Arms and the man: the curious inaccuracy of medieval arms and armor in contemporary film.

Grindley, Carl James

IN a relatively misunderstood scene from Zach Braff's recent film, Garden State, the protagonist, Andrew Largeman, wakes up in his friend's house and sits down to breakfast. He is recovering from a party the night before and so is unprepared to face a knight in shining armor who clanks noisily through the kitchen on a quest for cornflakes. Apparently a waiter from Medieval Times, this character comes and goes, serving not only to highlight the moral dissipation of the mother of the protagonist's best friend but also to reinforce the theme of armor that is used throughout the film. Garden State is a movie where the characters periodically armor themselves in everything ranging from protective helmets to shirts that camouflage themselves as wallpaper to garbage bags that serve as raingear and, indeed, to drugs and alcohol.

Internet commentary, through partially or thoroughly anonymous reviews, mostly highlights the implausibility of allowing a Medieval Times employee to take his "costume" home at night--few, if any, commentators bother imagining a symbolic purpose lurking behind the noisy steel plates. In addition, mainstream critics, although bemused by the scene, merely point to its filmic associations, in particular with regard to its relationship with The Graduate. Very few sources, if any, interpret the costume for what it is. It is as if the armor was "written" in an unfamiliar visual code, its meaning indecipherable due to some shortcoming or failure in language of steel.

The issue of the symbolic failure in the limited area of costuming is not to be confused with a pedantic demand for historical veracity in film. Such a prerequisite is not needed for the creation of a suspension of disbelief and never has been. As Cook asserted, "film constructs its fictions through the deliberate manipulation of photographed reality itself so that, in cinema, artifice and reality become quite literally indistinguishable" (93-94); but, as Woods suggested, "despite their mythic overtones and romance coloring, films with medieval themes, like medieval histories, are required by their audiences to deliver a convincing picture of life" (39). Noting that it was "unusual...that a lapse of authenticity tears the fabric of the viewer's sense of the authentic" (47), Woods argued that film audiences "can be sustained by what seems typical, the kinds of clothes, gestures and so forth that we expect of medieval reality" (47). Davis agreed, asserting that "historical authenticity comes first and foremost from the film's credible connection with 'the spirit of a period' (471). Driver and Ray, quite rightly, noted that, even for the authentically medieval audience of an authentically medieval text, some loss of realism was acceptable (20), and they explained the obvious gulf between the harsh realities of peasant life and its depiction on the pages of a typical book of hours. What is interesting is the chimera of meaning created by the lacunae between the historic and the fantastic.

As far as such things go, the Garden State suit of armor itself is commendably accurate--a fully articulated, reasonably Italianate suit of plate armor, replete with a cod piece--which is in itself a rarity in any film. In many ways, this armor succeeds where other filmic armors fail. Consider the armor typically seen in the bulk of contemporary popular film, including Henry V, Excalibur, First Knight, Timeline, and A Knight's Tale--all films that attempt to create a plausible medieval setting. In these films, an ambition towards establishing a recognizably medieval look and feel is almost always accompanied by a visible and immediate failure in the presentation of armor.

Michael Wilkinson, Garden State's costume designer, insists that the armor used in the scene arrived in the film almost accidentally. The first suit of armor they rented for the production had a "comic, amateur feel [with] fiberglass armor and knitted yarn chain mail" (Wilkinson), and the suit used in the film was eventually found by a production assistant "surf[ing] the web" (Wilkinson). The all important codpiece, it is discovered, was unexpected by all: "the codpiece was a happy accident--I love that it is so prominent in a scene bristling with sexual tension, male jostling and general feelings of inadequacies" (Wilkinson). Although an easily decodable image, the use of armor in Garden State does point to a larger phenomenon in contemporary film: the disjunct between how armor is used and what it is made to signify in medieval and non-medieval film.

To start, medieval film should be defined to deliberately include those movies that attempt to present a plausible but not necessarily historical vision of life in the distant past. Movies regarding Arthurian mythology, films concerning themselves with Robin Hood, works that readily invent their own history--these visions rely on the actual Middle Ages just as strongly as do the so-called "historical" ones: creations such as Braveheart and the vast legion of Joan of Arc films.

