Reel Fury: White Fragility and the Backlash Against Bathurst’s Robin Hood

Abstract

This article takes as its starting point the furious backlash against Otto Bathhurst’s 2018 remaking of the Robin Hood legend, noting the visceral disgust the film evoked in many viewers despite film critics’ generally favorable reviews. Taking a cue from Julia Kristeva’s work on the abject and Michael Kimmel’s work on white “aggrieved entitlement,” the essay teases out two interconnected threads that constitute sufficient threats to motivate these feelings of disgust and horror in the 2018 Robin Hood: the destruction of a reel racial hierarchy, and the threat to white supremacy posed by the movie’s call for the overthrow of neoliberalism by collective revolution.