1 00:00:00,600 --> 00:00:05,060 All right. Rather than hold you almost two steps. He's walking again. 2 00:00:05,060 --> 00:00:07,710 Let's show you the second part of your lectures. 3 00:00:07,710 --> 00:00:16,200 We're grateful that his people, art department and the terrorist operation respond to these soldiers who were here last week. 4 00:00:16,200 --> 00:00:25,430 You heard me give a lecture about America's finest working a way to set a debate for tomorrow, not a Vietnam War Memorial, 5 00:00:25,430 --> 00:00:34,450 which is clearly one of the great stuff, the Shaw Memorial in Boston, to provide you with a job to do for the Massachusetts students. 6 00:00:34,450 --> 00:00:42,360 So I will ask you a very sort of sombre laughter, as you might expect from that topic. 7 00:00:42,360 --> 00:00:49,030 Today's lecture is about somebody new power paida, who many of you here never heard of. 8 00:00:49,030 --> 00:00:54,830 He is the most important American, said a popular American will. 9 00:00:54,830 --> 00:01:06,220 So when we talk about how high his superiors, the machinery of his death was in 2011 and he has come down where a RUC is having wires there, 10 00:01:06,220 --> 00:01:17,490 he said that the show is art and it asked me if I could hear the last word to kick off the proceedings so that a celebrity could be here today. 11 00:01:17,490 --> 00:01:25,050 It's much more personal than last Friday. And last week you said you'll find out soon enough that it's very much about my 12 00:01:25,050 --> 00:01:39,280 response as a kid to how the Potapov leaders and thinking what all so that. 13 00:01:39,280 --> 00:01:50,000 When I was growing up, we didn't have Internet smartphones or video games or TV sets were small, black and white devices with only three channels. 14 00:01:50,000 --> 00:01:55,930 We're a fourth. If you counted the education station, don't pity me. 15 00:01:55,930 --> 00:02:02,260 We got along with what we had. We played in the streets until we were called in for supper. 16 00:02:02,260 --> 00:02:10,360 We rode our bikes in packs. When friends weren't around to share the thrill of mobility with us, we happily did so on our own. 17 00:02:10,360 --> 00:02:13,780 And when we were on our own and there was nothing good on TV, 18 00:02:13,780 --> 00:02:19,420 which was this often the case then as it is now, we happily resorted to books and comic books. 19 00:02:19,420 --> 00:02:24,640 At least I did. That's when I discovered Howard Pyle. 20 00:02:24,640 --> 00:02:35,290 I did so via classics. It was the Classics Illustrated version of Men of Iron, a novel he wrote and illustrated back in 1892. 21 00:02:35,290 --> 00:02:44,650 This dynamic cover image of a jousting night was by an artist named Alex Bloom, and it originally appeared in 1951. 22 00:02:44,650 --> 00:02:49,750 I acquired my copy, which you see here in January 1964. 23 00:02:49,750 --> 00:03:00,730 I know because stamped on it, I bought it at my local soda shop, Linzess Pharmacy on Main Street in Bexley, Ohio, 24 00:03:00,730 --> 00:03:09,700 and enjoyed reading it cover to cover while sitting at the counter and savouring a cherry flavoured coke or a strawberry phosphate. 25 00:03:09,700 --> 00:03:21,040 January 1964 was only a month or so after the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas at a time when the term Camelot was on everyone's lips. 26 00:03:21,040 --> 00:03:28,120 Action filled comic books examining the brutal clashes and power struggles of knights in armour or anything 27 00:03:28,120 --> 00:03:38,200 but irrelevant to the broader political climate of the day in which two superpowers were poised to collide. 28 00:03:38,200 --> 00:03:45,370 I was also aware of Pyle through the reprinting of his books in inexpensive but sturdy paperback editions. 29 00:03:45,370 --> 00:03:55,330 At that time, Dover Press began issuing its line of children's books, and Pyle, long deceased, became one of its best selling authors. 30 00:03:55,330 --> 00:04:01,390 Dover reprinted The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, first published in 1883. 31 00:04:01,390 --> 00:04:08,560 The Story of King Arthur and his Knights, originally published in 1983 and its 1985 sequel. 32 00:04:08,560 --> 00:04:16,240 The Story of the Champions of the Round Table, all books written by Pyle as well as illustrated by him. 33 00:04:16,240 --> 00:04:22,780 There are also several folktale collections in the strange juvenile novel Otto of the Silver Hand, 34 00:04:22,780 --> 00:04:32,080 about a mediaeval German boy whose hand is hacked off by an evil baron and eventually replaced by a silver prostheses. 35 00:04:32,080 --> 00:04:40,330 Sometimes I encountered piles work as I wandered through the stacks of my local public library looking for exciting reading material, 36 00:04:40,330 --> 00:04:45,220 which for me often amounted to exciting viewing material. 37 00:04:45,220 --> 00:04:52,510 I found the diction of old fashioned books ponderous and the stories too clogged with description to hold my attention. 