Robin Hood: A Case Study

"Recent work in cultural studies directs attention to the meanings text accumulate through their use. The reader's activity is no longer seen as the task of recovering the author's meanings but also as reworking borrowed materials to fit them into the context of lived experience. Michel de Certeau (1984) writes, 'Every reading modifies its object...The reader takes neither the position of the author nor the author's position. He invents in the text something different from what they intended. He detaches them from their (lost or accessory) origin. He combines their fragments and creates something unknown' (169). This modification need not be understood as textual 'disintegration' but rather as home improvements that refit prefabricated materials to consumer desires. The text becomes something more than it was before, not something less." 

- Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, 1992. 

"...the tales are reflections of the social order in a given historical epoch, and, as such, they symbolize the aspirations, needs, dreams and wishes of common people in a tribe, community or society, either affirming the dominant social values and norms or revealing the necessity to change them. According to the evidence we have, gifted narrators told tales to audiences who actively participated in their transmission by posing  questions, suggesting changes and circulating the tales among themselves. The key to comprehending the folk tale and its volatile quality is an understanding of the audience and reception aesthetics." 

- Jack Zipes, Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales, 2002.

Statue of Robin Hood in Nottingham

(clockwise from top left): Douglas Fairbanks (1922); Kevin Costner (1991); Errol Flynn (1938); illustration by N.C. Wyeth (1917); Jonas Armstrong (2006); Cary Elwes (1993); Russell Crowe (2010); animation by Walt Disney Productions (1973).

Robin Hood --> Green Arrow --> Katniss Everdeen

And then there's this guy...I'm still not sure how I feel about him.

The CW's 'Arrow'