"Conan, what is best in life?"
"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!"
I remember enjoying what I read, but very little about it because, I suspect, it was extremely disjointed. I liked the book covers, though; that I do remember. And this film faithfully recreates that aesthetic of scantily clad, sexy individuals of both sexes, sorcerers in horned headgear, loads of snakes, and really cool armour with even cooler helmets. It's a shame about all the mullets (not Arnie, fortunately), but I believe they were still legal in the early '80s. Still, the whole look of the film is bloody good. I'm now rather interested in reading about this whole world, and when I've finished this article I'll be off for a spot of Wikipeding.
But… it's really rather easy to pick holes in the whole idea of the Hyborean age, isn't it? This made-up epoch between the fall of Atlantis and the beginning of recorded history is pretty much an invitation to look for anachronisms- and here we get concepts such as Valhalla, Vanir and a character called "Thorgrim" with a massive warhammer. The technology level is very much Iron Age or later; the first thing we see is steel being worked, we see corn being ground with a quern early on, and I'm trying to recall if the horses had stirrups. I suppose you can explain some of these things as being lost in some later cataclysm, but it's rather hard to explain the sight of horses being ridden. I believe that horses were fairly light-weight until at least the Iron Age, which is why their use in warfare was pretty much limited to chariots for all but the lightest of uses.
Still, let's not pick holes, fun though it is. A fictional "lost" age is probably the only way you can do this kind of hard-edged, rough and ready sort of sword and sorcery stuff. These characters are neither stupid nor uncultured (they have poetry and philosophy), but there's a roughness to them. Speech is extremely direct. There are absolutely no pleases, thank yous or any other kind of verbal politeness. Characters mean what they say and hat they mean, which doesn't make them in any way shallow, unintelligent or incapable of irony or humour. Their society may be very harsh indeed, but there's an innocent lack of guile to them, and they're perfectly capable of warmth, love and even a kind of articulacy.
Not Arnold Schwarzenegger, though. Of course not. Aside from an ill-advised semi-soliloquy just before the big set-piece fight towards the end he's a man of few words, as befits his command of English at the time. Still, the future Governator was obviously hired for his rippling muscles and required to be more of a presence than an actor, and this is a role he fulfils admirably. And it's quite an achievement to display so much charisma, and to be the undisputed star of the film, while saying so little.
Of course, James Earl Jones is much, much more charismatic, and he does this entirely through actually acting. He has possibly the finest voice in all of cinema; Thulsa Doom is an utterly delicious baddie, but he has pretty much nothing at all in common with Darth Vader in his vocal stylings. He's pretty bad-ass, demanding that his underlings be prepared to face death and "emptiness" on his whim. Presumably this means that they sacrifice themselves for him without question, knowing that their deaths are pointless and they will be utterly forgotten, and in every expectation that there will be no afterlife. Chilling.
The film manages the wonderful feat of playing everything straight while slipping in a bit of metatextual silly subtext on the sly. Conan's crucifixion is such overblown and pretentious Christ symbolism that it can only be intentional. My eyebrow was also raised during the sex scene between Conan and the prophetess. As soon as she reaches orgasm she turns into a horrible screeching demon. Hmm. Perhaps just a slight hint of male fear of female sexuality there then. There are also lots of scenes of semi-naked women chained up and on public display, meaning that I couldn't help thinking about the male gaze and all that. But I think the scene where Conan, as a slave in his cage, is allowed to have sex with (well, rape) a female slave in his cage while others watch pretty much has to be taken as evidence that it's being done knowingly. It's still being done, of course. Doing things ironically doesn't actually stop things being misogynistic.
Oh yes, and then there's the scene with the semi-clad woman jumping into a pit to sacrifice herself to a snake, which one can't help noticing is a somewhat phallic creature. Do you reckon there might be a bit of symbolism there? Of course, the snake turns out to be dead. There might be a bit of symbolism there, too. No wonder Thulsa Doom is so humiliated and angry about this later on. And I can't help noticing that the only characters at whom he aims those snake-arrow things are female. What an amazing coincidence…
It's also rather noticeable that Conan's girlfriend, a rather major character, doesn't even have a name, in marked contrast to Subotai, whom I like a lot. A also like Akiro; he's such a fun character. I love the way he narrates the film and then appears halfway through, too. It's a very well-structured script, co-written, I notice, by none other than Oliver Stone.
