"Intellectually raped" -- good one, that's exactly how I feel. I feel Saint-Just's characterisation has been raped as well in this docudrama. I'm very disturbed, and can't get over this feeling really. I had never thought I would ever argue someday that even the psychotic Saint-Just in Wajda and the insufferable Saint-Just of LRF were better than what I've just seen. At least, they were still "dominating" -- bossy, giving orders, pushing people, furiously tearing things, sending evil!agents to beat up Desmoulins, etc., and when they were throwing tantrums, at least it was taken more "seriously" as in the sense that these Saint-Justs were then going to whine to evil!paranoid!dictator!Robespierre that they wanted someone's head. But the BBC!Saint-Just? My God: I'm still traumatized.
Oh, I've never been very objective when it comes to the subject of Saint-Just -- and I've never hidden it either. ;) That's why I study Robespierre in my thesis, and not Saint-Just, because I'm capable of being relatively more "detached" (yet, still...) with him than with Saint-Just. After all, there are important people (historians and others) who openly swoon over Marie-Antoinette or Napoléon Bonaparte (or Camille Desmoulins :P), so I allow myself to swoon on Saint-Just -- and to be self-righteously offended when his characterisation is totally mutilated as it was in that BBC crap.
You've got no idea how much I SCREAMED (okay, not really, but mentally at least) when I heard Hilary Mantel's infantilization of Saint-Just. She reactualized Courtois' report -- those are almost exactly his words. And, yes, especially that part "we can't imagine how they could have been impressed by him" -- well, it's odd, but I can? And many people can? And yet they're not necessarily "novelists"?
p.s. Okay, yes, I get it. ^^ I agree; he could get very "soft-spoken" or "kind" in his speeches in LTELV.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-07-17 09:50 pm (UTC)Oh, I've never been very objective when it comes to the subject of Saint-Just -- and I've never hidden it either. ;) That's why I study Robespierre in my thesis, and not Saint-Just, because I'm capable of being relatively more "detached" (yet, still...) with him than with Saint-Just. After all, there are important people (historians and others) who openly swoon over Marie-Antoinette or Napoléon Bonaparte (or Camille Desmoulins :P), so I allow myself to swoon on Saint-Just -- and to be self-righteously offended when his characterisation is totally mutilated as it was in that BBC crap.
You've got no idea how much I SCREAMED (okay, not really, but mentally at least) when I heard Hilary Mantel's infantilization of Saint-Just. She reactualized Courtois' report -- those are almost exactly his words. And, yes, especially that part "we can't imagine how they could have been impressed by him" -- well, it's odd, but I can? And many people can? And yet they're not necessarily "novelists"?
p.s. Okay, yes, I get it. ^^ I agree; he could get very "soft-spoken" or "kind" in his speeches in LTELV.