Cut to: myself, a few years ago, in a small seminar room - surrounded by old books and a thick copy of Le Morte d'Arthur in front of each one of us.
Our lecturer asks us: why do people find Arthurian legends so fascinating? What's so special about them? Why do storytellers keep coming back to them?
We gave several answers, among them being that they are iconic, that they represent the British 'knighthood' and values, that they're among the classics in world mythology. That they feature a hero - a British Hercules of some sort, if you want. That it's a tale of bravery, loyalty and great adventure.
Yes, yes, all valid points, yes. But you know what makes people come back to this story, again and again? The answer was much more banal than we expected.
Love triangle. Arthur's queen cheating on him with his best mate Lancelot. The truth is as simple as that - love and jealousy are the core things that evoke the strongest emotions in both readers and storytellers.
I wasn't sure I agreed completely back then, and I'm not 100% convinced yet that love story is the key storytelling driver. After all, there are so many examples, in both literature and cinema, that claim otherwise. Fame, friendship, money, ambition, sense of loyalty and exploration, revenge.
However, recently I've gotten into several conversations about what makes historical films and tv series good. And among countless topics for discussion was that filmmakers often change history or shift focus on certain things to add a bit of drama.
So, teenage-oriented Reign brings in a sexy Francis II and a love triangle, The Tudors spices things up with sex scenes and doesn't linger too long on politics and councillors talks. And even the writer of 1995 Pride and Prejudice adaptation Andrew Davies admits that he wanted an even sexier version of mr Darcy - insisting on Colin Firth jumping into the lake stark naked. Even the 'serious' an 'historical' Wolf Hall features sexed up scenes - which in my opinion were a bit out of place but are rarely pointed out by the viewers and critics, and I mean how practically any 20-something good looking female in the series wanted to hook up with Thomas Cromwell. Alright, that was a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea.
A lot of film critics and general audiences snobbily turn their noses at things like The Tudors, Black Sails and Game of Thrones, claiming the abundance of sex scenes is one of the main reasons why they stopped watching them. To me, that statement says more about the person rather than the series in itself. The very fact that P&P's lake scene has become iconic and gets mentioned in every single interview, review and most of the comments on Facebook by Jane Austen fans, says a lot about what they actually enjoy about the story. Spoiler alert: not the grumpy looks and pretty bonnets.
Marketing people know it. Great film directors and writers know it - but use love stories and sexualization sparingly.
Although love is not the only and the most important part of making a great story, it's a very effective one. Add an affair, or a tinge of sexual scandal to a boring case of a man going up against his boss - that's what Billions did, actually - and you might get an unlikely person interested in reading or watching it.
The 21st century courtship and "new" rules of flirting is what sparked protests and countless conversations online and on TV after Weinstein gate and now the Irish underwear case - much more than the scientists desperately trying to attract our attention to the fact that we're running our of resources and should change our ecological outlook NOW, before it's too late. No, people are more interested in scandal, drama and personal relationships.
Whether we like it or not, stories about love and sexual attraction are some of the most memorable and powerful ones in human history. They inspire the greatest poets and playwrites, and make some of the best films to date. They're eternal, because they explore the one thing that stays the same, no matter what age, country and religion serves as a backdrop - it is about human connection and one of the most important things in our own lives.
„Storytelling is powerful; film particularly. We can know a lot of things intellectually, but humans really live on storytelling. Primarily with ourselves; we're all stories of our own narrative.“
Richard Linklater