Don’t Mix Up Your Vampire Stories

Poster from the 1922 film version of Nosferatu.

This memorandum is a collection of thoughts after ingesting five creative endeavors within the course of a short time.
The first creation that I enjoyed was the new 2024 film Nosferatu.
(My husband and I recommend it highly.)
After watching Nosferatu, we were inspired to rewatch the 1922 silent by F.W. Murnau, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (that the four other Nosferatu creations are based on); Werner Herzog’s 1979 Nosferatu The Vampyre (the German version, with English subtitles!); reread the 1979 Paul Monette novel based on Herzog’s script (found in my husband’s extensive horror library); as well as rewatch the fantasy/horror film about the making of Murnau’s Nosferatu, 2000’s Shadow of the Vampire.

Around 25 years after Bram Stoker published the novel Dracula, Murnau released his silent film version of the vampire tale.

German actor Max Schreck portrayed the Count.

In Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, F.W. Murnau reinterpreted Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, which had been published in 1897.
After Murnau’s film was released, Mrs. Bram Stoker sued the German production company for infringing on her husband’s copyright.
As a result, all copies of the silent film were ordered destroyed.
(Fortunately, a few copies of the film survived, and Nosferatu has been gradually restored since 1922.)

The scene in the 1922 Nosferatu, in which the count sucks the blood of his victim, seems based on the Edvard Munch 1895 painting Love and Pain, in which a woman sucks the blood of a man.

This memorandum doesn’t deal with the many films, and books, that involve Bram Stoker’s story of Dracula.
(For example, we enjoyed the Plexus Polaire puppet theatre production Dracula: Lucy’s Dream, which was performed in Chicago in January of 2025.)

Also, there are other vampire stories, related to Murnau’s concept of Nosferatu, that we’ve not watched recently.

One central difference between Bram Stoker’s vampire tale, and F.W. Murnau’s vampire tale, is how the stories end.
In the Stoker story, heroic men usually stake a vampire, and attempt to protect their women from a vampire’s lust.
In the Murnau vision, a woman sacrifices herself sexually to a vampire to end a plague, and protect her man.
In the Bram Stoker’s Dracula stories, the women are generally helpless creatures.
In the Nosferatu stories, the female character is more powerful.

Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski) takes over the Demeter in Werner Herzog’s 1979 Nosferatu.

Another big difference between the two visions of the vampire, is the involvement of disease.
In the Bram Stoker novel a plague isn’t mentioned.
Furthermore, most of the rats in the novel infest the Demeter.*

Side note: a few years after F.W. Murnau (1888-1931) made his vampire movie, he began to work in America, where he directed three films.
He was only in his early 40’s when he died (in Hollywood), in a tragic traffic accident.
According to IMDb, of the 21 films that Murnau made from 1919 to 1931, eight have been lost.
Only 11 people attended his 1931 Santa Barbara funeral, among them: famed actress Greta Garbo, and director Fritz Lang.
His body was buried in Germany.

In both the 2024 film and the 1922 silent film, the main protagonist is named “Ellen.”
Ellen is a sweet, docile woman in the 1922 silent.
However, she summons enough strength to kill the vampire, end the plague, and (by doing so) save her city.

Shadow of the Vampire is a 2000 fantasy about the making of the 1922 silent.
It stars John Malkovich as director Murnau, and Willem Dafoe as Max Schreck, the actor who played Nosferatu.
In the 2000 fantasy, Max Schreck was actually a real vampire (a dark secret that director Murnau keeps from his cast and crew).

In the late 1970’s, Werner Herzog decided to make a reinterpretation of Murnau’s film; he called it Nosferatu The Vampyre.
Herzog’s version starred Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula, Isabelle Adjani as the main female protagonist “Lucy Harker,” and Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Harker.
(Herzog gave his characters the “Bram Stoker” names, since copyright was no longer an issue.)
In both the film, and Paul Monette’s novelization of the screenplay, Lucy sacrifices herself to Dracula, ending the plague.
However, after Lucy dies, the vampire’s spirit is then transported into the body of her husband, making her actions to protect the city possibly successful, but the attempt to save her husband futile.

In 2024 film Nosferatu, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) is a haunted woman.

There are some interesting differences between the 1979 Herzog film, and the Monette novel.
(Generally, novelizations are based on the first version of a screenplay, before filming starts.)
Some of these alterations can be explained because they obviously made the budget smaller.
Others made vital changes to the story.

