Grettir wrote:
I’ve long been a bit of a devil’s advocate here.
Crow Caller wrote:
Hmm, was it a melee duel? I'm not familar with the rules of engagement so to say.
Ah, I don’t concern myself with fairness or actual dueling rules here, it’s for me more of a lesson in how prejudice colours perception. Goliath’s people will rather have told the story of a great, brave and invincible hero brought low by the underhanded tactics of some lowly shepherd too cowardly to face him man to man. And they would have had a point.
Crow Caller wrote:
I know that in the Movie Troy they pretty much rip off the account of David and Goliath as Achilles (Brad Pitt) goes up against the 7 fott tall Boagrius. In this duel Boagrius throws his spears/javelins.
Just as an aside – no they don’t. Boagrius is totally using the normal kind of combat, it’s Achilles who doesn’t. First you exchange a few javelins, then you close for the melee. That’s all over the Iliad, dozens of times.
Crow Caller wrote:
Conan has always been one of the books (series) that I meant to read but have never gotten around to it. Since I haven't been able to find a single decent story in over a year now perhaps I'll look to Conan.
Do it, man, do it! From what I can guess about your tastes you’re going to love it. Just steer clear from everything that’s not
100% Robert E. Howard. The pastiches and posthumous collaborations twist Conan out of recognition.
Crow Caller wrote:
Out of curiosity was the colour of the Slave girl important here? Does Conan not care for non-White women or something?
Not for me personally, but very much so for the contextual evaluation of Conan’s inaction. That story was written in the 1930s, by a white small-town Texan writing for a white audience. In this milieu, racism is rampant and white man still considered intrinsically superior to the “black primitiveâ€. Viewed in the context of the age this was created, a white man failing to rescue a white girl from a “fate worse than death†by the hands of black men stands out all the more.
Crow Caller wrote:
Damn it man, by all means rant! Rant like you've never ranted before!!
I could rant for ages, but I will for now just say that Conan’s a quite ambiguous character.
In one story, he is cut down from a cross onto which he’s been crucified by a very callous chief of desert bandits and joins up with them. Conan rises throughthe ranks to become his second in command – then he maims his former rescuer and drives him into the desert to either die or make it. Now that chief has been a total bastard and deserving of his fate, but that’s not why Conan deposes him – he does so because he wants to be boss.
Then thereis this story wher he abducts a queen and goes through an adventure with her. The two fall for each other – he doesn’t force himself upon her, but they just have an affair. At the end of the story, she wants to return to her country – her people need her. Se pleads with Conan, but he tells her that he won’t let her go – he’abducted her, now she’s his, she's going to continue to couple with him, and she’s got no say in the matter. Now how chivalrous is that?
Don’t get the impression that Conan is some kind of bastard, he can be quite decent and very much so to those who play fair with him, but he’s got his dark, violent and brutal sides, too, and that’s something buried beneath an avalanche of comics and films and pastiches protraying Conan as some kind of barbarian Lancelot. And that’s just not how Howard created him.
End of rant.