It is also important to draw a line between early films (and those leading up to the midpoint of last century) and those dating to the last 30 or so years. Audience expectations have changed radically, to the point where holding Errol Flynn's Robin Hood to the same standards as Kevin Costner's does not make much sense. As well, in the early days of film, access to medieval scholarship was limited, as was the scholarship itself. Today, costume designers are Googling their way to information, whereas, sixty years ago, one would have to travel to a museum or research library, in many cases, far removed from the centers of film production. Even today there is only one dedicated museum to arms and armor in the United States. (1)

The most simplistic observation to make is that "serious" medieval films tend to present a less believable armored reality, whereas comedy medieval films or films where the Middle Ages are merely incidental to the plot often do a much more successful job in creating the look and feel of the real article.

The reason seems to be that serious medieval movies plunge their set design into the world of the symbolic. Frequently, armor becomes an extension of characterization. Consider the use of armor in Kenneth Branagh's 1989 Henry V. With the exception of Brian Blessed's Exeter--who is always well-armored --when characters lack confidence, when they behave with less than noble intent, or when they are at their weakest, at those times their armor becomes heavier, the plates thicker, the decoration more stylized and more grotesque. The traitorous knights Scroop, Cambridge, and Grey (H5:II:ii), for example, are shown in much heavier armor than the other characters in the same scene. More importantly, at the beginning of the film, the French, secure in their strong position, go lightly armored, but, as Henry's heroism begins to be demonstrated, the French become more and more elaborately armored, right up to moment of their defeat. Henry is virtually free from protection throughout the film, and yet his wounds are only ever so slight. It is perhaps unnecessary to observe that, if a real Henry V had participated in hand to hand combat in France, it is unlikely that he would have done so without adequate armor, wearing only a jupon.

John Boorman's 1981 film, Excalibur, sustains the central observation that filmic armor is primarily valued for its symbolism. In Excalibur armor is clearly stylized and used mostly for characterization. In the opening scene, for example, the bestiality of war and the debased nature of the feuding warlords are expressed through their helmets and their visors, which take on the dark and animalistic attributes of their owners. Also, the condition of armor in Excalibur--its cleanliness, its color, and its upkeep--serves to highlight other character traits; but the relationship is not the expected one.

Although Nickel's observation that Excalibur "places extraordinary emphasis on the representation of armor, to a degree unusual even among Arthurian films" (242) is partially supportable, Nickel misinterpreted the nuances of the overall symbolic function of armor when he asserted:

 The symbolic value of the armor becomes fully evident
 when the gradual breaking up of the Companionship
 of the Round Table is demonstrated by the
 rusting of the armor worn by the questing knights,
 until Perceval, after the achievement of the Grail,
 sheds his corroded armor altogether and returns almost
 naked, dressed only in loose breeches resembling
 the loincloth of Christ. (242)

On the contrary, in Excalibur cleanliness equates to a mask that merely conceals interior failure, whereas a filthy, dented, or incomplete suit of armor sometimes indicates moral superiority; and nudity, likewise, is not a consistent motif but is used to demark different types of vulnerabilities--whereas Nickel is correct when he asserts that Paul Geoffrey's Perceval, for example, can only obtain the Holy Grail when he has shed his worldly vanities. Nickel offers a different view of Lancelot:

 [His] armor is deftly utilized as [a] symbolic prop....
 Guinevere joyfully joins Lancelot in the enchanted forest
 glade, where the lovers embrace in almost chaste
 nakedness, with Lancelot's armor cast aside, never to
 be put on again. (242)

Nicholas Clay's Lancelot must restrain himself with constant and unsuccessful questing in order to maintain a tenuous grasp on morality, a fumbling grip on virtue represented by the surface gleam of his suit of armor, a suit of armor that at one point in the film not only fights him but which is ultimately responsible for his death. Lancelot divested from his armor is not the same knight at all, and he quickly loses all courage, all fidelity, all nobility--what Nickel calls a "guilty but pure love" (242) between Lancelot and Guinevere is, regardless of romantic desire, a major collapse of Lancelot's value system. Lancelot's armor supports this complex internal symbolism. It is more glittering than anyone else's other than Mordred's, but Lancelot's weak veneer of heroism is evident through his superficially superior armor. In Excalibur, resolution only comes to Lancelot's character when he inhabits two distinct half states--a partial suit of rusted armor seen during the film's climactic final battle--only then is he able to unite his mental, spiritual, and physical attributes. Unfortunately, it is too little and too late; Lancelot's true grace is followed abruptly by his death, which he blames on his "old wound" (the very ones obtained at the hands of his animated armor).