One of the primary differences, between the film, and the novel of the Herzog versions, is the nature of the second female lead (Mina, played by Martje Grohmann).
The Mina role is much smaller in the film, than it is in the book.
In the novel, main-character Lucy is viewed as an outsider by the other women of the town.
Her frenemy Mina comes to believe that Lucy must be communing with evil forces, and is not “a proper woman.”
Eventually, the Mina in the novel develops into a “religious fanatic.”
She communes with rats, and soon refuses to be in the same room as “unclean” Lucy.

Another significant difference is that the Lucy character is portrayed as much more sexual in the Monette novel.
When Lucy sleepwalks, she sleepwalks in the nude, not in a nightgown (as she does in the film). Furthermore, in the novel, Dr. Van Helsing places a stake in the heart of Lucy (not Count Dracula), and is then led off to be imprisoned. 

The sexual nature of the female lead (Lucy/Ellen), is portrayed differently in all five works.
In the 1922 version, Ellen seduces the vampire as an act of feminine self-sacrifice.
Up to that point, she’s a sweet creature who sews, serves breakfast to her husband, and plays gently with her kittens.

The Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) character in the 2024 film, Nosferatu, is the most sexual of all the Ellen/Lucy/Mina characters. Her version of Ellen has been haunted by the dark spirit of the vampire since childhood.
In one scene, Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz (the “Van Helsing” character, portrayed by Willem Dafoe) tells Ellen that she may be a reincarnation of Isis, the pagan goddess of the underworld.

In 1979 film Nosferatu The Vampyre, Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) is preyed on by Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski).

In the 1979 Herzog versions, brave Lucy Harker sets out to destroy the vampire by herself.
First, she attempts to convince public officials to help her, but she’s unsuccessful.
She tries to convince Van Helsing that the vampire exists, but the doctor tells her that she’s delusional.
Finally, Lucy places consecrated hosts in the vampire’s coffin, and arranges more diced-up hosts in a circle around her husband.
(When we saw the film, we thought Lucy was protecting Jonathan from the vampire, but perhaps she was protecting herself from Jonathan.)

Despite all her activities, trying to combat the vampire, Isabelle Adjani’s Lucy is not nearly as powerful as Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen.
Each has a scene in which they confront the vampire in their bedrooms.
In both films, it’s apparent that the vampire is both a seducer, and the seduced.
He’s both a victim of his vampiric condition, and in thrall to the female protagonist, who nevertheless represents “good,” opposed to his “evil.”

In the 1979 version of Nosferatu, Ellen/Lucy’s main female “friend” (Mina) is distrustful of her.
In the 2024 version of Nosferatu, the female main character is distrusted by a male character: Friedrich Harding (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson), the other half of the couple that Ellen/Lucy stays with while Thomas/Jonathan is in Transylvania.
Both the 1979 film and novel, and the 2024 film, make the point that for any female to have autonomy is dangerous and disturbing.

* Demeter is the ship that Dracula used to travel from Transylvania to London, in the Bram Stoker novel. Besides 2024’s Nosferatu, another good recent horror film to see is 2023’s The Last Voyage of the Demeter.

Manipulated?

In Twilight’s Last Gleaming, General Dell (Burt Lancaster) attempts to black mail the American government into revealing Vietnam War atrocities. This 1977 Robert Aldrich film is only available in a British-restored version, on YouTube.

I used to believe that I lived in a stable, democratic (small D) country.
I thought most people wanted the President to be intelligent, as well as ethical.
I also believed that most people realized that Liberals cared a little more about the working class than Republicans.
Today, I worry that most citizens don’t care about anything other than their pocket books.

I was a young person during the 60’s and 70’s.
It was an era of demonstrations in the streets, colleges closing down because four students were killed by the Ohio National Guard (Kent State), and a string of traumatic assassinations.
It was also a period of conspiracy films (1962’s The Manchurian Candidate, 1964’s Seven Days in May, 1973’s Executive Action, and 1977’s Twilight’s Last Gleaming).
Burt Lancaster starred in three of these films! 

