Post on 14-May-2023
Screening Love and Sex
in the Ancient World
Edited by
Monica S. Cyrino
pal-cyrino-book.indb iii 1/10/13 10:19 AM
SCREENING LOVE AND SEX IN THE ANCIENT WORLD
Copyright © Monica Cyrino, 2013.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the
United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth
Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of
the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan
Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998,
of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above
companies and has companies and representatives throughout the
world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United
States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN: 978- 1- 137- 29959- 8
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available from
the Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Scribe Inc.
First edition: February 2013
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Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Screening Love and Sex in the Ancient World 1
Monica S. Cyrino
Part 1: Screening Love and Sex in Ancient Myth and Literature
1 G. W. Pabst’s Hesiodic Myth of Sex in
Die Büchse der Pandora (1929) 11
Lorenzo F. Garcia Jr.
2 Kiss Me Deadly (1955): Pandora and Prometheus in
Robert Aldrich’s Cinematic Subversion of Spillane 25
Paula James
3 Perversions of the Phaeacians: The Gothic Odyssey of
Angels & Insects (1996) 39
Meredith Safran
4 Woman Trouble: True Love and Homecoming in
Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver (2006) 55
Corinne Pache
5 Sappho and Pocahontas in Terrence Malick’s
The New World (2005) 69
Seán Easton
6 Soul Fuck: Possession and the Female Body in
Antiquity and in Cinema 85
Kirsten Day
7 Ancient Allusions and Modern Anxieties in
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) 99
Christopher M. McDonough
pal-cyrino-book.indb v 1/10/13 10:19 AM
contentsvi
Part 2: Screening Love and Sex in Ancient History
8 Gorgo at the Limits of Liberation in
Zack Snyder’s 300 (2007) 113
Vincent Tomasso
9 Oliver Stone’s Unmanning of Alexander the
Great in Alexander (2004) 127
Jerry B. Pierce
10 The Order of Orgies: Sex and the Cinematic Roman 143
Stacie Raucci
11 Partnership and Love in Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010) 157
Antony Augoustakis
12 Objects of Desire: Female Gazes and Male Bodies
in Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010) 167
Anise K. Strong
13 Glenn Close Channels Theda Bara in Maxie (1985):
A Chapter in the Social History of the Snake Bra 183
Gregory N. Daugherty
14 Virility and Licentiousness in
Rome’s Mark Antony (2005– 7) 195
Rachael Kelly
15 Love, Rebellion, and Cleavage: Boadicea’s Hammered
Breastplate in The Viking Queen (1967) 211
Alison Futrell
16 Subverting Sex and Love in
Alejandro Amenábar’s Agora (2009) 227
Joanna Paul
Filmography 243
Bibliography 247
List of Contributors 263
Index 267
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Illustrations
1.1 A blackmail note written on a newspaper photograph
of Lulu (Louise Brooks) in Die Büchse der Pandora
(1929). Süd- Film. 14
2.1 Christina (Cloris Leachman) strikes an arresting Pandora
pose in the headlamps of an oncoming car in Kiss Me Deadly (1955). United Artists. 29
3.1 Eugenia (Patsy Kensit) channels Aphrodite to seduce
William (Mark Rylance) in Angels & Insects (1996).
Samuel Goldwyn Company. 45
4.1 Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) sings a song of homecoming
in Volver (2006). Sony Pictures Classics. 65
5.1 Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher) considers the nature
of love in The New World (2005). New Line Cinema. 74
6.1 The Oracle (Kelly Craig) in an ecstatic frenzy in Zack
Snyder’s 300 (2007). Warner Bros. 90
7.1 Adam Pontipee (Howard Keel) uses Plutarch to explain
gender relations in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954).
Metro- Goldwyn- Mayer. 101
8.1 Gorgo (Lena Headey) penetrates Theron (Dominic
West) in 300 (2007). Warner Bros. 120
9.1 Alexander (Colin Farrell) receives a shoulder massage
from Hephaestion (Jared Leto) in Alexander (2004).
Warner Bros. 134
10.1 Agrippa (Allen Leech) lectures Maecenas (Alex Wyndham)
on the impropriety of attending an orgy in Rome (2007).
HBO- BBC. 151
11.1 Pietros (Eka Darville) and Barca (Antonio Te Maioha)
enjoy an intimate moment in Spartacus: Blood and Sand
(2010). Starz. 161
12.1 Ilithyia (Viva Bianca) takes possession of Crixus (Manu
Bennett) in Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010). Starz. 174
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illustrationsviii
13.1 “Maxie” (Glenn Close) wears Cleopatra’s snake bra in
Maxie (1985), as an uncredited Harry Hamlin watches.
Orion Pictures. 188
14.1 Antony (James Purefoy) ignores his twin children by
Cleopatra (Lyndsey Marshal) in Rome (2007).
HBO- BBC. 206
15.1 Salina (Carita) takes on the breastplate of Boadicean
destiny in The Viking Queen (1967). Twentieth
Century Fox. 222
16.1 Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) attempts to save the Library’s
scrolls in Agora (2009). Focus Features/Newmarket
Films. 235
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Acknowledgments
My sincerest thanks to Cynthia Miller for her inspiration and support
at the outset of this adventure. I’d like to thank the organizers and
participants of the November 2010 Film and History Conference in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sponsored by the Center for Film and His-
tory at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, and the organizers and
participants of the July 2011 Cinema and Antiquity: 2000– 2011 J. P.
Postgate Colloquium in Liverpool, UK, sponsored by the University
of Liverpool, for constructive critical feedback on the papers and pre-
sentations that eventually became chapters of this book.
At Palgrave Macmillan in New York, I’m grateful to my editor,
Robyn Curtis, and her editorial assistant, Desiree Browne, for their
professional expertise and encouragement in seeing this project to
fruition. My gratitude also goes to the anonymous readers whose
comments, insights, and suggestions immeasurably improved the
scholarly work presented herein.
This volume was completed with a generous grant of funding from
Walter Putnam, Chairman of the Department of Foreign Languages
and Literatures at the University of New Mexico, and I thank him for
seeing the importance of supporting this work.
Most of all I’d like to thank my sixteen brilliant and screen- savvy
contributors, whose enthusiastic participation, patience, flexibility,
collegiality, and good humor made this project a joy to complete.
And finally, my heartfelt appreciation goes to Brian, Stevie, Chloe,
and Lucy for always reminding me what is real, and to whom I dedi-
cate this volume with love.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
July 2012
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4
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Screening Love and Sex
in the Ancient World
Monica S. Cyrino
Love and sex attracted the earliest filmmakers to screen the mythol-
ogy, literature, and history of the ancient world. Images and narratives
of torrid romance, provocative sexualities, and erotic excess have been
a mainstay of screen depictions of ancient Greece and Rome since the
beginning of cinema in the early twentieth century. Vibrant scenes
of baths, orgies, and brothels were first borrowed from nineteenth-
century paintings, photographic tableaux vivants, and stage plays, and
given new life in the nascent medium of film, and then they were later
reanimated on ancient- themed television series. By seizing the oppor-
tunity to exhibit scantily clad dancing girls and bare- chested muscle
men mingling with pagan abandon at bacchanals, banquets, and
gladiator games, cinematic entrepreneurs are able to satisfy both their
artistic and commercial senses. Characters, themes, and plots centered
on romance and sexuality continue to appear in the most recent recre-
ations of antiquity in blockbuster movies and on premium cable tele-
vision. Today, filmmakers and television producers regularly return
to classical antiquity as a persistent, powerful source of historical, lit-
erary, and mythological models for representing sexuality— its prob-
lems, pleasures, and intimate link to gender roles— to be celebrated
on the screen, as well as for negative paradigms to be confronted,
censured, or covertly savored.
Screening the history, imagined and “real,” of famous ancient bat-
tles and political intrigues has always been infused with a heavy dose of
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Monica S. Cyrino2
love and sex. Although the notorious— and visually titillating— sexual
debauchery of ancient Rome has especially captivated filmmakers
throughout the first century of cinema and television, the complicated
erotic inclinations of the ancient Greeks have also received screen
time. The artistic preference for screening antiquity as a time of sexual
exploration and excitement— where the lack of erotic inhibition is set
against the rise of powerful warriors, politicians, and femmes fatales, as well as the birth of great empires and their eventual decay and
destruction— has provided the historical framework for literally hun-
dreds of films and television programs set in the ancient Greek and
Roman worlds. From the various cinematic versions of Cleopatra as
a spectacle of sex and power (such as Cecil B. DeMille’s in 1934 and
Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s in 1963), to the eye- popping exposure of
buff male physicality in Zack Snyder’s 300 (2007), to the recent cable
television adaptation of the Spartacus story with its unparalleled dis-
play of graphic nudity, sex, and violence (Spartacus: Blood and Sand
on Starz, 2010), these recreations transport the viewer back to an
imagined ancient world brimming with enormous romantic passions
and sexual appetites. While purporting to offer a morally edifying
illustration of the dangers of overreaching power and erotic license,
the process of screening antiquity has at the same time allowed film-
makers and television producers to exploit the audience’s pervasive
and prurient fascination with the unbridled and alluring sexualities of
the ancient Greeks and Romans. Modern fascination with and anxi-
eties about love and sex are thereby projected back vividly onto the
ancient world onscreen.
Along with ancient historical accounts, the narratives and motifs of
classical mythology and literature have also provided a wide range of
thematic material for filmmakers and television producers to engage
with topics of love and sexuality, gender and power, erotic desire and
jealousy, loss and reunion. In using the archetypal characters and plot
outlines from ancient myth and literature, rather than strict “history,”
writers and directors find themselves more free to adapt stories and
images of romance and sexuality to the screen, often locating them
in a temporal setting far removed from antiquity, or even in the mod-
ern day. For example, the Greek myth of the first woman, Pandora,
together with the erotic danger she brought to mankind, has inspired
the cinematic narratives of numerous films, from the silent film clas-
sic of consuming female sexuality in G. W. Pabst’s Die Büchse der Pandora (1929), to the evocative name of the lush tropical moon,
Pandora, lethal but valuable to humans, in James Cameron’s futuris-
tic adventure Avatar (2009), while the epic tale of Homer’s Odyssey,
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Screening Love and Sex in the Ancient World 3
with its exotic, sexually adventurous travel narrative embedded within
a frame of enduring conjugal love, has been reimagined countless
times in films such as Mervyn LeRoy’s romantic drama, Homecom-ing (1948), the Coen brothers’ caper comedy, O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), and Anthony Minghella’s Civil War love story, Cold
Mountain (2003). Films like these allow viewers to enjoy the essence
of an ancient literary work or myth distilled into its most basic narra-
tive and authentic archetypal paradigms of love, sexuality, and gender
that resonate deeply with the contemporary world. Moreover, since
these films are not bound by any obligation to recreate a genuine
ancient setting or a precise historical context, the filmmaker can take a
more direct and innovative approach to the timeless themes and char-
acters, just as the ancient authors and mythographers did.
This volume of essays has the ambitious aim of engaging with these
two reception strands for screening love and sex in the ancient world,
both the mythic/literary approach, and the historical one; in doing
so, the chapters seek to demonstrate the importance of understanding
the many different ways in which filmmakers and television produc-
ers use the past to explore contemporary issues of love and sexuality.
In 16 original and compelling essays, the contributors to this proj-
ect address the question of how love and sex are portrayed in films
that refer to the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, either directly in
the context of ancient history, or indirectly through allusion to clas-
sical mythology and literature. These 16 chapters are organized into
two sections: the first half focuses on films that evoke characters and
themes from ancient myths and literature, and the second half deals
with onscreen representations of subjects rooted (more or less) in his-
torical accounts from antiquity. While the division reveals productive
connections between separate analyses, it is also somewhat arbitrary:
where does the boundary between myth and history break down? The
ancient Romans themselves viewed the foundational legend of the
Rape of the Sabine Women as something close to sacred history, while
the historical Battle of Thermopylae (in 480 B.C.), where three hun-
dred elite Spartan warriors gave their lives to hold off the invading
Persian force, was quickly mythologized in its own time by the ancient
Greeks who saw it as a conflict between Civilization and Barbarism.
Historical figures like Spartacus, the gladiator who led a slave rebel-
lion against Rome (in 73– 71 B.C.), and Boudicca, the warrior queen
of the Britons who fiercely opposed Roman military occupation (in
A.D. 61), have been romanticized by freedom- fighters as iconic sym-
bols of resistance against oppression down through the centuries and
in various cultural contexts up to the present day. Yet, as the essays in
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Monica S. Cyrino4
this volume show, the sometimes murky space between mythology
and history can be creatively negotiated by the themes of love and
sexuality when the ancient world is recreated onscreen.
Within the volume, and crossing over between the two sections,
the individual essays offer a great deal of diversity in subject matter—
chronology, genre of production, onscreen medium— just as they
utilize a variety of critical methodologies for analysis. There is a bal-
ance between films dealing with ancient Greece and those involving
ancient Rome, with both cultures of antiquity represented in each
section— myth and history— of the volume. In their essays, the con-
tributors examine a broad array of films and television programs,
starting from the silent film era and going all the way up to the most
recent cable television series, with discussions of numerous films from
several decades in between, while the type of productions they cover
include both art- house and independent films, as well as epics and
blockbusters. Many of the contributors are well- known scholars in the
area of classical receptions on film and television, but the volume also
showcases a number of exciting new voices who add fresh perspectives
to the conversation. The volume should be of great appeal and profes-
sional benefit to a wide range of scholars, teachers, students, and fans
of film and television, and it will be of particular interest to researchers
in the fields of classics, film studies, popular culture and media, and
the history of human sexuality.
Part 1 considers several films that draw their inspiration from
ancient mythological or literary characters, plots, and motifs to explore
the themes of love and sex onscreen. The first two chapters deal with
two early films (1929 and 1955) that allude to the figure of Pandora,
the first female who appears in Greek “myth- time,” and her relation-
ship to the males around her. In Chapter 1, “G. W. Pabst’s Hesiodic
Myth of Sex in Die Büchse der Pandora (1929),” Lorenzo F. Garcia
Jr. establishes the fact that Greek myths about erotic passion and sexu-
ality infiltrated the modern cinema from its beginnings in the silent
film industry. Garcia examines the way Pabst uses the iconic image of
Hesiod’s Pandora to associate female sexuality with economic produc-
tion and fertility; he argues that the character of the femme fatale Lulu
is ultimately exposed, just like Pandora’s emptied box of evils, as a
barren and unproductive commodity. In Chapter 2, “Kiss Me Deadly (1955): Pandora and Prometheus in Robert Aldrich’s Cinematic Sub-
version of Spillane,” Paula James joins Pandora with Prometheus,
the culture hero in the Hesiodic creation myth who brought fire to
humans and punishment on himself, to analyze the classic film noir
based on the mystery novel. James raises important questions about
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Screening Love and Sex in the Ancient World 5
gender roles and biases evident in the mid- century cinema, as she
explores how Aldrich updates the ancient myth of female duplicity
and male fallibility to reflect contemporary anxieties about nuclear
technologies in the 1950s.
The next two chapters investigate the nature of conjugal love and
fidelity as well as the themes of separation, return, and reunion, as
portrayed in Homer’s epic poem, the Odyssey, and how these par-
ticular motifs manifest themselves in two recent films. In Chapter 3,
“Perversions of the Phaeacians: The Gothic Odyssey of Angels & Insects (1996),” Meredith Safran elucidates how director Philip Haas
distilled Homeric material from the novella on which the film is based
(A. S. Byatt’s “Morpho Eugenia,” 1992) and made these images
and ideas explicit onscreen in his gothic sexual morality tale. Safran’s
analysis juxtaposes the characters of Homer’s Odysseus and the film’s
William Adamson and considers the film’s alternative plot scenario
where the protagonist is enticed to choose a profitable and pleasurable
marriage abroad rather than the delayed gratification of homecom-
ing. In Chapter 4, “Woman Trouble: True Love and Homecoming
in Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver (2006),” Corinne Pache argues that the
film, while perhaps not directly influenced by the Odyssey, is subtly
and ingeniously engaged with the epic’s foremost themes of memory,
identity, and return. Pache introduces another early Greek poem, the
Homeric Hymn to Demeter, to illuminate how Almodóvar’s film offers
a radical feminization of the male heroism implicit in the Odyssey’s journey and homecoming themes— one that privileges female familial
bonds over those of romantic or conjugal love.
The last three chapters of the first section look at films inspired by
classical Greek and Latin literary topics and motifs centered on love,
gender, and sexuality. In Chapter 5, “Sappho and Pocahontas in Ter-
rence Malick’s The New World (2005),” Seán Easton sifts through the
literary allusions underlying the film’s presentation of the legendary
love affair between Pocahontas and John Smith during the found-
ing of the Jamestown colony. While critics have noted that the film
is rooted in the male- centered, classical epic tradition, Easton dem-
onstrates how Malick integrates the verses of the archaic Greek love
poet, Sappho, to develop a model of female erotic consciousness that
serves to foreground Pocahontas as the protagonist of the film. In
Chapter 6, “Soul Fuck: Possession and the Female Body in Antiq-
uity and in Cinema,” Kirsten Day surveys several contemporary films,
from The Exorcist (1973) to Paranormal Activity (2009), that portray
female characters in the throes of supernatural or demonic possession
and links them to ancient Roman literary accounts of the prophetic
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Monica S. Cyrino6
possession of female mediums. Describing these scenes as “spiritual
rape,” Day explains how the comparison with ancient depictions of
female possession exposes the sexualized representation of women’s
bodies on film as vessels to be controlled and manipulated for male pur-
poses. Last, in Chapter 7, “Ancient Allusions and Modern Anxieties in
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954),” Christopher M. McDonough
investigates the way Stanley Donen’s colorful film not only follows the
gender and genre conventions of the 1950s Hollywood musical but
also reflects those same conventions in classical literary accounts of the
Rape of the Sabine Women. As a cinematic commentary on gender
relations in mid- century America, McDonough shows how the film
cannily evokes male anxiety and female ambivalence about marriage
using the ancient tale of the early Romans’ abduction of their wives.
Part 2 of this volume presents discussions of films and television
series set, or imagined to take place, in the “real time” of ancient his-
tory; these chapters consider how the themes and images of love and
sexuality manifest themselves against the background of the genuine
(or what is presumed to be) historical record of antiquity. The first
two chapters in the second section focus on films set in the ancient
Greek world. In Chapter 8, “Gorgo at the Limits of Liberation in
Zack Snyder’s 300 (2007),” Vincent Tomasso evaluates the strong,
independent figure of the Spartan queen, Gorgo, as portrayed in the
recent blockbuster film, to outline the challenges of trying to depict
the sexuality and personal autonomy of historical female characters
in screening the ancient world. Tomasso intertwines ancient mate-
rial with modern reception theory to pose the vital question of how
popular representations of the ancient world should deal with the
historical realities of gender relations in antiquity and yet reconcile
them with the more progressive views held by contemporary society.
In Chapter 9, “Oliver Stone’s Unmanning of Alexander the Great in
Alexander (2004),” Jerry B. Pierce describes how the ancient epic
cinema sets up the male lead as a powerful standard of masculinity by
emphasizing tropes such as his moral fortitude and his familial and
sexual bonds, while depicting male antagonists as weak and feminized.
Against this conventional representation, however, Pierce argues that
Stone’s film presents an emotionally and sexually enfeebled Alexan-
der, whose character is drawn more like that of a villain or a tyrant,
thereby undermining the heroism of the historical figure the director
claimed he sought to portray.
The next three chapters deal explicitly with themes and images
of love and sexuality in representations of the ancient Roman world
in film and, especially, on television. In Chapter 10, “The Order of
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Screening Love and Sex in the Ancient World 7
Orgies: Sex and the Cinematic Roman,” Stacie Raucci presents a
detailed overview of several orgy scenes in films and television series
set in ancient Rome and elucidates how such onscreen depictions
of sex in ancient Roman settings allow modern viewers to examine
their own sexualities. Raucci sets up a distinction between “orderly”
and “chaotic” orgies, which reveals the tension between the narra-
tive purpose of the orgy scene— to indicate the more moral character
with whom the audience should identify— and the audience’s ability
to enjoy without restraint the spectacle of onscreen erotic decadence.