Of course, the ability to read a complex symbolism into Excalibur's armor does not provide the filmmakers with a Get-Out-Of-The-Tower-of-London-Free card: the armor is still absurd. It is a fabrication not of the Early Middle Ages, nor is its design a knowing nod to the fifteenth century world of the film's credited inspiration, Thomas Malory; instead, Excalibur's armor is out of time, free from all but the most remote connections to the historical past. Obviously artificial, certainly non-functional, and extravagantly impractical, the armor is just as ludicrous as any other failed attempt. Its creators, primarily costume designer Bob Ringwood and armorer Terry English--whose collective work on costumes also includes Jabberwocky, Dune, the Batman films, The Messenger, and Troy--obviously had a well-thought-out agenda in mind the whole time; but that agenda was not one of historical accuracy but of characterization.

Perhaps one of the worst offenders of all time--and not only from the point of view of creating a plausible Middle Ages--was the appallingly incompetent, miserable, and tedious First Knight. Representing the worst possible revisionist, politically correct, moralizing sentiments, Jerry Zucker's 1995 film handily gutted its source text, The Knight of the Cart, and fashioned the insipid medieval equivalent of Dr. Quinn Medicine, Woman. The costume designer, Nana Cecchi, a guilty soul also responsible for Richard Donner's 1985 film, Ladyhawke, outfits her knights in what appear to be shiny, 3/4 size, seventeenth-century cavalry armor, a decision presumably made to accommodate both the athleticism of the stunt work and the egos of the actors--after all, Richard Gere would lose a certain definition and face recognition if locked within the confines of more substantial armor.

This quibble with the armor is not to ignore First Knight's other failures--which, more properly, should comprise their own more leisurely topic--including the shocking cleanliness of the peasantry, an oblivious attitude to the responsibilities of knighthood, the absurdity of the architecture, the heavy handed use of food symbolism, (2) and the great and unwarranted violence done to Arthurian mythology.

It should be noted that even more impressively constructed offerings, films such as Timeline, do not get as many details correct as might be first supposed. Richard Donner's 2003 film, based on Michael Crichton's book of the same name, attempts to recreate a very specific time and place: mid-fourteenth century France. Basing its action on a non-existent battle of the Hundred Years War, Timeline's producers and directors were very specific in their desire for accuracy, but, as costume designer Jenny Beavan explains, with one strange caveat and one even stranger methodology:

 The work I normally do is based on a historical truth, although
 adapted for film purposes because we're not making a documentary,
 we are making a story; but in this particular case,
 [the director] did ask for it to look real, so we've researched
 as far as we can the period--which is the 1350's--but a lot
 of the so-called research is actually later, and it's the 16th
 century interpretation of the 13th [sic]. We've tried to be as
 careful as possible; it makes it more interesting. We've looked
 at lots of pictures of soldiers and archers and knights; that's
 what we've based our costumes [on]. (Journey)

Although it is readily apparent that Beavan's film credits include masterful work on recreating the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries (through such films as Jefferson in Paris, Room with a View, Maurice, Remains of the Day, Gosford Park, Jane Eyre, Sense and Sensibility, Howard's End, Emma, and so on), it is also clear that she simply has no experience with the thirteenth, or, as she should have said, the fourteenth century. This, of course, can be seen as just one more example where "the most serious problems...arise out of the nature and demands of the visual medium itself" (Rosenstone 1173).

Complicating matters, Timeline's supervising armorer, Simon Atherton, is responsible for any number of anachronistic film moments--he worked on both Ridley Scott's Gladiator and Mel Gibson's Braveheart. Both films, it should be noted, were strongly criticized for surrounding profound and unnecessary historical blunders with an ocean of expertise and money. Between Atherton and Beavan, the look and feel of Timeline's armor was pre-ordained to fail.

