I saw a film today, oh boy

Adam Sandler is clearly some sort of Max Bialystock-level genius. I don't know how he's pulled it off, but somehow his current (very successful) career consists of:

• writing a movie script while putting in the least possible amount of effort
• flying out to exotic locales (the Caribbean, the Sahara) on his production company's dime in order to vacation while he films his movie
• casting his friends in these movies so that they can all pal around in their vacation spots while occasionally taking breaks to do actual work, and
• somehow, no matter how badly his movies flop, continuing on in this vein with no sign of professional or financial collapse.

Like I said: genius.

Sandler doesn't come up in the news very often- at this point, even professional critics are tired of flogging this dead horse- and when he does it's usually related in some way to his movies pissing people off. Sure enough, the latest news story is exactly what you'd expect from Sandler at this point: First Nations actors have walked off the set of his latest movie, "The Ridiculous Six," citing the script as being offensive towards their people and culture. Sandler and co have responded to these accusations with "it's a COMEDY, tcha," the tried and true refuge for everyone who's ever told a shitty joke and had to stare down a stone-faced audience in the aftermath. The movie will undoubtedly go on, as will Sandler's career- at this point, I don't think anything short of a massive fire at Happy Madison Studios is going to stop him. But some of the responses to this news story gave me pause- specifically, the cries of "our culture is too PC!" and- intriguingly- "censorship!"

Censorship? Really?

Here's the thing: the definition of the word "censorship" has gotten so warped in the past few years, very few people understand what it actually means. It's an especially egregious misuse in this case because no one is even trying to shut Sandler down; publicly calling his movie offensive is not the same as trying to halt production. One private citizen has every right to decide that he doesn't want to participate in another private citizen's business venture- which is, at the end of the day, what Sandler's movies are. Moviemaking is a business. No one is required to work at a business whose ethics they disagree with, or whose scheduling they don't like, or whose uniforms they think are ugly. That concept, "private citizen" is key to the entire censorship debate: it marks the difference between what censorship is and what it isn't.

Most of the time, cries of "censorship!" are accompanied by references to the First Amendment of the American Constitution. Let me quote it in full here, since it's not that long:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. (x)

I bolded that first bit on purpose. Censorship happens when a government stops its citizens from the free distribution of thoughts and ideas. A government. Hollywood is not a government, and the actors who walked off the set of "The Ridiculous Six" are not senators. If the United States Congress passed a law saying that they as a legislative body found Sandler's work juvenile and offensive and that he was therefore prohibited from releasing it in the United States, that would be censorship. This is, in fact,t he opposite of censorship- these actors are exercising their right to free speech in order to criticize what they see as a film which harms the public perception of their culture. They have that right, just as Sandler is within his rights to make the film anyway, and put it on Netflix. Freedom from censorship is not the same as freedom from criticism, especially when that criticism is coming from one private citizen to another.

Another case frequently cited as censorship is the imbroglio that happened over "The Interview" this past winter. To wit, if you missed it: Seth Rogen and James Franco made a movie in which their characters assassinate the prime minister of North Korea. North Korea took umbrage to this, and threatened to attack theatres in which the film was shown. Sony, the company the film was made under, responded by pulling it from circulation, eventually compromising by releasing it to Netflix and video on demand services. Honestly, I'm more than a little tempted to think that they cooked up the whole ploy themselves: it turned the latest bro-stoner comedy into a cause célèbre, with people lining up to prove that Kim Jong-Un couldn't tell them what movies to watch, dammit! (And lining Sony's pockets as a result, naturally. The greatest trick capitalism ever played is convincing people that spending money was equivalent to taking political action.) Now, if North Korea truly was behind these threats, that's horrible. But is it censorship?

Here's the thing: no, it's not. Because North Korea is not the American government. North Korea has no sovereignty over American citizens, and its only recourse in deciding what Americans read and watch comes by way of terrorist threats. The threats may have influenced the decision to pull the movie, but the decision itself was Sony's- and Sony, as a private company (I know, I keep beating this drum) is well within its rights to choose not to release a film. Film companies pulling films from release is not actually a new thing; they do it whenever they think that the film's release will hurt the company more than help it. It's just that this particular release was accompanied by such a media firestorm, it became- as I said- a cause rather than a mediocre movie being pulled from rotation. (I have to ask, did anyone feel that their lives were truly enriched by watching The Interview? Were the jokes about Rogen and Franco's bromance really vital to your understanding of the human condition?)