In Chapter 11, “Partnership and Love in Spartacus: Blood and Sand
(2010),” Antony Augoustakis makes the case for the major thematic
significance of love as portrayed in its many permutations during the
first season of the recent original television series on Starz. Joining
the concepts of love and heroism as the driving force of the narrative,
Augoustakis offers a close reading of how the relationships portrayed
on Spartacus influence the characters’ individual development, and
he demonstrates the way the series unites the themes of sex and love,
rather than setting them in opposition. In Chapter 12, “Objects of
Desire: Female Gazes and Male Bodies in Spartacus: Blood and Sand
(2010),” Anise K. Strong employs feminist and queer theory to show
how the Spartacus series develops a female- positive representation
of sexual relations that inverts conventional cinematic and televisual
depictions of erotic relationships and the objectification of women. In
assessing the female characters’ sexual dominance and agency, as well
as the mechanisms at work in the “female gaze,” Strong explains how
Spartacus explores the nature of social hierarchies and the corruption
of slave- owning societies.
The following two chapters look at onscreen appearances of two of
the most familiar celebrities from the annals of ancient history, Cleopatra
and Mark Antony, who were also (notoriously) lovers. In Chapter 13,
“Glenn Close Channels Theda Bara in Maxie (1985): A Chapter in the
Social History of the Snake Bra,” Gregory N. Daugherty takes a film
not usually on the radar screen in studies of Cleopatra receptions and
locates it on a multimedia trajectory of numerous popular Cleopatras.
In a close examination of one noteworthy scene in the film, Daugherty
shows how certain costuming details, and in particular the metallic snake
bra, visually invoke the sexy image of the Egyptian queen to suggest her
silent film heyday as a Vamp rather than her classical past. In Chapter 14,
“Virility and Licentiousness in Rome’s Mark Antony (2005– 7),” Rachael
Kelly situates the onscreen figure of Mark Antony within a long his-
tory of patriarchal anxiety about the depiction of hegemonic maleness.
Using masculinity studies and feminist film theory, Kelly interprets the
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Monica S. Cyrino8
character’s sexual availability on the HBO- BBC series Rome as the narra-
tive and visual embodiment of his “deficient masculinity,” as she unpacks
the ambiguities inherent in the terms “licentiousness” and “virility” and
suggests that the concept of fatherhood serves as a signifier of successful
masculine performance in the series.
The last two chapters of this section explore the narratives of two
extraordinary historical women from the ancient world— Boudicca, the
Briton queen, and Hypatia, the Alexandrian teacher and astronomer—
and how the cinematic receptions of their stories engage with themes
of love, gender, and sexuality. In Chapter 15, “Love, Rebellion, and
Cleavage: Boadicea’s Hammered Breastplate in The Viking Queen
(1967),” Alison Futrell surveys the history of the Boudiccan Revolt
against Rome and the various receptions of the figure before turning
to an analysis of the story as portrayed in the lurid screen production
from Hammer Studios. Locating the film in the tradition of “barbarian
queen” portrayals and revisionist Hammer tales of female leadership,
Futrell describes how the film deploys the normative female- gendered
tropes of star- crossed romance, familial loyalty, and feminine sacrifice
to complicate— and ultimately doom— the rebel queen’s author-
ity. Finally, in Chapter 16, “Subverting Sex and Love in Alejandro
Amenábar’s Agora (2009),” Joanna Paul considers the bold innova-
tion of Agora among ancient epic films for its setting in late antiquity,
its nuanced depiction of religion and intellectual culture, and most
significant, its presentation of the scholar Hypatia as a woman who is
not primarily defined by her male romantic or familial relationships.
Paul argues that the film’s originality lies in its use of the central female
character to subvert epic cinematic conventions concerning love and
sex, while it positions her brutal murder by zealots (in A.D. 415) as a
symbol of the demise of the classical world.
When it comes to screening the universal themes of romance and
sexuality, those films and television series based on the history, litera-
ture, and mythology of the ancient world have always succeeded in
arousing audience expectations, anxieties, and desires. The essays in
this volume offer a distinctive focus on the issues of love and sex that
have always been— and will continue to be— so prominent in screen-
ings of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, as they contribute to
the fruitful ongoing dialogue between scholars, critics, and fans of the
films and television series that recreate antiquity onscreen.
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4
P a r t 1
Screening Love and Sex in
Ancient Myth and Literature
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4
C h a p t e r 1
G. W. Pabst’s Hesiodic Myth of Sex
in D I E B Ü C H S E D E R P A N D O R A ( 1929)
Lorenzo F. Garcia Jr.
G. W. Pabst’s late silent era masterpiece depicts Louise Brooks as
Lulu, a beautiful young woman whose unfettered sexuality leads to
the ruin of those men and women who fall under her erotic sway.1 She
is described as “Pandora” by the prosecutor at her husband’s murder
trial and is condemned by the court, made an outlaw of the legal sys-
tem in all its patriarchic glory. In critical work on Pabst’s film, many
scholars have drawn a connection between Lulu and the Pandora of
Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days2 to elucidate the film’s mytho-
logical background. Karin Littau (1995), Laura Mulvey (1996), and
Maree Macmillan (2010) trace Lulu back to the mythological figure of
Pandora to analyze how a figure associated with agricultural fertility—
Pandora the “all giver”— becomes a femme fatale who takes men’s
goods and in return provides only evils— Pandora the “all given.”3
The precise emphasis on fertility in the Pandora myth, however, has
not been sufficiently read into Pabst’s film or Frank Wedekind’s earlier
play Pandora’s Box, which Pabst drew on.
In this chapter I argue that Pabst and Wedekind’s misogynist
visions of Lulu’s vibrant sexuality echo a tradition first stated in Hes-
iod’s poetry. According to Hesiod’s theory of sexual economy, later
constitutive of Western concepts of gendered power relations, nonpro-
ductive female sexuality is depicted as pure expenditure without profit
(Theogony 592– 602). Only through productive sexual relations does
the female body make a return on male investment of labor. Hesiod’s
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Lorenzo F. Garcia Jr.12
“Pandora” symbolizes both the destructive and the valuable poten-
tial of sexual relations, since Pandora is the source of both mortality
itself— namely, labor, old age, disease, and death (Works and Days 42– 48, 90– 105)— and the unborn child “Hope” (Works and Days 93)
that remains within her jar- like uterus. The demise of Pabst’s Lulu,
then, signals a kind of patriarchal punishment of Lulu’s failure to be a
productive investment instead of a wasteful expenditure.
Pabst and Wedekind: The Image of Lulu
G. W. Pabst’s screenplay (cowritten by Ladislaus Vajda) is based on
the five- act “Monstertragedy” (Eine Monstretragödie) by Frank Wede-
kind, written between 1892 and 18954 but later divided into Erdgeist “Earth Spirit” (1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora “Pandora’s Box”
(first published 1902, but continually revised under threat of cen-
sorship until 1913).5 Early performances of the plays featured Wede-
kind himself as Dr. Schön/Jack the Ripper and Tilly Newes, whom
Wedekind would later wed, as Lulu.6 Pabst’s script recombines the
two plays into a single work as Wedekind originally intended, but it
condenses the plot at many points and expands at others. Lulu’s three
marriages in Wedekind’s plays— to Dr. Goll, the painter Schwartz, and
the newspaper editor Dr. Schön— are reduced to a single marriage in
Pabst’s film, though that marriage is made paradigmatic so as to stand
in for others.7 Pabst innovates at several points, such as the courtroom
scene where Lulu is tried for Dr. Schön’s murder, a scene that does
not appear in Wedekind’s plays.
Although Pabst’s Pandora’s Box is well known in cinema studies,
it is less so for those who study classics, so I provide a brief plot sum-
mary. As the film begins, Lulu (Louise Brooks) is visited by Dr. Schön
(Fritz Kortner), her lover and the editor of a widely distributed news-
paper, because he wants to break off their relations so he can maintain
public respectability and marry the daughter of an important govern-
ment official (Daisy D’Ora). Lulu rejects the breakup; “You’ll have to
kill me to get rid of me,” she says,8 and she seduces Schön beneath a
painting of herself.
In the second act, Schön’s son, Alwa (Franz Lederer), is producing
a dance revue with costumes designed by Countess Geschwitz (Alice
Roberts), “who is clearly represented as a woman defined by mas-
culine features.”9 Alwa and Geschwitz look at sketches of costumed
women; Lulu enters and insists Geschwitz design costumes for her;
Alwa and Geschwitz gaze at her with desire.10 Schön and Alwa vie
with one another over Lulu. Schön authorizes Alwa to include Lulu
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G. W. Pabst’s Hesiodic Myth of Sex 13
in his revue and promises his paper will make it a success. Father and
son bond over the exchange of Lulu as sexual object and as image fig-
ured in Geschwitz’s drawings, and they part with Schön’s paternalistic
advice: “Beware of that woman!”11
The third act takes place backstage at Alwa’s production. Schön
attends the opening with his fiancée, and they both catch sight of
Lulu; when Lulu spies Schön with his fiancée, she refuses to perform
(“I’ll dance for the world, but not for that woman”).12 Instead, Lulu
stages her own drama in which she seduces Schön in front of his fiancée
and son. When the pair sees Lulu and Schön kissing, Lulu smiles at
her victory and returns onstage.13 The act ends with Schön telling
Alwa that he must now marry Lulu.
Schön marries Lulu only to find she is unfaithful to him, and his
house and bedroom are filled with hidden lovers. Schön reestab-
lishes his authority by the obvious phallic gesture of drawing a pistol
to chase out would- be lovers, and then he tries to force Lulu to
shoot herself, as he claims, “so that she does not make him a mur-
derer as well.”14 In an ensuing struggle, Schön is shot and dies. Lulu
is tried for Schön’s murder. The prosecutor’s argument explicitly
compares Lulu to the mythological figure of Pandora: “Your honors,
and gentlemen of the jury! The Greek gods created a woman— Pandora.
She was beautiful and charming, and versed in the art of flattery . . . But
the gods also gave her a box containing all the evils of the world. The
heedless woman opened the box, and all evil was loosed upon us . . .
Counsel, you portray the accused as a persecuted innocent. I call her
Pandora, for through her all evil was brought upon Dr. Schön! . . .
The arguments of the defense counsel do not sway me in the least. I
demand the death penalty!”15 Lulu is found guilty and flees from the law.
Driven by the consequences of her polyandry from respect-
able society to an illicit gambling boat somewhere in Paris, Lulu
is blackmailed by men who know she is hiding from the police. In
particular, Marquis Casti- Piani (Michael von Newlinsky) recognizes
Lulu from a newspaper photograph; when he learns he can make
more money by selling her into sexual slavery, he speaks with an
Egyptian slaver, showing him photographs of Lulu in various cos-
tumes. Lulu escapes the gambling ship dressed in the outfit of a
young sailor she has seduced, and she flees once again to the red-
light district of London. In London she becomes a streetwalker to
support herself, Alwa, and her pimp/father figure Schigolch (Carl
Goetz); she is murdered on Christmas Eve in a violent encounter
with a “John” who turns out to be Jack the Ripper (Gustav Diessl).
Alwa meets Jack leaving Lulu’s ramshackle London flat, and the
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Lorenzo F. Garcia Jr.14
two men walk off separately into the foggy London night, “like
men leaving the cinema . . . the sort of cinema that caters for men
in raincoats.”16
The film revolves around Lulu and her relations with men, or in
the case of the lesbian Geschwitz, a woman in a “masculine” relation
to Lulu. The relationships between Lulu and her masculine others are
specifically coded in terms of an exchange of money for visual plea-
sure.17 From the first shot of Lulu in the film— when Louise Brooks
appears framed in an open doorway— Lulu is marked as “image.”18
As noted in the summary, Lulu appears everywhere as “image”: she
seduces Schön beneath a painting of herself; Geschwitz, Alwa, and
Schön exchange sketches of her in costume; Casti- Piani recognizes
her from a photograph and later barters with a slave- trafficker over
photos of her. Lulu’s image captivates: throughout the film Brooks is
shot in soft- focus, softly lit close- ups, lifted from the background and
set in an imaginary space of pure fantasy.19 Her body is shiny: skin,
eyes, teeth, hair, and costume are highlighted with soft backlighting,
essentially fetishized by tricks of illumination.20 Schön’s name implies
a “would- be Renaissance aesthete,” and the artwork throughout his
home betrays his attraction to images.21 Lulu is captivated by her own
image, especially when she gazes at herself in a large mirror as she
takes off her wedding gown.22 In Wedekind’s play, Lulu and Alwa
speak about her reflection:
Figure 1.1 A blackmail note written on a newspaper photograph of Lulu (Louise
Brooks) in Die Büchse der Pandora (1929). Süd- Film.
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G. W. Pabst’s Hesiodic Myth of Sex 15
Lulu: Looking at myself in the mirror I wished I were a man . . . my
own husband.
Alwa: You envy your husband the happiness you offer him.23
Even in death, Lulu remains image: in an extreme close- up as she
sits on Jack’s lap, Lulu’s face appears like a waning moon;24 the glow
of her face is matched only by that of the knife on the table as Jack
surveys her body.
At a key moment in Pabst’s film, Lulu’s trial, a scene wholly
invented by Pabst, Lulu is once more rendered an image. A defen-
dant dressed all in black, Lulu is the negative image of the veiled
bride she played in the preceding scene. She is gazed on by judges,
news reporters, and a full spectator galley. Photographers snap pic-
tures; artists sketch her. All the while, the prosecutor glares at her,
wearing a monocle that recalls Schön’s eye- piece: this is the paternal-
istic gaze that condemns Lulu.25 It is at this very moment that she is
identified with “Pandora.”
Pandora is the protofemale of Greek thought, created for men by
the gods.26 The economy of the image is a trope particularly at home
in the mythopoetic tradition of Pandora, as I detail in the next section.
The iconic dimension of Pandora has been well noted in scholarship
on Pabst’s film. What has been less noted is a secondary economy
underlying both mythological accounts of Pandora and Lulu: labor
and (re)productivity.
Hesiod’s Pandora: Exchange, Agricultural
Labor, and Sexual (Re)production
In the Theogony and Works and Days, Hesiod associates the creation of
the first woman, Pandora, with mankind’s mortality and need to work
for sustenance. In Hesiod’s works Pandora is created by the craft- god
Hephaestus as a punishment for Prometheus’s transgressions against
the gods on mankind’s behalf: Prometheus first deceives Zeus with
an unfair distribution of sacrificial offerings (Theogony 535– 60; Works and Days 47– 48) and then steals fire from the gods to give to men
(Theogony 561– 69; Works and Days 50– 52).27
Pandora appears in the context of exchange, both the sacrifice
offered to the gods and the price Zeus demands for fire, that marks
a fundamental separation between mankind and the gods; Pandora’s
advent signals the rupture between men and gods.28 According to the
logic of Hesiod’s account, then, before Pandora men lived without
labor, disease, and old age (Works and Days 90– 93):29
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Lorenzo F. Garcia Jr.16
For before this, the races of men used to live on earth
far away and apart from evils and apart from hard toil
and painful diseases, which gave death to men.
A wretched life ages men before their time.
In this prelapsarian vision of human life before Pandora and the need
for sexual reproduction,30 the earth once produced of its own accord,
without need for human labor (Works and Days 112– 18):
They [= men] used to live like gods, with a carefree heart,
far away and apart from toil and misery. Nor at all was wretched
old age upon them, but always the same with respect to their feet
and hands
they took pleasure in feasts, outside of all evils.
They died as if overcome by sleep. All good things
were available for them. The life- giving plow land bore fruit
of its own accord— a great deal of it, unstintingly.
Hesiod imagines men living like gods before the anger of Zeus and
the advent of Pandora: their “carefree” life is described in terms of
distance from “evils” (113, 115): care, toil, misery, old age. The earth
was exuberantly fertile without added labor; man had only to gather
and eat what the earth produced of its own accord (118). Now, how-
ever, the procurement of grain requires agricultural labor: the earth
must be ploughed and sown in order to obtain “livelihood.”
Agricultural labor to obtain a “livelihood” is Zeus’s punishment for
mankind’s transgressions against the gods (Works and Days 42– 50):
The gods hid livelihood from men and keep it hidden.
For otherwise you could easily accomplish enough in a single day
so that you could go even a whole year and be free from work.
Then you could quickly set your rudder over the smoke of your
fireplace,
and the works of cattle and of labor- enduring mules could go
to hell.31
But Zeus hid it, since he was angry in his heart,
because the crooked- counselor Prometheus deceived him.
Indeed, that’s why Zeus devised grievous cares for men.
He hid fire.
Zeus hides both the fruit of the earth and fire from mankind (42, 47,
50). The term “livelihood” refers to the grains men eat and live on.32
In exchange for stolen fire (Works and Days 57; Theogony 570), Zeus
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G. W. Pabst’s Hesiodic Myth of Sex 17
has Hephaestus create Pandora like a jar out of clay, and all the gods
contribute to her manufacture. Pandora’s body is itself a deception:
like the sacrificial offering that Prometheus set before Zeus in which
he arranged inedible bones and covered them with shining fat (Theog-ony 540– 41), so too does Pandora’s attractive exterior, tricked out
with a veil and shining clothing (Theogony 574), conceal a worthless
interior. In the Works and Days, Athena decks her out in finery (72);
the Graces and Persuasion give her jewelry (73– 74); the Hours crown
her (74– 75); and Hermes fills her with falsehood, beguiling speech,
and a thieving nature (77– 78). She is delivered to Epimetheus, Pro-
metheus’s brother, who fails to reject Zeus’s evil gift (cf. 57). Once
in Epimetheus’s home, Pandora opens the jar she has with her (Works and Days 93– 101):
But the woman with her hands removed the great lid of the jar
and scattered its contents. She devised grievous cares for men.
Only Hope there in the unbreakable house
remained inside under the lips of the jar and did not
fly outdoors, for before that she put back the lid of the jar
by the plans of cloud- gathering Zeus who bears the aegis.
The others, countless, grievous, wander among men,
since earth and sea are filled with evils.
With Pandora’s appearance, mankind suffers “grievous cares” (95):
these “grievous cares” Pandora brings recall the “grievous cares” (49)
men suffer when Zeus hid their livelihood. The repetition of “griev-
ous cares” in the two contexts— agricultural “labor” and opening
Pandora’s jar— draws a comparison between the earth and the female
body.33 With the appearance of Pandora, the female body, like the
earth, must be ploughed and inseminated to (re)produce. With sex-
ual reproduction comes labor— physical labor for man, child- bearing
labor for women— and here the association between Hesiod’s Pan-
dora and the Biblical Eve becomes clear. Like Adam sent from Para-
dise to work the land for food once given freely (Genesis 3:17– 19),
and like Eve who now must suffer labor pains when she delivers the
fruit of her body (Genesis 3:16), so too Hesiod’s mortal men must
suffer labor pains while they plow and inseminate for both agricultural
and sexual (re)production.
Sexual reproduction is explicitly linked with Pandora’s “jar.” Pan-
dora’s body, made of clay by Hephaestus, is precisely the “jar” that
she opens, as we see both in Hesiod and in the visual representa-
tion of Pandora as a combination of female and jar in the Campanian
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Lorenzo F. Garcia Jr.18
red- figure neck- amphora dating to the late fifth century B.C.34 In the
medical tradition, early Hippocratics associated the female reproduc-
tive system with an inverted jar: the anatomy of the womb is likened
to that of a jar, and parts are named accordingly as lips, mouth, neck,
belly.35 Soranus notes that a woman’s body is closed when she is a vir-
gin, but once she has first engaged in sexual intercourse, she becomes
like an unstopped jar and leaks.36 Yet there is a way her body becomes
stopped again: through pregnancy. According to Hippocrates, “In
women who are pregnant, the mouth of the uterus closes” (Aphorisms 5.51). Hippocrates describes productive coitus as the “mouth” of the
female closing around male semen and holding it, like a well- made
jar. Nonproductive sex is indicated by the seepage of the semen from
the woman who fails to “close” her “mouth,” like a leaky jar (Hip-
pocrates, On Generation 5.1):37 “When a woman has intercourse, if
she is not going to conceive, then it is her practice to expel the sperm
from both partners whenever she wishes to do so. If however she is
going to conceive, the sperm is not expelled, but remains in the womb.
For when the womb has received the sperm it closes up and retains
it: this happens because the orifice of the womb contracts under the
influence of moisture. Then both what is provided by the man and
what is provided by the woman is mixed together.” The verb “to take
hold of” is used to indicate the female “conceiving” by “closing” the
“orifice”— literally “the mouth”— of her womb over the semen. When
a woman is not to conceive, she “expels” the semen: more literally, she
“pours it out.” That the womb is conceived as a kind of jar is patent
from this passage. Both true virginity and pending motherhood (i.e.,
during pregnancy) are moments when the female is “closed”: either
because her “jar” has not yet been opened, or because she has closed
her “jar” around male seed. In Hesiod’s account, the “Hope” that
remains inside the jar, then, is none other than the child conceived in
sexual intercourse: “Only Hope . . . remained inside under the lips of
the jar and did not fly outdoors, for before that she put back the lid
of the jar” (Works and Days 96– 98).38 Pandora conceives because she
stops the mouth of her jar and does not allow Epimetheus’s labor to
“fly outdoors.” The “hope” of marriage in Hesiod’s scheme is sexual
(re)production: the very model of agricultural labor.
The female who does not sexually reproduce, then, is like the earth
that does not bear fruit: from a patriarchal perspective (specifically
Hesiod, Wedekind, and Pabst’s), she is a waste of seed and labor.
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G. W. Pabst’s Hesiodic Myth of Sex 19
Wedekind’s Lulu, Pabst’s Brooks: The
Exchange and Control of Fertility
Wedekind and Pabst’s Lulu was created as a Pandora- figure exchanged
by men. In Wedekind’s play her name appears as “from before the
flood” (vorsintflutlich), calling to mind Pandora, Eve, and perhaps
her willful, sexually active doublet, Lilith.39 Indeed, Wedekind’s early
name for his Lulu cycle was “Astarte,” the Greek name for the East-
ern Mediterranean goddess of fertility, sexuality, and warfare,40 and
in Erdgeist (II, ii) Lulu notes she is now called “Eve.”41 As with her
mythical predecessors, Lulu’s “fertility”— or lack thereof— is very
much on stage in Wedekind’s plays. In the Monstertragedy, Lulu talks
to Schwartz about pregnancy (II, i);42 in the same act, Alwa tries to
convince his father to marry Lulu, afraid lest Schön and his fiancée
produce a challenger to his inheritance. Alwa says of Lulu, “For me,
she’s a firm guarantee that the family won’t grow” (II, viii).43 Lulu,
then, is a Pandora whose jar is never closed in the service of sexual
reproduction; she is an investment, but without profit from the male
perspective. In the final scene of the Monstertragedy, Lulu’s lack of
fertility appears in conversation with Jack (V, xiii):44
Jack: Have you ever had a baby?
Lulu: No.
Jack: Thought not.
Lulu: Why?
Jack: Your mouth is so . . . fresh still . . .
The fetishistic displacement of Lulu’s genitals and “mouth” repeats
throughout Wedekind’s text:45
Jack: You have a beautiful mouth when you are speaking. (151)
Jack: Where did you get your beautiful mouth? (152)
Jack: Did you ever have a child?
Lulu: No, Sir. Never. But I was a nice looking woman. (152)
Jack: I judged you after your way of walking. I saw your body is per-
fectly formed. I said to myself she must have a very expressive
mouth.
Lulu: It seems you took a fancy in my mouth.
Jack: Yes. Indeed. (152)
Jack: Goddam! There is no finer mouth within the four seas! (153)
Lulu’s attractiveness for Jack is her very lack of sexual productivity:
her “mouth” is still “fresh.” When Jack kills Lulu in both Wedekind’s
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Lorenzo F. Garcia Jr.20
and Pabst’s Pandora’s Box, he is effectively putting a stop to her
unproductive “jar.” Indeed, Wedekind’s play ends with Jack control-
ling Lulu’s “jar” in a literalized metaphor as he cuts out her uterus and
wraps it in newspaper.46 I also suggest that Pabst represents the same
idea of Lulu as a nonproductive Pandora through his very choice of
Louise Brooks to play the lead role in his film.
In their commentary on The Criterion Collection edition of Pan-dora’s Box, Mary Ann Doane and Thomas Elsaesser discuss the image
of Louise Brooks onscreen. Doane notes, “The fascination of Louise
Brooks has been limited to her look, and the question is what produces
that kind of fascination. She has a very smooth face with no wrinkles,
no lines, no really defining features— and it’s this presentation of the
woman as surface which becomes extremely important in the context
of Pandora’s Box, and also within the context of the cinema as an
institution for the representation of a particular image of woman that
circulates. She comes to represent the pure pleasure of cinema itself.”47
The smoothness of Brooks’s image with its undisturbed surface denies
the possibility of depth. Elsaesser notes the “androgyny” of Brooks’s
lithe figure in the film:48 such a figure is not that of the fertile mother,
but of the infertile prostitute whose “magical gift to men [is] that she
never gets pregnant and is not plagued by the mothering instinct.”49
Lulu’s polyandry and the image of the prostitute opens a wholly other
economy, one in which the male is rendered interchangeable and
therefore arbitrary, as Elizabeth Boa notes in her discussion of Wede-
kind’s plays: “The prostitute accessible to all men is contemptible, but
also frightening, for she suggests that men are interchangeable, thus
threatening masculine power and identity. In killing a prostitute, Jack
destroys the threat of being reduced to a cypher, one man who might
as well be another. This is the horror which grips Dr. Schön in his
mad vision of multiplying lovers, echoed also in Kungu Poti’s and
Dr. Hilti’s horror on discovering that they are not alone with Lulu.”50
Instead of a fertile mother who will (re)produce, making a return on
male investment of labor, the prostitute is like Hesiod’s drone that
devours the labor of the busy honeybee but gives nothing in return
(Theogony 593– 602). Within a domestic economy, Pandora is not a
true partner who helps to bear the workload (593); instead, she is
a “conspirator” (595, 601) of hard work by consuming the fruits of
her husband’s labor without providing anything in exchange. Such a
creature, according to the logic of the Hesiodic narrative, cannot be
allowed to circulate endlessly: it must be contained. Thomas Elsaesser
has discussed Lulu’s sexuality in terms of a larger economy in both
Wedekind and Pabst’s representations of her:
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G. W. Pabst’s Hesiodic Myth of Sex 21
The figure of Lulu that Wedekind portrays in Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora superficially belongs to the tradition of the femme fatale, the sexually alluring but remote woman, through whom men expe-
rience the irrational, obsessional and ultimately destructive force of
female sexuality . . . More explicitly than anyone else, he locates the
question of sexuality within an ideological field. The repression of almost all manifestations of female sexuality entails an intense eroticism suffus-ing everything that is a- social, primitive, instinctual, according to a topos that sees nature as devouring whenever its nurturing function has been perverted. At the same time, Wedekind saw very precisely the relation-ship between social productivity and sexual productivity that the bour-
geoisie had fought so hard to establish, and which lay at the heart of
its ‘sexual repression’: it was the energy that had to be subjected to the
labour- process, regulated and accounted for. The bourgeois subject,
for whom sexual passion is nothing but the reverse of all the frustra-
tions that make up his social and moral existence, is contrasted with
the members of the lumpenproletariat— those outside, unassimilable or
scornful when it comes to the bourgeois’ dialectic of renunciation and
productivity.51
In Elsaesser’s reading, Lulu cannot exist within a bourgeois society,
where her unproductive sexuality can only appear as subversive. In this
light, Jack functions as a hero of a father- ruled, heterosexual social
order. He seeks to contain and punish Lulu’s eroticism, which is con-
nected with her “fresh . . . mouth” and unproductive sexuality.
Louise Brooks suffered analogous treatment at the hands of her
male handlers. In an interview in 1979 with Kenneth Tynan, Brooks
noted an explicit connection between herself and Lulu: “As a matter
of fact, I’ve never been in love. And if I had loved a man, could I have
been faithful to him? Could he have trusted me beyond a closed door?
I doubt it. It was clever of Pabst to know even before he met me that I
possessed the tramp essence of Lulu.”52 Pabst also linked Brooks with
Lulu, and, according to Brooks’s memoirs, tried to contain her feisty
sexuality. Brooks explains, “I was less wonderfully surprised when he
also subjected my private life to his direction. His delight in Lulu’s char-acter belonged exclusively to the film. Off the screen, my dancing days
came to an end when George Marshall, with whom I had been inves-
tigating Berlin’s nightlife till three in the morning, left for Paris. On
the set the next day, I had just accepted an invitation to an ‘Artists’
Ball’ when Mr. Pabst’s quiet, penetrating voice sounded behind me:
‘Müller! Loueess does not go out anymore at night.’ ”53 Brooks recalls
that from then on after shooting, she was “bathed, fed, and put to
bed, to be called for the next morning at seven. Cross and restless,
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Lorenzo F. Garcia Jr.22
I was left to fall asleep listening to the complaints of the other poor
caged beasts, across Stresemannstrass, in the Zoologischer Garten.”54
Brooks identifies herself with Lulu, only to find herself treated like
“the other poor caged beasts.” Brooks likens Pabst’s treatment of her
to Schön’s treatment of Lulu: “Pabst’s feelings for me . . . were not
unlike those of Schön for Lulu. I think that in the two films Pabst
made with me— Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl— he was
conducting an investigation into his relations with women, with the
object of conquering any passion that interfered with his passion for
his work. He was not aroused by sexual love, which he dismissed as
an enervating myth. It was sexual hate that engrossed his whole being
with its flaming reality.”55 Brooks sees herself reduced to image for
Pabst to control: he wanted her to be “sweetly innocent.”56
Throughout the film, Brooks’s Lulu is image, from her painting in
the opening scenes, to Geschwitz’s drawings admired and circulated
by Schön and Alwa, to her photograph that enables Casti- Piani to
recognize and blackmail her, to the fashion photos used to sell her
into prostitution to an Egyptian businessman. As an image, Lulu is
in constant circulation, a commodity traded between men for their
viewing pleasure. But as an object in constant circulation, Lulu can
never fully be possessed. Within what I have tried to define as a “Hes-
iodic economy” in this study, this is the status not of the wife, nor of
the productive body in which the male can make an investment and
expect a return on his labor, but rather of the prostitute, which, like
Pandora, is an attractive but ultimately unproductive expenditure.
Notes
1. I would like to thank Monica Cyrino, Emily Kratzer, and audiences
at the 2010 Film and History conference and the 2012 Wyoming
Humanities Council Summer Classics Program for comments on ear-
lier drafts of this chapter.
2. Throughout this chapter I cite West’s editions of Hesiod’s Theogony (1966) and Works and Days (1978).
3. On Pandora’s name, see Panofsky (1962) 4, 9– 11, 142– 43; West
(1978) 164– 66. For more on Pandora and Wedekind, see Littau
(1995) 890 n. 15; Boa (1987) 89.
4. Wedekind (1990) 132– 33, 136, 151, 204 traces the development of
the Lulu plays.
5. Gittleman (1969) 66; Boa (1987) 17– 19; Littau (1995) 888 n. 1.
6. Gittleman (1969) x– xi, 22, 26.
7. See Mary Ann Doane and Thomas Elsaesser on the DVD commen-
tary track for Die Büchse der Pandora, restored and distributed by the
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G. W. Pabst’s Hesiodic Myth of Sex 23
Criterion Collection (2006). Likewise, Lulu’s trysts with three lovers
in London are reduced to a single encounter with Jack in Pabst’s film.
8. Title card in Die Büchse der Pandora (1929); see the shooting script in
Pabst (1971) 24.
9. Doane on the DVD commentary track (2006).
10. Pabst’s shot/reverse- shot editing clearly indicates the close- up of Lulu
is Geschwitz’s point of view; see Doane and Elsaesser on the DVD
commentary track (2006).
11. Title card in Die Büchse der Pandora (1929); Pabst (1971) 41.
12. Title card in Die Büchse der Pandora (1929); Pabst (1971) 49.
13. Die Büchse der Pandora (1929); Pabst (1971) 53– 54.
14. Title card in Die Büchse der Pandora (1929); Pabst (1971) 67.
15. Title cards in Die Büchse der Pandora (1929); Pabst (1971) 71– 72.
16. Elsaesser (1983) 32.
17. Elsaesser (1983) 23.
18. Die Büchse der Pandora (1929); see Pabst (1971) 18– 19; Elsaesser
(1983) 18– 19; Burkett (2007) 236– 37.
19. On Lulu’s close- ups, see Doane (1991) 147; on the fantasy space cre-
ated by Pabst’s mismatched shot/reverse- shot editing and violations of
the 180- degree rule, see Doane (1991) 149.
20. Webber (2006) 275.
21. Boa (1987) 79.
22. Doane (1991) 159– 61; Littau (1995) 893– 96.
23. Wedekind (1967) 98.
24. Film critic Lotte Eisner notes, “In the scene with Jack the Ripper, this
face, a smooth mirror- like disc slanting across the screen, is so shaded
out and toned down that the camera seems to be looking down at
some lunar landscape. Is this still a human being— a woman— at all?”
Quoted in Pabst (1971) 15.
25. Elsaesser (1983) 26, 29; Doane (1991) 148.
26. Wedekind presents Lulu as the “Urgestalt des Weibes”; see also Boa
(1987) 113– 14; Littau (1995) 889 n. 7.
27. On the correspondence between the Pandora myths in the Theogony and Works and Days, see Vernant (1980) 174– 77.
28. On the sacrifice (Theogony 535– 36) constituting a separation of men
and gods, see West (1966) 318; Vernant (1989) 24– 25; on Pandora
and the separation between men and gods, see Zeitlin (1996) 62,
71– 74, 83.
29. All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated.
30. On Pandora and sexual reproduction, see Zeitlin (1996) 84– 86.
31. My translation of this line follows West (1978) 154.
32. Vernant (1980) 176; Vernant (1989) 41– 43.
33. Vernant (1980) 180– 81; Vernant (1989) 42– 43, 73– 78; on the meta-
phorical association between agriculture and the female body, see also
duBois (1988).
pal-cyrino-book.indb 23 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Lorenzo F. Garcia Jr.24
34. British Museum, inv. no. F 147, attributed to the Owl- Pillar Group.
Another representation conflating Pandora and her “box” is Paul
Klee’s Die Büchse der Pandora Stilleben (1920), depicting a kantharos- shaped chalice with flanged rim, holding a few flowers, and emitting a
noxious vapor from a vaginal opening at the base of the cup; Panofsky
(1962) 112– 13, fig. 59.
35. Hanson (1990) 317.
36. Hanson (1990) 324– 30.
37. The translation is from Lonie (1981).
38. On this reading, see Zeitlin (1996) 64– 66.
39. Erdgeist II, ii; Wedekind (1980) 36; see also Boa (1987) 61.
40. Wedekind (1990) 165.
41. Wedekind (1980) 36.
42. Bentley (1994) 67– 70.
43. Bentley (1994) 95.
44. Bentley (1994) 201– 2.
45. The following quotes are all from Wedekind (1980).
46. Wedekind (1980) 246; discussion at Littau (1995) 903– 6.
47. Doane on the DVD commentary track (2006).
48. Elsaesser (1983) 10, 13; see also Doane (1991) 153.
49. Boa (1987) 67. Boa argues, “It is clear that motherhood is not for her:
to be a mother would desex her.”
50. Boa (1987) 104.
51. Elsaesser (1983) 10– 11; emphasis added.
52. Quoted at Laschever (1982).
53. Brooks (1982) 102; emphasis added.
54. Brooks (1982) 102.
55. Brooks (1982) 97– 98.
56. Brooks (1982) 94.
pal-cyrino-book.indb 24 1/10/13 10:19 AM
4
C h a p t e r 2
Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
Pandora and Prometheus in
Robert Aldrich’s Cinematic
Subversion of Spill ane
Paula James
In this chapter I explore aspects of baneful women, fallible men,
and the mutual manipulation involved in gift giving with the Pro-
metheus paradigm in mind. Elements within the myths of Pandora
and Prometheus will be brought into constant interplay to enrich
an appreciation of Robert Aldrich’s movie, but also to rethink
the attributes of these mythical figures in their classical context.
A. I. Bezzerides produced a culturally allusive screenplay that by
the film’s finale was directly invoking classical and biblical charac-
ters, particularly the direct reference to a destructive Pandora about
to unleash a monstrous power (spoiler warning!), as curious and
acquisitive Gabrielle embraces and then opens the atomic box at
the end of the film.1
The unstable identities in mythical terms of private eye Mike
Hammer and key personae he encounters illuminate the proximity of
Pandora to Prometheus. Kiss Me Deadly modernizes, marries, and
polarizes their attributes and raises questions about heroism and its
gender biases in the ancient and modern contexts. Male heroism and
female duplicity fracture from the beginning of the film as all the main
characters prove to be ambiguous harbingers of good and evil in a
world on the edge of lawlessness and destruction.2
pal-cyrino-book.indb 25 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Paula James26
The Myth
In his poem Works and Days and also in the Theogony, Hesiod (writ-
ing ca. 700 B.C.) introduces the figure of Pandora, a specially made
woman commissioned by Zeus, lord of Olympus, and put together
by Hephaestus, who fashioned her from clay. In the Works and Days, Aphrodite, Athena, and Hermes, assisted by the Graces, Peitho (Per-
suasion), and the Hours, endow Pandora with beauty, allure, accom-
plishments, eloquence, and cunning. In Hesiod’s epic narratives,
Pandora is presented as the first woman and a thing of evil for man-
kind: she is escorted to earth by Hermes and once accepted as a wife
by the unwise king, Epimetheus, she opens a jar full of ills. Hope is
trapped under the rim. Thus Pandora and her jar mark the beginning
of man’s toil and trouble.
In both his works, Hesiod relates that Zeus’s motivation is to
balance the blessing of fire, which the human race received from Pro-
metheus (descendant of the Titans, the divine cohort displaced by the
Olympians). Prometheus, whose name means “Forethought,” plays
benefactor to humans and trickster in his dealings with Zeus. He not
only smuggles fire concealed in a fennel stalk out of Olympus but also
deceives the ruler god into choosing the white glistening fat around
the bones of the sacrificial animals, leaving the tasty meat for the
mortal worshippers to enjoy. In turn Zeus is able to fool Epimetheus
(who thinks only after the event in spite of being forewarned by his
brighter brother Prometheus) with an equally attractive and gleaming
gift that is all show and, worse still, an active agent of woe and suffer-
ing: Pandora.
Prometheus, as a courageous adversary of a new and inflexible deity
(Zeus) and a hero for his time, was celebrated in the play Prometheus Bound ascribed to Aeschylus, the fifth- century Athenian tragedian.
The Titan was taken up in Latin poetry and prose as the molder of
man from clay and the bestower of skills and ingenuity upon the mor-
tal race. In this paradigm, Prometheus is portrayed as the champion
of the people, an opponent of tyranny.
However, from classical to modern times his benefaction of creativ-
ity, fire, and freethinking has been viewed as a mixed blessing.3 In his
powerfully bleak and dystopian 1998 film Prometheus the acclaimed
poet Tony Harrison used the Titan as a symbol to highlight the bodily
disintegration of UK miners from industrial disease and the fragmen-
tation of their community under the hammer blows of aggressive
capital. The workers are an expendable labor force in an allegedly out-
moded technology.4 As for the gift of Promethean fire, this partly
pal-cyrino-book.indb 26 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) 27
morphs into the self- destructive habit of smoking, which the tobacco
industry has promoted for profit.
Pandora per se is mostly absent from Latin literature, although
it has been argued that she is present as a signifier in the poetry of
Roman elegists who so loved to wring out every possible permutation
and motif from the myths of the Greek world.5 In postclassical per-
ceptions, Pandora persists as a byword or convenient marker for the
femme fatale whose curiosity has dire consequences; the misogynistic
tradition is reinforced by conflating her with the Christian Eve and
Western models of flawed womanhood. Also, her jar was converted
into a box many centuries ago.6 This is the receptacle she cannot
escape in the refashioning of her story, although both the woman and
her baneful baggage have been given a positive spin in modern mani-
festations of the myth and its main player.7
Prometheus and Pandora’s mythical narrative in its classical context
has inspired many stimulating interpretations, from the structural-
ist school (Vernant 1974, 2006) to the feminist readings of Froma
Zeitlin (1996) and the comprehensive account of Pandora’s psycho-
logical, erotic, and cosmic dimensions by Lev Kenaan (2008). Aspects
of distorted reciprocity and the ambiguous nature of gift exchange
that preoccupied scholars for many years have yielded to an explo-
ration of the characters of Prometheus and Pandora, both variously
reconfigured to represent the radical and the revolutionary.