In the 2012 documentary Aldrich Over Munich: The Making of ‘Twilight’s Last Gleaming’ (by Robert Fischer), Fischer explains how Twilight came to be produced.
The six-million-dollar film was neither a critical, or a financial, success.
However, star Burt Lancaster, director Robert Aldrich, and the rest of the all-star cast, all hoped that it would spur discussion on the dangers of nuclear war, and the fact that the American Government lied to its’ people.
(The documentary reveals that Burt Lancaster was one of the few friends that Robert Aldrich asked to see, when Aldrich was on his deathbed.)

In 1964’s Seven Days in May, U.S. generals attempt a coup against a President who has negotiated a nuclear disarmament treaty.

I just read Sex and the Constitution, by Geoffrey R. Stone.
In legal-scholar Stone’s book, I learned that it wasn’t just George Washington who feared for the future of his fledgling country.
Other Founders (like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams) also feared that future citizens would simply lack the “passion for the public good” (a quote from John Adams) that’s necessary for self-government to succeed.

In Washington’s Farewell Address (1783), Washington said that only unity could prevent the nation from splintering into many parts, and from “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” usurping “the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

I recently discovered the first volume of A Frenchman in Lincoln’s America, written on 1865 by journalist Ernest Duvergier de Hauranne (1843-1877).
Much like Alexis de Tocqueville (who visited America in 1835), this other young Frenchman visited twenty states, and discussed the American political system with many citizens.
(In short, another political young Frenchman tried to understand this “exotic” country, and reported back to France.)

One of the things that Duvergier de Hauranne noticed (fresh off the boat), was how only English visitors and immigrants were treated with any measure of civility by customs officials.
All other nationalities were treated with suspicion and hostility.

It wasn’t just a matter of American “nativism.”
In “The Invasion of Maryland” chapter, he states:

The great evil of American Democracy is . . . the apathy of the general public. . . . It is conceivable that the individual who is called upon from time to time to express an opinion on some vague, abstract question by silently casting his vote might tire of what he would come to regard as a useless formality. [Italics mine.]

At least 10 million people (who Vice President Harris, and Governor Waltz, expected to vote in the 2024 election) didn’t bother to vote, making Duvergier de Hauranne’s observations about America prescient.

A scene from The Manchurian Candidate, with the American POWs and their captors. In this 1962 film, an American Staff Sergeant, the stepson of a Senator, is kidnapped to Manchuria, and brainwashed into becoming an assassin. The film was remade in 2004.

The Founders believed that Democracy would only succeed if ordinary citizens learned to care about the well-being of their fellow citizens.
By July 4th, 1826, when Jefferson and Adams were on their deathbeds,* democracy looked like a very dicey bet.
John Quincy Adams (John Adam’s son) had been elected president in 1824, even though his rival (Andrew Jackson) had won 99 electoral votes, and Adams had won only 84.
The House of Representatives still ended up giving the presidency to Adams.

In 1920, Republican congressional leaders attempted to impeach Louis F. Post (1849-1928), the assistant Secretary of Labor, because Post only deported 460 people, out of the 1,600 people that J. Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) wanted him to deport.
(Read all about it in William Willrich’s book about immigrant radicals, American Anarchy.)
This book tells the story of how the U.S. government wasted millions pursuing nonviolent immigrant radicals during, and just after, WWI.

As Louis F. Post put it:

To permit aliens to violate the hospitality of this country by conspiring against it is something which no American can contemplate with patience. Equally impatient, however, must any patriotic American be with drastic proceedings on flimsy proof to deport aliens who are not conspiring against our laws and do not intend to.

Diplomat and political scientist, Madeleine Albright (1937-2022), was ambassador to the United Nations from 1993-1997, and Secretary of State from 1997-2001.
During the middle of Trump’s term, she described him as the “first anti-democratic president in modern U.S. history.”
She wrote in Fascism: A Warning (2018):

I wonder now whether we, as democratic citizens, have been remiss in forming the right questions. Maybe we have grown so accustomed to receiving immediate satisfaction from our devices that we have lost patience with democracy’s sluggish pace. Possibly, we have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by hucksters who pledge to deliver the world on a silver platter but have no clue how to make good on their promises.

Dr. Miles J. Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) dodges and attempts to stop cars again in the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In both films, Dr. Bennell is unable to convince others that the earth has been taken over by aliens.