The interesting thing is, there is actually a history of Hollywood colluding with the American government to censor movies- and it hasn't been done with the intent of appeasing pissy liberals. Throughout the 1920s, various state and municipal governments came up with laws to keep movies that they disliked off the screens: in response, Hollywood scrabbled to find some way of appeasing them, and came up with the Motion Picture Production Code. Rather than having to make cuts after sending the film prints out, the reasoning went, they would make all the necessary changes before

Hi I'm Joseph Breen, and I'm here to ruin your day.

anyone outside the studios ever saw the films. The Code was originally overseen by Will Hayes (hence the common nickname "Hays Code") who had resigned from his position as the head of the Republican National Committee days before taking on the job at what would become known as the Production Code Administration. He was later replaced by Walter Breen, a Roman Catholic layperson who once charmingly referred to Hollywood's Jewish directors as "the scum of the earth." Breen's anti-Semitism probably contributed to Hollywood's extreme reluctance to release any films criticising Nazi Germany: while filmmakers attempted to make movies that criticized the Nazi concentration camps, they were shut down by the PCA, and only permitted to move forward after it was discovered in 1938 that Nazi spies had infiltrated the American government. Here are the "don'ts" of the Hays Code- the things Hollywood films were absolutely not allowed to portray:

1. Pointed profanity – by either title or lip – this includes the words "God," "Lord," "Jesus," "Christ" (unless they be used reverently in connection with proper religious ceremonies), "hell," "damn," "Gawd," and every other profane and vulgar expression however it may be spelled;
2. Any licentious or suggestive nudity – in fact or in silhouette; and any lecherous or licentious notice thereof by other characters in the picture;
3. The illegal traffic in drugs;
4. Any inference of sex perversion [homosexuality]; 
5. White slavery [prostitution];
6. Miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races);
7. Sex hygiene and venereal diseases;
8. Scenes of actual childbirth – in fact or in silhouette;
9. Children's sex organs;
10. Ridicule of the clergy;
11. Willful offense to any nation, race or creed

So PC. Much liberal.

Directors either complied with the Code or found ways to skirt it (kissing scenes of longer than three seconds were forbidden, so Alfred Hitchcock got around it by having the actors come up for air every three seconds during a two-minute makeout scene in Notorious) and it remained in place until 1966, when the Hays Office closed. This happened for a variety of reasons; America was beginning to shift away from the rigid religious morality that had governed the Code, and the lack of an MPPC certificate was no longer a barrier to a film's financial success. Most significantly, a 1952 Supreme Court case, Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, handed down the verdict that films were protected under the First Amendment (a freedom that had not previously existed, as per the Mutual Film Corp. v. Industrial Commission of Ohio decision of 1915) which means that state boards could no longer control what content was and was not acceptable in their movie theatres. The government could no longer control what movies the public watched.

So that's when film censorship ended, right?

Well, Kind of.

You may have seen "This Film is Not Yet Rated," the 2006 documentary detailing the inner workings of the Motion Picture Association of America- the ratings board that replaced the Hays Code. The director of that film, Kirby Dick, found that members of the MPAA were generally laypeople when it came to child development and psychology, that their appeals process provided no clarity to directors who wanted to know why their film had received the rating it did, and that a disparity existed between films with heterosexual content and homosexual content. But most pertinent to the current discussion is the fact that Hollywood frequently works alongside and in cooperation with none other than the Pentagon- aka, a branch of the American government. The Pentagon provides military vehicles, weapons, and expertise to filmmakers, but can and will yank their support if the film portrays the military in a way that they disapprove of. Here is a partial list of films produced with Pentagon assistance (the full list can be found at the link):

• Iron Man
• Transformers
• True Lies
• Star Trek IV
• Silence of the Lambs
• Battleship
• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• Captain Phillips

So, does the Pentagon's involvement in Hollywood constitute censorship? Not under the First Amendment, no. The Pentagon isn't Congress, and the First Amendment specifies that Congress cannot interfere with the freedom of speech. However, the Pentagon's relationship with Hollywood- and Will Hays' quick job turnover from the RNC to the Production Code Administration- comes closer to government interference in filmmaking than anything else under discussion. It is perhaps worth noting that the First Nations actors criticising Adam Sandler do not work for the Pentagon- and the American government does not have a history of either cooperating with or uplifting its First Nations constituents. So unless Obama comes out with a presidential decree shutting down Happy Madison Studios, it might behoove Adam Sandler's fans to consider the fact that he operates and has always operated with impunity as far as censorship is concerned.