The Movie
Kiss Me Deadly is a startling film with its backward roll of opening
credits that surely unsettles the viewer from the outset to the final
revelation about the contents of the elusive box that so many people
have died for. The first to die under horrific torture from faceless men
is a girl on the run from the asylum whom Mike Hammer (Ralph
Meeker), private detective, picked up at the beginning of the film and
whose capture and murder he witnesses while he is barely conscious.
Miraculously escaping with his life (the unknown killers send him over
a cliff in his car), Mike, along with his devoted secretary, Velda (Max-
ine Cooper), becomes embroiled in a pursuit of the unknown gang,
the murderers of the girl, Christina (Cloris Leachman). Mike makes
this a personal vendetta and follows a labyrinth of leads, including
clues from his conversation with Christina, until he finds the key she
was hiding and the highly prized box it opens.
In the meantime, Mike has been deceived and manipulated by Gabri-
elle (Gaby Rodgers), the mistress of the “gang” leader, Dr. Soberin
pal-cyrino-book.indb 27 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Paula James28
(Albert Dekker)— she masquerades as Christina’s flatmate, Lily Carver—
and rapidly loses the mysterious haul to this ruthless couple. They also
kidnap Velda, but Mike is able to track her down to Soberin’s lair. In an
action- packed finale, Gabrielle shoots Soberin and wounds Mike, taking
total control of the mysterious box. In spite of Soberin’s dramatic dying
warning (with references to Pandora, Cerberus, and Lot’s wife), she lifts
the lid and releases an apocalyptic nuclear fire. Both Velda and Mike
narrowly escape the huge conflagration and in the original ending of the
film they fall at the water’s edge while the beach house is engulfed in the
cataclysmic explosion.
In Spillane’s novel, the sought after box contains a drug haul, but
cinema censorship would not allow drugs to be portrayed onscreen.
The choice of the nuclear vessel no doubt appealed to Aldrich, whose
films tend toward apocalyptic resolution, and both director and
screenplay writer, Bezzerides, consciously tapped into current preoc-
cupations about the destructive power of science and the angst of the
atomic age. At least two postimpressionist artists had anticipated this
concept: that the single destructive energy of an atomic bomb would
replace the multiplicity of ills contained in Pandora’s receptacle.8
As the evils of the box turn out to be the destructive force of mod-
ern fire, the film narrative reverses and telescopes the full compass of
the Hesiodic myth in which Prometheus steals fire for the benefit of
humankind. In Hesiod’s version, Zeus retaliates by visiting a world
of pain on the race Prometheus has championed. What is interesting
about the cinematic narrative is the fact that Christina has already
stolen this fire (trapped in a box) but suffers anguish and death keep-
ing it concealed from humanity (and frustrating the cynical profiteers
who pursue the prize) in order to protect people and preserve their
survival. Christina seems to be a distorted version of Prometheus, but
visually and symbolically— especially as the keeper of the key to the
fatal container— she is simultaneously a troubled Pandora.
The Modern Prometheus and his
Twentieth- Century Pandoras
Christina, a gasping desperate character, precedes the credits. As
she fails to flag down the cars, she invites the viewer into her des-
peration. The choice of actress Leachman (in her first screen role)
transformed the Viking- like Berga of the Spillane novel into a more
fragile figure. Like Berga, Christina also launches herself into Mike’s
headlights desperately using her whole body to hitch a ride. The fol-
lowing extract from the novel sets the scene and gives some sense of
pal-cyrino-book.indb 28 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) 29
Spillane’s vigorous narrative. The appearance of the larger- than- life
Berga is startling and uncanny. “All I saw was the dame standing there
in the glare of the headlights, waving her arms like a huge puppet and
the curse I spit out filled the car and my own ears. I wrenched the
wheel over, felt the rear end start to slide, brought it out with a splash
of power and almost ran it up the side of the cliff as the car fishtailed.
The brakes bit in, gouging a furrow in the shoulder, then jumped to
the pavement and held.”9
In the movie, when the running, panting escapee raises her arms
in desperation in front of Mike’s car headlamps, she strikes the arrest-
ing pose of a goddess but also of a supplicant. Spillane and Aldrich
were surely conscious of the gothic elements of the scene. The cin-
ematic visualization of the almost phantom- like Berga/Christina on
the highway evokes a famously tragic figure from Victorian fiction,
namely Anne Catherick in The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins,
father of the English detective novel: “There in the middle of the
broad, bright high- road— there, as if it had that moment sprung out
of the earth or dropped from the heaven— stood the solitary figure of
a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments, her
face bent in grave inquiry on mine, her hand pointing to a dark cloud
over London, as I faced her. I was far too seriously startled by the sud-
denness with which this extraordinary apparition stood before me, in
the dead of night and in that lonely place, to ask what she wanted.”10
Collins was inspired by an actual encounter with a distraught and
almost spectral female, and he generally relished introducing similar
epiphanic scenes in his fiction. Collins’s hero, Walter, has a gentle and
delicate way of questioning the apparition, as if he is experiencing a
divine encounter. But Mike is irritated and intrigued in equal parts
by his damsel in distress. In the film the girl is given a ghostly and
Figure 2.1 Christina (Cloris Leachman) strikes an arresting Pandora pose in the
headlamps of an oncoming car in Kiss Me Deadly (1955). United Artists.
pal-cyrino-book.indb 29 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Paula James30
ethereal quality, and a refinement, a cultural sensuality, which suggests
that if she is less goddess- like in stature than the novel’s Viking figure,
Berga, she fits the supernatural stereotype by virtue of her other-
worldly quality. Berga is ungainly by comparison, while Christina is
less overtly sexual than Spillane’s creation. For censorship reasons the
mystery girl’s nakedness under the raincoat is only suggested in the
movie and her sexual advances to Mike are toned down. She takes
his hand in a pleading gesture as they approach the roadblock. Mike
goes against his survival instincts in protecting Christina. In spite of
the warning signs, within moments of their meeting Mike makes the
spontaneous decision to pass off this unknown and unstable woman
as his wife at the police cordon.
Hammer continues to exhibit Promethean qualities in his flout-
ing of orthodoxy and authority. The act of helping the distraught
Christina in her escape from the asylum has echoes of Prometheus’s
sympathy for the victimized and crazed character of Io in Aeschylus’s
play.11 However, Mike also displays cavalier and Epimethean qualities
in his curiosity about this enigmatic creature. A second look at the
cinematic composition of this opening scene brings Christina closer to
a Pandora figure. In flagging down the car so dramatically, Christina
seem to be mimicking a Pandora pose found on the classical volute
krater related to the Group of Polygnotos.12
Aspects of Christina’s accoutrements and attributes— the belt, the
seductive voice, her arresting presence— all evoke both the ancient lit-
erary and visual (especially vase) depictions of Pandora’s preparations
as a baneful bride for Epimetheus. Christina also has a whimsical qual-
ity to her speech patterns and demonstrates a resigned but knowing
air once she has recovered her equanimity. She very quickly has the
measure of Mike, the narcissism and self- centeredness that character-
izes him. Her astuteness and insight connect her with the wisdom of
Prometheus as well with the alluring speech of a Pandora.13
Aldrich prolongs the episode in the film by introducing a prob-
lem with the car. Mike stops at a garage, which proves to be a fatal
delay. The skewed steering has been caused by a branch caught up
in the spokes of the wheel. In a calyx krater by the Niobid painter,
Pandora is depicted carrying a wreath or leafy branch, perhaps an indi-
cation of wedding ritual.14 Another marriage motif is the belt that
must be loosened and relinquished to the bridegroom as a prelude to
the surrender of her virginity. Christina speaks the lines, “Ah woman,
the incomplete sex— and what does she need to complete her? Why,
man of course, a wonderful man.” Christina is the Pandora bride, but
pal-cyrino-book.indb 30 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) 31
something very brutal replaces the deflowering that should follow the
ceremony of marriage.
Mike and Christina are pursued and captured. The torture scene—
nothing really shown but the screaming is traumatic— ends with the
biblical reference uttered by Soberin, “You might as well try and res-
urrect Lazarus,” as Christina dies. Internet discussions (a plethora of
chatter and critique on the film) agree that the name Christina puts her
character very much in the martyr mold.15 The faceless torturers— we
see instruments for only a split second and the dangling legs of the
screaming girl— are like the figures of Violence and Strength at the
opening of Prometheus Bound, and the suffering they inflict is of equally
horrific proportions. In the novel Berga is described as making mewing
noises of pain tied to a chair. Aldrich’s decision to suspend Christina
and to view her from upper shots sets her above her male tormenters,
thus elevating her to crucifix height. Mike is knocked out and sent over
a cliff in his car, but he survives a Promethean- style suspension from the
rock. Prometheus’s punishment is rerouted to Pandora.
Willfully ignoring the warnings uttered by detective Pat Murphy
(Wesley Addey), Mike pursues the torturers and murderers of Chris-
tina. This crusade signifies that Mike (made into a “bedroom dick” in
Aldrich’s version) has some spark of decency. Aldrich also introduces
the character of Nick, the Greek car mechanic— and Mike’s earthly
but helpful Hephaestus— who is obsessed with the powerful va va
voom16 of the fast car. He is just one casualty of Mike’s quest. Nick
is brutally crushed beneath the object of his affection, his beloved
motor; his murder drives Mike to further avenging zeal.
It is while on the trail that Mike finds and protects Lily, Christina’s
flatmate. The listless Lily gives Mike a second chance to save an inno-
cent female. He realizes too late that the real Lily has already been
disposed of and he has become the dupe of Gabrielle, her impersonator.
Gabrielle is in partnership with and a pleasure plaything of the villain,
Dr. Soberin, who had Christina tortured to death. False Lily mimics
Christina in the way she dresses (a white robe, then a white overcoat)
and in a certain riddling style of speech that enhances the enigma.17
The specter of Christina continues to haunt the narrative. Her
body contains the key to the narrative as well as to the box. The fact
that Christina has swallowed the key to the prize and that Mike needs
to probe her corpse to find it makes this Los Angeles Pandora both
maiden and repository. It is fitting that the Rossetti poem Christina
quotes with her poignant “Remember Me” and its reference to dark
and secret places gives literal- minded Mike (the hero is no aesthete!)
the vital clue to the key’s whereabouts.18
pal-cyrino-book.indb 31 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Paula James32
In stealing and concealing the fire to save the world, Christina
could be seen as a modern Prometheus, back tracking on the original
heroic gesture of bestowing the flame and reversing the role such a
hero needs to play in the modern world. The Pandora persona then
emerges as a protector of humanity, a brave, antiauthoritarian pres-
ence, undergoing torment and a martyr’s death. When Gabrielle, as
both the false and the true Pandora, takes possession of the prize, the
box with its atomic bomb realizes and releases its full potential, with
woman as a demonic harbinger of chaos and destruction.19
Mike’s individualism and willfulness put him somewhat in the
Promethean mold, as he is antiauthoritarian throughout and will
not accept the status quo or hierarchy. Detective Murphy turns up
at Mike’s apartment after Mike has found and lost the mysterious
box and reveals that its contents, which have already scorched Mike’s
hands, have something to do with Los Alamos, Trinity, and the Man-
hattan project. Upon hearing from the detective toward the final
scenes of the film that Lily is a fraud, Mike has his moment of contri-
tion. When the revelations about the false Lily and the hugeness and
horror of the “prize” have sunk in, he says, “I didn’t know, I didn’t
understand.” But the detective gives the wearily exasperated reply, “If
you had known, Mike, would you have acted any different?”
This is the clearest characterization of Mike as Epimetheus or a
failed Prometheus and casts the detective, the knowing authority
figure, as a rival claimant to the Promethean and prophetic role. Seek-
ing out fatal knowledge is Mike’s particular tragedy. Mike blunders
blindly into conflicts and dangers, never heeding advice, but as a self-
styled vengeful vigilante, he is only ever superficially and temporarily
in control and never aware of the larger picture. When Mike rushes to
rescue Velda, the exasperated detective says to his colleague that they
should let Mike go to Hell.
Mike saves Velda, but they do witness a fiery furnace. Gabrielle
shoots Soberin and wounds Mike so that she can take total posses-
sion of the box. As Gabrielle bends over it, Soberin’s words to her are
steeped in myth: “The head of Medusa, that’s what’s in the box, and
who looks upon her will not be changed into stone, but into brim-
stone and ashes. But of course you wouldn’t believe me: you’d have to
see for yourself, wouldn’t you?” Gabrielle goes up in flames, thereby
releasing the hellish demon from the container and precipitating a
nuclear reaction. Thus the cerebral Soberin, who accepted Gabrielle
for the physical comforts she offered him, refers to the myth of Pan-
dora in the final scene: he begs her not to open the box. Gabrielle’s
role as the false and baneful female is hardly debatable, as Soberin now
pal-cyrino-book.indb 32 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) 33
becomes Epimetheus. Mike’s own lack of foresight has taken another
vertiginous turn. Together he and Soberin have foolishly protected
and united a destructive Pandora with the deadly container.
Seizing the Fire
Both film and book narratives end in flames, but in the novel the pri-
vate eye Mike Hammer, shot by the duplicitous female, takes a terrible
revenge by setting light to her highly flammable flesh. In Spillane, the
lovely Lily with her constant alcohol baths is a monstrously disfigured
fire- damaged creature whose true appearance is only revealed at the
very end. Her body repulses Spillane’s hero and his revenge reflects his
revulsion. Both in the novel and the movie, Spillane’s hero is defined
by the burning cigarette butt; he smokes “Luckies,” a popular brand of
the day. In thumbing his cigarette lighter at the combustible Lily, Mike
is punishing her for hiding her deformity under surface sexuality, for
breaking the illusion of a delightful, alluring, white, and unblemished
body covered and concealed beneath the white robe. Mike is like Zeus
enraged by the deception of the glistening white fat. He wields a mod-
ern Promethean fire to destroy Gabrielle’s deceitful Pandora persona.
Although there are no Pandora references in the novel, this moment
of revelation could well have inspired Aldrich and Bezzerides to
work a motif of mythic proportions into the film: their baneful Lily/
Gabrielle will burn to death as the result of opening the atomic box.
The moods of darkness are accentuated by “the roaring light ready to
spill into your lap.”20 Symbolic white reflects the false purity of Lily;
the whiteness of her name and her dress disguise her true provenance:
an avaricious seductress from a criminal and shadowy world. Yet Lev
Kenaan views Pandora as the embodiment of the blinding, dazzling,
and epiphanic property of celestial fire itself.21 Lily is a masquerade of
womanhood in the corporeal sense, imitating the specious, surface
beauty of the Hesiodic Pandora. She keeps her scarred body hidden
from Mike in the Spillane narrative and her pitiless soul secret in both
novel and movie. Gabrielle’s final words to Mike, who is dubbed the
dissembler, are a teasing turn of the tables: “Give me the liar’s kiss,
Mike. You are good at giving such kisses”; but in the novel’s finale she
says, “deadly . . . deadly, kiss me,” before she shoots.
Readings of the Film
Aldrich’s film was dubbed “a frozen tragedy” by Raymond Durgnat.
“Formal yet Dionysiac, cerebral yet vulgar, it has the cold atrocity
pal-cyrino-book.indb 33 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Paula James34
of a Greek tragic myth— lacking only the chorus,” and he compared
“the terrible beauty of its bleak nihilism” with Hitchcock’s Psycho
(1960).22 Carol Flinn discusses the particular contribution Aldrich
made with this “monolithically male” film, but sets it in the context
of anxiety about the female as alien. For Flinn, fear of the empowered
female came to fruition in the postwar period and relates to US sol-
diers’ desire and suspicion toward the women they left behind. Tell-
ingly, Flinn observes that Kiss Me Deadly shares features of the film
noir genre in uncovering a visually enticing woman and determin-
ing the reliability of her (often) deceptive image. In terms of seduc-
tive and enigmatic articulateness, the female characters of the film are
strong focalizing forces and their voices provide many of the clues to
the mystery.23
Hesiod’s Pandora is the archetype for wheedling, unstable, and
seemingly sexually voracious womanhood. The Pandora model can be
readily related to celluloid constructs because, while not always being
bearers of evil, the women of film noir do combine characteristics
of self- interested and available, vulnerable and deceitful, beneficent
and baneful. Even minor characters like Friday (the “nympho” figure,
played by Marion Carr) seem to mimic the easy intimacy that identi-
fies Aphrodite’s manner and speech and that Pandora also displays in
her snaring of Epimetheus. The women in Kiss Me Deadly are both
deified and demonized, and the figure of Pandora, accompanied by
her Hesiodic narrative, shadows them thematically.24
Condemning Hammer as “so hard he’s impotent,” Thomson
believes that both Christina “with her real abused delicacy in a sin-
gle abashed glance and Lily/Gaby with her sinuous body stretched
over the box” have immediate insight into “the blunt phallic upright
which is Mike Hammer.”25 It could be said that both the book and
the film abound in sensual and yielding female bodies and hard but
frigid males. Indeed, Alison Sharrock’s analysis of rigor and molli-tia as deceptive attributes in Ovid’s Pygmalion could be applied
to the heroes and heroines of such films.26 However pliant Lily/
Gabrielle seems to be, she is the stonehearted villain, the ruthless killer,
while the hardness of the alpha male (Mike) proves to be a Narcissistic
celibacy. Thomson describes Mike as “too tight for fucking.” Thus
Gabrielle’s unleashing of the Great Whatsit is a metaphor for releasing
the final male inhibition in an orgasmic as well as cataclysmic finish.
From the perspective of a mythical mnemonic, Kiss Me Deadly deals
in the topos of human fallibility when a powerful and destructive gift
comes into the possession of venal, ignorant, and even heroic mortals.
The film plays with the shared and contradictory characteristics of
pal-cyrino-book.indb 34 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) 35
Pandora, Prometheus, and Epimetheus. It takes Spillane’s motif of
fire in the novel to the level of nuclear annihilation.27 Aldrich makes
Kiss Me Deadly a moody tone poem about a Los Angeles belying its
name, a metaphor of corruption and despair, desire and temptation, a
universe of diminishing values and destructive power.
In Hesiodic terms— following the myth of deteriorating races in
Works and Days— we are invited into a world where the race of iron is
represented by the criminal underworld where everyone is going to be
sucked into the chthonic regions.28 At the end of the film something
bright but hellish erupts from the box, the horror of a modern Hades
breaking through the fissures. Lily is consumed in the conflagration,
and it is questionable whether Mike and Velda who are on the scene
can survive what she has unleashed.29 Kiss Me Deadly is ambiguous
about the fate of its “hero” and “heroine.” The escape of Mike and
Velda and the parting shot of them in a fearful embrace on the shore
could almost be a reenactment of Pyrrha and Deucalion emerging
from the flood (as described by Ovid in the Metamorphoses), super-
natural survivors indeed, mirroring the descendants of the Titans who
were destined to repopulate the world.
Kiss Me Deadly has the atomic angst of the Cold War decade, but it
also has an emphasis on the va va voom of a Vulcanized world. From
explosive fast cars to guns that spray the screen, this is a film where
technology, as Hephaestus, forges the way.30 In terms of characteriza-
tion, the polarity between Prometheus and Epimetheus is implicit in
the portrayal of the film’s hero/antihero, Mike Hammer. Even more
telling is the ambiguity the film reveals in the figures of Pandora and
Prometheus. Mike masquerades in a mistaken sense of strength and
knowledge as the antiauthority Prometheus, while he is in reality a
reflection of the manipulated Epimetheus, especially in his lack of
foresight and his acceptance of the illusions around him. Christina, the
“first woman” of the film, is a complex construct who plays Pandora
to his Promethean and Epimethean identities but whose attributes
reveal her own Promethean qualities.
