Disney's Robin Hood

This past Sunday me and Noah watched Robin Hood at the library. We actually got there a little late. I thought Noah would only kind of like this movie because it was old, but he liked it so much that when it ended he was really pissed off and started screaming at me for having come late and told me I had to get this movie. Unfortunately Disney is really good about pulling their classics off of Youtube. I guess I will have to borrow this movie from the library. I remember not really liking it that much when I watched it so many times as a child and also remeber my mother commenting on how goofy it was. Basically I think my mother wanted it to stay truer to the English Classic, but the Disney version is really country music. Everyone either has some sort of British accent, (counting all the places belonging to Great Britain) or a Southern or Country Accent from America. And I'm pretty sure the rooster is Johnny Cash. Anyway, watching it as an adult I guess I really appreciate it more, especially now that I know who Johnny Cash is. It's also odd because the arguments in it are a little backward from reality of our time. Though I think my whole notion of what taxes do are pretty much ingrained in my childhood mind from this movie and now they are ingrained in Noah's mind too. For instance. Noah has been asking me who stole the gold. And I reply that Robin Hood did. But he will get mad saying , "Noooo!! The fox didn't steal the gold!!" In other words, the movie is really telling you that Prince John, a "phony" king, whatever that means, is stealing the gold through taxes... on the poor.
Now back then it is true that the aristocracy and the clergy didn't even get taxed. (Actually this shows that the movie is a little wrong because Friar Tuck would probably have had more power than he did in the movie.) Also you see all these very poor people scrounging up money for the "poor" and then the Sheriff coming and taking it away. SO you watch this movie and you kind of think that's how taxes work in America. But actually, especially in Massachusetts, the government provides a lot of infrastructure and social programs for the poor through taxing the rich. Yeah Companies have tax breaks and are subsidized and there's all these loop holes and all that sort of thing. But in the issue of poor people being poor, the problem is not really taxes. What I mean is, the poor are not poor because the Sheriff is taking away their money. Not in this country right now. The upper middle class might be just getting by because they are taxed, small business owners might be worse off because they are getting squeezed somehow. I'm not saying more taxes are necessarily good. I see both sides of that argument. But it's definitely not the way the situation is portrayed in Robin Hood. However, when you watch that movie, especially as a child, that cartoon is more real than an article in a newspaper, or a piece on the news, or pretty much anything. It's really hard to compete with that story and Johnny Cash singing and seeing all those poor cartoon animals locked up in jail covering themselves with a trench coat as a blanket even though we are supposedly in the middle ages.

Anyway, the movie is sparking some interesting conversations about stealing and the law. For instance, from Noah's view. Prince John stole the gold, or the Sheriff stole the gold. But I had to explain that Prince John is the government, so all the gold is already his really. And since they are the law (in this cartoon version, though there is that 1066 Magna Carta thing which puts John below the law even though he is King) they aren't stealing even though what they are doing is wrong. That right and wrong is different then legal and illegal.