Ivanhoe_-_Contact_Sports

Ivanhoe Summary In summary of the movie Ivanhoe, I would like to examine the issue of contact sports in the movie as it relates to the present day. In the movie the main form of contact sports is jousting. Another form, although it is also used mainly in battle, is swordsmanship. These two sports are used for many reasons in the movie. Some of which are entertainment, competition and for justice. In the movie there are competitions which involve jousting and swordsmanship to determine who the stronger and better person is. The entertainment value comes as are there are crowds of people watching and cheering to see who is not only going to win, but also who is going to lose. Even the other competitors are watching the matches to see who will win. Another important role of contact sporting in the movie is to serve justice. In what would be seen as unjust in today’s society, back during the time of the movie, 1192, when a person was accused of something, such as witchery like Rebecca was, they had the option of having a knight fight for their chance to avoid punishment. This was if the accused could find someone willing to defend them. The whole thought behind this was that God would decide who was right and who was wrong. All of these uses of contact sporting in the movie were fueled by the humans desire to see people battle each other. It is the same today just with different sports. Although the sports are different today the attraction to them and the basic principle is the same. We as humans like to see somebody win and somebody lose, a stronger person or team and weaker one. Evidence of this is that in most sports there is some sort of overtime or ‘sudden death’ to prevent the competition ending in a tie. Today we have both individual sports and team sports. The individual sports of today are similar to jousting of the past. Two people compete against each other and the end result is one of them winner and the other is the loser. The team sports are similar to the battles of the past when one race would invade another and start fighting with bows and arrows then with swords once they were close enough. During battles the ultimate cost of the fight was death. Still today there are athletes at every level dieing from all sorts of causes while training or competing. The movie Ivanhoe does a good job portraying the humans desire to win or be the best. It does this through the use of contact sporting. It shows how some are willing to risk everything, including life, to win. Just as today some athletes will take many different types of legal and illegal drugs just to get that little edge over the competition. That competition could be their opponent or the next person in line to get their job. Works Cited Ivanhoe, Movie 1952