After all, he's not inferring "sex perversion."

Accuracy; or, why I'd never make it as a historian

When I was first trying to sell Sherwood Forest- back when it was in teleplay form- I got a response from one agent who apologetically explained to me that it's virtually impossible to sell period drama in the Canadian television market unless it's set in Canada; it's a byproduct of CanCon laws that require Canadian networks to either produce or re-broadcast content that reflects our national character. I can certainly understand the logic of this- we are, as a group, fiercely proud of ourselves and also fiercely opposed to becoming any more Americanized than we already are*. Just look at how we commemorate the War of 1812. And I would certainly love to see more Canadian period dramas on the air- why not a miniseries about the Winnipeg General Strike, or an anthology show about various landmark Canadian court cases? But I also can't help but feel like holding CanCon as the highest standard to which Canadian broadcasting can aspire to leaves us open to letting total crap stay on the air for far longer than it has any right to. See also: why Murdoch Mysteries has lasted for eight godforsaken seasons.

But there is value to be found in writing historical fiction that's set close to home, and that value is simple: if you're writing about your hometown circa 1799, you have all the primary materials you could ever need right at your fingertips. If I were writing a show about the occupants of Dundurn Castle, all I'd have to do is hop in the car and take a fifteen-minute drive to downtown Hamilton, where the tour guides at the castle could tell me absolutely everything I need to know. Furthermore, I could roam the halls (insofar as I'd be allowed to without a pass from the owners) getting a solid feel for everything my characters would have seen, touched, smelled, and tasted when the castle was first built back in 1835. There's a certain solidity in being able to experience this sort of thing firsthand- a knowledge that when you describe Sophia McNab's porcelain doll with its lacy dress, you know exactly what it looks like, because you held it in your hands not twenty-four hours ago. Not living in Nottingham- or, for that matter, in England- I can't claim the same sort of firsthand knowledge when writing Sherwood Forest.

To a certain extent, I think, it doesn't matter. Sherwood Forest is fiction, and simply by virtue of its premise- that someone named Robin of Locksley was married to a woman named Marian, ruled Nottingham in the 1180s, and left on the Third Crusade only to be quickly usurped by the Sheriff- it's alternate universe fiction. Someone named Robin may have ruled in Nottingham around that general time period, but if he did, I have no record of it. I don't really mind this. My general attitude towards historical fiction is that you can't reconstruct every minute detail, and attempting to do so detracts from the point of the whole endeavour, which is telling a good story. That's not to say that some historical fiction doesn't irritate me due to the liberties it takes (ask me about Phillipa Gregory sometime) but in general, storytelling takes precedent for me over whether or not the office of "sheriff" existed in 1193. (It did, but they were generally called "reeves," and they were elected by the peasants. In other words, if the real people of Nottingham had hated their sheriff, they could have thrown him out with impunity.)

That's not to say, however, that I've dispersed with accuracy entirely- aspects of the series are taken straight from the Medieval Sourcebook. Shaima, for example, was inspired in part by the "Saracen sidekick" who's been appearing in Robin Hood adaptations since the eighties, but the factual basis for her comes from this bill of sale for a girl named "Aissa" (or at least, that's what her captors called her) in thirteenth-century France.&nbspMarseilles in 1248 is obviously a fair distance, geographically and liminally, from Nottingham in 1193, but that's where the "what if?" aspect of storytelling kicks in. What if the practice of bringing Saracen slaves back from the war started as early as the Third Crusade, if not earlier? What if one of these slaves was brought to England by someone who had been compelled in some way to do so against his moral judgement? And how would the slave- Shaima, Aissa, Nasir, Azeem, Djaq- feel about the whole deal?  I gave it some thought, and the answer I came up with was "rip-roaringly pissed off."

Unless they decided to express their feelings via impromptu narrative rap, I guess.