Sex and the Constitution, A Frenchman in Lincoln’s America, Fascism: A Warning, and American Anarchy, have all make me realize that the seeds of America’s destruction, as a democratic nation, have been sprouting since 1776.
On November 5th, a battle was lost.
We learned what most U.S. voters actually care about.

*One of the ironies of American history, is that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died on the same day, July 4, 1826, almost 200 years ago. Adams (at 90) was seven years older than Jefferson.

Believing What You Want to Believe

In the 1979 film, Being There, Washington insiders plot to gain the favor of a man (Peter Sellers), who they do not realize is only a homeless gardener.

In the 1979 fable Being There, a simple-minded gardener named Chance—wandering the streets of Washington, D.C.—is misperceived as an insightful businessman, by the elite.
One of the points in Being There is that people only see what they want to see.
Also, once people have been fooled, it’s extremely difficult to convince them that they’ve been mistaken.

Chance becomes a popular media celebrity, a Presidential confidant, and finally heir to an aging tycoon.
By the tycoon’s funeral, political insiders are plotting that Chance become the next U.S. President.

In the 2016 TV series BrainDead, Senator Raymond “Red” Wheatus (Tony Shalhoub) is possessed by extraterrestrial insects who want to disrupt the federal government. Were the insects a precursor to Project 2025?

Recently, Trump admitted that—despite graduating from an ivy league college in 1968—he didn’t realize what NATO was, before he was elected President.
He used tariffs very badly in 2018 through 2019, leading to agricultural export losses of nearly $27 billion.
Yet, Trump is still talking about adding more tariffs, if elected.
What many “victims” of “Trump-derangement syndrome” fail to understand, is how Trump was normalized by being made president eight years ago.

Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, by Russ Buettner and Suzanne Craig, outlines how reality TV producers turned a failing, bankruptcy-prone businessman from a New York joke into a “star.”
Since watchers of Fox News never heard of Lucky Loser, Trump supporters still believe he’s an admirable, self-made billionaire.

People didn’t pick up the clues when Trump went through his Cabinet hires like tissue paper, and proudly revealed highly classified information (“great intel”) to a Russian delegation, just weeks into his presidency.
They didn’t mind when he betrayed the Kurds, or pitted state against state during the COVID crisis.
Never-Trumpers are worried 20 days from November 5: why do so many people still support an entertainer who’s determined to throw the world into chaos?

President Thomas Wilson (Danny Glover) in 2012, a thriller about global catastrophe. The Black men who’ve played presidents in American films, have usually had Waspier names than “Barack Obama.”

The court cases against Trump only made him more popular.
His supporters have known for years that he lies, is cavalier with government papers, and is “sexually incontinent.”
They don’t care!
Democrats may clutch their pearls while Trump fails to “uphold the honor and dignity of the office,” but his people don’t give a hoot.

The goal of “populist” Trump is to keep poor white people (as well as blacks and browns) stuck as second-class citizens, and to keep WASPs in charge.
That’s what he did when he signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, and what he would do if he increased tariffs, and dismantled the Federal Government (as outlined in Project 2025).
According to the Brookings Institute, the trade deficit got worse every year of Trump’s presidency, and the number of manufacturing jobs went down.
Nevertheless, Trump supporters still defend him as their savior.

President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen) in the 1999-2006 TV series The West Wing. His name “Josiah Bartlet” represented neither side of Martin Sheen’s actual heritage (Irish and Hispanic). However, Sheen was given a name reminiscent of the Founders.

The upcoming election race may be so tight because the U.S. has always elected Presidents who fit the same old tired WASP pattern.
45 men have held the office.
U.S. Presidents have all been male, raised as Christians, and had Northern European—never Southern European!—ancestors.
With a few exceptions, Presidents have been taller, Protestant, military men, more vigorous than studious, and lawyers.
True. Obama was the first Black president.
He still fit several of the “other qualifications.”*
There’s a “presidential type” for the U.S. “avatar,” and Americans still tend to trust WASPs over other office holders.
If you check off the list of avatar attributes, the only attributes that Kamala has going for her is that she’s much more vigorous than Trump, plus she’s a lawyer!