When Mike as the fallible heroic figure fails, the world falls apart as
it seems to do in the finale of Prometheus Bound.31 Mike’s Promethean
heroism is no more resolved as a motif than in the Greek play. Instead,
the rebellious Titan is transported into 1950s Los Angeles and frag-
mented across both male and female figures on the relatively lawless
landscape. The film’s ethical gloom evokes ancient perspectives of
supernatural strength and knowledge contrasted with limited human
understanding. Aldrich’s focus on the stealing and concealing of fire
in a modern technological form by a succession of Pandora- like and
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Paula James36
Promethean figures brings the conundrums of the ancient myth into
the nuclear age.32
Notes
1. Aldrich acknowledged that his screenwriter was the arty one, and Bez-
zerides may well have been behind such changes as the hero’s girl-
friend, Velda, practicing ballet; one of the gangsters collecting abstract
art; and the presence of classical music interludes. When quizzed
about his literate screenplay, Bezzerides commented, “People ask me
about the hidden meanings in the script, about the A- bomb, about
McCarthyism, what does the poetry mean, and so on. And I can only
say that I didn’t think about it when I wrote it.” See Gorman, Green-
berg, and Server (1998) 115– 22.
2. I recognize there are pitfalls in privileging this kind of direct dialogue
between ancient motifs and cinematic texts when so many cultural lay-
ers and filters have been acquired by the classical sources. Add to this
the fact that movie directors and screenwriters might deny that they
had any myth in mind; see Goldhill (2007) 261; Paul (2010a) 144– 45.
3. See Adams (2010) for the Titan as an inspiration for Victorian think-
ers, writers, scientists, as well as John Martin’s art of the apocalyptic
sublime.
4. See Hall (2002) for a detailed critique of the Harrison film. She
describes the Promethean Old Man who “ruminates on the extraor-
dinary pleasure and sexual allure cigarettes, at least as represented
onscreen, used to offer” (130). It would seem as if Prometheus’s gift
has morphed into an icon of Pandora.
5. Lev Kenaan (2008) 10.
6. See Panofsky (1962) 14– 26.
7. See Potter (2010) on positive Pandoras.
8. The Dutch cartoonist, L. J. Jordaan, published in 1955 a picture of
a huge square box with winged bombs, clearly designated as Pan-
dora’s gift; Panofsky (1962) 113 n. 43. See the thought- provoking
article by Calame (2005) on the legacy of anthropopoieisis and its real-
ization when finance capital and the profit imperative drive scientific
development.
9. Spillane, in Kiss Me, Deadly (2006) 647.
10. Collins, in The Woman in White (1998) 20.
11. Alison Sharrock pointed out to me that Christina resembles Io
“on the run” in Prometheus Bound with her frantic and breathless
inarticulateness.
12. In the Oxford Ashmoleum Museum, inv. no. G.275 (V.575.); I simply
note that Epimetheus is carrying a hammer (Hammer?!), which con-
tinues to puzzle classicists. See too the “goddess with raised hands” in
pal-cyrino-book.indb 36 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Kiss Me Deadly (1955) 37
the clay figures of the sub Minoan period, especially “The Goddess of
Karphi.”
13. Her fatalistic exhortation to “Remember me” directly quotes the poet
Christina Rossetti, for whom the character is named. This is Nausicaa’s
exhortation to Odysseus (Odyssey 8.460) and the lament of Purcell’s
Dido. It is also the pressing plea uttered by the ghost of Hamlet’s
father.
14. In the British Museum, inv. no. GR.1856 (E.467). For an impressive
range of vases illustrating Pandora’s bridal and virginal accoutrements,
see Reeder (1995) 277– 86.
15. Websites featuring critiques of Kiss Me Deadly include Grost (2006).
See also Silver and Ursini (1996).
16. The actor, Nick Dennis, was keen to define his character by this passion
for the fast car so he imported the “va va voom” catchphrase from the
1950s Art Carney American television series.
17. Described by Thomson (1997) 1 as “sensationally listless and
depraved.” See Jayamanne (1995) 3 on modifying the image of the
femme fatale and promoting B actresses in roles as toxic teenagers.
“Buzz” (Bezzerides) clearly enjoyed creating women of whimsical sex-
uality and fulfilling the male fantasy along the way.
18. Zeitlin (1996) 60– 62 argues persuasively that Pandora is anatomi-
cally (womb and belly) bound up with her jar as well as figuratively
symmetrical as a repository of evils for the curious to probe. Mulvey
(1996) 56– 58 makes great play of the metaphor of the female body as
container onscreen.
19. See the discussion by Anthony (2004) on powerful and destructive
artificial women as phobic fantasies on sexuality and technology. For
Prometheus and Pandora as reflections, see Austin (2001) 6, who views
modern technologized Pandoras as over- reachers, like Eve: “Pandora is
Prometheus.”
20. Thomson (1997).
21. Lev Kenaan (2008) 44.
22. Durgnat (1966) 84.
23. Flinn (1986) 121– 23 explores the role of dissonant and distracting
sounds in the film and the significance of the central song as well as the
function of the film score.
24. Mulvey (1996) 62– 64 analyses Hitchcock’s 1947 film Notorious through the interpretative lens of the Pandora paradigm, accessing
Kristeva’s theories of abjection and the metaphor of secret spaces: “The
female body’s topography presents a façade of fascination and surface
that distracts the male psyche from the wound concealed beneath, cre-
ating an inside and outside of binary opposition” (63).
25. Thomson (1997).
26. Sharrock (1991).
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Paula James38
27. For an excellent appraisal of the film’s relationship to the Spillane novel
and the motivations behind its form and content, see Robson (2005)
184– 97. Kiss Me Deadly postdates the Noir era, but its influence on
French New Wave cinema is well known.
28. See Holtsmark (2001) 23– 50 for the katabasis theme on film, and
Grost (2006) on Aldrich’s use of downward and spiraling camera
angles.
29. In Spielberg’s 1981 film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the fiery nemesis in
the sacred container cascades out in a similar pyrotechnic glow.
30. Bezzerides’s technological background was an influence here: “I’m a
big car nut, so I put in all that stuff with the cars and the mechanic.
I was an engineer, and I gave the detective the first phone answering
machine in that picture,” quoted in Vallance (2007). Thus Bezzerides
comes across as both a Hephaestus and a Prometheus.
31. Aldrich’s vision is bleaker than that of Aeschylus. See Dodds (1973)
30– 44 on the reconciliation between Zeus and Prometheus, but also
the return of the Age of Violence.
32. I am grateful to John Penwill for his observation that the term ura-nium suggests fiery material from heaven, and plutonium the techno-
logical substance from hell.
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4
C h a p t e r 3
Perversions of the Phaeacians
The Gothic Odyssey of Angels & Insects (1996)
Meredith Safran
As a traveler’s yarn of adventure and tale of yearning for home,
Homer’s Odyssey has inspired artists for three thousand years.1 In
Books 6 through 13, Odysseus stands at a crossroads: one path con-
tinues homeward to Ithaca, the other to settlement abroad with the
Phaeacians, a wealthy but isolated people of divine descent. After
many brushes with captivity and death since departing Troy, Odysseus
could abort his perilous journey by marrying the princess Nausicaa
and receiving a share of island paradise from her father. In choos-
ing homecoming, Odysseus avoids the moral failure of abandoning
return and— even more problematic— perverting the cultural tradi-
tion underlying Homeric epic, which requires his homecoming.2 If
this man does not return to Ithaca, he would not be Odysseus— but
what man would not have been tempted?
This notion that Odysseus might have chosen pleasure and security
abroad over the deferred gratification of homecoming stands behind
A. S. Byatt’s 1992 novella “Morpho Eugenia,” the basis of Philip
and Belinda Haas’s 1996 film, Angels & Insects.3 As the Phaeacian
episode becomes a gothic morality tale, the warrior- king Odysseus,
ship wrecked after ten years of post– Trojan War wandering, becomes
naturalist William Adamson, shipwrecked while returning from ten
years exploring the Amazon. Odysseus finds refuge as the guest of
King Alcinous and Queen Arete; William receives hospitality from Sir
Harald and Lady Alabaster of Bredely Hall, where he meets Eugenia,
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Meredith Safran40
the “princess” of this isolated palatial estate. Here the parallels diverge,
temporarily: William marries his Nausicaa, joining her wealthy, closed
society. But, true to the gothic genre, Bredely’s aristocratic idyll does
not simply differ from William’s prior experience; its bucolic appear-
ance conceals the sociosexual perversion that ultimately drives him
away and back onto the path of his Homeric model.
As a narratologist, Byatt regularly plays intertextual games by reshap-
ing traditional material to explore latent tensions in her sources and to
highlight peculiarities of an adaptation’s historical setting.4 In fact, this
treatment of the Odyssey in “Morpho Eugenia” resembles the Homeric
tradition of posing counterfactuals: Adamson’s temporary divergence
from Odysseus’s path generates suspense by making a character con-
sider an action that would deform the traditional, ergo necessary, course
of the story. For example, in Book 1 of the Iliad, Achilles considers
killing Agamemnon; in Book 2, the Greek army almost abandons the
war. Similarly, Odysseus tarried with the sorceress Circe for a year, until
his crew begged to leave; after seven years on Calypso’s island, the god-
dess offered Odysseus immortality if he would consent to stay forever.5
While the novella and film eschew heavy- handed gestures toward the
epic, cumulative points of contact and echoes highlight the significance
of the Odyssey as “narrative template,” in Judith Fletcher’s words.6 The
audience need not apprehend the Homeric source to enjoy the novella
and film, but recognition of the story’s indebtedness to the Odyssey enhances an appreciation of how this adaptation engages in a cultural
tradition that traces its roots back to the ancient Greeks.
In adapting Byatt’s cerebral novella for the screen, the Haases nec-
essarily emphasize the visual aspects of the narrative in counterpoint
to the scientific, philosophical, and theological debates for which
Byatt’s work is distinguished. By translating characters’ inner lives
into images and focalizations, their screenplay transforms moments
that marred Odysseus’s stay with the Phaeacians into symptoms of the
dysfunction latent in Victorian aristocratic ideology. The viewer both
empathizes with William’s romanticized image of Eugenia in their
strange courtship and perceives dark William’s incompatibility with
the golden Alabasters even before the marriage falters. The viewer
shares William’s shock in discovering that the Alabasters’ perversions,
not his difference, are the cause of his unhappiness, driving him to
resume the voyage that reunites him with his epic model. Ironically,
the ideology of sexual relations at Bredely, which privileges traditional
aristocratic rules over new Darwinian ones, would have been logical
to Homer’s ancient Greek audience, reinforcing the power of adapta-
tion to illuminate and question its sources.
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Perversions of the Phaeacians 41
Courtship, Accidentally
Both Odysseus’s and William’s Phaeacian encounters begin with per-
verted courtships that, as guests in strange and potentially hostile
societies, neither can gracefully avoid. In order to pursue his journey,
each must navigate the rules that distinguish the “civilized” from the
“savage,” according to each society, including offers of hospitality.7
Yet when a local woman initiates an unsought courtship, entwined
with hospitality, permanent membership through marriage might trap
the traveler abroad. Both Odysseus and William field such overtures
from high- status women that diverge from the norms of their own
patriarchal societies, which use marriage to transmit lineage and prop-
erty and to express social validation and partnership— that is, among
men. Courtship protocols allow male guardians to regulate interac-
tion between marriageable girls and prospective husbands, lest erotic
impulses destroy social order.8 When women take control of the pro-
cess and, further, exert the power of a host on a resourceless guest, the
logic of courtship is perverted.
Courtship is far from Odysseus’s mind after he shipwrecks on an
unknown shore (Odyssey 5.499– 501).9 When he wakes to nearby cries,
his first concern is security: “What kind of land have I come to now? /
Are the natives wild and lawless savages, or godfearing men who wel-
come strangers?” (6.118– 20). Espying unchaperoned girls washing
clothes, and unaware that his divine patron Athena has engineered this
situation, the naked Odysseus ponders whether to approach; simply
revealing himself could be tantamount to sexual assault.10 When his
desperation outweighs propriety, Nausicaa stands her ground while
her maids flee the approach of this filthy, naked stranger. Since Athena
has primed her to consider marriage, Nausicaa listens to the stranger’s
praise, pleas, and wishes that she enjoy a successful marriage. When
Athena magically renders Odysseus beautiful, Nausicaa hands over
her brother’s clothing, directions to her house, and instructions to
bypass her father and supplicate her mother, Queen Arete.11 She can’t
convey him in her wagon, she explains, lest Phaeacians make imper-
tinent remarks about her fancying a stranger when she already has
many suitors among her own people: “I myself would blame . . . /
a girl who . . . / kept the company of men before her wedding day”
(6.294– 96). By indicating her availability, desirability, and respect for
propriety, Nausicaa skillfully counters Odysseus’s appeal for aid with
an invitation to courtship.
Nausicaa’s oblique proposition puts Odysseus in a delicate position,
especially once her parents become involved. The civilized Phaeacians
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Meredith Safran42
will provide hospitality to a stranger, but Homeric courtship involves
sex segregation, which his encounter with Nausicaa has already vio-
lated: he, merely by approaching her unsupervised; she, by engaging
in negotiations. Indeed, Alcinous’s awkward welcome to Odysseus is
complicated by Arete’s suspicion: recognizing the stranger’s cloth-
ing as her son’s, she probes Odysseus’s story for some impropriety
(7.163– 256). After he allays such anxieties and recounts his captiv-
ity on Calypso’s island, Alcinous offers this anonymous stranger his
daughter’s hand in marriage and a share of his kingdom or convey-
ance home after the next day’s festival (7.332– 50). As this is the third
such offer that Odysseus has fielded on his voyage, he politely chooses
homecoming; after all, he already has a perverted marital scenario
waiting at home, where young aristocrats have been consuming his
wealth while courting his wife, Penelope. William, by contrast, will
accept the princess’s oblique advances, generating his own perverted
martial scenario among these Phaeacians.
Where the Odyssey’s Phaeacian episode begins with perverse court-
ship abroad, Angels & Insects opens with two contrasting courtship
scenes among “others”: in the clearly alien Amazon, and at the more
insidiously alien Bredely. As whoops and percussion sound out, the
opening titles scroll across torch- lit darkness, revealing glimpses of
bodies dancing in a jungle clearing: brown- skinned men, naked save
for thong loincloths, body paint, and brightly colored feathers and
beads. The camera follows a lone female moving confidently through
the men and dancing with one. Suddenly a pale white man in Euro-
pean shirt and trousers is carried, protesting, into the dance: William,
whom the woman draws into her sinuous embrace, and kisses. As
the music accelerates, the scene fades to a splendid, bright ballroom
where tuxedoed youths whirl elaborately attired women as a string
quartet scores the remaining credits. The camera lingers on the only
graphically sexual image: a sculpture of amoretti embracing in a niche,
naked save loincloths. Despite the contrast between “savage” jungle
and “civilized” ballroom, the juxtaposition of images suggests that
dancing as courtship ritual forecasts sexual encounters in both soci-
eties. But female centrality and control, so open in the Amazonian
ritual, emerge as subtle perversions of this Victorian English scenario.
As Nausicaa and Arete exerted unusual influence over Odysseus’s
fortunes, in Bredely’s ballroom William must follow the social cues of
the Alabaster women. If the Amazonian sequence suggested Odys-
seus and Nausicaa’s disorienting meeting in the wild, the ballroom
scene picks up from Odysseus’s interview with Arete. As the ranking
member of the house at the ball, Lady Alabaster, who presides seated
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Perversions of the Phaeacians 43
over her adult children, engages the standing William in a conversa-
tion that establishes his accidental presence and lack of resources, both
social and economic. Yet the matriarch’s interview threatens to col-
lapse back into the initial encounter scene, as Lady Alabaster’s affect
suggests that she is attempting to elicit courtship. Her simpering flir-
tations parody those of a young girl, as her frilly white dress, golden
ringlets, sinuous head movements, and nasal, high- pitched voice enact
an out- of- season coquetry. Furthermore, she— not Eugenia— has out-
fitted the stranger in her son Edgar’s suit. This substitution should
be more proper than if her unmarried daughter had done so, but the
erotic undertones of Nausicaa’s commerce with Odysseus in the epic
model, combined with Lady Alabaster’s unsettling affect, amplify the
perversity of the switch.
When Lady Alabaster eventually maneuvers William into asking
the demure Eugenia to dance, this interaction too goes awry. Their
polite conversation about William’s “surprise,” an exotic butterfly
specimen, abruptly sends Eugenia running from the ballroom, an
ominous reversal of Nausicaa’s improper courage. Eugenia’s previous
“surprise,” William presently learns, was her fiancé’s suicide, which
has cast doubt on her marriageability. Although her behavior and this
report should deter William, he is enchanted by her fragile beauty
and pines for Eugenia during his stay at Bredely. Their interactions
occur in the simulated wild: out on the grounds, or in the plant- filled
solarium, where Eugenia eventually indicates to a surprised William
that she is receptive to marriage.
Although marriage is the proper end to courtship, the union of
the daughter of landed gentry with this butcher’s son is a misalliance,
a violation of the social order. Nevertheless, William anticipates the
wedding night as the beginning of conjugal bliss. Signaling his formal
integration into this alien society, a maid ushers William into a bed-
room, where virginal white draperies and bedclothes frame the primly
dressed Eugenia. When he hesitates at the threshold, she playfully
invites him into bed, and he symbolically takes his wife by snapping
the daisy chain around her wrists, marking his sanctioned role as pos-
sessor of her blooming sexuality.
Marriage as Misalliance
The Homeric tradition required that Odysseus depart for wife and
home, rather than marry the princess and remain with her people;
the unmarried William has no such reason to leave Bredely. Yet the
consequences of his choice expose the moral necessity of hewing to
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Meredith Safran44
one’s path: by accepting incorporation into Bredely’s society, William
exchanges exploration for domesticity, a bargain more disconcerting
still due to the diminution of his masculinity.12 Aristocratic marriage
in both men’s patriarchal societies conventionally entailed the wife’s
subordination to her husband and his household, but William must
accommodate himself to the Alabasters at Bredely.13 Whereas Odys-
seus returns to political supremacy and idealized marital reciprocity
with Penelope at home, William’s marriage produces neither conjugal
intimacy nor social acceptance, due to his persistent outsider status.14
William’s subordination is soon evident through his wife’s control
over sexual access. Eugenia possesses the conjugal bed in her own
bedroom, which his chamber merely adjoins, and she decides when
intercourse occurs. On one occasion, Eugenia leaves the door open
and reclines nude in her white bower, a tableau of sexual invitation.
But on most nights William finds the door locked. Conversely, Euge-
nia intrudes on his spaces. Midday she descends to the riverside, where
William has been drafted into educating his wife’s younger sisters, and
wordlessly summons him back to her bedroom for sex. Another day,
after snubbing him to ride on the hunt with her brother Edgar, Euge-
nia enters William’s room and seduces him into hers. Thus Eugenia
subordinates William into a consort, indicating his dependent status
at Bredely.
This use of female sexuality to dominate a man through erotic
desire is both titillating and disturbing— the more so because patri-
archal society works to contain this phenomenon. The novella signals
Eugenia’s effect on William by reference to Aphrodite.15 Like the
Greek goddess of sexuality, Eugenia transcends the status of desirable
object through her disruptive manipulation of this power, primar-
ily through her visual affect.16 So too Penelope exerts her greatest
personal influence over the unruly suitors when Athena pours onto
her “the pure, distilled Beauty that Aphrodite anoints herself with”;
on seeing her, the suitors become so desirous of Penelope that they
reverse their consumption of her husband’s wealth by heaping rich
gifts at her feet (18.200– 331). In fact, sexual intercourse with a god-
dess is forbidden to mortal men in Greek mythology, resulting in
disability or death.17 Odysseus’s divine lover, Calypso, lists all the god-
desses whose mortal paramours were destroyed by gods, even as she
claims that, should Odysseus consent to stay, she would make him the
exception by granting him immortality (5.118– 43). As her captive, he
has been as good as dead to human society for seven years; there is
no reason to believe that she could succeed in preserving him literally
when the superior goddesses she enumerated have failed.18
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Perversions of the Phaeacians 45
While no laws of marriage defined such goddess- mortal relation-
ships, and no society witnessed and sanctioned the union, like William
and Eugenia such a couple would be mismatched.19 Inevitably, the
man was the subordinate partner, whatever his standing among his
own kind. He might join the divine household, but he could never
possess it, or her, or be fully counted a “man.” Even Odysseus, despite
his past deeds and lineage, would have suffered a diminution of status
among the Phaeacians as a dependent son- in- law and an outsider to
the royal bloodline. William, who lacks many of Odysseus’s advan-
tages, faces this problem magnified. Despite possessing one kind of
worldliness, William could not foresee the insurmountable divide that
his nonaristocratic background opened between himself and his wife.
