Azeem and the Witch: Race, Disability, and Medievalisms in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

Abstract

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was the second highest-grossing movie of 1991. Its fuzzy version of the Middle Ages invokes the Angevins only in cameo and revises a genre of medievalism I call ‘Robin Hood Times’. This medievalism claims a specific setting, usually during the reign of King Richard I, even while it generalizes that setting enough to comment on contemporary problems. In Prince of Thieves, the characters Azeem and Mortianna serve as opposites, their racialized bodies participating in an individualized discourse about race that ultimately upholds a neoliberal, ‘colorblind’ form of white supremacy. Azeem’s physical competence and ability also contrast sharply with Mortianna’s physical frailty and deformity in a classic example of what Mitchell and Snyder (2000) call ‘narrative prosthesis.’ The intersections of race and disability in the fantasy setting of Robin Hood Times suggest that the solution to social injustice is individual rather than systemic. The return of the ‘good’ King Richard I restores order, virtue, the Locksley lands—and the status quo. The Robin Hood story has revolutionary potential, but this version of Robin Hood Times chooses to reinforce neoliberal ableism and ‘colorblind’ racial tolerance instead of the utopian promises of equity that the forest society could provide.