Some voters think they’re facing a “Hobson’s choice.”
(“Hobson’s choice” refers to the choice of taking what’s available, or nothing at all.)
Neither Donald Trump, or Kamala Harris, fits the standard WASP profile.
Trump is not Anglo-Saxon, he’s unwillingly to learn from his mistakes, plus he’s obviously unstable.
Harris is a woman, plus she’s the child of two immigrants (not just one, like Trump).
Harris has an Irish ancestor (via Jamaica), while Trump is half Scot and half German.
Neither is Anglo-Saxon at all.
However, like Eisenhower and Van Buren, Trump is all Northern European.

Henry Hobson (Charles Laughton) ponders his position, with his daughter Maggie Hobson (Brenda de Banzie), in 1954’s Hobson’s Choice.

In David Lean’s 1954 film of Hobson’s Choice, Henry Hobson (Charles Laughton) is a small businessman who’s forced to give up power—and stop treating his three daughters as chattel—by the manipulations of his eldest daughter Maggie (Brenda de Banzie).
In the end, Henry accepts his “Hobson’s choice,” and surrenders his shoe shop to his heirs.

The question is: who will people vote for, in November of 2024, when some believe that there’s no satisfactory choice (Trump because of his instability, and Harris because of her sex)?
Is the Vice-Presidential pick a factor?
Will a few more people vote for Harris, because they feel safer with Coach Walz than with Mr. Vance?
Will less, or more, citizens vote in 2024, than voted in 2020?
There are about 20 days left to learn what’s up.

* President Obama has extremely deep roots in this country, on his mother’s side. He’s the 11th great-grandson of an African man named John Punch. In 1640, Punch attempted to escape indentured servitude, and ended up the first Black slave in colonial Virginia. Who says God doesn’t have a great sense of irony?

Who Wants a Delusional King?

Dr. Willis (Ian Holm) and Papendiek (Matthew Lloyd Davies) minister to George III (Nigel Hawthorne) seated in his special strait jacket chair in 1994’s The Madness of King George.

Many authors have written about the three biggest influences on the personality of Donald J. Trump: (1) his father, Frederick (Fred); (2) shifty attorney Roy Cohn; and (3) famous minister Norman Vincent Peale.
All of these men spent their lives fighting against what most other people would call “reality.”

Besides teaching Donald that financial worth was identical to self-worth, his father taught him that “real men” should be “killers,” cruel for the sake of being cruel.
After failing to turn his firstborn son Fred Jr. into a “killer,” he settled on his second-born son, Donald.
In Mary L. Trump’s book about her family (Too Much and Never Enough), the daughter of Fred Jr. describes how her grandfather delighted in humiliating others, and enjoyed watching Donald do the same.

As Fred Trump built his company, he continued in his delusion that he was the financial genius in the Trump family, not his mother Elizabeth Christ Trump (who had founded E. Trump & Son).
Mary Trump describes how her grandfather refused to face reality as he descended into old age.
When facing clear proof that he had failed in the Steeplechase Park project, he blamed his son Fred Jr., instead of himself.
When facing clear evidence that Donald had failed in Atlantic City, Fred double-downed, and blamed everyone but Donald: the banks, the economy, and the Casino industry itself.
Eventually, Fred attempted to save Donald, by purchasing a million dollars in chips, and not cashing them in.

Incitatus was the treasured horse of the Roman Emperor Caligula. The horse had 18 servants, but contrary to legend, Caligula never made him a chief magistrate.

Drawing by Jean Victor Adam (1801-1866).

Fred Trump was also unskilled in helping his family deal with the realities of illness and addiction.
He told Fred Jr. to fight alcohol addiction with the platitude: “Just make up your mind, Fred.”
He told his sick wife: “Everything’s great. Right, Toots? You just have to think positive.”
No wonder that Donald Trump ignored the reality of the COVID-19 crisis, and ran a federal government that caused nearly 250,000 unnecessary American deaths!

A much “showier” person than Fred Trump, Roy Cohn also taught Trump to be “a killer,” but to be more “public” about it.
As a young man, Cohn played a key role in Senator Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist hearings of the early 1950’s.
He parlayed that into a 30-year career as a private attorney in New York City.
Cohn was known for having no moral compass.
His clients included prosperous, but unethical people, from Mafia figures (like Tony Salerno and John Gotti), to businessmen (like Fred Trump and Richard Dupont).
Cohn was finally disbarred in 1986 for unethical and unprofessional conduct, including misappropriation of client funds (the 1975 Rosenstiel case).
He finally died of HIV/AIDS in 1986, leaving few financial assets.