38 00:04:52,510 --> 00:05:02,290 But Pile's illustrations and those of similar artists thrilled me with their Proteau cinematic depictions of romance and adventure. 39 00:05:02,290 --> 00:05:09,370 Here I show you the cover of a posthumous compilation by volume entitled Howard Pyles Book of Pirates, 40 00:05:09,370 --> 00:05:14,080 which was published in 1921, 10 years after his death. 41 00:05:14,080 --> 00:05:22,270 The picture beside it shows a Spanish galleon about to be raided by pirates as the father of American book illustration, 42 00:05:22,270 --> 00:05:32,050 Howard Pyle, with his easily identifiable visual flair, provided boys like me endless fodder for the imagination. 43 00:05:32,050 --> 00:05:42,250 Such books made me imagine myself as a fearsome pirate, a bone crushing mediaeval knight, a couple of swinging Revolutionary War patriot, 44 00:05:42,250 --> 00:05:48,370 or some other type of heroic individualist garbed an all time clothing, anything, in fact, 45 00:05:48,370 --> 00:05:56,140 other than when I was a skinny adolescent boy who wished the girls noticed him half as much as he noticed them. 46 00:05:56,140 --> 00:06:02,530 So as you can see, Howard Pyle registered warming with For Assorted Reasons, 47 00:06:02,530 --> 00:06:08,770 the Classics Illustrated version of Men of Iron, which provided prose biography of the author. 48 00:06:08,770 --> 00:06:12,250 The Dover editions of Robin Hood and King Arthur. 49 00:06:12,250 --> 00:06:19,390 And those must be old library books with a rousing colour or black and white illustrations of epic adventure. 50 00:06:19,390 --> 00:06:24,400 I also knew of indirectly by way of old movies on TV. 51 00:06:24,400 --> 00:06:32,200 Many of these films, as you will see in the course of my presentation, were inspired by Pyle and his invasions of the past. 52 00:06:32,200 --> 00:06:37,060 Let me give an example now with more to come later. The 1935. 53 00:06:37,060 --> 00:06:46,150 Errol Flynn, swashbuckler, Captain Blood, was based on a 1922 novel by the popular adventure writer Rafael Sabattini. 54 00:06:46,150 --> 00:06:49,390 The look of the film, however, is pure pile, 55 00:06:49,390 --> 00:06:57,010 as in the famous duel on the beach between Flynn is a pirate captain and his nemesis, played by Basil Rathbone. 56 00:06:57,010 --> 00:07:02,800 What you're looking at is a drawing by playing in a still from the film. 57 00:07:02,800 --> 00:07:11,560 The first time I saw this movie was on a Saturday night in the mid 1960s when my parents were going out for the evening. 58 00:07:11,560 --> 00:07:18,580 My dad spotted it on the TV listings, told me it had been his favourite film as a boy in the mid 1930s. 59 00:07:18,580 --> 00:07:21,820 It immediately became my favourite film, too. 60 00:07:21,820 --> 00:07:27,850 Looking back decades later, I can see how the movie might have meant one thing to viewers in the Great Depression, 61 00:07:27,850 --> 00:07:31,510 such as my dad and another two young viewers such as me. 62 00:07:31,510 --> 00:07:39,070 During a period of national prosperity, a tale of wealth, circulation and global trade routes, 63 00:07:39,070 --> 00:07:46,450 and an allegory of good leadership as embodied by Flynn versus bad leadership as embodied by Rathbone, 64 00:07:46,450 --> 00:07:52,660 the movie would have been had one sort of meaning during the Build-Up to the Second World War and another different meaning. 65 00:07:52,660 --> 00:07:59,350 At the height of Cold War, Flynn and his pirates were essentially democratic, freedom loving, 66 00:07:59,350 --> 00:08:06,010 good guides who plundered the ill gotten gains of desperates and redistributed them equitably. 67 00:08:06,010 --> 00:08:13,450 A few years later, at the turbulent clothes of the 1960s, they still regarded Captain Blood as one of my favourite movies. 68 00:08:13,450 --> 00:08:24,680 Only now I tended to view Flynn and his men as rebellious hippies with swords, whereas the 17th century equivalent of rock and rollers with guitars. 69 00:08:24,680 --> 00:08:34,590 Here's Captain Blood and the riggings of his pirate ship and the protest singer songwriter country Joe McDonald on stage at Woodstock. 70 00:08:34,590 --> 00:08:42,780 Pyles greatest influence on popular American popular culture may have been in the imaginary realm of pirates and piracy. 71 00:08:42,780 --> 00:08:50,680 But he also said his stamp on the way we have come to think of legendary figures such as Robin Hood, King Arthur and Mediaeval Knights. 72 00:08:50,680 --> 00:08:55,120 In each case, these figures are cultural archetypes that, for better or worse, 73 00:08:55,120 --> 00:09:01,420 encourage us to imagine our collective past in ways that shape our collective future. 74 00:09:01,420 --> 00:09:08,210 Let's see how this works. First with Robin and then with pirates. 75 00:09:08,210 --> 00:09:18,310 Robinhood balance of various types of shapes had been around for centuries, long before Howard Powell gathered them into a single unified prose hole. 76 00:09:18,310 --> 00:09:23,570 The Robinhood of English folklore had been a wildly and violent thief, but Pile, 77 00:09:23,570 --> 00:09:30,320 amongst other modernisers, converted him into a 12th century hero and do gooder, still widely. 