#bbc terror robespierre and the french revolution

[aedesluminis]

"Camille has done something very stupid" is the only historically accurate fact from the Terror BBC docudrama

[sarahecsplojian]

[saint-jussy]

I know I've been in your asks before but I need a lecture on the ship "Saintspierre". I don't know the historical context behind it and why they get villanized so much. I'm a newbie when it comes to history. Thank you! :)

Hello again! So Saintspierre is the ship between Robespierre & Saint-Just of the French Revolution, who are often depicted as queer-coded villains in adaptations of the Revolution to serve as a counterpart to the Straight and Manly ™️ Danton. This happens because reactionaries are eager to push the narrative of 1789 being "the Good Revolution" and 1792 as "the Bad Revolution." Danton represents the Good Revolutionary, who advocates for change but is against offending too many moderates, while Robespierre is the Bad Revolutionary who brought on the Reign of Terror. They make Danton out to be a tragic victim who heroically tried to stop the Terror (even though he had a major hand in starting it and was corrupt af) and Robespierre out to be a gay psychopath who killed him out of jealousy. You can see this in La Revolution Francais (1989), Danton (1983), the BBC documentary, and many other adaptations.

For example, LRF goes out of its way to depict Danton as a loving family man, with a frankly excessive number of scenes of him making out with his two wives, while ignoring how he was a creep who sexually harassed women and that his second wife was 16. His close ally Camille is also depicted as very loving with his wife Lucile. Meanwhile, Robespierre is never shown being affectionate toward any women. The only person he has multiple close interactions with, besides his childhood friend Camille, is Saint-Just, who struts into his attention in part 2 and ruthlessly replaces Camille at Robespierre's side. Literally, Saint-Just's only character traits in this movie are being pretty and zealously urging Robespierre to kill Camille specifically. They even made up a scene where Saint-Just sends thugs to beat Camille up while making Camille think it was Robespierre who did it, so he can cause an irrevocable break between them. They give him no backstory, no explanation for his motivations, and completely erase his military accomplishments. He's just an homme fatale who lures Robespierre to the dark side with his pretty hair. This is a common tactic in works that struggle to reconcile the fact that Robespierre was on record being a pacifist who opposed the death penalty, opposed the war, and fought for the rights of the poor, with the propaganda that he was a monster responsible for the Terror. They blame his fall on Saint-Just.

Another tactic they use to villainize Robespierre is exaggerating his vanity. There is ALWAYS a scene where Robespierre gets his wig pampered. I mean, yeah, he DID care a lot about his appearance and never stepped out of the house looking like shit...but Danton wore a wig too. 99% of Danton's historical portraits have him in a wig, yet these works have him conveniently ditching it in most scenes to rock his Messy & Manly Natural Hair, and you will NEVER catch them showing Danton caring for his wig. No, only fops like Robespierre do that...even though it was just the norm at the time for lawyers to wear wigs. They put shady emphasis on Robespierre following 18th century fashion norms that have now become feminized, like wigs, lace cuffs, and stockings, to further queer-code him.

THOUGH, it's true that even historically, Robespierre was seen as a strange man in many ways. There are many contemporary accounts that rail on him for repeating things, being socially awkward, being blunt and callous, hating physical contact, having no emotions, being incapable of love--when from a modern lens, it's clear to me that he was just autistic. Like omg, leave the man alone. But when people want to villainize someone, they latch onto the traits that make them seem odd, that stray from typical societal expectations. When it comes to Robespierre, his villainization thus becomes very gendered, homophobic, and ableist, because he was 36 and unmarried and didn't abuse his power to sexually harass women and cared about his appearance and had a large female following and was most likely autistic. Meanwhile, Saint-Just gets exaggerated as a breathtakingly handsome twink who wore an earring and has a fancy bathroom that Camille roasted him for. Like omg, how dare a man have running water in his bathroom and not look like shit in the 18th century!!

Personally, I ship Robespierre & Saint-Just as a form of rebellion against this villainization. If they were gay, so WHAT? It would be cute. Fuck the homophobes. They did have a very touching relationship with each other. They shared many similar ideas and complemented each other's personalities and Saint-Just chose to defend Robespierre to the end even though he could've easily saved himself on the basis of his military merits by staying out of the drama. The fact that he was prevented from finishing his last speech, in which he defended Robespierre, is one of the saddest things in the whole goddamn Revolution.

Is there historical basis for their relationship being explicitly romantic? Most of their correspondences have been burnt, so we don't have much, but I ship it regardless in a historical fiction, What If? kind of way. Robespierre and Eleonore aren't romantically confirmed either, but nobody bats an eye when mainstream media or even historians treat them as "canon." I think that is very heteronormative, so I am ride or die for Saintspierre as protest. Some historians have pointed out that we have no records of any warm interactions between them, but I think they understood each other in a way that didn't require pleasantries, and that's what makes them so compelling to me. There's Charlotte Robespierre's infamous casual revelation that Saint-Just was Maximilien's 2nd favorite revolutionary, just after his own brother and OVER Camille. Then the Duplay testimony that Saint-Just would go up to Robespierre's room without saying hi to anyone else. It's these little things!!

