In Pulp Fiction, when Marcellus Wallace tells his captor and tormentor Zed that “I’m gonna get medieval on your ass”, we are spared further details, which is just as well since it involves a pair of pliers and a blow torch.To Marcellus, “medieval” clearly means acting with cruelty towards a helpless captive, and similar thinking lies behind the use of the word to describe the murder of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff carried out, and broadcast to the world, by Islamic State. Everyone from UK deputy prime minister to US foreign secretary has used the word to express their horror at these awful crimes.“” proclaimed Christopher Dickey in The Daily Beast. Dickey referred to Foley being beheaded “as if he were a captive taken in medieval combat”. Bad old days?There are a number of things going on when we describe something as “medieval”.
To go medieval means to become savagely violent without restraint, similar to how we imagine those in the savage, unrestrained medieval times would respond to someone who had done them wrong. From the movie Pulp Fiction, one of the most feared characters stated his henchmen would 'go medieval on yo' ass', which basically was a way of saying his. Pulp Fiction is a darkly humorous 1994 crime drama told in the Quentin Tarantino trademark nonlinear fashion. It covers three stories, all interconnected. The first is about two hitmen, Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta), who are out to retrieve a briefcase stolen from their employer, Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames).
Let’s look at the word first. “Medieval” comes from the Latin medium aevum, “the middle period”. The term was invented by Renaissance scholars to describe – and dismiss – the 1,000 years of perceived backwardness that separated their world from antiquity.
So the word has always contained the potential for condemnation. In history, to a large extent this has been lost.
We still talk of “the Middle Ages” because it is a convenient term for the millennium stretching from the fall of Rome to the Reformation – frankly nobody can think of a better one.But was it brutal? Taken in the round, the period was no more violent than what came before or afterwards. The 15th, 16th and 17th centuries knew as much sickening cruelty as the 12th, 13th and 14th. Witness the genocide of native Americans, the burning of so-called witches, or the horrors of the French wars of religion and the Thirty Years War.The flip side was the life-enhancing creativity that you find everywhere in the Middle Ages, in its art, literature and music. This has not gone unnoticed.
With a few exceptions like Pulp Fiction, describing something as “medieval” in order to denigrate it came close to vanishing in recent times. A poor choice of wordsSo why has it resurfaced in media coverage of the killings carried out by Islamic State?I suspect there are two reasons behind it. One is circumstance. What makes theses videos especially horrific is the victims’ decapitation, a fate reminiscent of a pre-gunpowder, that is, medieval, society. In point of fact, most captives taken in medieval combat would have been kept alive with a view to ransom or exchange.It’s true that on occasion they were killed. After the battle of Agincourt in 1415, when Henry V thought his French prisoners might manage to overpower their captors, he ordered them all massacred. It’s been suggested that the prisoners were still wearing all their armour except their helmets, so the quickest way to dispatch them would have been to stab them in the face, a horrendous idea.This much is understandable.
But I think there is another train of thought going on, and it’s one that western commentators would do well to be cautious about.Both the use of torture and execution without trial slowly – and very selectively – diminished in Europe from the 18th century onwards. It was the spread of Enlightenment ideas about human rights that saw their condemnation not just as immoral but also as backward ways of behaving. In other words Europe became more civilised.It’s unwise to apply to any group waging war on western values words that derive from a European historical evolution. It carries overtones of cultural superiority – “they haven’t caught up yet” - which sustains misguided beliefs and may even help them recruit others to their cause.Better by far to stick to generic terms such as “cruel” or “brutal”. A word like “medieval” makes for colourful copy, but it isn’t accurate or wise: leave it to Quentin Tarantino.
After, Quentin Tarantino is officially the patron saint of badass cinema. From the ear-cutting antics of Reservoir Dogs to the blood-vomiting chaos of The Hateful Eight, his movies are often remembered for their violent set pieces, but they endure for one simple reason: incredible actors playing badass characters.What makes a Tarantino character a badass? While all of QT's characters are morally complicated, the badasses on this list aren't straight-up villains (sorry, Hans Landa!) and they're not only the most iconic roles (goodbye, Vincent Vega!). They are cool.
They are righteous. And, of course, they're badass.