78 00:09:30,320 --> 00:09:41,130 But now violent only in his fight against injustice. And even then, pile writing for children kept the violence minimal, thanks largely to pile. 79 00:09:41,130 --> 00:09:51,260 Robin Hood became a literary creation. A staple became a beloved literary creation, a staple of Victorian and Edwardian nursery and finance. 80 00:09:51,260 --> 00:09:56,270 He leapt onto the stage of American mass culture in 1922. 81 00:09:56,270 --> 00:10:00,350 Douglas Fairbanks, Hollywood's most popular leading man, 82 00:10:00,350 --> 00:10:10,560 loosely adapted Pyles novelist telling of the legend as well as other accounts to bring Robin Hood to the silent screen. 83 00:10:10,560 --> 00:10:15,530 A trip to Fairbanks, his speciality is a phenomenal acrobat. 84 00:10:15,530 --> 00:10:20,300 Robin Hood in this movie accomplishes amazing feats of gravity, defiance. 85 00:10:20,300 --> 00:10:27,470 As, for example, in a scene in which he or his stunt double leaps onto a closing drawbridge and scalper's up 86 00:10:27,470 --> 00:11:11,260 an immense height to gain entrance to the castle in which Marian is imprisoned and puts. 87 00:11:11,260 --> 00:11:24,510 Yeah, that's true. Could you show it again? 88 00:11:24,510 --> 00:11:47,060 We didn't have these things when I was a boy. Desplechin. 89 00:11:47,060 --> 00:12:08,240 I think this is an awesome piece of set design. All right. 90 00:12:08,240 --> 00:12:14,240 Here in an earlier scene in the film, Robin provides welfare for the poor and needy. 91 00:12:14,240 --> 00:12:22,790 This is surprisingly liberal behaviour to find a movie made shortly after the red scares of the early 1920s during the Conservative Party era, 92 00:12:22,790 --> 00:12:26,990 when the gap between rich and poor in America was the greatest it had been in decades. 93 00:12:26,990 --> 00:12:36,230 And the notion of Social Security lay far in the future. Of course, Fairbanks as Robin, is rather naive in his approach to economic distribution. 94 00:12:36,230 --> 00:13:15,450 He flings coins at people and hands infants bags of gold. 95 00:13:15,450 --> 00:13:20,440 Fairbanks is rather good, however, animated offers little in the way of personality. 96 00:13:20,440 --> 00:13:24,790 He smiles and grins upon. But that's not enough to bring the legend to life. 97 00:13:24,790 --> 00:13:37,150 The next screen, Robinho, did a far better job. In 1938, the hero of short Sherwood Forest was incarnated by the devilishly handsome Errol Flynn, 98 00:13:37,150 --> 00:13:41,350 who, in addition to being a superb swordsman, lit up the screen with charisma. 99 00:13:41,350 --> 00:13:49,570 He epitomises the Mary in Mary, and then his smile is dazzling, his laugh captivating compared to fair break. 100 00:13:49,570 --> 00:13:57,610 Thanks. He radiates warmth and humanity. No matter how serious escaped Flins, Robin Hood finds himself in. 101 00:13:57,610 --> 00:14:02,380 He meets joy when Warner Brothers produced The Adventures of Robin Hood. 102 00:14:02,380 --> 00:14:07,690 Americans were still in the throes of the Great Depression. Another world war was on the horizon. 103 00:14:07,690 --> 00:14:17,670 And here was Flynn's unstoppable Robin Hood taking in, giving enormous pleasure in his acts of death defiance. 104 00:14:17,670 --> 00:14:23,880 A generation or two later, when I millions of other young Americans were watching old Flynn movies on TV, 105 00:14:23,880 --> 00:14:27,480 his jolly good nature had a wonderfully bracing effect on us, 106 00:14:27,480 --> 00:14:35,160 offsetting our worries about nuclear war, juvenile delinquency and the onset of acne piles. 107 00:14:35,160 --> 00:14:39,990 Robin Hood is not nearly so jaunty and happy. Go look luckiest, Flins. 108 00:14:39,990 --> 00:14:47,190 Nonetheless, Pyles Robin is indeed married, as are the good stout fighting men with whom he surrounds himself. 109 00:14:47,190 --> 00:14:56,760 This Pilar's verbal description of Friar Tuck quote, beneath his bushy black eyebrows dance a pair of little grey eyes who could not stand still. 110 00:14:56,760 --> 00:15:07,410 The very drollery of humour. No man could look into his face and not feel his heart strings tickled by the merriment of their look. 111 00:15:07,410 --> 00:15:15,600 Now, here's the pilot's pen and ink drawing Robinhood crossing a stream on the Fryer's back with its beautiful decorative border. 112 00:15:15,600 --> 00:15:24,060 It calls to mind illuminated manuscripts, but also the neo mediaevalist aesthetic of the pre Rafeal White artists who preceded 113 00:15:24,060 --> 00:15:29,190 Pile by a generation and the arts and crafts designers such as William Morris, 114 00:15:29,190 --> 00:15:42,030 who were his contemporaries. Here is the 1957 Classics Illustrated adaptation of Pyle, which I acquired in the early 1960s, placing its Friar Tuck. 115 00:15:42,030 --> 00:15:46,260 Besides piles, we can see how the comic book artist, true to his medium, 116 00:15:46,260 --> 00:15:55,020 adds colour and subtracts one texture in detail to make the visual information easier to grasp. 117 00:15:55,020 --> 00:16:00,780 I suspect that the comic book artist was as much influenced by Flynn as possible. 118 00:16:00,780 --> 00:16:22,220 Here's the corresponding scene from the Flynn film. 119 00:16:22,220 --> 00:16:30,710 I particularly like Pyles drawn Robin Hooks first encounter with Little John, who is not his young adversary, into the water. 120 00:16:30,710 --> 00:16:36,500 An iris with a dragonfly it in space fills the decorative outer panel in the inner panel. 121 00:16:36,500 --> 00:16:47,090 The tall yeomen with a plume cap peers down from a log bridge into the pond where bedraggled and bemused Robin float SAMID waterlilies. 122 00:16:47,090 --> 00:16:51,670 This is a delicious illustration full of rhythmic visual echoes. 123 00:16:51,670 --> 00:16:57,830 A palpable breeze, stirs the water, bends the reeds at the water's edge and activates the windmill. 124 00:16:57,830 --> 00:17:01,780 The tall trees and the billowing clouds in the foreground. 125 00:17:01,780 --> 00:17:08,360 The neuro plume and Little John's cap reaches out in the direction of the curling iris leaf in the outer panel, 126 00:17:08,360 --> 00:17:13,400 joining together to separate sections of the image in organic harmony. 127 00:17:13,400 --> 00:17:34,740 Now for Flins, take on the famous encounter. They. 128 00:17:34,740 --> 00:17:53,270 Oh. Ha ha. 129 00:17:53,270 --> 00:18:00,650 And here's the Classics Illustrated version, no. How cinematic it is in a cell on the upper left position from below. 130 00:18:00,650 --> 00:18:06,050 Looking up at the two fighters as if with a low camera, low angle camera shot. 131 00:18:06,050 --> 00:18:09,620 The text reads. He gave the stranger a blow that could have felt. 132 00:18:09,620 --> 00:18:15,020 Three men in the next cell is a close up of little John who laughingly types Robin. 133 00:18:15,020 --> 00:18:22,670 Now does tickle me with my playing. The bottom cell is a wide-angle reaction shot with the camera, so to speak. 134 00:18:22,670 --> 00:18:28,850 Half submerged in the water to catch Robin as he hurls backward into outer space. 135 00:18:28,850 --> 00:18:38,020 It's straight out of Cinerama, the three projector overlapping image widescreen photographic process that was the forerunner of today's IMAX. 136 00:18:38,020 --> 00:18:48,440 It was introduced by Hollywood in the early 50s. In an effort to keep audiences going to movies rather than staying home in front of their TV's. 137 00:18:48,440 --> 00:18:56,180 You're looking at it. You are there. You are right there. Shot from this is Cinerama made in 1952. 138 00:18:56,180 --> 00:19:05,630 If we look at a recent depiction of Robin's first encounter with Little John, Kevin Costner's Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves from 1991. 139 00:19:05,630 --> 00:19:12,890 We see that the director of Public Barbas, much from classics illustrated as from pile of Flyn costumes. 140 00:19:12,890 --> 00:19:16,860 Robin Hood, by the way, is as much a part of his time as respectably. 141 00:19:16,860 --> 00:19:21,890 Piles and Flins were theirs, released shortly after the first Gulf War. 142 00:19:21,890 --> 00:20:02,980 It portrays Robin as a battle hardened veteran of a messy conflict in the Middle East known as the Crusades. 143 00:20:02,980 --> 00:20:11,370 Nineteen ninety three. Director Mel Brooks spoofed the legendary hero in his comedy Robin Hood Men in Tights. 144 00:20:11,370 --> 00:20:24,420 Brooks AME's tearful erosive Pyle Fairbanks for Flynn, to be sure, but most of all at Kevin Costner as seen in this pairing of advertising images. 145 00:20:24,420 --> 00:20:29,340 Pile differs essentially from all the pop pop culture versions we've been examining, 146 00:20:29,340 --> 00:20:35,010 not only in visual style, but also in gravity, in tone, unlike the later versions. 147 00:20:35,010 --> 00:20:40,980 His ends in elegiac sadness. He dares to recount the death of Robin Hood. 148 00:20:40,980 --> 00:20:46,290 The last full page illustration of the book shows Robin Haggard in. 149 00:20:46,290 --> 00:20:52,170 Sitting up on his deathbed to fire one last arrow through an open window where it lands. 150 00:20:52,170 --> 00:20:55,590 That is where he wishes to be buried. Little John. 151 00:20:55,590 --> 00:21:05,400 His face darkened with grief, cradles his friends and Master Pyle details the wood grain of the wall and mantelpiece and the living near the window. 152 00:21:05,400 --> 00:21:10,590 That leaves the planks of the floor and folds the bedclothes almost empty of lying. 