In the 2003 TV mini series Angels in America, Roy Cohn (Al Pacino) is a man dying of AIDS, and haunted by the ghosts of people he has wronged.

Roy Cohn was as bad at reality as Fred Trump.
Despite being gay, Cohn never publicly admitted this reality.
One would never have guessed his homosexual identity, based on his treatment of other gay men and women.
Cohn was instrumental in President Eisenhower’s executive order to ban homosexuals from employment in the Federal Government.

Jacket of The Power of Positive Thinking.

Many Sundays, Fred and Donald Trump attended church services at the Marble Collegiate Church, on Fifth Avenue, in Manhattan.
This was the church where Donald married his first wife.
The minister, Norman Vincent Peale, had written the extremely popular book The Power of Positive Thinking (1952).
It was at this church that Fred and Donald listened to sermons that didn’t preach much about the nature of God.
Instead, the Trumps were told that anything was possible if they were confident enough, that God values worldly wealth, and to evade what made them feel either sad or inadequate.

Many Protestant theologians found Peale’s beliefs to be dangerous, heretical, and even anti-Christian.
To Episcopalian Bishop John McGill Krumm, it was apparent that Peale was using hypnotic techniques.
Methodist Bishop Garfield Bromley Oxnam complained that Peale was turning Christianity into “a cult of success.”
Certain ministers, like Billy Graham and Joel Osteen, have found Peale’s belief system much more appealing.
While most Catholic priests, and Protestant ministers, preach humility before God, Peale taught his flock unreasoning confidence, and to ignore reality.

Photo of Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845-1886) posing as a medieval knight. During Ludwig’s reign, he built three Gothic fantasy castles, where he could live in the past.

The influence of his father, his lawyer, and his minister, explains a lot about Donald Trump.

Trump believes that if he lies often enough, his followers will believe anything he says.
He believes that if he’s able to win a second term, all the historians will fall in line, and—there he’ll be—a face on Mount Rushmore.

Trump refused to listen to the White House lawyers who begged him to do what every losing political leader has done before, graciously admit that he’d lost the 2020 election.
Instead, he sought out shysters—as his father had done—to think up schemes to keep him in power.
He was known to exclaim: “Where’s my Roy Cohn?”

To Trump, there is no real meaning to the word “truth,”* and he doesn’t seem to have clear viewpoints on many subjects besides tariffs, and ignoring climate change.
Words are only tools to help this salesman/conman obtain more money, and stay out of jail.

* Counselor to former President Trump, Kellyanne Conway, understands her former boss very well. Trump exists in a world of (as she phrases it) “alternative truths.”

Ye Olde Story of Autocrats

Henry V (Kenneth Branagh) encourages his troops to conquer France, in the 1989 movie based on the Shakespeare play Henry V.

I recently read Dan Jones’ The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England, in order to fill some serious gaps in my knowledge of British history.
Jones’ book is the story of British rulers from Henry I (who ruled from 1154-1189) through Richard II (who ruled from 1377-1399). 

I learned quite a bit in this book.*
First of all, I learned why Henry V (1386-1422)—a king not covered in the book (because he was a Lancaster)—fought so hard to reclaim French land in the Shakespeare plays.
I had never understood why Henry V was invading France in 1415.
I also learned more about the Magna Carta than I ever knew from my Indiana high school history classes.
During the 1960’s, Midwest high schools emphasized American history.

The Plantagenets fought to gain back land in France because they were from a royal house that originated in France.
The Plantagenet Kings and Queens only spoke the French language, not the English language, until the very late 1300’s.
For generations, most English Barons possessed land in both England and France, and traveled back and forth between the two.
As the Plantagenets conquered and reconquered Wales and Scotland, they wiped out the hereditary rulers in those places.

Prince John (Claude Rains) holds his very large scepter in 1939’s The Adventures of Robin Hood. There‘s no evidence that Robin Hood was a real person, but Richard the Lion-Hearted, and his brother John, were real Plantagenets.

The Magna Carta was a 1215 peace treaty between King John I (1166-1216) and his ruling class.
Its’ purpose was to protect the freedoms of Englishmen.
This document had a big influence on the thirteen colonies, and the American belief that rulers shouldn’t be autocrats.
Its’ main principal was that an English ruler was not above the law.
It also guaranteed due process of law, freedom from arbitrary imprisonment, and trial by a jury of ones’ peers.
Of course, the Magna Carta was designed mainly for the upper crust, and it wasn’t honored by British rulers for many generations.
However, it was a start.