Breeding: Nature vs. Culture
The birth of children, instead of securing their father’s tenuous posi-
tion at Bredely, only reinforces that William was mistaken in choosing
to diverge from the Odyssean path. Rather than bridging their parents’
difference, the babies’ pallor suggests only Alabaster inheritance: as
William observes ruefully to his wife, “They do not seem to resemble
me at all.” By contrast, the resemblance of Telemachus to his absent
father is frequently observed (1.224– 26, 3.134– 37, 4.146– 56). The
birth of a son, so important in a patriarchal society, initiates conflict
when Eugenia declares his name as Edgar, for “there is an Edgar in
every generation of Alabasters.” When William objects that his son is
Figure 3.1 Eugenia (Patsy Kensit) channels Aphrodite to seduce William (Mark
Rylance) in Angels & Insects (1996). Samuel Goldwyn Company.
pal-cyrino-book.indb 45 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Meredith Safran46
an Adamson, Eugenia pointedly contradicts him: “We do not see your
family, or speak, or seem likely to do so . . . We are your family, and I
think you must own we have been good to you.” When William insists,
Eugenia suggests compromising, with “William Edgar.” William pre-
fers his father’s name, asserting “Robert’s a good English name.” But
by mimicking the aristocratic custom, William underlines the lack of
continuity in his working- class family.
This dysfunctional outcome was anticipated by the one person who
objected to the marriage: Eugenia’s brother, Edgar. He is already
antagonistic in the opening scene, impetuously assaulting William after
Eugenia runs from the ballroom. Although satisfied that William has
not wronged Eugenia (substituting for Queen Arete’s concern that
Odysseus had wronged Nausicaa), Edgar’s stilted apology forecasts
the men’s incompatibility. Edgar’s commanding physicality, white and
gold coloring, and arrogant personality contrast with William’s slight
build, dark features, and modest manner: a comparative physiognomy
of social class. Indeed, the unmarried Edgar takes great pride in brash,
class- coded equestrian activities; beyond riding with the hunt in his fine
redcoat, he races trains and drives carriages through hedges and par-
lor windows with impunity. He views William as an interloper, bluntly
warning him, “Don’t get too comfortable. You’re not one of us.”
The basis of Edgar’s palpable contempt emerges when he expounds
on horse- breeding. “Give me a purebred Arab stallion like Sultan any
day,” Edgar opines at a family dinner. “Keep the breeds separate and
you can’t go far wrong. That is the cardinal rule. God made crea-
tures distinct; it is our job to keep them that way.” When William
advances the Darwinian position that “the evidence is that all horses
are descended from the same animal,” Edgar vehemently defends
appearance as evidence of intrinsic difference: “Don’t be absurd. A
dray horse has nothing in common with an Arab. There is no blood
shared there. They are different— quite different. And if you knew
anything about horses, you’d see that.” Edgar’s conflation of biologi-
cal and social rules, especially viewing purity as a moral imperative,
leads him to attack William over drinks: “You are underbred, sir, and
you are no good match for my sister. There is bad blood in you,
vulgar blood . . . You are a miserable creature, without breeding or
courage . . . She is not for such as you!”
This ideologically charged conflict between William and Edgar
echoes the clash between Odysseus and the Phaeacian aristocrat,
Euryalus. When Odysseus declines Prince Laodamas’s invitation to
participate in athletic competitions due to his suffering at sea, Eury-
alus, the wrestling champion and “a match for the War God” (8.126),
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Perversions of the Phaeacians 47
insults the stranger as unfit to participate based on physiognomy:
“I’ve seen a lot of sportsmen, / and you don’t look like one to me at
all. / You look more like the captain of a merchant ship, / . . . greedy
for profit. No, you’re no athlete” (8.174– 79). Although the seagoing
Phaeacians’ wealth must derive from commerce, this young aristocrat
judges social worth only by an aristocratic warrior code. Odysseus,
although both aristocrat and warrior, is withholding his identity while
fleeing the wrath of the sea- god Poseidon (1.76– 86, 9.475– 529), and
so he starts with the retort (8.185– 95):
“One man might not have good looks,
But the gods crown his words with beauty,
And men look at him with delight . . .
Another man might look like an immortal,
But his words are not crowned with beauty.
That’s how it is with you. Your looks
Are outstanding . . .
But your mind is crippled.”
To support his rhetoric, Odysseus throws a discus so far that no one
could best him. William similarly retorts in the film, “As for breed-
ing, I count my father as a kind man, an honest man, and I know no
other good reason for respect. As for courage, I think I may claim that
to have lived for ten years on the Amazons, to have survived murder
plots, poisonous snakes, shipwreck, fifteen days on a lifeboat in the
mid- Atlantic, may reasonably compare with driving a poor horse into
a house through a window. I think I know what true courage is. It
does not consist in fisticuffs as a response to an insult.” Unlike Odys-
seus, however, William is unable to compete with Edgar’s sporting
displays of manliness and does not change Edgar’s views.
The Homeric episode exemplifies how the intrusion of an outsider
not only offends one man’s sensibilities but threatens the logic of a
conservative system. As the prince’s friend and “handsomest of the
Phaeacians” after Laodamas (8.127– 8), Euryalus’s rudeness may have
stemmed from this “nobody” sweeping in and capturing the marriage
many young aristocrats were pursuing.20 Thus an intrusive element
threatens the closed- group mentality that polices the boundaries of
a birthright aristocracy, including through marriage practices. Where
martial success, and analogous athletic ability, is fundamental to
Homeric masculinity, a merchant is “other” and lesser in the typology
of men.21 However, economic historian David Tandy has identified
the century in which Homeric poetry crystallized as the period in
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Meredith Safran48
which the warrior aristocracy became widely engaged in commercial
activities: instead of status attracting wealth, wealth began to attract
status, a major cultural shift attested in archaic Greek poetry like the
Odyssey.22 Euryalus’s taunt cuts Odysseus, himself a warrior- aristocrat,
to the quick, yet he is also concerned with gifts and material gain
throughout the epic (e.g., 9.192– 220, 10.41– 51, 13.208– 28).
A similar epochal shift in assigning honor structures the conflict
in Angels & Insects. Edgar, who was born into his social position,
performs his aristocratic status through his equestrian exploits. The
redcoat worn to hunt foxes not only marks a sporting gentleman but
projects quasimilitary authority.23 By Edgar’s standards, William is
hopelessly deficient: the butcher’s son lacks noble lineage and partakes
of no sport. Even the light brogue that actor Mark Rylance affects
marks William as “other.” Moreover, William engages in both material
trade in exotic flora and fauna and intellectual commerce in new scien-
tific principles inherently hostile to the ideology rooted in God- given
order and the aristocracy’s concomitant right to police the boundaries
of rank. If such as William gains admittance and mixes his blood with
that of aristocrats, of what value is being to the manor born?
Homeric society largely shared the view that status was inherited
and aristocracy resulted from connection to the gods, but with an
important qualification. While Odysseus’s family claims descent from
Zeus through Hermes, and Zeus’s patronage of kings underwrites his
right to rule and judge his subjects, aristocrats must uphold the moral
standards that structure the universal order to maintain their earthly
prerogatives. This order is therefore not natural, but a naturalized
cultural construct that must be validated by exhibiting moral qualities
befitting descendants of the gods and arbiters of their justice.24
The misbehavior of young aristocrats compared to better- behaved
“outsiders” is common to the Odyssey and Angels & Insects.25 Aris-
tocratic immorality is at issue in Ithaca: Penelope’s suitors may be
well- born, but their impropriety in besieging her home and con-
suming her husband’s property, rather than approaching her father,
is public knowledge (2.1– 282). Euryalus, by contrast, both apolo-
gizes to Odysseus and offers a gift (8.418– 51). At Bredely, Edgar,
despite the occasional conciliatory word, confirms his true character
when William finds him raping a dark- haired young servant girl in the
stables, his personal domain. Breeding may matter to Edgar where
marriage is concerned; below stairs, the “Arab stallion” may satiate his
sexual appetite even with the “dray horse.”
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Perversions of the Phaeacians 49
Cuckoldry and Cultural Norms
From William’s Darwinian perspective, Edgar’s obsession with pure-
breeding and categorical exclusion of difference is perverse. Regulat-
ing sexual intercourse for breeding should privilege biological over
social reproduction. Still, William is about to accept the naturalized
order at Bredely by donning the redcoat for his first hunt, similar to
Odysseus throwing the discus. But when a servant urgently calls him
back to “Miss Eugenia,” William discovers the full implications of the
dysfunctional ideology at the potently named Bredely Hall. A jarring
series of handheld shots dog William’s progress from the front door
to his wife’s bedroom, where William witnesses Edgar in the midst of
sexual intercourse with Eugenia, in the marriage bed, an event that
strongly echoes a key issue in the Odyssey.Throughout the Odyssey, a wife’s infidelity is a huge source of
anxiety, as a fatal perversion of patriarchal order. The story of Penel-
ope’s cousin Clytemnestra, whose infidelity resulted in her husband
Agamemnon’s death at his homecoming, repeatedly serves as a cau-
tionary tale (1.37– 48, 3.290– 347, 4.95– 96, 11.415– 50).26 Her
own husband’s long absence puts Penelope under similar suspicion;
all doubt of her fidelity is dispelled when she and Odysseus reunite
through shared secret knowledge of their marriage bed, a key symbolic
object (23.189– 237).27 At the Phaeacian court, the bard Demodocus
sings of the god Hephaestus discovering his wife Aphrodite in their
bed with her lover Ares (8.287– 395). This song combines anxiety
about infidelity with misalliance: the most sexually desirable goddess
is married to a god who is skilled, but physically disabled, a sign of
emasculation in a warrior culture— certainly compared to the War
God himself. Informed of the affair by a witness, Hephaestus trapped
the lovers in flagrante with a magical net, allowing him to display
the adulterous pair to the divine community and demand restitution.
Most gods who witness the ensnared adulterers laugh at the irony of
the crippled god trapping his swift foe, and once their uncle Poseidon
promises restitution, the adulterers flee, and divine society resumes
the status quo.
Comparing these illicit couples’ respective exposures instructively
highlights the differences between epic model and adaptation, and
god and human. While the servants know of Edgar and Eugenia’s
incestuous affair, “upstairs” William alone witnesses it— though Euge-
nia later admits her former fiancé committed suicide rather than live
with his suspicions. William simulates the effect of Hephaestus’s magi-
cal net through seeing and being seen: the combination of accusation,
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Meredith Safran50
shame, and the authority projected by his own redcoat, compared
to Edgar’s nudity, similarly reverses their power dynamic. Unlike the
gods, the erotic triangle at Bredely now suffers real consequences.
William abandons the hollow marriage to resume his journey, while
Edgar and Eugenia remain to an uncertain fate— including the pos-
sibility of utter ruin, should William disclose their secret.
Beyond the personal betrayal, Edgar and Eugenia’s incest troubles
William as a man of science who understands the biological impli-
cations of such pure- breeding. Yet this most shocking aspect of the
Victorian scenario would not have so troubled Homer’s audience:
Ares, Hephaestus, and Aphrodite are half- siblings in Homeric epic,
fathered by Zeus.28 Among the gods, this liaison is not considered
unnatural: gods are concerned with the conservation of political power
in Zeus’s patriline through endogamy. Greek mythology consistently
represents Zeus as married to his sister Hera, with whom he has sev-
eral children; with another sister Demeter he fathers Persephone, who
marries her uncle Hades. The Olympians’ parents Cronus and Rhea
also were siblings, and grandparents Gaia and Ouranos were mother
and son. Odysseus even encounters this extreme “in- group marriage”
on his voyage, in isolated mortal societies. The sons and daughters
of Aeolus, keeper of the winds, marry each other and reside in their
father’s house (10.1– 17). Nausicaa’s own parents are uncle and niece,
their marriage arranged to conserve an unbroken inheritance of king-
ship through Arete’s side of the family (7.57– 84). In historical ancient
Greek societies like Athens, an epikleros, or heiress without brothers,
was liable to marry an uncle to preserve patrilineal inheritance.29
While acceptable in classical antiquity, this ideology of power rankles
with an audience versed in Darwinian evolution.30 Through William,
we see the Alabaster siblings acting with inappropriately divine dis-
regard for biological laws, let alone human morality, in naturalizing
their aristocratic beliefs. Finally understanding why none of his wife’s
children resemble him, William’s moral repulsion at Eugenia’s infi-
delity is strengthened by his recognition that her sexual activity also
contravenes the laws of nature. When he later announces his decision
to abandon the marriage, he lays down the Darwinian law: “Breed-
ers know that even first- cousin marriages produce inherited defects,
increase the likelihood of deformity.” Thus William asserts the distinc-
tion between difference and perversion, the limit of even a kind and
worldly man’s tolerance.
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Perversions of the Phaeacians 51
Resuming the Journey:
Fidelity and License
The film concludes with William leaving Eugenia and Bredely, closing
off the counterfactual scenario and returning to the course prescribed
by Homeric tradition. Yet two further variations on the Odyssey dem-
onstrate how an adaptation may illuminate its source through artistic
license. Unlike Odysseus, who resumes his journey to Ithaca, William
has no such home; yet his destination, the Amazon, is where William
is most fully himself. In fact, even Odysseus will not remain at home:
the prophet Teiresias informed him that he must subsequently jour-
ney inland, until he finds men “who know nothing of the sea” and
perform propitiatory sacrifice to Poseidon (11.120). Ultimately, the
journey defines each man, as much as the destination itself.
Furthermore, each man travels with a female champion who
orchestrates safe passage to her protégé’s destination. The goddess
Athena repeatedly intervenes to advance Odysseus’s homecoming,
by advocating for him with Zeus, manipulating humans in Phaeacia
and Ithaca, appearing in numerous disguises, and assisting Odysseus
directly. Athena favors Odysseus because they are like- minded—
the key to a good marriage, as Odysseus told Nausicaa.31 However,
Athena is sexually off- limits, both as a goddess and a sworn virgin,
forbidden even to gods. For William, Matilda Crompton plays a varia-
tion on Athena’s role. She is, like William, a dependent who is neither
aristocrat nor servant. She shares his interest in the natural world
and new ideas, although she disguises her intellect as effectively as
drab clothing hides her body. Matilda aids the despondent natural-
ist in recovering his identity by persuading him to publish a book
about local insect societies. With the proceeds from her own book,
she purchases him a berth on a ship bound for the Amazon— and
one for herself. Unlike Athena, Matilda is no sworn virgin; she and
William consummate their intellectual passion following his shock-
ing discovery— a discovery that William suspects Matilda of having
enabled. Matilda also cannot travel unaccompanied, despite having
funded and orchestrated the venture, and her own wish to pursue
exploration requires a shift in the power dynamic: William becomes
the guide and protector, and Matilda the protégé. This more benevo-
lent expression of patriarchy nevertheless restores the “proper” order
of the sexes— precisely Athena’s role throughout the Odyssey.32
As Odysseus’s return to Ithaca restores order at the Odyssey’s end,
the closing credits roll over the well- matched William and Matilda’s
departure for the Amazon and their proper Homeric course. Through
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Meredith Safran52
a sophisticated engagement with the plot, symbols, themes, and even
ideology of the Odyssey, Angels & Insects provides an example of how
adaptation can both affirm and question the narrative and even moral
continuity of a cultural tradition. Some lessons transcend the evident
historical differences: for example, deceptive allure provides no true
basis for happiness, and security is not worth captivity. Thus the nar-
rative twists that seemed a daring departure become an affirmation of
cultural tradition’s validity, even more neatly in the Haases’ film than
in Byatt’s novella.
Notes
1. Thanks to Monica Cyrino for organizing the 2010 Film and History
conference panels, and to Nicholas Rynearson for comments on drafts
of this revised chapter.
2. On origins versus originality in Homeric epic, see Foley (1999).
3. Fletcher (1999) has demonstrated Byatt’s use of the Odyssey as a “nar-
rative template”; there is necessary overlap between novella and film.
Discussions of the film focus on William’s study of insect society as
parallel to Bredely’s: see e.g. Cardullo (1997); Kline (1996). On
gothic and Homeric material in “Morpho Eugenia,” see Byatt (2001)
114– 22.
4. Explicitly in Byatt (1997) 39– 71; similarly, classicists have questioned
whether Phaeacian society is deceptively hostile: see Reece (1993)
101– 21.
5. On temptation in the Odyssey, see Hogan (1976).
6. Fletcher (1999) 217.
7. On hospitality in Homeric epic, see Reece (1993).
8. For Homeric courtship in the Odyssey, see Perysinakis (1991).
9. All references are to the translation of Lombardo (2000).
10. See Shapiro (1995).
11. On Nausicaa’s preparation for marriage, see Ingalls (2000).
12. On gender inversion in the Odyssey, see Foley (1987).
13. On archaic Greek marriage, see Foley (1994), esp. 79– 84; Ormand
(2004).
14. On marriage in the Odyssey, see Bolmarcich (2001).
15. Byatt (1992) 7, 20.
16. On Aphrodite, see now Cyrino (2010a).
17. On mortal/goddess relationships, see Lefkowitz (2002).
18. In Greek myth goddesses never succeed at this task; given the opacity of
female characters in the Odyssey, Calypso’s offer may be disingenuous.
19. The marriage of mortal king Peleus and goddess Thetis, parents of
Achilles, is the exception that proves the rule: after her forced nuptials,
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Perversions of the Phaeacians 53
Thetis abandoned her husband, despite a marriage sanctioned by Zeus
himself.
20. So too Fletcher (1999) 220; see also Murnaghan (1987) 97.
21. On Homeric masculinity, see Graziosi and Haubold (2003).
22. Tandy (1997).
23. Thanks to Gregory N. Daugherty, who pointed out the importance of
the redcoat in response to my talk in Milwaukee.
24. On class in the Odyssey, see Thalmann (1998).
25. For a discussion of Homeric morality, see Yamagata (1994).
26. For Clytemnestra as Penelope’s foil, see Felson- Rubin (1993).
27. On the marriage bed as symbol, see Zeitlin (1996).
28. In Greek mythology, Ares is always Zeus and Hera’s son; only in
Homeric epic are Aphrodite and Hephaestus children of Zeus.
29. For discussion of recent bibliography on the epikleros, see Cohn- Haft
(1995) 9 n. 33.
30. Campbell (2004) 148 notes that the incest taboo, “while horrifying
Victorians, [was] at the same time invited by the period’s social struc-
tures.” On late twentieth- century British literature’s concern with the
impact of Darwinism, see Byatt (1995).
31. On like- mindedness, see Bolmarcich (2001).
32. See Murnaghan (1995) on Athena’s championing of patriarchy.
pal-cyrino-book.indb 53 1/10/13 10:19 AM
4
C h a p t e r 4
Woman Trouble
True Love and Homecoming in
Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver (2006)
Corinne Pache
A meditation on the notion of return, Pedro Almodóvar’s 2006
Volver focuses on the modern experience of love, memory, and iden-
tity in a manner that is at once indebted to the past and resolutely
contemporary. Some films represent the ancient world directly, draw-
ing on historical or literary sources, but many that focus on contem-
porary narratives can be shown to be inspired— directly or not— by
ancient myths whose history is so influential that they pervade many
of our notions about the human experience. In particular, insofar as
Homer’s poem is the foundational text in Western culture of the very
idea of homecoming— or nostos, to use the ancient Greek term— the
treatment of the homecoming theme in Almodóvar’s film parallels,
and significantly diverges from, that of the Odyssey. Like the Odyssey, Volver places love and family at the center of its narrative, but, unlike
its ancient predecessor, which tells the story of a husband’s return
to his wife after a long separation, Almodóvar’s vision of nostos privi-
leges family ties over romantic love and presents the bond between
husbands and wives as an obstacle to the characters’ homecoming.
