#i can't believe i'm pairing The Bard with this shitty movie

[lyledebeast]

Bleeding Villains and Bloody Heroes

@malicious-compliance-esq's comments on my last meta regarding General Cornwallis's "clean broadcloth, perhaps, but bloody hands all the same" owing to Tavington doing the dirty work for him got me thinking about the role actual blood plays in this movie.

For all the violent situations they both end up in, prior to the final scene, the only blood we see on Benjamin Martin is other men's, and the only blood we ever see on William Tavington is his own. This stands in striking contrast to the rest of the movie, in which the only gore the camera shows us is on Patriot bodies: the cannon balls ripping off heads and legs, the torn and bleeding men in the Continental field hospital. Contrast them with the British soldiers, whose causes of instantaneous death include gunshot, tomahawking, bumping, and, apparently, surprise? (Brandon F's video analyzing the ambush scene is a resource I highly recommend). Regardless of the method, once a British solider is hit, the movie is done with him in almost every case. These deaths are presented as flippant in comparison to the noble sacrifice and suffering of the Patriot soldiers.

Tavington is the exception to this rule. Not only does he take a lot more killing, like a lot more, than his brothers in arms, but he takes a good bit of damage prior to that. There is blood on his face in a deleted scene in the officers' tent that initially looks like it could be someone else's, but a closer shot reveals a cut on his cheek to be the most likely source. There is blood on his shirt in another deleted scene from Gabriel's bullet grazing his side. Finally, there is blood oozing between his lower teeth as he says his final line, mostly likely from a cut in his mouth after being violently thrown from his horse. I don't think anyone involved in the making of this movie would argue that Tavington's blood represents his commitment to the cause of British dominance in the American colonies or even to his own aspirations. If that is not the case, though, then blood is clearly a signifier of very different things depending on where it is and whose it is.

Still, seeing Tavington bleed reminds me of an exchange between my other favorite villain of all time and the hero in that text. In Shakespeare's Othello, when Iago's machinations are revealed, Othello tells him, "If that thou be'st a devil, I cannot kill thee," and stabs him (Act. V, scene ii). Iago replies, "I bleed, Sir, but not killed." Iago is not a devil; none of Shakespeare's numerous memorable villains are. They are deeply flawed people with human desires taken to destructive extremes. The difference between the two villains is that Iago is one character in a play full of deeply flawed people with human desires whose flaws he utilizes in his destructive extremes: Othello's gullibility, Cassio's vanity, and Roderigo's stupidity. All of these characters, though, are so much less malevolent than Iago that he appears monstrous in comparison even as he remains very much human. In contrast to the cannon--and musket, bayonet, tomahawk, and shock--fodder the other British soldiers constitute, Tavington's injuries render him more human. He is fleshed out in the most literal possible sense.

At the same time, Martin becoming increasingly drenched in British blood over the course of an afternoon while not sustaining a single scratch himself makes him somewhat monstrous. Even without showing the audience where all that blood is coming from, that most of it is from a man who is unable to fight back compromises Martin's heroism in a way it arguably never recovers from. When Tavington does fight back, and then some, the injuries Martin takes are in service of vengeance, not the Patriot war effort. As far as the cause of American independence goes, well, he has no skin in that game. Literally.