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Introduction

2008; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 41; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/are.2008.0009

1080-6504

Kristen Day,

Cinema and Media Studies

Introduction1 Kirsten Day The past thirty years have seen a growing scholarly interest in examining films with a classical focus, a movement more or less initiated by Jon Solomon's 1978 study The Ancient World in the Cinema. This trend gained momentum in the 1990s with the publication of Martin Winkler's Classics and Cinema (1991) and Maria Wyke's Projecting the Past (1997). Since then, a steady stream of books and articles on classics in the cinema has appeared, along with an increasing number of panels on this topic at academic conferences.2 Classical themes have enjoyed a corresponding revival of popularity at the box office, touched off by the success of Ridley Scott's Gladiator in 2000. The small screen followed suit with miniseries like John Kent Harrison's 2003 Helen of Troy and serial dramas such as HBO's Rome (2005–07). The success of Gladiator and its influence on subsequent big and small screen productions have energized the critical study of classical antiquity and visual media, while providing classicists with new material [End Page 1] for analysis. Today the study of the representation of classical antiquity in pop culture has grown into a vigorous sub-field of classics and is increasingly recognized as a legitimate means of exploring our past in relation to the present. Despite the relatively secure place currently enjoyed by film and media studies within the broader field of classics, the road has been rocky and far from uncontroversial. As early as 1915, B. L. Ullman, associate editor of Classical Weekly, recognized the potential importance of the analysis of filmic connections to the field of classics: "There is no question that the cinematograph is to become an even more important factor than it is . . . As classical teachers, let us seize an opportunity." While Ullman admits that there is much in filmic representations of the classics that is inaccurate, "on the whole," he concludes, "they are worth while, and one should not hesitate to make use of them" because "the cause of the Classics will be greatly benefited, for the people as a whole will become familiar with classical life and history."3 Even with this early endorsement, interest in film in classics was long hindered by the notion of a divide between high culture, where most classicists traditionally situate the objects of their study, and low, a label that many academics, at least in years past, would assign to filmic production because of the newness of the medium, its reproducibility, and its popular appeal. Although some scholars persist in this view,4 the compulsion to build walls between ancient and modern, high and low, continues to diminish. And while contemporary film criticism does attempt to distinguish serious movies from frivolous ones, the clarity and value of such distinctions are hotly debated. At the same time, interest among classicists in ancient topics previously considered unworthy of serious study—such as Greek novels, erotic epigrams, and graffiti—has worked to erode the lines between high and low from within. As a result, classicists are gradually distancing themselves from the high/low dichotomy and coming to recognize the value [End Page 2] of exploring the representation of classical antiquity in cinema regardless of artistic merit. As James Clauss's essay in this volume illustrates, even the most seemingly absurd revisions of ancient myth in film often utilize intersections between past and present that touch on concerns and anxieties common to ancient and modern audiences alike. Another sticking point for many classicists is what we tend to see as the "corruption" of classical material in modern reworkings: despite the flexible attitudes of the Greeks and Romans, who readily accepted variant versions of myths, adapted old stories, and presented histories in the spirit of the truth rather than with complete factual accuracy, modern classicists often view the liberties taken by popular culture with ancient material with a condescending sense of horror. Those of us who tend towards this position might bear in mind that the Greeks, too, introduced a new medium—one whose appeal, like that of film, cut across the demographic spectrum—through which traditional narratives could be communicated: drama. In drama, myths were transformed, partly...