Volver thus offers a resolutely original and feminist perspective on love
and homecoming that centers on the relationships between mothers,
daughters, sisters, and friends.1
To raise the phenomenon of return is to start a conversation with
Homer’s Odyssey, which is, in our tradition, the home to which all
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Corinne Pache56
narratives of homecoming must themselves return.2 The story of Odys-
seus’s twenty- year absence and his adventures on his long way back to
Ithaca thus exerts a powerful and abiding intertextual influence on the
film. There are, as I will show, many thematic and structural parallels
between Volver and the Odyssey. But first, let us consider the Spanish
volver, which has several connotations: to return, to turn, to do again,
and, in the phrase volver en si, “to come back to oneself, to regain con-
sciousness,” a connotation also central to the Greek concept of nostos, whose semantic range includes “homecoming,” “return from dark-
ness,” and “return from death.”3 Odysseus, the homecoming hero of
the Odyssey, is also described as the man “of many turns” in the first
line of the poem with the epithet polytropos, which alludes to both the
many turns taken on his journey home and the twists and turns of his
clever mind that are so crucial to his nostos.4
Volver, like the Odyssey, explores nostos in many of its forms:
homecoming, return of the past, return of the dead, the repetitive
patterns that define human lives, and the link between homecoming
and self- knowledge. Several characters experience an emotional and
psychological form of nostos in Volver, the most important being the
return of the mother, Irene, who may or may not be a ghost, and the
return of her daughter, Raimunda. Irene comes back from the dead,
while Raimunda’s homecoming has to do with coming to terms with
her own past. The film, like the Odyssey, is also highly attentive to the
power of art in our lives: songs, stories, old photographs, and movies
shape the characters’ lives and their self- understanding. Where Volver
differs the most from the ancient poem is in its emphasis on home-
coming as a female experience.5 In the world of the Odyssey, women
are confined to the domestic realm and their perspectives are second-
ary to the narrative of the hero’s return. Although Penelope’s loyalty
is crucially important to Odysseus’s homecoming, the poet’s focus is
always on the male protagonist.
Like the Odyssey, Volver begins in medias res, with an adolescent
whose imminent adulthood upsets the status quo. The plot revolves
around the lives of women: Raimunda (Penélope Cruz), a cleaner; her
14- year- old daughter, Paula (Yohana Cobo); and Raimunda’s sister,
Sole (Lola Dueña). Both sisters live in Madrid but often return to the
village where they grew up, Alcanfor de las Infantas, to visit an elderly
aunt, Paula (Chus Lampreave), and to take care of their parents’
tomb. A close friend of the sisters, Agustina (Blanca Portillo), helps to
care for their aunt. The friends’ close bond is reinforced by a shared
experience of loss: Agustina’s mother disappeared on the same day
Raimunda’s and Sole’s parents died in a mysterious fire. Almodóvar’s
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Woman Trouble 57
film shifts its attention between Raimunda, Sole, Agustina, and the
past that unites and later threatens to separate them.
Two events precipitate the action: one evening, Raimunda comes
home to find that her husband, Paco, has tried to rape her daughter,
Paula, who killed him in self- defense. At the same time, Raimunda’s
and Sole’s aunt has died in Alcanfor. Because Raimunda is busy trying
to hide Paco’s body, Sole (unaware of the true reason for Raimunda’s
refusal to accompany her) is forced to go to the village alone, where she
hears about sightings of the ghost of her mother. After she goes back
to Madrid, Sole discovers Irene (Carmen Maura), very much alive, in
the trunk of her car. Meanwhile, Raimunda’s neighbor has given her
the key to his restaurant so she can show it to potential buyers while
he is away, a serendipitous event that allows Raimunda to temporarily
hide Paco’s body in the restaurant’s freezer. When a film crew arrives
in the area looking for someone to provide meals, Raimunda sees a
good opportunity and opens the restaurant with the help of neighbors.
While Sole reconnects with her mother in secret, hiding her from Rai-
munda, Raimunda reconnects with her past: she admits to Paula that
Paco was in fact not her father, and in one crucial scene discussed in
more detail below, she reconnects with her love of singing. By the end
of the film, mysteries are solved, and the women— mothers, daughters,
sisters, friends— are all reunited once more in Alcanfor.
The film is a return for Almodóvar in several respects. It is an
opportunity to come together with two actresses, Carmen Maura and
Penélope Cruz, with whom he has collaborated throughout his career
and who in many ways have come to personify his idiosyncratic vision.
The brittle Carmen Maura of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Break-down (1988) here reappears as a remorseful ghostly mother, while
the young Penélope Cruz who was pregnant and died in childbirth in
All About My Mother (1999) becomes the embodiment of flourishing
motherhood.
There is yet another return in the film on the level of plot, which
refers obliquely to The Flower of My Secret (1995). In the earlier film,
a successful writer of romance novels, Leo Macías, becomes disen-
chanted with her life and yearns, among other things, to write in a
different genre. She delivers a manuscript to her editor, Alicia, for a
series entitled “True Love,” but instead of the expected romance, she
has written a gory tale of incest and murder. Leo’s new book, The Cold
Storage Room, to her editor’s dismay, is about a woman who has the
abject job of emptying hospital bedpans. Her son is a junkie, and her
daughter, as in Volver, kills her father after he attempts to rape her. To
prevent discovery, the mother hides the body in the cold storage room
pal-cyrino-book.indb 57 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Corinne Pache58
of a neighbor’s restaurant. When her editor points out the absence of
a love story, Leo answers that there is romance in the subplot, based
on a true story of a man who finds himself so desperately in love with
his ex- wife that he hires a hit man to kill her mother so he can go the
funeral and convince her to come back to him.
When Leo defends her novel as being about reality, Alicia responds,
“reality should be banned.” For Alicia, novels should “give the illusion
of living” to people who lead despairing lives. Leo instead rejects the
formulaic romances she is supposed to write and looks for true love in
the experience of more realistic characters. In the end, The Cold Stor-age Room is about a mother who is ready to do anything to save her
daughter. Leo and Alicia’s argument about the role of novels is also
an argument about the nature of art: should it reflect the truth of our
daily lives or embellish reality with the veneer of fantasy? This question
is reflected in Almodóvar’s own evolution as a director, from his early
rocambolesque films of the 1980s to the more emotionally complex
narratives he started directing in the 1990s. The fantasy flavor of the
earlier films, such as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, gives
place to affecting meditations on the nature of love between friends,
parents, and children, as in All About My Mother, and between couples,
as in Talk to Her (2002) and Broken Embraces (2009).6
There is also a homecoming in The Flower of My Secret that fore-
shadows Volver. After her husband leaves her, Leo takes refuge in her
mother’s village, Almagro (the village where Almodóvar grew up).
Her mother explains that the village is the place where women go
when they lose a husband “because he’s died or left with another
woman, it’s the same. We have to return to the place where we were
born.” In Almagro, Leo spends her time sitting with the village’s
elderly women who gather to embroider lace while telling stories and
singing. Homecoming for Leo thus involves a literal return to the
maternal village where women gather together to weave their lives.
In Volver, Almodóvar revisits the plot imagined by one of his own
characters in the earlier film and makes female homecoming the center
of his narrative. Like Leo in The Flower of My Secret, Almodóvar exper-
iments with genre: the film veers between melodrama and comedy,
without completely yielding to either one. But Volver retains little of
the darkness of Leo’s plot. Despite the bleak circumstances, the colors
are bright and cheerful; the tone is lively and full of humor. The film
is nevertheless deeply serious about the humanity of its characters and
their emotions. There is sadness to be sure (illness, loss, death), and
there is violence (rape, incest, murder), but the focus is always on the
characters’ resilience and, especially, the bond between mothers and
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Woman Trouble 59
daughters. Almodóvar’s playful blend of different genres is in itself
epic: Volver describes the world in different modes— tragedy, comedy,
lyric, romance— that can be found in the narrative of the Odyssey.Like the Odyssey, Volver has much to say about homecoming as a
process of memory and loss. In the publicity materials accompanying
the film’s release, Almodóvar explains that “[Volver] is a movie about
the culture of death in my native region, La Mancha. My folks there
live it in astonishing simplicity. The way in which the dead are still
present in their lives, the richness and humanity of their rites makes it
possible for the dead to never really die.”7 In the interview accompa-
nying the DVD of Volver, Almodóvar comes back to the notion that
the film deals with death, more precisely with “[t]he female universe
in relation with death.” In La Mancha, as in ancient Greece, women
take care of the bodies of the dead and the rituals of mourning that
follow death.8 The opening scene makes clear the intricate connec-
tion between past and present and establishes death, and women’s
relation with death’s rituals, as central themes. The film begins with
music over a black screen. Joyful women’s voices soon join the music
in an old- fashioned song, simultaneously with a tracking shot of a
cemetery filled with women who fight against strong winds to clean
tombs. The title, Volver, suddenly appears in bright red letters on a
grey background, as if inscribed on one of the tombstones we were
just watching.
The contrast between the solemn task at hand and the joyful sing-
ing in the background is striking. The song, “Las Espigadoras” (“the
Gleaners”), is drawn from a 1930 zarzuela (a Spanish form of popular
opera), La Rosa del Azafrán. Almodóvar describes how he remem-
bered this song from his own childhood. Accompanying his mother
to the river to do the laundry, he heard the women sing “a song about
gleaners who welcomed the dawn as they worked in the fields and
sang as if they were merry little birds.”9 In the song, the gleaners cel-
ebrate their work, “standing and stooping all day long in the wind and
the sun,” picking up whatever grain the male harvesters leave behind.
At the end of the song, not included in Volver, a male chorus joins in
and the harvesters reassure the women that they will not pick up all
the grain and “wait till you come to hear talk of love.” The song thus
celebrates women’s work in the traditional framework of a harvest
festival, with its potential for romance.10
By juxtaposing the beginning of “Las Espigadoras” with the open-
ing of Volver, Almodóvar highlights important themes: women’s work,
the mixing of high and low art, and the ways in which art, and more
particularly songs, inform our lives. The women of “Las Espigadoras,”
pal-cyrino-book.indb 59 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Corinne Pache60
like Raimunda, lead difficult lives centering on hard work, yet they find
beauty and happiness in their humble surroundings. Almodóvar’s use
of the gleaners’ song is also reminiscent of the Odyssey’s fondness for
depicting singers and songs.11 Such embedded songs— and there will
be another very important song in Volver— add layers of meaning by
interacting with the outer narrative.
The next shot shows a close up of a grave decorated with two pho-
tographs, a woman and a man. The camera then zooms out to include
Raimunda, Sole, and Paula in the frame as they dust and polish their
parents’ grave. When Paula wonders about the number of widows in
the village, Sole explains that women live longer than men in the vil-
lage, with the painful exception of her and Raimunda’s own mother. As
they brush off pine needles from the gravestone, Raimunda and Sole
reminisce about the death of their parents. The wind blowing dead pine
needles recalls Glaucon’s famous simile in the Iliad comparing the gen-
erations of human lives to autumnal leaves that fall each season as they
leave their place for new ones (Homer, Iliad 6.146– 49). The brown
pine needles also suggest that the dead keep intruding in the lives of the
living, and the ever- present wind is depicted as a quasisupernatural force
that, according to Raimunda, drives the village’s inhabitants insane.
The cemetery scene thus looks both back and forward to death.
The cleaning ritual centers on the memory of the dead, but it also
brings to mind the mortality of the villagers. Raimunda explains to
Paula that villagers all buy a plot for themselves and take care of it
during their lifetime, preparing for their own death and treating their
grave as “a second home.” Widows and orphans remember and care
for their dead, though it soon becomes obvious that Raimunda herself
has ambivalent feelings toward her dead mother. There is anger in
her strong gestures and in her remark to Sole that their mother was
“lucky” because “she died in Dad’s arms, and she loved him more
than anyone in the world.”
The film continues to move back and forth between the two worlds
of the village of Alcanfor and the city of Madrid. Almodóvar shot the
film in his childhood village, Almagro, but gave it the fictional name
of Alcanfor de las Infantas. Translated literally, the name means the
“camphor of the princesses” and evokes the embalming qualities of
camphor and the dream state of the village, a fairy tale place outside
of the everyday world, where stories are told and the dead are remem-
bered. The area between Madrid and Alcanfor is shown as a no man’s
land filled with the wind turbines that have succeeded the famous
windmills of Don Quixote. The modern machines take advantage of
the winds that wreak havoc on the region and its inhabitants’ psyches
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Woman Trouble 61
and signify the transitions between the modern world of Madrid and
the village steeped in the past and tradition.
All heroic journeys include a journey to the world of the dead, and
Alcanfor is portrayed as a kind of Underworld: the village is full of
ghosts, and all activities revolve around death. Elderly women, dressed
in black, spend their time caring for the dead: washing their bodies,
mourning them at home and in funeral processions, and taking care of
their graves. The only young person in the village is Agustina, who is
dying of cancer. Alcanfor also becomes the final resting place for Rai-
munda’s dead husband, Paco, whose body she buries by the river near
the village. The film begins and ends with Alcanfor, and each trip to
Alcanfor, like Odysseus’s descent to the Underworld, is accompanied
by an encounter with death.
One striking image in Volver stresses the porous boundary between
the living and the dead. When Raimunda finds Paco dead in her kitchen,
her first instinct is to wipe the blood off the floor. The camera next
zooms in on a paper towel as it slowly absorbs Paco’s blood. The
image becomes almost abstract as red slowly overcomes white, high-
lighting the lacelike pattern of the towel, which Almodóvar describes in
his DVD commentary as “bloody embroidery.” The blood- drenched
towel becomes fluidly metaphorical: death overpowers life, but life in
turn overpowers death. When Raimunda’s cleaning is interrupted by a
neighbor, she goes to open the door with some of Paco’s blood smeared
on her neck. After Emilio points to the stain and asks her if she’s hurt,
Raimunda without hesitation reassures him with the phrase “women’s
troubles.” The phrase evokes blood as menstruation, but also every-
thing that menstruation entails: puberty, sex, children, and death. Paco’s
blood thus becomes a symbol of women’s troubles writ large.
The motif of lace also goes back to The Flower of My Secret. I have
already mentioned the importance of women gathering in their village
to embroider and tell stories. Almodóvar shoots one scene through
hanging lace, starting with a close- up of the delicate flowery motifs
and slowly shifting the focus so we can see, through the lace, Leo’s
mother entering the room where Leo is recovering when she returns
home. The traditional lacy flowers literally shape the scene and under-
line the beauty of the village’s traditions, handed down from mother
to daughter. Women’s work transforms women’s troubles into beau-
tiful patterns. The “bloody embroidery” of Volver is just another
variation on the motif of traditional lace that also evokes the weaving
of Penelope in the Odyssey as a way of controlling events in her life.
In contrast with the Homeric world in which men play the active
role while women weave inside the house, in Almodóvar’s odyssey,
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Corinne Pache62
the Homeric paradigm becomes inverted, and women take center
stage. Men become obstacles that must yield in the face of the female-
defined trajectory of the narrative. And as the film proceeds to get
rid of men entirely (those who do not die get out of town), women
start to thrive. The men we encounter, with a few exceptions, are
repulsive. Raimunda’s husband, Paco, is a beer- swilling brute who
is only interested in satisfying his own desires. He cares little for his
wife’s feelings, and when she declines sex because she is upset about
the state in which she found her aunt Paula, he masturbates at her side
rather than comfort her. The next day, lust overcomes him and he tries
to rape his 14- year old daughter, arguing that he is not her biological
father, a fact that hardly justifies assaulting her in the kitchen. Another
man who plays an important role in Raimunda’s past is her father,
whose photograph is seen briefly on the grave in the first scene. Agus-
tina’s observation that Paula has her grand- father’s eyes hints at the
identity of Paula’s real father, and in time we learn that Raimunda’s
father, like Paco, was unable to resist the urge to rape his daughter,
and that young Paula is both Raimunda’s daughter and sister.
While sex precipitates major turning points, Volver gives a dark per-
spective on the relations between women and men. In the Odyssey, the
Homeric nostos finds both its source and culmination in the deep and
long- lasting connection between Odysseus and Penelope. Penelope
weaves and unweaves her tapestry, deceiving her suitors in order to
remain loyal to Odysseus. In the Homeric perspective, Odysseus’s
infidelities during his long voyage back are of little account, and his
love for Penelope is never in question. As he describes it to the Phae-
acian princess, Nausicaa, a good marriage consists of two individuals
who share “a similar way of thinking” (Odyssey 6.683). Husband and
wife also have a secret sign, centering on the rooted bed that symbol-
izes their marriage and their common- mindedness, which allows them
to recognize and to reconnect with one another after a twenty- year
separation.
The perfect harmony between Odysseus and Penelope is nowhere
to be found in Volver, where marital love is absent, and sex is always
depicted as perverted. Husbands are faithless, and fathers rape (or
attempt to rape) their daughters. Husbands and wives in Volver are
closer to the paradigm of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, the couple
Odysseus and Penelope are constantly contrasted with in the Odyssey. When Agamemnon returns home from Troy, he is murdered by his
wife’s lover.12 In Volver, there is love to be sure, but never between
husbands and wives. Raimunda ultimately seems untroubled by
Paco’s death at her daughter’s hand, while Irene, enraged when she
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Woman Trouble 63
realizes that her husband raped their daughter, decides to kill him and
his lover. Husbands, in Volver, are by definition bad— and fathers are
even worse.
It is between women that love and like- mindedness thrive: mothers,
daughters, sisters, and friends love and nurture one another. Home-
coming thus takes place in the realm of women. To nurture means to
feed or nourish, and food features prominently in Volver as a means
of creating a home and expressing love. This connects the narrative to
the Odyssey, where food is a symbol of civilization, and feeding guests
is a crucial component of the institutionalized friendships formed
through hospitality known as xenia (“guest- host friendship”). Food
in ancient epics helps to form multigenerational bonds, establishes
and nurtures civilization, and is also a way of communicating between
the dead and the living. When Odysseus goes to the Underworld,
he feeds blood to the ghosts of the dead to give them momentary
consciousness. In Volver, Irene secretly makes her daughters’ favorite
foods while she is hiding at Aunt Paula’s. Raimunda and Sole are puz-
zled by the abundance of plastic containers they find, carefully labeled
with their names, that contain complicated delights that are far too
work- intensive for the elderly and frail Paula to have prepared. The
mystery food is a way for Irene to be in contact with her daughters
and to continue nourishing them from beyond, as it were, the grave.
Just as good hospitality in the Odyssey is a symbol of civilization, inap-
propriate eating, such as cannibalism, signals barbarism and figures as
a recurrent danger that threatens to impede or terminate Odysseus’s
homecoming. In the first half hour of Volver, Almodóvar hints at the
possibility that Raimunda might get rid of Paco’s body by turning him
into food, and the film gently threatens to descend into a gory, Swee-ney Todd– style horror story. The next day, after she hides Paco’s corpse
in the large freezer of her neighbor’s restaurant, Raimunda agrees to
provide lunch for a film crew of 30 people and proceeds to go grocery
shopping. Each of Raimunda’s moves encourages the viewer to think of
Paco’s body as potential food. And there is nothing reassuring about the
meat- heavy menu inscribed on the blackboard when Raimunda begins
to serve lunch: “omelet and blood sausage, pork salad.” Raimunda’s
repeated questions, as she moves swiftly among her customers replenish-
ing their plates, take on an ominous tenor: “Who’d like some pork? It’s
delicious.” Is the film crew unwittingly devouring Paco the pig? But the
joke is on us. Raimunda would never feed her customers human meat, as
befits a heroine who, like Odysseus, is always civilized about food.
Food and sex also link Volver with another ancient Greek text that
focuses on the story of a mother and her daughter. The Homeric
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Corinne Pache64
Hymn to Demeter tells the story of the goddess Demeter’s despair
when her daughter is abducted by the god of the Underworld, Hades.
Demeter mourns the loss of Persephone and withdraws, with disas-
trous consequences for both men and gods, who are deprived of the
fruit of agriculture and the means of sacrifice. Demeter ultimately
obtains her daughter’s return, but because Persephone has tasted of
the pomegranate given to her by Hades (a fruit with sexual and fertil-
ity connections), she has to stay in the Underworld for a part of each
year. Persephone’s annual return thus signals the return of vegetation
and life each spring. The Hymn to Demeter ends with Demeter order-
ing the inhabitants of Eleusis to establish mysteries in her honor.
Mary- Louise Lord has shown how the Hymn to Demeter shares the
same narrative pattern of withdrawal and return also found in both
the Iliad and the Odyssey, in which the hero’s or heroine’s withdrawal
has dire consequences for the community until order is restored on
his or her return. These same elements— withdrawal, long absence,
hospitality, disguise, return, and reunion— are found in all three
narratives, though they can vary in their emphasis and order.13 The
Hymn to Demeter thus provides a feminine alternative to the male-
dominated Homeric nostos and is unique in ancient Greek literature
in privileging a female perspective and in focusing on the relationship
between mother and daughter. Like Volver, the Hymn begins with a
girl who is on the cusp of becoming an adult, and the narrative can be
understood as a feminized nostos. But while the Hymn exists within
the confines of a patriarchal and divine world, Volver upends gender
conventions and comes to a very different resolution.
