ALTERNATIVE BUSINESS: OUTLAWS, CRIME AND CULTURE

A book extract by Professor Martin Parker, Warwick Business School

Professor Martin Parker's new book, Alternative Business: Outlaws, Crime and Culture is an entertaining look at the outsiders of fiction and film, from Robin Hood and Captain Jack Sparrow to Tony Soprano and David Brent. These stories have endured, argues Prof Parker, precisely because they tell us something important about power, organization and economics. Below the extract, you can also listen to a podcast with the author.

In February 1632, an English writer of ballads called Martin Parker entered his ‘A True Tale of Robin Hood’ into the London ‘Stationers’ Register’, an official list of publications established as a means of enforcing copyright. Parker had already written ballads about the misty tales of King Arthur and St George, and here produced a poem about another legendary English figure. He subtitles this work:

A brief touch of the life and death of that Renowned Outlaw, Robert Earle of Huntingdon vulgarly called Robbin Hood, who lived and dyed in A.D.1198, being the 9 yere of the reigne of King Richard the first, commonly called Richard Cuer de Lyon. Carefully collected out of the truest Writers of our English Chronicles. And published for the satisfaction of those who desire too see Truth purged from falsehood. (Knight and Ohlgren 1997)

There was a popular proverb at the time that ‘tales of Robin Hood are good for fools’, but Parker’s Robin Hood claims both historical accuracy and nobility. In the poem, Robin was outlawed as the result of the plotting of a rich abbot, and takes to the woods with a hundred men. He robbed from the rich, castrated any clerics he didn’t like, and was kind to the poor:

But Robbin Hood so gentle was, And bore so brave a minde, If any in distresse did passe, To them he was so kinde That he would give and lend to them, To helpe them at their neede: This made all poore men pray for him, And wish he well might speede. (op cit, lines 73-80)

This other Martin Parker's wasn’t the first account of Robin Hood, but it certainly contains most of the key elements of the narrative that we would recognise nowadays (Holt 1960). An outsider, a criminal, a hero who cared about the poor and showed us what freedom might mean.

The story has, in the globalizing culture of the global North, been something of a touchstone for ideas about the noble robber. A cowed local population, a company of bold men hiding somewhere, and a cruel authority figure. Perhaps most importantly, some idea of stealing from the rich to give to the poor. It is a heroic story of resistance to oppression, and of the justifiable use of violence. An inspiring tale, and one that has been retold in many ways over the centuries through ballads, songs, poems, novels, films, TV series and children’s plastic play sets made in the third world. The names for the goodies and the baddies might alter, but what is consistent is the distribution of power and justice. The people in charge might have the castle, the army, and the money, but the sparking eyed rogues in the shadows have right on their side.

This book begins with Robin Hood because I think that it isn’t merely a children’s fantasy, or an interesting bit of social history or literature, but an enduring story about power, organization, and economics. Built into the narrative is the idea that what one person assumes to be the necessary order of things, another might think of as injustice. Or that crime is what the powerful call any economic activity that damages their interests. Or that a gang can be as organized as an army. The 17th-century Martin Parker does his best not to question the authority of King Charles the First’s power in his poem, preferring to suggest that this is a history, and such events couldn’t happen in these days of ‘plenty, truth and peace’ (line 462). Not a very good prediction, given that Charles was beheaded by revolutionaries 17 years later. This 21st-century Martin Parker has the opposite problem. I want to untame the outlaw, and show that even a blockbuster Hollywood film like the 2010 Robin Hood starring Russell Crowe can be understood as a radical text. I think that these are deeply subversive stories, and that we can find the politics of Robin Hood in many different guises – as pirate, smuggler, highwayman, train robber, bandit, outlaw, Mafiosi, bank robber, jewel thief, revolutionary icon and so on. We can also find the Sheriff of Nottingham of course – as king, captain, detective, policeman, businessman, mayor, banker, general, president, manager and so on. I am interested in these ideas, in these stories, because it seems to me that their ubiquity and endurance tells us something rather important about popular culture, and about political economy. To put it simply, I think that a great deal of popular culture is and has long been hostile to the forms of organization and economy that are contemporary with it. Stories about outlaws, whether in medieval ballad or blockbusting film, appear to fit into this interpretation pretty neatly. Blackbeard, Jesse James, Dick Turpin, Ned Kelly and many, many others reflect a deep suspicion of those in power, and also sometimes present ways of living, and forms of character, which present radical alternatives to the present.

Listen to Professor Parker talking to Peter Dunn about his book: