof of the project! (p.200).
Braveheart is not the only 1990s epic in which an ugly ideological message has been detected. Edward Zwick!s Legends of the Fall (1994) is a grand-scale family saga set in early twentiethcentury Montana. In the 2004 expanded edition of his excellent Westerns (first published
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1973) The Observer!s film critic Philip French points out that the anti-government ideology at the heart of Legends of the Fall is not at all dissimilar to that of the people responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. At first blush, this must certainly seem fantastic; however, French puts forward a succinct and convincing case. McArthur, overall, makes an equally strong case regarding the "proto-fascist! appeal inherent in Braveheart. He marshals his evidence carefully and powerfully. For example, it is decidedly troubling to learn "Hitler has been described on a neo-Nazi website as “a twentieth-century Braveheart”! (p.193). The central thrust of his argument, however, focuses on the resonance Braveheart evidently has for Celtic Southerners in the United States. This isn!t the same audience David Stenhouse spoke of when he wrote about Randall Wallace addressing Scots-Americans in Illinois. On 8th June 2000, Robert Tait!s article "Home of the Brave Hearts! appeared in The Scotsman. Tait!s was just one of a number of reports in recent years to highlight the chauvinistic enthusiasm for Braveheart that has flourished in the American South. His piece chronicled the activities of the League of the South, an organization which claims direct ideological (perhaps also familial) lineage between William Wallace and George Wallace, the late former Governor of Alabama, who once declared: "In the name of the greatest people that ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. And I say: Segregation now! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!! The League of the South is dedicated to secession from the United States, and its members feel kinship to the Scots of both Wallace!s time and Bonnie Prince Charlie!s. The perceived shared bond is that between two nations each unjustly defeated and oppressed by a larger, more powerful neighbour. Their goal of a separatist "Southland! is romantic and unrealistic, to say the least. Yet, given the current sorry state of reallife Scottish politics, there!s no less chance of the Old South rising again than there is of Scotland seriously aspiring to independence. Our vaunted dreams of selfdetermination are no nearer fulfilment than those of the Confederate throwbacks South of the Mason-Dixon line. McArthur himself mentions that the League of the
South!s website recommends Braveheart to interested parties as "immediate and powerful (and violent)…. Unreconstructed Southerners will find it difficult to miss the parallels between the Scots and our Confederate forebears! (quoted p.205). Moreover, McArthur astutely identifies common ground which might help explain this exotic cultural affinity of the Deep South for wild Highland warriors: "Just as there is a Scottish Discursive Unconscious within which the hegemonic narratives are Tartanry and Kailyard, there may well be a Southern Discursive Unconscious – like the Scottish one, ardently subscribed to by the "natives! … – in which the dominant tropes are Gone With the Wind-style defeated grandeur, Tennessee Williams-inspired dementia and Deliverance-style redneckery, all subsumable within HL Mencken!s notorious and influential concept of “the benighted South”! (p.202). Still, even granting its talismanic significance for Celtic Southerners who might be disposed to equate William Wallace in 1305 or the Jacobites of 1745 with the Confederates of 1865, what precisely was the appeal of Braveheart for Scots in 1995? The answer is simple, if rather crude: Braveheart is one of the greatest "kick-ass! movies of all time. It premiered at a particular juncture in Scottish history when the majority of Scots, while having no truck with the Anglophobic excesses of Settler Watch, were thoroughly sick of being pushed around for sixteen years by a government which had no interest in the welfare of Scotland and which had long ago dropped any pretence to the contrary. Braveheart was McAlamo, it was Spartacus in Tartan, and it had nothing to do with any upsurge of proto- (or crypto)fascist sentiment in modern-day Scotland. If Braveheart were the unvarnished truth, it would have been great to have been us. The film might have had a beneficial effect if it had inspired us toward a more positive sense of national identity, but the sad truth was that it proved to be only an entertaining yet ultimately inconsequential diversion. Take the Scottish media!s pathetic rapture over Braveheart!s triumph at the Oscars. The morning after "we! had shown the world (shown them what?), we woke up to find – surprise, surprise – we were still being bossed about by John Major!s minions, including our own dear
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Michael Forsyth. Some triumph. A full decade later, are we any better off? The United Kingdom has for the past eight years had a Prime Minister who was born and educated in Scotland. Granted, he has often appeared to be at pains to reinvent himself as "English!, but that!s okay; we don!t mind. Scotland can afford to do without him. Most Scots are about as eager to claim Tony Blair as one of their own as Christians are to claim Judas Iscariot – not because of his aspiration to be "English!, but because of who he is and what he has done. But the problem isn!t attributable to one individual. The problem is fundamentally systemic. It doesn!t matter who sits in 10 Downing Street. Scotland is never going to be the number one priority for a system of government which, by its very nature, automatically privileges South-Eastern England. The sooner we grasp that fact, the sooner we!ll acknowledge we have no future unless we build it ourselves. The mythic message at the core of Braveheart is one Scots might be advised to bear in mind: beware the Scottish Establishment just as much as its English counterpart. As Braveheart nears its end, Scotland is sold out by self-aggrandizing Scots aristocrats who estimate they will benefit by cleaving to the larger power structure down South. Does this sound familiar? The Establishment party in Scotland is a Unionist party. At the time the poll tax was imposed, and inflicted, on Scotland, most of its leaders put party first. No chance of Scotland daring to assert the classically American principle of "no taxation without representation!, then going on to declare independence! Labour might have been consigned to permanent opposition at Westminster; and so what was the result? Dangle a dim and distant prospect of attaining power years down the line, and you couldn!t see the brave hearts for parliamentary procedure. The poll tax illustrated how low Scotland was on the totem-pole. The recent G8 summit proved the point again – just in case we missed it the first time. The people of Scotland didn!t want the G8 any more than we wanted the poll tax; but we got it, anyway. Yet again, we were to be the first ones shafted and the last ones considered. Part of our antipathy in the face of this "honour! was due to the unseemly and wholly unjustifiable cost of this fat-cat jamboree. It was also partly due to the animosity widely felt toward the guest who brought 2,000 US Marines with him. The man who put the "mock! in democracy. Blair is unpopular; Bush is hated. Once again, we have proof of how unlucky Scotland can be. If Clinton or Reagan or Kennedy or Eisenhower or Truman or either of the Roosevelts had ever visited Scotland during their incumbency, the streets would have been lined with Scots waving the Stars and Stripes; but, no – the first time a sitting US President comes to Scotland, and we have to get this turkey. In the unlikely event of Bush having glimpsed the demonstrators, no doubt they would have been
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dismissed as anti-American. It!s not America they!re against – it!s him. More and more Scots are now openly contemptuous of Blair as the poodle across the pond. Still, there is a marked difference between the intensity of the scorn for Blair and the loathing for Bush. In the perversion of the democratic ideal, Bush is fast becoming akin to the serpent in Eden, while Blair is little more than the worm in the apple. It strikes me that Scotland would have been spared this headache had we been an independent sovereign nation. Yet, in a European Union now composed of twenty-five member states, we still don!t have our own voice – and it!s our own fault. Alex Salmond is still swimming upstream, fighting against the apathy which keeps a London-based party in power in Scotland. One of the reasons the Nationalists consistently fail to get their message across is, perhaps, because many of the Scottish people are by no means clear about what that message is. What do the Nationalists stand for? If it!s devolution, they!ve already won. If it!s independence, is it just political separation from England, and equal standing within the Commonwealth? Or is it complete independence from Britain, in the form of a Republic? The Scottish Nationalists need to figure this out, and fast. In the meantime, we!re governed by a man who launched his re-election campaign with the assurance that the people are the boss – just like the predator who assures the nervous young virgin that of course he!ll still respect her in the morning. And in the meantime, we have Braveheart to fall back on, lulling us into the cosy fantasy that, one day, we just might be able to take a crack at governing ourselves. Aye, right. Dream on.
Braveheart is a heroic myth, a clarion call for liberty and self-determination. Yet in reality, we have been scrambling for crumbs from a system dominated by a larger neighbour whose own political processes are hidebound by hierarchy and inequality. We need a myth like Braveheart, because we still haven!t quite got the country we supposedly won at the end of that film. So I would contend that, as far as domestic consumption of Braveheart is concerned, McArthur!s verdict may be unnecessarily harsh. McArthur would no doubt answer this contention with his parting-shot on the film!s inherent proto-fascist appeal: "It remains to offer those (particularly my fellow Scots) who admire Braveheart a slogan for their banner – “Ur-Fascism is Oor Fascism”! (p.208). Jings, crivvens and help ma Boab! We await the comic-strip with baited breath. If fascism ever comes to this country – or to America – it will not come wearing a swastika. It is more likely to come wearing a suit and a collar and a tie, telling us how we all have to conform to the whims of managerial elites. This is not to belittle the alarming spectre of suited and booted thugs, but it is corporate fascism which poses the greatest threat to the developed world. McArthur!s book ends by condemning the "reckless military adventurism! (p.211)
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which was shortly about to be visited on Iraq – and it was evident from the outset that that war was the harbinger of a new era of corporate fascism. McArthur argues, "Films of the ideological orientation of Braveheart partly reflect and partly construct the will! (p.211) to perpetrate such international bullying. Yet Scotland!s part in this tragedy is rather different. Faced with a Prime Minister intent on taking the United Kingdom to war, the people of Scotland (the majority sceptical about this crusade) might have met such high-handed unilateralism with a unilateral declaration of their own; but that is not, and never was, a realistic proposition. We are a nation without the competence, and long ago stripped of the confidence, to take such a bold step. Yet again, we were trapped in the old "can!t-do! mentality. Scotland!s great tragedy is not that we risk emulating the heroes of Braveheart – but that we do not resemble them enough to stand tall and become the true heroes of our own lives. Back in the 1950s, Scots sportswriter John Rafferty observed: "Scotland!s great problem is that she!s too wee to be big, and too big to be wee.! It is Scotland!s eternal dilemma, and it is a fundamental part of that national culture of selfdoubt. As long as we let ourselves be governed by that small, pernicious, nagging voice which asks us, "What makes you think you can … [insert your own cherished objective]?!, we condemn ourselves to continual second-rate status. And no point in blaming our failings on our neighbours down South. We have met the enemy – and they are us. The solution lies not in an eruption of the chauvinistic patriotism that McArthur has detected in Braveheart. Anyone who believes otherwise would certainly do well to ponder George Bernard Shaw!s wonderfully withering definition of patriotism as "the ridiculous conceit that your country is superior to all others, simply because you happen to live in it!. In this instance, Scotland is exceptionally fortunate, because in the Scottish political mainstream, whatever "Scottish nationalism! does stand for, it!s clearly understood to be devoid of the sinister excesses of chauvinism. That!s not a bad place to start from. In any event, we should not allow ourselves to be defined (even on the movie screen) either by dewyeyed Scots in exile or wild-eyed, claymore-rattling Southern supremacists. We need, above all, to define ourselves. It!s gratifying to learn from David Stenhouse that the thistle is the most "fashionable leaf in the salad bowl! in America; yet one wonders if this is still true after George Galloway!s virtuoso performance before the Senate on 17 May, when Americans saw not an imaginary, couthy, olde worlde Scot – but one single-handedly and fearlessly defying great odds. Like a classic hero from a Hollywood movie. I!m thinking of one in particular. What was the title again? I remember it starred Mel Gibson....
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