Baphomet Incorporated, A Case Study

Summary

Recently Studies in Medievalism (SiM) has dedicated itself not only to reassessing the meaning of medievalism but also to defining the emergent field of neomedievalism. In their effort to distinguish neomedievalism as a new mode of expression qualitatively distinct from previous medievalisms, Carol Robinson and Pamela Clements, along with several of the contributors to SiM 19, have identified what they find to be the most salient features of neomedievalism. Most significantly, they argue, neomedievalism severs itself from history, often with conscious irony and anachronism, producing works refracted through the lenses of previous medievalisms rather than rooted in a real sense of the Middle Ages. These works foster the commodification and mass consumption of the past rather than the earnest attempt to recover and understand it. Moreover, while neomedievalism gestures to multicultural awareness, it sometimes presents a narrow and culturally homogeneous interpretation of the medieval. Finally, while digital technology does not by itself define neomedievalism, it provides an ideal environment to nurture works that are frequently intertextual, fluid, and collaborative.

On one level, the attempt to distinguish neomedievalism from its “parent,” as Robinson and Clements say, is a semantic exercise that betrays an anxiety of influence. We misconstrue nothing by admitting simply that neomedievalism is medievalism adapted to the postmodern moment. As Amy S. Kaufman sensibly concludes, “while medievalism can exist perfectly independently at any point in time, neomedievalism despite its seeming ahistoricity, is historically contingent upon both medievalism itself and the postmodern condition. […] Despite its desire to erase time, neomedievalism is situated in time: it just happens to be our time.” We do not need to disown medievalism in order to legitimate neomedievalism.

Nevertheless, the vigor of discussion in the pages of SiM and on the panels of professional conferences suggests that we do need a new theoretical model, and perhaps a new term, to account for the new ways that contemporary culture has appropriated the medieval without quite comprehending (or wanting to comprehend) the Middle Ages, particularly in films and games. The appropriation of the medieval by Antoine Fuqua’s film King Arthur (2004) or by the online video game World of Warcraft, with its nearly twelve-million subscribers, signals a cultural phenomenon more complex than pure “anarchy” or the mere “dumbing down” of the high medievalism practiced by J. R. R. Tolkien and T. H. White.