Finally, A Knight's Tale, perhaps the strangest medieval film made in many years, appears to be afraid of its own ambition of realism. Self-deprecating and constantly undermining its historical authority, the film goes out of its way to challenge its audience's suspension of disbelief. This is a film that goes above and beyond the call of duty to present novel interpretations of and allusions to the vagaries of Chaucer's life--his mugging in 1390, his accurate and frequent use of gambling terminology throughout the Canterbury Tales, his authorial claims of a factual basis for the Tales, and his habit of using "real-life" models for his literary creations; but with regard to Caroline Harris's armor, the film takes a different track altogether. Harris provides the audience with armor constructed in an unrealistic smithy, in an impossible time frame, which ends up being adorned by Nike symbols. As the director, Brian Helgeland, explains "Harris came up with a lot of the conceits and notions to make the armor work towards all the sports analogies" (Sexy). Although likening the sickening dregs of late fourteenth-century European so-called nobility to today's overpaid, over-pampered, and morally destitute athletes might seem to be a stroke of genius, it is unlikely that such an association was intended.

Harris herself seems more interested in the physical charms of the leads than she does in any sense of fidelity to the material: "it should be exciting and it should be sexy, and, I mean, the period itself: I'm sure it was exciting and sexy" (Sexy).

Ordinarily, the observations that Hollywood produces according to necessity, that it is a place driven by profit, and that both it and its audiences are uninterested in historical fidelity might be viewed with a grand and sweeping "so what?" No one really expects historical accuracy from any mainstream commercial venture--and so it would be if not for the odd situation that arises when non-medieval-themed films are examined for their use of armor. Apparently, the less medieval context there is in a film, the more accurate the depiction of medieval arms and armor. Perversely, the best-case scenario is often found in Hollywood's least ambitious offerings.

No sensible person would have predicted that Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure would contain some of the best representations of authentically medieval arms and armor in contemporary film, but that is precisely what happened. In one of the film's central vignettes, the two eponymous characters are transported back to the late Middle Ages where they encounter a pair of damsels in distress. Making their way through the castle, Bill and Ted find themselves in an armory and take the opportunity to put on some apparently accurate Italian plate armor. Utilitarian and plain, their relatively non-descript armor is free from symbolic gestures. Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves' characters immediately act out a scene from Star Wars--correctly interpreting at least some of the background of Lucas' samurai-inspired series. The scene rapidly descends, terminating in a play on the homo-social society of medieval knighthood, but the important part seems to be the armor itself. It is at least twice as authentic-looking as any suit of armor in any other contemporary film.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure also includes a segment with Joan of Arc. Like the earlier scene with Bill and Ted in England, the scene with Joan, which admirably enough occurs in a chapel in Orleans, includes armor, and, once again, Joan is dressed plausibly. The filmmakers also allude to the ecstatic nature of Joan's visions, stressing the sexuality and otherworldly intrusion of her mysticism. Cynically, however, the filmmakers suggest that Joan's contemporary self would be reduced to performing aerobics in the banal recesses of a suburban shopping mall, and Joan's participation in the film ends with the young woman stating her desire to bring cardiovascular training to the armies of France; but the point has been made, and it seems obvious enough that, in order for Joan of Arc to survive a socio-political and gender-based deconstruction in a Bill and Ted film, she absolutely had to have an air of distinct plausibility.

It is irresponsible to discuss comedic takes on the Middle Ages without mentioning the seminal work of cult director Sam Raimi. His classic film, The Army of Darkness, like so many other films, contains scenes set in a generic Arthurian milieu. Although not identified by name in the film, the local lord is named Arthur, who possesses an important albeit short-lived sword, (4) and there is an unidentified wizard (named Wiseman John in the script) replete with pointed hat, robes, and long white beard. Regardless of Twainesque in-jokes, Army of Darkness' armor presents a genuinely acceptable vision of medieval arms and armor. In one of the film's earliest scenes, where the picaresque protagonist Ash--played by Bruce Campbell--confronts Lord Arthur's men, there is a plethora of bland and realistic armors, and they are treated as absolutely mundane objects by Bruce Campbell's character. Indeed, Campbell's anti-hero disregards the film's armored reality entirely. The film's costuming appears to be functional and, in many ways, serves as a counterpoint to the work's more fantastic elements.

