Welcome to 1789...

Random fashion question today to solve a not-so-grand mystery of representations.

What's up with the all-too-dandy canes in Wajda's Danton and in the BBC docudrama? Isn't British!not!Carnot soooo proud in the back? Even... a little too much? While Emo BritishCockney!not!Collot is Emo. Wait, "emo"... I thought that was supposed to be the job of British!Orlando Bloom Billie Joe Armstrong Adam Lambert!not!Saint-Just. Sorry, I got confused.

Were they really a key fashion accessory then? Louis-Sébastien Mercier seems to more or less confirm it in the Tableau de Paris, apparently:

« Elle a remplacé l’épée qu’on ne porte plus habituellement, dit-il. On court le matin une badine à la main ; la marche en est plus leste et l’on ne connaît plus ces disputes et ces querelles si familières il y a soixante ans, et qui faisaient couler le sang pour de simples inattentions… On n’aurait réussi qu’avec peine à interdire le port des armes : le Parisien s’est désarmé de lui-même pour sa commodité et par raison… Les femmes ont repris la canne qu’elles portaient dans le XIe siècle. Elles sortent et vont seules dans les rues et sur les boulevards, la canne à la main. Ce n’est pas pour elles un vain ornement ; elles en ont besoin plus que les hommes, vu la bizarrerie de leurs hauts talons qui ne les exhaussent que pour leur ôter la faculté de marcher. La canne à bec de corbin disparaît peu à peu et ne se verra bientôt plus que dans la main du contrôleur ou directeur des finances qui seul est dans l’usage d’entrer ainsi chez le roi. »

Lazy translator here is lazy.

If Louis-Sébastien Mercier says it in the Tableau de Paris...!

But why is it only The Worst Portrayals Evar (from my POV they are, sorry) who give them this top fashion and admittedly cool accessory? And why not in La Révolution française while we're speaking of Worst Portrayals (lol)? It would have been practical to beat the crap out of Desmoulins in this ~famous scene~? (I'm being facetious, okay.) Are there other representations I missed that show them with canes too? Discuss.

This, which I just discovered, just topped most of the reasons why I nurture love-HATE feelings for TV Tropes:

I must bring to your attention that Maximilien Robespierre has his own TV Tropes page!... Uh-huh, after all these weeks of playing around on that site, I just discovered it. (Or perhaps it's new.)

Amoral Attorney and Just The First Citizen, orly? *rises eyebrow*

...hm, I don't know who exactly is this group in charge of TV Tropes, but they can sound like such cynical, bitter, ultra-sarcastic, arrogant b**ches at times. Trust me, I can tell. Ha ha ha, maelicia can do humor.

Some of the Tropes listed there can be, as usual, pretty hateful and/or just plain irritating, and any Historical Inaccuracies/Slash Mentions (yes, they exist -- that's how I first came across that site in fact) aside:

1) I love how, in "Just The First Citizen", Robespierre coexists with Roman Emperors, Stalin, Kim Jong-il, Hitler and Mussolini. Admittedly, it's rather unexpectedly appreciated that they put all presidents and prime minister of the present democracies in the same package deal. In other words: we're doomed.

2) Hoist By His Own Petard: he was eventually executed via guillotine, the fate he assigned to so many others. Ugh. I'm so tired of this one. But it could have been worse, they could have listed Karmic Death. However, Karmic Death is a bit too overused in Original Thermidorian Literature (that is, the pamphlets, etc.) -- which I can testify of after much readings of said documents. Shoot me... but don't miss me in the jaw. Ha ha ha, moar humor.

3) Villains Out Shopping: At the height of the Terror, he lived a normal life at a respectable boarding house, eating toast every morning with his favorite marmalade and flirting with his housekeeper's daughters (although not too much as he was a rather prudish guy). After this of course, he would go to work and sentence lots of people to guillotining.
Yes, you know... that would be logical since IRL "Villains" don't really exist, IRL people you consider "Villains" never really consider themselves as such, and IRL people do lots and lots of very common, banal, boring stuff like everybody does. No, seriously. In between Important Guillotining Scenes and Plotting of Evil Plans Of Tyranny And Mass-Murdering, Robespierre doesn't just brood in the dark sipping red wine blood---oh wait.

4) I'm grateful for the "It's worth noting that many of the morality tropes here differ in different works/character representations." and "A highly controversial person, the level of sympathy allotted to him depends on the work." Small progress. However, the rest....



Thoughts? Comments? Guillotine? Complaints to register? (I really can't stop linking back to that one lately.)