Anyway, I'm leaving out a lot of details about precisely what Robespierre & Saint-Just were and weren't responsible for in history, but just know that they were two of the only clean, honest political leaders of the time. Never took a bribe, never embezzled, meant everything they said, were genuinely committed to the ideals they spouted. It's incredibly unfair that they, along with the other leftist paragon Marat, ended up with the worst reputations.

[werewolfetone]

I've finished the BBC terror documentary, which was honestly like being psychologically tortured--I'm sure the Frev people on here know what I'm talking about, I don't need to go into it from a French Revolution perspective. What I'm more interested in saying, however, is that it was really absolutely dreadful from a British history perspective as well.

There's a few specific things I'd like to mention with that. Firstly, all of the stereotypical "the government killed whoever the hell they wanted just because people said something that they kind of didn't agree with" talk. It's really bold, actually, for a British person to say with their whole chest that acting like that in the 1790s is bad, because they did the exact same thing at the exact same time in Ireland, with the 1798 United Irishmen rebellion. In fact, several of the things that the documentary says about Robespierre would probably be better applied to the British government's Lord Camden--the idea of sham trials applied to anyone who even slightly opposes you simply because, for instance, happened with William Orr, and the idea of arresting people in pubs for making a remark that you didn't entirely agree with happened to Charles Hamilton Teeling, and violently silencing journalists you don't agree with happened with Samuel Neilson, all on Camden's orders. There was an undercurrent throughout the entire thing, I felt, of "we did this as well, to the Irish, but we're going to ignore that bit," that made it at some points genuinely sickening to watch.

Secondly, there was a line about Robespierre not having a concept of controlled opposition that I found extremely ironic as well, because neither did the UK. The opposition of the time was considered borderline treasonous, and in some cases was considered actually treasonous (they would have tried and killed opposition leader Henry Grattan had Castlereagh not stopped them). In fact, when George Canning went into opposition in the 1800s he was told that it would be ungentlemanly and unfair to put up a real fight against the government, that it would be better of him to simply go along with them and only put up token opposition. So it's bold, as well, for the BBC to accuse someone from the 1790s of not having a concept of controlled opposition.

Overall I felt as if they, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and the gaggle of British historians they had on there, didn't really know their British history either, and were just pretending that Ireland didn't exist for an hour and a half. Which is just laughable, really. What were they even trying to do with this film.

[madmarkinabox]

Season 1

The Reign of Terror

The Doctor, frustrated at Ian's belief that he can't control the TARDIS, returns the ship to Earth, but ends up landing in the French Revolution. Before long, Ian, Barbara and Susan are locked up in the Conciergerie in Paris, leaving the Doctor to have to rescue them alone.

It's another historical one! And it's FAR too long. 6 episodes of mostly dialogue, a bunch of characters I can barely discern between, mostly addressing each other as "citzen", and it is utterly BORING. The Aztecs, this is not. Were we supposed to learn something? Are we supposed to already just know a lot of what happened in the reign of terror? All I learned was that Madame Guillotine was a very popular lady and Robespierre was a real person, not just a cat in a cartoon musical no one remembers, and I had to go to Wikipedia for that. Susan is at her most useless in this one, falling sick for no obvious reason, and freaking out over rats. Girl, you've faced down Daleks! The only times I was interested in what was happening were when Ian was trying to break out of jail, and the Doctor blagging his way through society with an authoritative voice and fancy clothes. He always has been a clothes horse. And this is a prime example of his (paraphrased) viewpoint: "Walk around like you own the place, it works for me." Other than these, I was checking the episode list and runtime like "is it over yet? When can I get to a good one?"

And now, the elephant in the room. This is another story that has been partially lost to the mists of time (AKA: wiped by the BBC before they thought to preserve the show). Enough has been saved to reconstruct the episodes that are sound-only with animation, but episode 2 needs some real TLC if possible, it's washed out and the music is horribly warped.

Time has not been kind to this one. You can just go ahead and skip it, it doesn't really offer anything significant. Boring.

Next time: Planet of Giants.

[lanterne]

Ok. I’ve never seen it so I’m going to watch the documentary.

Honestly, though. Why does everything frev have the same name? “The French Revolution,” “La Revolution française,” “Revolution! (released in English, very unhelpfully, as… “The French Revolution”).

Well, for documentaries, there's the BBC documentary... "Terror! Robespierre and the french revolution" 💀💀💀💀💀 not the best example tbh

For movies with original names, the ones thay I can think about rn are "La Terreur et la Vertu" and "un peuple et son roi" which was translated as "one nation one king"

But really, there's a lack of original names in frev media 😔

[being-of-rain]

Random thoughts from my Classic Who watch, the second half of season 1.