153 00:21:10,590 --> 00:21:17,650 This emptiness provides a foretaste of the void that Robin's death will leave a compare Pyles pen 154 00:21:17,650 --> 00:21:25,770 and ink account of Robin's demise to the 1917 oil painting by Pyle's most gifted student in CYF. 155 00:21:25,770 --> 00:21:31,200 The great illustrator in his own right, Wyeth's rended. Rendition is certainly beautiful, 156 00:21:31,200 --> 00:21:36,510 but I find it sweeter and more sentimental than piles less complexly attuned 157 00:21:36,510 --> 00:21:42,420 to the loneliness and gravity of approaching mortality in the early 1950s. 158 00:21:42,420 --> 00:21:45,030 There was a new surge of interest in Robin Hood. 159 00:21:45,030 --> 00:21:55,740 In 1952, Walt Disney released the story of Robin Hood and his Merry Men with Richard Todd as Robin and Peter Finch as the sheriff of Nottingham. 160 00:21:55,740 --> 00:22:00,750 It was broadcast in two weekly instalments on Disney's Wonderful World of Colour. 161 00:22:00,750 --> 00:22:11,130 In 1955, a comic book adaptation tied in with the film's theatrical release appeared in 1962. 162 00:22:11,130 --> 00:22:14,790 The half hour TV series, The Adventures of Robin Wood, 163 00:22:14,790 --> 00:22:24,180 produced for British television but broadcast in the United States as well, ran for four seasons from 1955 to 1960. 164 00:22:24,180 --> 00:22:27,600 Its most memorable feature was the rousing song The Closed. 165 00:22:27,600 --> 00:22:34,380 Every Episode and became the anthem of those who would later be known as the Woodstock generation. 166 00:22:34,380 --> 00:22:37,740 Robin Hood. I tried to sing. Robin Hood. Robin Hood. 167 00:22:37,740 --> 00:22:41,790 Riding through the Glen. Robin Hood. Robin Hood with his band. 168 00:22:41,790 --> 00:22:45,930 Men Feared by the bad. Loved by the good. 169 00:22:45,930 --> 00:23:13,950 Robin Hood. Robin Hood. Robin Hood. It would be more reforms. 170 00:23:13,950 --> 00:23:19,630 What's most intriguing to me, 171 00:23:19,630 --> 00:23:28,390 at least about the Robinhood revival of the early 50s is that it occurred during a period of great political tension dominated by this man, 172 00:23:28,390 --> 00:23:33,400 Senator Joseph McCarthy. The Cold War was at its peak in the entertainment industry, 173 00:23:33,400 --> 00:23:37,870 was under duress by the anti-communist in Washington and elsewhere who sought 174 00:23:37,870 --> 00:23:43,510 to purge American film and television of any possible taint of socialism. 175 00:23:43,510 --> 00:23:50,900 Yet here was Robin Hood, a man of the people who fostered class warfare by stealing from the rich to give to the poor. 176 00:23:50,900 --> 00:23:58,210 And he lived with his cohort in an egalitarian, non-hierarchical, non capitalistic, communal harmony. 177 00:23:58,210 --> 00:24:03,790 One wonders what the senator from Wisconsin would have thought of Robin and his band. 178 00:24:03,790 --> 00:24:07,500 Make no mistake, Hollywood wasn't entirely pink, 179 00:24:07,500 --> 00:24:25,660 and not all of its best-known stars could embrace or even paid lip service to the Robin Hood ethos, as we see in this next snippet. 180 00:24:25,660 --> 00:24:42,510 Kurt Campbell is the CEO of General Motors. 181 00:24:42,510 --> 00:24:49,920 Three quarters of a century earlier, Pile had not shied away from the traditional view of Robin Hood as a wealth redistributor. 182 00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:57,810 He tells us the Robin and his men, quote, vowed that even as they themselves have been despoiled, they would despoiled their oppressors. 183 00:24:57,810 --> 00:25:01,890 Whether Baron, Abbot, Knight or Squire and the fighting each, 184 00:25:01,890 --> 00:25:09,930 they would take that which had been run from the poor by unjust taxes or land rents or in wrongful fines. 185 00:25:09,930 --> 00:25:18,210 Thanks to Robin's illegal activities, quote, money and food came in time of want to many a poor family. 186 00:25:18,210 --> 00:25:23,760 So Pyles book, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, appeared at the height of the Gilded Age. 187 00:25:23,760 --> 00:25:30,480 This was a time, as never before in American history of enormous disparities between privileged and poor. 188 00:25:30,480 --> 00:25:36,570 Or to put it in appropriately metaphoric terms between robber barons and the benighted farmers, 189 00:25:36,570 --> 00:25:41,850 peasants and immigrants who comprise the vast majority of the American population. 190 00:25:41,850 --> 00:25:46,860 When Pyle published Robin Hood at age 30, he was still young and hungry. 191 00:25:46,860 --> 00:25:53,730 Perhaps he identified with the poor having undergone a near poverty as a fledgling artist in New York. 192 00:25:53,730 --> 00:26:01,710 Later, when Pyle was rich and famous and began to count politicians, robber barons and captains of industry amongst his friends, 193 00:26:01,710 --> 00:26:13,320 he became fascinated with pirates and piracy and the so-called golden age of piracy from roughly 16 50 to 70 30 became his recurring theme. 194 00:26:13,320 --> 00:26:18,180 He wrote and illustrated a number of books and stories about pirates. 195 00:26:18,180 --> 00:26:22,470 As I mentioned earlier, a compilation volume Howard Pyles Book of Pirates, 196 00:26:22,470 --> 00:26:29,160 published 10 years after his death, sparked new interest in the art of the legendary illustrator. 