“Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves” is a 1991 movie, directed by Kevin Reynolds and starring Kevin Costner (Robin Hood), Morgan Freeman (Azeem). To be honest, this is not such a great movie, but it nonetheless drew my attention at one discursive point. Let me summarize briefly, we all know that Robin Hood is the very courageous defender of the poor and needy. In the movie, he has a companion, Azeem, dark-skinned Muslim guy. We don’t know what he is doing in England except for that he was held prisoner during the Crusades and somehow escaped to England. During their days in England, Robin and Azeem develop a real heart-to-heart friendship. Although Azeem is different than the others in terms of physical appearance, he is not excluded from society, and treated respectfully throughout the movie.
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I would like to concentrate on one significant dialogue in the movie, which occurred between Azeem and the little English girl. “Did God painted you?” the little girl asked. “Yes” answered Azeem, and replied: “God likes diversity”. I was discussing this dialogue in the film with some of my friends and all said that they were impressed by this dialogue; the way in which it proposes “diversity” as a kind of celebration of multi-culturality, in other words the cinematic tone implying a particular peaceful ethnic variety in medieval England. In that sense, it seems like the dialogue is a signifier of “interaction” of two people from different ethnic, cultural, religious origins. But we have to be looking for another level of signification which would enable this dialogue to fully make sense.
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The dialogue is between two persons, one of who is a female child of England origin, and the other one is Azeem, dark skinned, supposedly a man of Muslim origin. The child asks a question, answer of which she is curious to know. The child does not know the cause of why the colour of that man’s body is different from the others. But she wants to know, and while searching for the truth from the very source, that is Azeem himself, she conveys the mysterious question in herself with the help of a reference, which is the only available information for her ideas to be structured upon; God. Let us interpret responses of Azeem who exists in cinematic representation, and audience who is in touch with both the external world and the movie.
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First of all, let’s think about Azeem’s response in the dialogue. It was claimed by one of my friends as an argument that Azeem was in such a position like he totally accepted his otherness. I suggest that this kind of interpretation is not what director expects us to follow throughout the movie. Instead, he continuously visualizes dialogues in which Azeem is the absolute other, but not because of that he was dictated or forced by society to internalize certain kind of otherness. On the contrary, Azeem is a conscious and determined individual who proceeds with his own way of living in England. His rejection to drink wine when offered is one example of this argument. When he rejects to drink wine, noone neither misunderstands nor excludes him. Moreover, nobody intends to exclude him just because he is praying to “Allah” according to his religious orientation. He exists, not in the way the society expects him to, or forces him to, but in conscious state of mind and in his own decisions within the society that he’s not familiar with. As I said, this is what director expects us to conclude. But there was one point he and the scriptwriter skipped, which is this dialogue I’ve been underlining between little girl and Azeem. Let’s argue step by step. “Did God painted you?” I’ve already argued that the child approaches the mysterious body of Azeem, by raising this question on the basis of religious data, which is her only and foremost source of information at that stage of her life in making sense of natural-physical differences. The question asked by a “white” female girl; “Did God painted you?” clearly indicates the assumption that regards “blackness” as a secondary step of holy creation of God, or in other words, nature (For the litte girl, making sense of an unknown phenomenon that exists in nature is only available through a particular explanation which refes to God. In the understanding of little girl, natural is equivalent to celestial). According to the impression which little girl presents with her question, we can obviously claim that this kind of intention in making sense of bodily differentiation, childishly assumes that at first, every human being was white, but later some of them were painted in black. In this sense, for the white little girl, blackness is natural thougİtalikh, because it’s after all the creation of God.
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At this point, it seems there is no problem, and that being white and black are both natural, and at the same degree of importance whatsoever. However, it is what it only seems. As I already mentioned, blackness is a secondary phenomenon coming after whiteness, and the reason it seems that they are equivalent in respect to each other is because blackness is presented under the disguise of naturalness. In addition, in respect of this filmic representation, the debate on whiteness versus blackness should not be concluded as both identities being either natural or equivalent; it’s rather about the distinction between “naturally being white” and “impossibility of naturally being black but the very possibility of becoming it”. Furthermore, Azeem approves the little girl’s suggestion regarding his black existence as a secondary phenomenon, and this is exactly the point where the director and the scriptwriter are trapped. In this short but very specific scene, Azeem internalizes his otherness which is constituted by the “white hegemony”.
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Secondly, there is the response of the audience. Like I said, my friends have mentioned their excitement of this dialogue. Let’s ask ourselves, what would happen if the dialogue was to end after Azeem said “yes”, and not to pronounce the word, “diversity”? Would there be responses celebrating diversity? Would that dialogue make any sense? I don’t think so. What makes this dialogue significant by bringing in specific purpose is the very word, diversity. By this kind of attitude, the script-writer is clearly emphasising peaceful togetherness of one self and the other, whatever we may name it, their interaction on emphatic basis or the friendship of two people representing two distinct civilizations. This definitely points out the discourse of dialogue, which invisibly depicts white hegamony over black, rather than equivalence of the two. Hence the discourse of dialogue elicits a kind of a celebratory response in the audience. I’ve already explained previously that this dialogue signifies the dominion of the white body over black body, although in first linguistic level of signification, it presents itself as equality of those two.
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What I mean is that, in order to be critical to those who celebrate the message of diversity as a positive, friendly, humanistic sign, we have to counter with Barthian methodology (as I intended to do so) which would characterize the understanding of diversity as the “myth of diversity”, on the basis of structuralist analysis.
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