I enjoyed this far more than I expected. It may not be very deep but it's solidly written, and a lot more fun than it might appear to be at first glance.
What order are the books supposed to be in?
ReplyDeleteA Conan timeline is fiendishly difficult to organize. The order in which they were written is the best bet all-round, and the only thing of which we can really be sure. The three volumes from Del Rey with the original restored texts, The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, The Bloody Crown of Conan, and The Conquering Sword of Conan use the written chronology.
Does the stuff written by L. Sprague De Camp count as "canonical"?
The official position by CPI and Howard scholars is no, it doesn't: if Howard didn't write it, it isn't canon. Whether one chooses to count them in their own personal canon is their prerogative, but keeping it to Howard only keeps things simple, clean and correct.
Is there some sort of overlap with the stories of H.P. Lovecraft whose stories, I believe, were published by the same pulp magazine?
It has been argued that Lovecraft, Howard and Clark Ashton Smith were writing in a shared mythos, and given all three authors make fairly explicit links with the others' creations, it's clear some sort of overlap is going on. The exact degree is a matter of debate.
But… it's really rather easy to pick holes in the whole idea of the Hyborean age, isn't it?
If you have a mind to it. But then, archaeology is always showing signs of civilization earlier and earlier than previously thought, and I think if you're going to accept things like giant Cthulhoid monsters and the like, you might as well cut the geohistorical context a bit of slack.
This made-up epoch between the fall of Atlantis and the beginning of recorded history is pretty much an invitation to look for anachronisms: here we get concepts such as Valhalla, Vanir and a character called "Thorgrim" with a massive warhammer
Howard explained a lot of the Hyborian Age in his essay (called, well, "The Hyborian Age"): succinctly, the tribes and peoples of the Hyborian Age are the ancestor tribes of modern humanity, and the myths/legends/folklore of those tribes was the mythologization of Hyborian history. Case in point: the wars of the Aesir and Vanir of Norse Mythology are the distorted memory of the Nordic tribes who would give rise to the Scandinavians.
The technology level is very much Iron Age or later; the first thing we see is steel being worked, we see corn being ground with a quern early on, and I'm trying to recall if the horses had stirrups.
It's important to remember that the film and the original stories take some massive divergences from each other. Case in point, the original stories had armies in shining plate armour, cities with towers, spires and minarets, and whatnot. So a bit past the Iron Age.
I suppose you can explain some of these things as being lost in some later cataclysm, but it's rather hard to explain the sight of horses being ridden. I believe that horses were fairly light-weight until at least the Iron Age, which is why their use in warfare was pretty much limited to chariots for all but the lightest of uses.
Sure you can: when a catastrophe occurs, it's usually the most specialised animals that are the first to go. Millennia of husbandry and codependency would mean domesticated horses couldn't compete with their wild brethren, so when the Ice Age occurred they died out.
Of course, the lack of remains for these horses (along with armour, ruins etc) is a bigger issue, but when one learns that the Cataclysm was not caused naturally ("The Isle of the Eons") you can legitimately resort to "A God Did It."
Oooh, thanks for that! I had no idea that there was a new-ish publication of the Robert E. Howard stories with some attention given to chronology. I'm not always so OCD with such things, but when we're dealing with one central character it does seem to matter. I admit it's tended me to put me off dipping into the Conan stories again. I've just ordered the first Del Rey volume from Amazon at a pleasingly low price. :)
ReplyDeleteAnd it simplifies things rather to keep to the Robert E. Howard stuff, as you say. I'm not entirely sure how much of what I read in the mid-90s was by Howard and how much by De Camp- I remember they were well-thumbed paperbacks with the Frazetta artwork, and the general feel of the stories, but little else.
It's very intriguing that there seems to be some sort of vague link with the Cthulhu mythos, especially as I'm a player in a game of Call of Cthulhu at the moment. That's another thing to look out for in the stories, which will add to the fun.
I suppose it's always going to be easy to pick holes in the historical accuracy of fictional historical ages (and enormous fun as well!), but it would be unfair to do that too seriously, I think. After all, there's the compelling "artistic licence" argument that you couldn't really have this sort of fictional world without a fictional prehistoric age. As you say, the argument that "a god did it" can pretty much be used as a universal sticking plaster. And I suppose it's a bit unfair to use post 1930s historical knowledge, not to mention modern understandings of continental drift.
I've followed your blog, btw. I've had a peek and there looks to be some stuff that's well worth devouring. :)