197 00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:38,940 One influential fan was Hollywood legend Douglas Fairbanks, whom we have already seen as Robin Hood in 1926. 198 00:26:38,940 --> 00:26:44,550 Fairbanks converted his admiration of Pyles Book of Pirates into a feature length adventure film, 199 00:26:44,550 --> 00:26:49,200 The Black Pirate, which he wrote under a pseudonym and co-produced. 200 00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:53,280 He also played the title role while performing his own stunts. 201 00:26:53,280 --> 00:27:00,990 It's an excellent adventure film and holds the distinction of being the first full length feature shot in technicolour. 202 00:27:00,990 --> 00:27:02,670 The advertising poster of the film, 203 00:27:02,670 --> 00:27:13,350 which you see on the left borrowed from Pyles images such as his 1985 painting an attack on the gallingly scene on the right at the box office. 204 00:27:13,350 --> 00:27:20,520 Success of the Black Pirate led to a succession of pirate themed films over the next quarter century. 205 00:27:20,520 --> 00:27:25,920 One way or another, all of them derived from PI. Let me remind you of some of the most famous movies. 206 00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:32,820 Reading Clockwise from upper left are the 1934 MGM production of Treasure Island, 207 00:27:32,820 --> 00:27:39,660 Warner Brothers, 1935 Captain Blood, Disney's 1950 remake of Treasure Island, 208 00:27:39,660 --> 00:27:44,640 which was the studio's first full length of live action film in Peter Pan, 209 00:27:44,640 --> 00:27:51,270 released by Disney in 1953, Pyle's influence extended beyond the realm of movies and comics. 210 00:27:51,270 --> 00:27:58,500 In 1967, the Disney Corporation, drawing heavily on Pyle, introduced Pirates of the Caribbean, 211 00:27:58,500 --> 00:28:03,600 an indoor water ride with animatronic figures costumed as pirates. 212 00:28:03,600 --> 00:28:10,690 It was great hit. And years later, it spawned the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise starring Johnny Depp. 213 00:28:10,690 --> 00:28:14,970 Pyle, this is to say, invented or present day image of the pirate. 214 00:28:14,970 --> 00:28:20,160 Early representations of pirates were generally stiff, colourless and static. 215 00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:30,030 Pyle veered away from these bare bones representations by adding colour, dynamic energy in vivid, vividly rendered settings. 216 00:28:30,030 --> 00:28:33,060 Compare this 1974 story. 217 00:28:33,060 --> 00:28:46,500 Compare this 1724 drawing of Blackbeard with Pyles 1987 depiction of a fictional pirate captain planting this booted feet on a steeply canted deck. 218 00:28:46,500 --> 00:28:50,970 Pyles image has formed far more life and movement to it. 219 00:28:50,970 --> 00:28:53,070 The perspectival, perspectival, 220 00:28:53,070 --> 00:29:03,060 lines of F deck direct the viewer's eye beyond the captain to the roiling sea where a distressed Gallion churns heavy smoke. 221 00:29:03,060 --> 00:29:09,150 The smoke clouds rine visually with abrupt turns of the ship's railing and the folds. 222 00:29:09,150 --> 00:29:13,620 The black flag that spills from the top of the image down to the corner of the 223 00:29:13,620 --> 00:29:18,690 captain's cap needed to time and motion pictures were still in their infancy. 224 00:29:18,690 --> 00:29:23,280 Pyles painting anticipated by years, if not decades. 225 00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:31,140 The capacity of movies to portray pirates with elaborate costumes and sets fully realised seagoing environments. 226 00:29:31,140 --> 00:29:36,680 Action on multiple planes. Dramatic colouring and intensity of. 227 00:29:36,680 --> 00:29:44,400 The logical expression that Pinel self consciously sought to avoid stereotypes in his 228 00:29:44,400 --> 00:29:51,210 illustration allows his work at its best to offer fresh perspectives on old material. 229 00:29:51,210 --> 00:29:57,900 A curator at the Deleware Museum of Art, where the majority of the piles paint, pirate paintings and drawings are located, 230 00:29:57,900 --> 00:30:03,270 has told me that filmmakers for Pirates of the Caribbean drew heavily on the museum's collection. 231 00:30:03,270 --> 00:30:14,370 When conceiving sets and costumes for their films. Unfortunately, this clip isn't playing on on the computer we're using here. 232 00:30:14,370 --> 00:30:21,480 But it's a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean released in 90, the first of the series released in 2003. 233 00:30:21,480 --> 00:30:26,250 As you would have seen, it's not only in costume set borrows from Pyle, 234 00:30:26,250 --> 00:30:34,320 but also in terms of the dynamic motion and inherent drama that gave life to the best of his diary images. 235 00:30:34,320 --> 00:30:38,370 So let's return to the first of the pile derived pirate movies. 