All that said, I'm not entirely lacking in first-hand experience when it comes to the setting of these stories. When I was eighteen, my parents- who'd been discussing a vacation to Britain for years- decided that visiting England would be my combined birthday/high school graduation present. We spent one week in London, and then took the train to Edinburgh, where my dad's extended family still lives. And of course, being in the midst of researching a Robin Hood story, I couldn't pass through the north of England without stopping at the epicentre of the whole legend.

The Trip to Jerusalem Inn (or as it's now called "Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem Inn") where Bess and her father live and work, is a real place. And if you believe the stories, it really did exist in 1193, having been built four years earlier in 1189. It gained its name because- so the story goes- Crusaders, including one Richard the Lionheart*, stopped there overnight on their way to Jerusalem. And it still stands today. Here's me standing in front of it:

And here's a side view that lets you see the whole building:

The building currently calling itself Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem does not date from 1189, unfortunately- historians estimate that it's only about three hundred years old. But the inn is still proud of its heritage, as you can see when you go inside:

I also got to visit Nottingham Castle, where of course I took several dozen pictures:

Despite what you may think, that isn't the view from the ramparts. It's from the courtyard. Nottingham Castle sits on the top of a hill, so if you assume that the castle Marian, Cecily, Guy, and the Sheriff live in is the same as the one that still stands in Nottingham today, Marian could concievably stand in the courtyard and look down at whatever was happening in town that day. 

All that said- and illustrated- the Trip to Jerusalem Inn that appears in Sherwood Forest does not actually resemble the Ye Olde Trip that you see in the photos above. No, I based Bess and Thomas' Trip in a source closer to home. In the summer of 2011, I worked at Westfield Pioneer Village, which includes- among other things- the D'Aubigny Inn, built around 1820. It looks like this:

And the fictional Trip looks pretty similar. It has the same layout, too: when you come in, there's a set of stairs leading to the bedrooms and a door that leads into the main room, where you'd be served. From the main room, there's a small hallway that leads to the kitchen. That way, the main action of scenes set in the inn can take place in the main room, where the customers are, or the characters can duck back into the kitchen if they need to speak privately. Upstairs, there's one big room for guests (private rooms at inns and hotels are a relatively modern concept- back then everybody snoozed in a communal room) and two smaller ones, belonging to Bess and Thomas. Anyone feeling especially fussy about privacy- unlikely, but possible- can ask for a curtain to be drawn around their bed. And, if you're close friends with the owners (as we'll see in an upcoming installment) you might get to share their room. (If you're really, REALLY wealthy and want a more private room, I imagine you could offer Thomas a financial incentive to give up his room to you for the night. But who in Nottingham has that kind of money?)

So there you have it: a glimpse into my creative process, when it comes to historical accuracy. I've talked before about my approach to history and fiction- namely that, while it's good for authors to not propogate damaging myths about the past (COUGH COUGH PHILLIPA) I don't think slavish adherence to detail is necessary to speak greater truths about who your characters are and what they represent. As a historical fiction series, Sherwood Forest does deal with the realities of England in the twelfth century. If it didn't, there'd be no point in setting it there. But while I may stick closely to events and attitudes, I don't think a whole lot is lost by fudging the layout of the Trip to Jerusalem or muddying the chain of command as it existed in Nottingham at the time. If I didn't, there wouldn't be a story- and that would suck, wouldn't it?

(Don't answer that.)

*Unless you're Stephen Harper

*Richard the Lionheart actually sucked. Like, on a deep fundamental level as a human being, he was AWFUL. I saw a statue of him outside Westminster Abbey, and I took great pride in flipping him the bird*.

*I did the same thing to Oliver Cromwell. Britain, why do you keep building statues of these guys?

Salem 101, part one

While watching Orphan Black the other night, the SyFy channel ran a promo for this new show, Salem. The basic premise: that the witches being hunted during the infamous Salem witch trials were, in fact, actual devil-worshippers (who, going by the trailers, ran around naked a lot.) Now when I heard the premise, I was annoyed- can we please not trivialize a real tragedy in which nineteen innocent people died?- but the promo was what really got my blood boiling. The tagline? "IT WASN'T PARANOIA. IT WAS REAL."

*grinds teeth*

I've been fascinated by the Salem trials for a long time, so much so that I own several books on the subject. Since I have the resources on hand, I've decided I should put together a sort of Salem primer, in case anyone who watched the show is curious about what actually went on. Because education is fun, and with shows like this flinging around information like monkeys flinging poop, SOMEONE has to.