Travel back to Medieval times with Emma and Juliet this month and see if you can pull the sword from the stone (well, anvil, actually) and assume your place as the true king of England! They dive into T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone from The Once and Future King, usually regarded as the correct version of the novel to read, without realizing until it’s too late that the 1963 film is NOT based on the 1958 novel, but rather the original 1938 version! Which is more different than you might think! World War II changes a man, after all.
Content warnings for The Sword in the Stone include general Medieval vulgarity, lots of droppings and scat just everywhere, a weird praising of Feudalism that comes off as uncomfortably sympathetic to slavery as an institution, 1960s questionable views and anachronisms, and a completely unexpected use of a racial slur.
The articles and interviews Emma references in this episode can be found here:
https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/live-like-a-king-the-60th-anniversary-of-the-sword-in-the-stone/
https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/in-his-own-words-floyd-norman-on-disneys-the-sword-in-the-stone/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zySgUZHDNM
https://www.hoganmag.com/blog/seldom-re-peeted-the-bill-peet-interview
https://thecityoflostbooks.glasgow.ac.uk/t-h-white-the-sword-in-the-stone/
https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/mad-madam-mim/
Emma can be found on twitter at @ematsca and on bluesky @crabmoney.bsky.social. The show can be found on twitter @UnselectPod. Juliet can be found on social media @follypersist on most platforms. Unnatural Selection and Juliet’s show I’ll Be Pod For Castmas are a part of the Moonshot Podcast Network. If you like what you’ve heard and want to support them, you can become a patron at https://www.patreon.com/moonshotnetwork
The music for this show was composed by Jake Loranger. You can find more of his work at https://amaranthine.bandcamp.co