236 00:30:38,370 --> 00:30:47,220 The Black Pirate. Its most famous moment occurs when the title character after single handedly captured an enemy ship, 237 00:30:47,220 --> 00:30:52,710 makes a rapid yet graceful descent from the heights of a masked by plunging his dagger 238 00:30:52,710 --> 00:30:59,730 into the canvas of a breeze filled sail and writing the night down to its deck. 239 00:30:59,730 --> 00:31:01,830 This is a spectacular stunt, 240 00:31:01,830 --> 00:31:48,910 rich and symbolic overtones showing the self reliant individual taming the surging power of technology epitomised here by the 18th century sail. 241 00:31:48,910 --> 00:31:57,310 Pile, on the other hand, refused his pirates', whether heroes or villains, such unmitigated control of their environment in this regard. 242 00:31:57,310 --> 00:32:01,870 His pirates are the antithesis of what Hollywood later envisioned. 243 00:32:01,870 --> 00:32:07,180 As often as not, they are victims of a hostile environment, not its supreme masters. 244 00:32:07,180 --> 00:32:14,320 The unsparing view of existence in which cruel univers torments poor suffering humanity with its perverse 245 00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:20,590 indifference found powerful expression in the work of the American literary naturalist Stephen Crane. 246 00:32:20,590 --> 00:32:25,900 Theodore Dreiser and Frank Norris. I believe it emerges from Pyles work as well. 247 00:32:25,900 --> 00:32:33,130 Take, for example, marooned, an illustration he made for Harper's Monthly in 1887. 248 00:32:33,130 --> 00:32:37,540 It shows a lonely figure sitting hunched over on a desolate strip of beach. 249 00:32:37,540 --> 00:32:41,800 He seems resigned to his fate. Death by thirst or starvation? 250 00:32:41,800 --> 00:33:11,670 If not from the madness of endless solitude in the black pirate, Fairbanks is also marooned as seen in this clip. 251 00:33:11,670 --> 00:33:12,810 But make no mistake. 252 00:33:12,810 --> 00:33:22,740 In Fairbanks film, the maroney's dejection is only momentary and the very next scene, Fairbanks, a swashbuckling individualist, springs into action. 253 00:33:22,740 --> 00:33:30,270 When the bad pirates land on this desert island to bury their treasure, he takes them on without an ounce of hesitancy or fear, 254 00:33:30,270 --> 00:33:40,490 fights a duel with their chief, kills him, is summarily takes over leadership of the band. 255 00:33:40,490 --> 00:33:46,220 In 1989, two years before his death, Pyle painted a new version marooned. 256 00:33:46,220 --> 00:33:52,160 Despite its golden hue, its darker, lonelier and more despairing than the earlier version, 257 00:33:52,160 --> 00:33:58,640 he eliminates the bottle from which the marooned pirate might drink or even send a call for help. 258 00:33:58,640 --> 00:34:03,320 And he increases the expanse of sand, reduces the size that figure, 259 00:34:03,320 --> 00:34:11,960 and places him on the horizon by making him appear that much more remote from human contact. 260 00:34:11,960 --> 00:34:17,970 Further darkening the mood is the sky no longer clear and unthreatening, as in the magazine image. 261 00:34:17,970 --> 00:34:20,750 It now palpitate with clouds. 262 00:34:20,750 --> 00:34:30,740 A flock of birds wheeling about the height taunts the beach sailor with the freedom of mobility he so sambal lacks piles later version of broomed. 263 00:34:30,740 --> 00:34:37,860 The nineteen oh nine painting is starkly modern compared to the earlier version or to the passage we've seen in Fairbanks. 264 00:34:37,860 --> 00:34:53,240 His film, The Paintings vast horizontal vista inhabited by a solid dimity of diminutive figure set off asymmetrically to the side calls to mind. 265 00:34:53,240 --> 00:34:55,880 Sorry. OK. 266 00:34:55,880 --> 00:35:07,040 Calls to mind the desolate, widescreen compositions of cinematic masters of the 1960s, such as Michelangelo Antonioni, Stanley Kubrick and David Lean. 267 00:35:07,040 --> 00:35:14,450 Here we see a still from Lean's magnificent 1962 desert epic, Lawrence of Arabia. 268 00:35:14,450 --> 00:35:20,120 Make no mistake, I'm not claiming the David Lean In the other epic filmmakers of the 60s. 269 00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:29,840 Looking at pie, but only the pile. Half a century earlier had grasped the psychological potential of widescreen composition. 270 00:35:29,840 --> 00:35:35,180 PIOs pirates should never be taken literally. That is not metaphorically. 271 00:35:35,180 --> 00:35:43,100 They are always more than simply pirates. Consider these two depictions of duels in the sand. 272 00:35:43,100 --> 00:35:50,060 The hero, the one on the left, his back to the viewer, has made a bid to replace the captain of a band to pirates. 273 00:35:50,060 --> 00:35:53,330 Onlookers study the engagement with grim concern, 274 00:35:53,330 --> 00:35:59,840 for they must accept as leader whoever proves stronger and more ruthless in the painting on the right to knife 275 00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:06,830 wielding pirates embrace in a death struggle under the setting sun while the crew looks on intently for again, 276 00:36:06,830 --> 00:36:13,220 their own survival depends on that of the theatre or more devious of the combatants. 