Even a Martin Lawrence vehicle, 2001's Black Knight, managed to create an extremely plausible medieval setting for its irreverent and contemporary humor. In this film, at an amusement park vaguely reminiscent of an inferior version of Medieval Times, Martin Lawrence's Jamal Walker is either sucked into the past or experiences an odd hallucination following a near drowning. The filmmaker, Gil Junger, along with costume designer Marie France, went to elaborate lengths to keep this most implausible film looking realistic.

Marie France, whose allusive and surprisingly deep costume work includes Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey--a film that itself plays with Dante's Inferno and Bergman's Seventh Seal--created and compiled a vast collection of entirely ordinary fourteenth century arms and armor.

The director, Gil Junger, had previously directed 10 Things I Hate About You, a film he described, a little simplistically and cheekily, as a teen comedy--it is, of course, well known that 10 Things was a clever and knowing analogue to Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. Junger, in Black Knight's DVD commentary track, makes it abundantly clear how much he valued realism in his film, at one point stating that he interviewed thousands of extras in search of those faces that looked medieval, or in his words "not like contemporary Americans" (Director's Commentary). Junger also claims that he was not reworking Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court augmented by the Robin Hood myth but was really creating a lengthy homage to Victor Flemming's Joan of Arc (Director's Commentary). All of these observations--quite easily demonstrable--raise a serious issue: why does this apparently simple, modest, and contemporary comedy do a so much better job of replicating the Middle Ages than films that set out to do that very thing?

Obviously, there are a number of successes that could be mentioned. For example, the depiction of crusading knights in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is excellent. As well, the production of every film, individually, tells a complete story in itself. Some films have narrow budgets that apparently result in costumes being rented from specialty suppliers--most generic suits of armor appear to be from such sources. For the most part, as Garden State's Wilkinson discovered, these rental houses supply idiotic suits of armor; but, as Wilkinson also discovered, it is occasionally possible to score an inexpensive yet fabulous suit. It should also be noted that some larger-budget films seem to rely on big name costume designers who, though they might have a strong track record in one historical time period, might have little experience with the Middle Ages. In any event, the general trend seems to hold: films that have a vested interest in the Middle Ages seem to do a poorer job than those that do not.

The explanation for the disjunct between the plausibility of armor and the perceived intent of the filmmakers seems to be a simple one. As a movie heads towards the medieval, many of its props make a transit towards the symbolic. Conversely, as a film heads away from the medieval, a metaphorical sigh of relief is breathed, and most of the symbolic load carried by armor is dissipated; but these two observations are essentially obvious ones. The real question, therefore, is why: why does armor become more symbolic in a context that would apparently demand increased realism? Oddly enough, one of the worst medieval-themed films ever made provides a crucial insight.

Consider Merlin. In this execrable offering, the arms and armor are impossible to classify to any given time or place. Roman armor, Anglo-Saxon armor, and late medieval armor share the screen with elaborate flights of design fancy. Ring mail, chain mail, plate mail, brigandine, Roman segmental, and Roman scale all appear; and, as is usual, decorative breast plates adorn the film's more difficult female characters--drawing attention to steel breasts, highlighting a mockery of female nurturing. Merlin's schizophrenic costume design serves to highlight the utter timelessness and out of time nature of the tale; by incorporating so many competing designs, the arms and armor serve to showcase the a-historicity of the myth, which, in turn, validates the myth by removing it from time and place.

I believe that Huizinga's remark that "we, at the present day, can hardly understand the keenness with which a fur coat, a good fire on the hearth, a soft bed, a glass of wine, were formerly enjoyed" (9), summarizes an attitude that has worked much mischief. Huizinga's words have become a self-fulfilling prophecy, and perhaps one not entirely grounded in quantitative reality. That is, we have trained ourselves through the belief that the Middle Ages represent an absolutely alien time frame--one divorced from everything from the banal all the way to the conception of the self--that the medieval world is now almost unapproachable on its own terms. The unnecessary "counsel of utter despair" (Partner 62) represented by the excesses of New Historicism have made us collectively afraid of the Middle Ages, while at the same time, and as Eco so astutely pointed out, we constantly long for just such a time period (65). Filmmakers, when they attempt to create a plausible medieval identity, end up working against the very thing they are trying to construct. It is as if the general understanding, the unwritten rule, is that the Middle Ages are so alien that, if the audience is not given occasional symbolic anchor points, the text will become opaque. Of course, the more concrete the anchor, the more secure; hence the conduit of symbolized arms and armor.

On the other hand, films that do not have such an agenda do not have to play by the same rules. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is so much of our world--even with its long list of asinine historical impossibilities--that no such concession to the present needs to be made with regard to its understanding of the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, an accuracy of arms and armor--if such a thing were at all possible--would be a pointless triumph. Those of us who understand the minutiae of such matters are never satisfied, and those who do not simply are incapable of reading the text at all. Film is placed in a lose-lose situation.

Notes

(1) The Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, MA. Obviously, fine collections also may be found in a variety of other museums including the Metropolitan in New York, but the resources are actually rarer than might be initially supposed.

(2) The film's symbolic agenda is so strange that it denies food and wine to the good characters, forcing them to suffer on an all-water diet, whereas the film's antagonist, Malagant, enjoys a thoroughly carnal existence, feasting on wine and meat. It is almost as if the filmmakers wanted to draw attention to their work's thematic poverty, its mental starvation, and to the utter weakness and blandness of their central characters.

(3) In a perversely telling moment, the professional Chaucerian will note the odd similarity between Heath Ledger's "Sir William Thatcher" (AKA Sir Ulrich Von Lichenstein of Gelderland, real identity quite possibly unknown) and Chaucer's repellent and equally nameless Knight (who also lacks a reasonably believable history, pedigree, and heraldic existence). In an odd scene, William's self-centered immobility is juxtaposed against the backdrop of the film's villain, Rufus Sewell's Count Adhemar of Anjou, who actively participates in the war between England and France (fighting, one presumes, for France). William, like Chaucer's knight, seems oblivious to the on-going brutality of the 100 Years War and remains in Paris and the surrounding countryside to participate in tournaments--tournaments that were banned by Edward III in both the real historical world and in Chaucer's reflection of it in The Canterbury Tales.

(4) See: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106308/.

Works Cited

Cook, David A. A History of Narrative Film. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1990.

Davis, Natalie Z. "'Any resemblance to persons living or dead': film and the challenge of authenticity." The Yale Review 76 (1986-87): 476-82.

"Director's Commentary." Black Knight. DVD. 20th Century Fox, 2001.

Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality. New York: Harcourt, 1986.

Huizinga, Johan. The Waning of the Middle Ages. New York: Anchor, 1954.

"Journey through Timeline." Perfs. Jenny Beavan. Timeline. DVD. Paramount, 2004.

Nickel, Helmut. "Arms and Armor in Arthurian Film." In Cinema Arthuriana. Revised ed. Ed. Kevin Harty. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002. 235-251.

Partner, Nancy F. "Reading The Book of Margery Kempe." Exemplaria 3.1 (1991): 29-66.

Rosenstone, Robert A. "History in images/history in words: reflections on the possibility of really putting history onto film." American Historical Review 93 (1988):1173-1177.

"Sexy Armor and a Rock Band on Tour." Perfs. Caroline Harris and Brian Helgeland. A Knight's Tale. DVD. Columbia Tristar, 2001.

Wilkinson, Michael. "Re: Garden State." E-mail to the author. 15 Oct. 2004.

Filmography

A Knight's Tale. Dir. Brian Helgeland. DVD. Columbia TriStar, 2001. Army of Darkness. Dir. Sam Raimi. DVD. Universal, 1993. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Dir. Stephen Herek. DVD. MGM, 1989. Black Knight. Dir. Gil Junger. DVD. 20th Century Fox, 2001. Excalibur. Dir. John Boorman. DVD. Orion, 1981. First Knight. Dir. Jerry Zucker. DVD. Columbia TriStar, 1995. Garden State. Dir. Zach Braff. Fox Searchlight, 2004. Henry V. Dir. Kenneth Branagh. DVD. MGM, 1989. Merlin. Dir. Steve Barron. DVD. Hallmark Entertainment and NBC Entertainment, 1998. Timeline. Dir. Richard Donner. DVD. Paramount, 2003.

Carl James Grindley teaches English and film at Hostos College of the City University of New York. He has published on the Middle Ages and Popular Culture and on Middle English Literature, Paleography, and Codicology. He co-founded the Society for Popular Culture and the Middle Ages with Michael Torregrossa.

Carl James Grindley

Hostos College--CUNY