Doctors attempt to treat Cardinal D’Ambroise (Christopher Lee) suffering from bubonic plague in 2011’s Season of the Witch.

Dan Jones’ The Plantagenets covers the Black Death, the bubonic plague pandemic that killed the rich and the poor, and threw England’s economy into a tailspin.
Hundreds of thousands of workers died, and wages overall threatened to rise.
Therefore, King Edward III instituted the 1351 Statute of Laborers.
This law kept wages artificially low, and protected the political class, and the King (England’s biggest landowner), from suffering financial losses due to the plague.
One sentence from the law reads:

“If any man take more [than the prescribed wage], he shall be committed to the nearest jail.” (page 413 in The Plantagenets.)

This 1351 Statute which set wages for “saddlers, skinners, white-tawers, cordwainers, tailors, smiths, carpenters, masons, tilers, shipwrights, carters, and all other artisans and laborers” reminds me of how COVID-19 was actually used to widen the inequality gap, making fortunes for the wealthy, and driving middle-class (and lower class) workers into poverty. 

In any rational world, the COVID-19 pandemic should have made wages go up, especially for workers engaged in health care and education.
However, while wages increased slightly in many industries after the pandemic, they increased at a much lower rate in health care and education, and haven’t kept up with inflation!
Most salary increases went to people in executive positions, and not to the average worker.

Getting back to the Plantagenets, the next ruler after Edward III (Richard II), faced the Peasants’ Revolt.
At the young age of 14, Richard actually held a face-to-face negotiation with the rebel leader Wat Tyler (1341-1381).
Tyler demanded that all hierarchy be abolished (except for the king’s own lordship), that the goods of the Catholic Church not remain in the hands of the clergy, and that serfdom be abolished.
Richard appeared to concede to his subjects, but soon after the conversation occurred, Wat Tyler was beheaded, and the rest of his rebel band was hunted down and killed. 

King Arthur (Graham Chapman) assaults a peasant (Michael Palin) in 1975’s Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
“Help, help, I’m being repressed.”

A British film about a peasant during the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, is currently in preproduction.
The proposed title is The Hood, and it’s to be directed by Paul Greengrass (the director of the Jason Bourne movies).
Benedict Cumberbatch has been mentioned as the possible lead.

By the time Richard II was 20 years old, he resolved to not be as conciliatory to rebels.
He reversed Edward III’s 1351 Treason Act, which had mainly limited treason to attacks on the King, the Queen, their children, and senior officials.
Richard broadened the law, in order to expand his executive power.
He decreed that all those who constrained the King, ignored a royal command, or basically annoyed him in any way, were now traitors to the crown!
This, and other actions, led to a civil war.
As Dan Jones put it:

“He had built himself up as an antagonistic private lord, rather than fulfill his higher duty to be a source of public authority. He had believed that kingship was about prestige and magnificence instead of leadership. And he had ended up with nothing.” (Page 494, The Plantagenets.)

Jack, 14th Earl of Gurney (Peter O’Toole) is quite, quite mad in 1972’s The Ruling Class, a black comedy about the British class system.

I began to realize, after reading The Plantagenets, that the English have been attempting to limit their rulers to just leading their subjects—and not terrorizing them—since the early 1100’s.
In doing so, Englishmen were way ahead of the Germans, the Spanish, the Italians, and the French.
No wonder, the men of the thirteen colonies rose up against George III in 1776!

It’s interesting that a person like Trump still believes that a U.S. President should expect absolute loyalty, and that leadership is mainly about prestige and magnificence.
He’s obviously never heard about the Magna Carta.
It’s also interesting that the U.S. Supreme Court would rule, in 2024, that Presidents are immune from criminal liability for committing fraudulent acts.
To many, that sounds like being above the law.

*In The Plantagenets, Dan Jones notes that, in 1269, Henry III forced the Jews of England to wear a felt yellow badge of shame (page 271). I also learned that Frederick II (Holy Roman Empire) made Sicilian Jews wear a blue T-shaped badge, and Philip II ordered French Jews to wear a wheel-shaped badge (page 272). Note: all page references in this memorandum are from the American 2014 paperback edition.