277 00:36:13,220 --> 00:36:19,310 Here's Fairbanks version of the duel The Sand showing him eliminate that pirate captain. 278 00:36:19,310 --> 00:37:08,090 I spoke up earlier. It's very aggressive way of making this guy die. 279 00:37:08,090 --> 00:37:12,410 These pictures, allegories, the social Darwinism of the Gilded Age. 280 00:37:12,410 --> 00:37:17,360 Life is a dog eat dog affair and then ending struggle for limited resources. 281 00:37:17,360 --> 00:37:24,690 A relentless competition which only the fittest and boldest survive and only for a limited time before they too miss to come. 282 00:37:24,690 --> 00:37:30,740 Pile appreciated the irony that his fame was based on depictions of scallywags and scoundrels, 283 00:37:30,740 --> 00:37:34,940 brigands and thieves, social outcast and violent aggressors. 284 00:37:34,940 --> 00:37:39,860 He had a sense of humour about this duality, pointing out the oddity that he, quote, 285 00:37:39,860 --> 00:37:48,890 a Quaker gentleman in the farmlands of Pennsylvania should devote such Paduan attention to men of the past who penalise lawlessness and greed. 286 00:37:48,890 --> 00:37:55,880 What he admired about the pirate, he said, was the quote. He knew his own mind in what he wanted. 287 00:37:55,880 --> 00:38:02,390 In other words, he saw pirates as decisive men of action, which by all accounts, he was as well. 288 00:38:02,390 --> 00:38:09,800 Like many of his generation, he seems to have regarded pirates as spiritual forefathers figures to be emulated within reason, 289 00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:14,960 of course, for their transgression of repressive social norms. 290 00:38:14,960 --> 00:38:25,250 In 19 in photographer Edward Steichen famous 1933 portrait of America's most feared financier J.P. Morgan, 291 00:38:25,250 --> 00:38:29,090 the analogy between capitalist and pirate was explicit. 292 00:38:29,090 --> 00:38:36,230 So much so that Morgan despised the photograph and refused to accept it with good reason to fear. 293 00:38:36,230 --> 00:38:42,100 It makes it seem as though he's clutching a knife in his fist. You see the knife in this? 294 00:38:42,100 --> 00:38:46,430 He's like the combatants in one of piles. Death struggles on the sand. 295 00:38:46,430 --> 00:38:56,190 Except that in Morgan's case, it's not really Blakeney orders in his hand, but rather a chair handle gleaming in the light. 296 00:38:56,190 --> 00:39:02,130 Over the decade, Pyles themes have found their way into other types of films besides pirate movies. 297 00:39:02,130 --> 00:39:06,540 The atavistic lust for gold depicted in So The Treasure was divided, 298 00:39:06,540 --> 00:39:13,530 returned with a vengeance in Eric von Stroheim 1924 silent classic greed shown 299 00:39:13,530 --> 00:39:18,750 here on the left and in the 1948 Humphrey Bogart saga of greed and betrayal. 300 00:39:18,750 --> 00:39:27,240 The treasure of the Sierra MindTree in Oliver Stone's 1987 hit film Wall Street. 301 00:39:27,240 --> 00:39:30,960 Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas as a corporate raider. 302 00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:36,000 And then our money suit proudly proclaims greed is good. 303 00:39:36,000 --> 00:39:42,540 Thus providing a catchphrase that in Reagan era, America was both reviled and admired. 304 00:39:42,540 --> 00:39:52,580 Since 2008, Hollywood has turned out a spate of movies about white collar piracy, with movies such as Michael Clayton, Duplicity, 305 00:39:52,580 --> 00:40:04,070 The Informant, Margin Call, The Wolf of Wall Street The Big Short in my own personal favourite in the genre, The Social Network. 306 00:40:04,070 --> 00:40:10,070 Action movies in the past 30 years that have drawn on the pirate archetype where there's good guys or bad, 307 00:40:10,070 --> 00:40:14,990 include the Wild Punch Star Wars Waterworld in Gangs of New York, 308 00:40:14,990 --> 00:40:25,190 to name but a few in which powerful, self-reliant heroes or antiheroes take charge of marauding gangs in lawless times through sheer force of will. 309 00:40:25,190 --> 00:40:38,800 Here, alongside one of Pyles buckin years, is young Mel Gibson in an early starring role as a futuristic land pirate known as the Road Warrior. 310 00:40:38,800 --> 00:40:46,900 Piracy remains with us today, literally so as described in this recent cover story in the New York Times magazine, 311 00:40:46,900 --> 00:40:56,890 but also figuratively, as in this New Yorker cartoon. We should make it past the rocks by nightfall, provided our luck holds, says the pirate leader, 312 00:40:56,890 --> 00:41:09,860 who clearly has not had a very good run of luck, suggesting that there's little we can do to avoid the hard times ahead. 313 00:41:09,860 --> 00:41:14,330 We live in a new Gilded Age. Negatives are everywhere. 314 00:41:14,330 --> 00:41:30,781 We seek Robin Hood. We long for King Arthur. We hope for pirate captains who will lead us past the rocks piles.