I never thought I’d say this, but this Terry Nation story needs another sequel. It’s inevitable that The Keys of Marinus has a lot of underdeveloped ideas, since it has a different setting each episode. It works well as what it is, and it’s nice to see a planet that very much isn’t the stereotype of being only one biome. But it amazes me that none of the Dr Who EU has revisited the planet and all its potential, nostalgic authors usually eat references like that up, and in this case there’s lots of ideas to expand upon. There’s been a few stories with Voord, but they’re always taken completely out of the story’s context. If I was Big Finish or BBC Books, I’d order a sequel story called The Conscience of Marinus.

The Aztecs is fun. I don’t have much new to say with some of these stories because I’ve seen them before. The conflict between Barbara and the Doctor is great. The Doctor’s line about knowing (believe him, he knows) about how history can’t be changed is interesting, and like the line I mentioned in Edge of Destruction it sounds like a good prompt for a pre-Unearthly Child story that the Who EU hasn’t picked up on yet. As always, the quiet moments in the story can be really delightful, like the Doctor and Cameca bonding.

In The Sensorites it’s really nice to see a species that’s obviously alien like the Daleks and the Voord, but isn’t pure evil, or even extraordinarily antagonistic. The cliffhanger of the first episode where a Sensorite appears at the space window is great, as is the last episode’s twist where some greedy patriotic Humans are revealed to be the instigators of all the story’s problems (although it’s weird how quickly the episode forgets about the Sensorite villain in that episode after he’s caused so much trouble himself).

Watching The Reign of Terror sent me back to high school, when studying the French Revolution made me realise my love for studying history (and gave me high marks on all my assignments jkjslkdjf). Good old kooky Robespierre. It also made me think of playing Assassin’s Creed Unity, even if it is the worst AC game ksdjf. And it made me think of the Dr Who audio Fields of Terror, also set in the French Revolution but with a much more terrifying atmosphere. I was tempted to relisten to that story, as well as some others that tie in to the first season, but I decided I wouldn’t listen to any First Doctor audios while I’m watching his TV episodes. The cliffhanger at the end of The Sensorites when the Doctor decides to get Ian and Barbara off his ship feels a little random, as there doesn’t seem to be anything he hasn’t heard before in Ian’s innocuous comment. But I’m happy to chalk it up to him being an eccentric old man, because it leads to some lovely character moments in Reign of Terror: when Ian and Barbara show that they’ve learnt exactly how to sweet talk the Doctor into joining them outside, and when they take a private moment to realise that they’re not actually upset that they haven’t arrived home. There’s more great character moments in the rest of the story too: the Doctor never wavering from Susan’s safety being his highest priority, his saluting the young boy that helped him after in episode 2, him and Barbara briefly continuing their discussion about changing history from The Aztecs, Barbara’s understandably emotional outburst about history when she finds out that Léon has betrayed them and been killed.

Finally, at the end of The Reign of Terror there’s a short scene in the TARDIS when its crew are unwinding and joking together, and then wondering about what they’ll do next. Like I said in my last post, the way the characters learn to like each other and become a team works so well- it’s really the highlight of the series that makes each story click.

I’m looking forward to season 2, where I haven’t seen all of the episodes before!

[deputy-vania]

So I watched the BBC documentary The French Revolution - Tearing Up History today. Considering it’s a bbc documentary, and considering its topic - the destruction of art, or iconoclasm during the French Revolution, I was totally expecting it to be “see the angry mob destroyed so many precious arts! The crazy radicals!”, and I started watching it in battle mode fully prepared to give it a takedown. Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised.

The documentary surely isn’t without its problems - the narrator can’t tell the difference between the Constituent Assembly, the Legislative Assembly and the National Convention; there’s a Thermidorian picture of Robespierre with a guillotine in it; apparently Robespierre executed the members of the dechristianalisation movement; the Thermidorians arrested Robespierre because they were tired of the terror.

But the above are the only points I can remember. Maybe it’s because of my low expectation, but I was pleasantly surprised with the description of the French Revolution, and even the Terror in it. Well, at least it didn’t use any words like fanatic or bloodthirsty, and didn’t call Robespierre a dictator. (It even had the decency to call him ONE OF the architects of the terror.)

There are in it, things that are not wrong but still reinforces the stereotype of the French Revolution, like the National Convention declaring “terror is the order of the day”, or calling the revolutionaries “terrorists”, or saying a certain symbol the revolutionaries used later gave name to the word “fascism”, but since the topic of the documentary is iconoclasm, not the French Revolution in general, I can’t blame the narrator for not explaining it. I have reason to suspect that he might actually believe the stereotypes of the terror, but at least he didn’t SAY things that are too ridiculous.

The documentary, as I see it, is generally positive towards the French Revolution. It explicitly rejected words like “mob” and “vandalism”. It changed my attitude towards iconoclasm. It also gave me insight into the power struggle in public visual spaces. I learnt things about graffiti.

So all in all I’m glad to have watched it.

[aedesluminis]

I will never grow tired of this scene :')

[aedesluminis]

Hérault Desmoulins and Vampire D'Eglantine.

[saint-jussy]

BBC’s Terror! Robespierre and the French Revolution except it’s just Saint-Just being Robespierre’s emotional support shoulder devil

Cut together because I find these scenes hilarious but I get disgusted by the rest of the documentary every time I flip through it