In the Hymn to Demeter, Demeter and Persephone are periodically
reunited, but only because they both accept the terms given to them
by Zeus, the ruler of the gods, and Hades, the ruler of the dead. The
pomegranate eaten by Persephone signals her transition to woman-
hood and her union with Hades.14 Demeter accepts the separation
and, implicitly, the rules of the patriarchal game: daughters get mar-
ried and leave their mothers. In Volver, there are two mother- daughter
pairs. Some 14 years before the action of the film, Raimunda was
raped by her father and withdrew from her mother. Paula, like Perse-
phone and Raimunda, becomes the object of desire of an older male
and almost becomes a rape victim, but she kills her attacker and does
not separate from her mother. In both instances, mothers are ready
to do anything to help their daughters: Irene avenges her daughter’s
rape by killing her husband, while Raimunda takes on the burden of
hiding Paco’s body.
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Woman Trouble 65
The radical feminization of the nostos narrative can be seen most
dramatically through the lens of a defining moment, about halfway
through the film, when Raimunda sings the song “Volver” while,
unbeknownst to her, her mother has returned— literally from the
dead— and is listening to her from inside Sole’s car. The scene takes
place at the restaurant Raimunda has opened for the film crew,
when she hears a guitar’s melody during a festive evening and starts
humming:
I can see the twinkling of the lights in the distance
That are marking my return.
Raimunda suddenly realizes that her daughter, Paula, has never
heard her sing, and decides to sing for her. Longing and sorrow over-
take Raimunda as she sings of the fear of “the encounter with the
past” and memory as a way of returning:
Coming back
With a wrinkled forehead
And the snow of time
Silvering my brow
Feeling that life is an instant
That twenty years is nothing
The lyrics express the bittersweetness of years gone by and the grief
of returning to one’s first love. “Volver” is a love song, but Raimunda
Figure 4.1 Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) sings a song of homecoming in Volver
(2006). Sony Pictures Classics.
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Corinne Pache66
sings it in a context that contrasts with the lyrics and complicates their
meaning. At the song’s center is the idea that time escapes us and that
“twenty years is nothing,” but for Raimunda of course the last twenty
years are everything. She learned the song long ago for a children’s
singing contest, yet it is only now that she can genuinely understand
it. As a tearful Raimunda sings “but the fleeing traveler sooner or later
must come to a halt,” the camera switches over to Irene weeping in
the car. While Raimunda is not yet aware that her mother is back,
she seems to sense her presence, and the song affects daughter and
mother in similar ways.
The twenty- year absence in “Volver” echoes the twenty- year
absence of Odysseus. This extraordinary moment is in fact a nostos for both mother and daughter. Irene has returned “with a wrinkled
brow,” and, like Odysseus listening to Demodocus singing about his
role in the Trojan War in Odyssey 8, she completely breaks down when
she hears Raimunda singing. At the precise moment Raimunda sings
that “twenty years is nothing,” we see her coming fully into herself
as daughter, sister, and mother of a grown daughter. The women’s
homecoming has not literally lasted twenty years as in the Odyssey, but
Raimunda completes her nostos at the same moment when her mother
returns and her daughter reaches adulthood. The mother figure
returns— as if from the dead in the case of Irene— and the fundamen-
tal reunion is not between a father and his wife and son, but between
mothers and daughters. Like Odysseus who tells his own story to the
Phaeacians, Raimunda sings her own song. In Almodóvar’s revision
of the epic, the mother returns, not as a hero but— explicitly— as a
heroine, and insofar as she succeeds in finding what is beautiful and
orderly in the messiness of family life, the mother emerges as a hero-
ine who nods toward her ancient male predecessors but looks as well
toward the future.
Modern works of art, whether consciously or not, must repeat
(volver) the same gestures as ancient works. This to some degree is a
consequence of our limited repertoire as human beings: we have par-
ents and a home, we are born, we grow, we suffer, we love, we die; and
at some point in our lives, we return, in imagination or in actuality, to
our origin. But the source of this pattern, in imagination and in fact,
is also a matter of literary history: like all tales of return, Volver must
reckon with Homer’s precedent. When we analyze the film in terms
of its Homeric precursor, we see the radical novelty of Almodóvar’s
feminization of the nostos narrative. The Odyssey, to the dismay of some
modern readers, ends not with the loving reunion of Odysseus and
Penelope in Book 23, but with the reunion of Odysseus and his father,
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Woman Trouble 67
Laertes. Book 24 emphasizes the close relationship between fathers
and sons, and Odysseus reconnects with his father by remembering
the names of the trees Laertes gave him when he was still a child.
The epic ends with three generations of men— Laertes, Odysseus, and
Telemachus— back in control of the palace and island. Volver by con-
trast presents homecoming as women’s work. The film ends, fittingly
for a narrative of return, where it started, in the small village in Alcan-
for where the living encounter the dead, and where three generations
of women— mothers, sisters, daughters— safeguard each other’s nostos and tell the stories that keep the dead alive.
Notes
1. This chapter is a development of my ideas in Pache (2010). I want to
thank Madeleine Goh, Adele Haft, Justin Isenhart, Tom Jenkins, and
Jordan Zinovich for their comments on this essay.
2. For the deep affinities between ancient literature and the cinema, see
Winkler (2009b). On the modern reception of the Odyssey, see Hall
(2008), and Graziosi and Greenwood (2007).
3. For nostos as “return from death and darkness,” and the connections
between nostos (return) and noos (mind), see Frame (2009) 28, 38– 39.
4. On polytropos, see Pucci (1987) 16– 17.
5. For other versions of the Odyssey that privilege the female perspective,
see e.g. Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad (2005); see also Pache (2008)
on Louise Glück’s Meadowlands (1996).
6. See Mendelsohn (2007) on how The Flower of My Secret represents an
important turning point in the director’s career.
7. Almodóvar (2006).
8. On ancient and modern mourning in Greece, see Alexiou (2002).
9. Almodóvar (2006).
10. La Rosa del Azafrán, music by Jacinto Guerrero, libretto by G. F. Shaw
and F. Romero. The lyrics are quoted from the English subtitles of the
production by the Jarvis Conservatory in Napa, California.
11. See Segal (1994), especially 113– 83.
12. For the different versions of the story, see Olson (1990).
13. See Lord (1994) 181– 82.
14. See Foley (1994) 130.
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4
C h a p t e r 5
Sappho and Pocahontas
in Terrence Malick’s
T H E N E W W O R L D (2005)
Seán Easton
The New World (2005), Terrence Malick’s fourth film, retells the story of
the seventeenth century Powhatan woman, Pocahontas, and her involve-
ment with the Jamestown colony.1 It features prominently the ahistorical
love affair with John Smith that has become a staple of the Pocahontas
myth tradition.2 Although viewers have found allusions to the epic poetry
of Homer and Vergil in The New World, the presence and purpose of Sap-
pho’s erotic verse remains unexplored.3 As we shall see, The New World is
very much rooted in a male- centered, classical epic tradition, yet in two
scenes central to her relationship with Smith, Pocahontas delivers lines
from Sappho in her own voice and as her own sentiment.4 The normative
reflex of epic is to relegate a woman in Pocahontas’s position either to the
role of victim, however sympathetic, or possession. Malick uses Sappho
to develop a model of female amatory consciousness that is necessary for
Pocahontas’s evolution into the protagonist.
Malick’s allusions to Sappho in characterizing Pocahontas cor-
respond to four aspects of her poetry. First, Sappho depicts the
contingencies of desire from a female perspective both in and out of
the context of marriage. Second, Sappho explores the relationship of
desire to loss, abandonment, and despair. This resonates with a major
priority of the film: to represent Pocahontas’s experience of desire as
a good thing in and of itself, rather than a lapse for which she must
suffer punishment. Instead, she survives, matures, and loves again.
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Seán Easton70
Third, Sappho (in fragment 16) makes Helen the model of a woman
who acts according to her own desire, in contrast to her representa-
tion in Homeric epic and male- authored lyric. Although Malick does
not directly allude to the poem in which this portrait appears, it none-
theless offers in miniature a template for connecting female desire to
agency. The Homeric Helen possesses a distinctive voice and attributes
agency to herself, but Homeric males as a whole treat her simply as an
object of desire, albeit an incomparable one. They do not blame her
for the war, but in not doing so they deprive her of agency.5 Among
male lyric poets, Ibycus treats Helen after the fashion of Iliadic males.
He objectifies her as a prize to be won without responsibility for her
presence in Troy.6 The poet Alcaeus does blame Helen for her conduct
while ignoring her beauty and, in the process, the basis for her fame.
She becomes simply a female transgressor.7
Sappho’s Helen proves more complex. Though by no means an
uncomplicatedly positive figure, she retains her agency, beauty, and
fame.8 She becomes, as one scholar has put it, “the hero of her own
story.”9 Likewise, The New World centers on the evolution of Poca-
hontas as a desiring subject.
Last, Sappho’s poetry depicts a mentoring relationship between
a female deity and a mortal woman, which is characterized by both
intimacy and a religious sensibility. In Sappho’s poetry and The New
World, this relationship overlaps with that of Muse to poet. Yet it also
serves as an index of the mortal woman’s narrative stature. The film
unfolds in the context of a dialogue between Pocahontas and a deity,
whom she addresses as her divine Mother. She knows that this divine
spirit is omnipresent, but she wishes her to become directly manifest.
She associates the Mother at first with John Smith, and then finally
locates her in Thomas, her son with John Rolfe.
Desire In and Out of Marriage
Sappho is particularly associated with a type of poem called the epi-thalamium, which celebrates a young woman’s passage from girlhood
to womanhood through the institution of marriage. This association
is especially suited to The New World, in which the marriage motif
explores the possibility— ultimately to be lost— of reconciliation
between the Old World and the New.10 Which of Sappho’s poetic
fragments belong to the genre of epithalamium is itself a matter of
scholarly debate. Two of the three Sapphic fragments to which Malick
alludes (51 and 130) are definitely not marriage poems, and the third
(fragment 31) is likely not either. Yet in The New World, all three
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Sappho and Pocahontas 71
reinforce an epithalamic theme. As the film moves from opening
credits to main narrative, viewers hear Pocahontas speak in voice- over
addressing the divine Mother:
Dear Mother . . .
You fill the land with your beauty
You reach to the end of the world.
How shall I seek you?
Show me your face.
You, the great river that never runs dry.
As we hear these words, we see a trio of female swimmers enjoying
themselves in the waters. They are young, nude, and joyful. The erotic
character of the scene is undeniable, though the context of the scene
is not directly sexual. A low angle shot from below the water’s surface
shows Pocahontas greet the swimmers on shore. Then we see her
again, partially nude, perhaps suggesting that she had joined them.11
At this moment the English ships appear in the bay, one of which car-
ries her future lover, John Smith.
The music accompanying this scene is the prelude to Wagner’s
Rheingold, in which three Rhine maidens swim happily together, just
before the Nibelung dwarf, Alberich, discovers them. When they
realize he desires them, they each in turn mock him. Embittered,
Alberich steals the Rhine gold that the maidens are charged to pro-
tect and forswears love, which— he has learned from them— is the
price he must pay for using the gold to rule the world.12 Similarly,
the Jamestown colonists will search obsessively for gold and Smith
will give up the love of Pocahontas in exchange for the opportunity
to win fame through further voyages of discovery. Malick’s musical
analogy of the swimmers to the Rhine maidens and, by implication,
the hardly less beautiful John Smith (Colin Farrell) to Wagner’s
lustful dwarf, highlights first the sufficiency of the three female
characters among themselves, neither needing nor wishing for male
attention; and second, the formal entry of the (European) male gaze
and, with it, anticipation of the terrible historical outcome of the
encounter.13
What viewers see, however, in the swimmers montage, is beauty and
freshly present sexual maturity, all amid an atmosphere of innocence.
The divine Mother, to whom Pocahontas prays, infuses the world—
and the film as well, in her Muse- like capacity— with the beauty
that the swimmers embody in human form. As viewers watch from
their underwater perspective, the swimmers spin, dive, and describe
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Seán Easton72
arcs and lines with their bodies. Two of them hold hands as they
move beneath the water’s surface. If the fact that the swimmers are all
female is neither a simple replication of Wagner’s scenario, nor a mere
multiplication of bodies, what is to be made of this moment? There is
nothing to imply a sexual relationship between the two swimmers, yet
the context in which they take pleasure in their bodies and surround-
ings is certainly eroticized.
The tension between innocence, experience, invasive lust, and the
moral choices of the viewer’s eye is all the more keenly felt due to the
age of the actor Q’Orianka Kilcher, who plays Pocahontas and who
was 14 years old at the time of filming. Her age appears to be a com-
promise between that of the real Pocahontas— 11 years old, though
the historical Smith reports her as 10— and the nearest plausible age
for a romantic relationship.14 This is also the age at which a young
Greek woman would marry, a detail that makes Sappho’s poetry all
the more important to the characterization of Malick’s Pocahontas.
It contributes a language concerned with the development of female
amatory consciousness in a premodern, patriarchal context whose
norms parallel— for the purposes of the movie— those of her own time
and place.
In this way, the swimmers montage suggests the air of erotic ten-
sion and sexual innocence in epithalamic poetry that marks the young
Greek girl about to depart from the company of her age and gender
peers and make the transition through marriage into adulthood. It
also recalls a challenge that Sappho’s poetry poses to her readers. The
collection of her surviving fragments includes poems of desire as well
as celebrations of marriage, but which is which? Since almost all her
poetry survives in incomplete form, how do we decide when she offers
praise to a bride or to a woman she herself desires?15
To press the point still further, what are the potential satisfactions
implied in Sappho’s expressions of same- sex desire, if that is what one
takes them to be? Do we understand Sappho to refer to a fully realized
emotional and physical relationship with another woman? The swim-
mers montage offers a powerful portrait of the sensual. The joined
hands of the swimmers express a form of sensual pleasure between two
members of the same sex. Yet, rather than indicate a relationship that
either involves or excludes genital contact, it presents a moment of
undefined sensuality. The scene as a whole challenges viewers to parse
further what the erotic means for Pocahontas, while hinting that to do
so is to impose foreign categories and distinctions.
As if to underscore the power of one’s cultural context to limit
perspective, Malick’s Smith arrives as a prisoner in the ship’s hold,
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Sappho and Pocahontas 73
blinking through a hatch at the sky. The expedition’s first communal
act on shore is to be his execution, but he receives pardon at the last
moment. A low angle shot lingers on the empty noose as the reprieved
Smith walks away from what was to be the scene of his death. Soon
thereafter, Smith, an experienced military man, is entrusted with the
task of making contact with a powerful monarch— Powhatan, ruler of
the Powhatan people— who can assist the colony.
Powhatan’s warriors capture Smith en route and bring him to their
capital, Werewocomoco, where he is granted an interview with the
king and his brother and advisor Opechancanough. At a certain point,
Smith is seized and warriors rush in with their clubs upraised. Yet
no sooner does he brace himself for death (again) than Powhatan’s
daughter, Pocahontas, intervenes and Smith’s life is spared once more.
The community now welcomes him and, although he is not permitted
to leave for a period of some weeks, Smith is otherwise free to roam
about the town. During this time he and Pocahontas become close
and, shortly before he is returned to Jamestown, they acknowledge
their love for each other.
The final scene of Smith’s stay at Werewocomoco is one of the most
beautiful moments in the film. Pocahontas addresses her divine Mother
in voice- over, seeking after her and describing the transformation she
feels in herself and her relationship to all about her. This sequence
echoes the swimmers montage in its repetition of Wagner’s Rhein-gold prelude. In this sequence Pocahontas delivers a line of Sappho
and concludes the epithalamium that she began in the film’s opening
sequence:
Mother . . .
Where do you live? In the sky? The clouds? The sea?
Show me your face.
Give me a sign.
We rise, we rise.
Afraid of myself.
A god, he seems to me.
What else is life but being near you?
Do they suspect?
Oh, to be given to you . . . you to me.
I will be faithful to you. True.
Two no more.
One.
One.
I am.
I am.
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Seán Easton74
We witness a flow of images accompanying her words— a temple to
the divine Mother, Pocahontas worshipping with other Powhatans,
her mortal mother, birds in flight, a sky illuminated by lightning. Her
voice transforms these images into the visual record of her inner expe-
rience, adding an aura of erotic desire to the relationships of com-
munity, nature, and spirit that the imagery symbolizes. The joyful
sufficiency manifest in the swimmers montage reappears now in Poca-
hontas’s relationship to Smith.
The seventh line of this address— “A god, he seems to me”—
delivered in an erotic context is an unmistakable allusion to the
opening of Sappho, fragment 31. This poem is especially famous;
most notably, the Roman poet Catullus adapted it as an expression of
his own (male) desire. As we shall see, Malick’s allusion represents a
different form of appropriation insofar as he, by implanting these lines
into Pocahontas’s inner dialogue with her divine Mother, replicates
the relation of Sappho to the female addressee.
The allusion, taken alone, deepens the power and resonance of
Pocahontas’s declaration of love, while enhancing its sense of the
timeless and mythic. Yet the resemblance to Sappho’s poem goes fur-
ther. Here is the first stanza and a half of Sappho’s poem:16
He seems to me equal to the gods
That man who sits across from you
Figure 5.1 Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher) considers the nature of love in The New
World (2005). New Line Cinema.
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Sappho and Pocahontas 75
And listens closeby
To your sweet speaking
And lovely laughing— truly it
Sets my heart fluttering in my breast.
Fragment 31 contains the speaker, a female addressee, and, sitting
near her, a male third party. Pocahontas’s speech likewise contains
three figures, though here, they consist of a speaker and, seemingly,
two addressees. The first is the divine Mother and the second is Smith,
though it is significant that he is never named as such.
The cinematic montage emphasizes Pocahontas, Smith, and the
Mother deity, reinforcing the sense of a triangle of desire. It depicts
Smith smiling and laughing with Pocahontas, offering visual, rather than
verbal, recollection of Sappho’s reference to “your sweet speaking / And
lovely laughing.” Its effect on Pocahontas, akin to that of the addressee’s
laughter on Sappho’s speaker, is the transport of joy that registers in her
voice- over and the exuberant imagery that accompanies it.
The speaker in Sappho’s poem appears, in the first line, to desire this
man who is like a god, but it is quickly revealed that her appreciation
is reserved for the young woman with whom he sits. Furthermore,
the man resembles a god exactly because he is so fortunate as to sit
with the woman whom the speaker desires. Pocahontas’s response to
Smith in combination with her desire for the Mother deity creates
its own triangle. She begins the voice- over with an address to her
divine Mother. After asking her where she lives, she proposes several
likely places, then says, “A god, he seems to me.” After this point, the
address seems to shift toward Smith, but she has in fact not ceased
her prayer to the Mother. Rather, the scene suggests that Pocahontas
believes that this deity is to be found in John Smith and, for this rea-
son, he seems godlike to her.17
This is both like and unlike Sappho. She does not suggest that
there is any desire for the man in her poem, only for the woman.
Where the desire of Sappho’s speaker for the woman is erotic or, at
least, eroticizing, Pocahontas’s for Smith is also a longing for union
with her Mother, the embodiment of all the world’s beauty and gen-
erative power. For her, the erotic represents a path to this union. The
blending of her address to this Mother and to Smith does not suggest
the subordination of her erotic feelings for Smith to a higher love for
the goddess, but that the two loves share the same space. To be near
him, she feels, is to be near Her.
At this stage of the story, however, Pocahontas feels herself draw
nearer to the Mother as her relationship to Smith moves from the
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Seán Easton76
emotional to the physical. At this moment, she articulates her feel-
ings and the nature of her union with Smith and, through him, to the
Mother: “I am, I am.” This also recalls Walt Whitman’s poem One Hour to Madness and Joy (line 15):18 “O to have the feeling, to- day or
any day, I am sufficient as I am!”
Yet, in Malick’s adaptation, it is a feeling accomplished, rather than
merely desired. Further, these words evoke the name of the Hebrew
deity— Yahweh, or “I Am Who Am”— and make for a significant close
to a speech addressed to a goddess on the subject of divinity. The full-
ness and joy that Pocahontas feels in her oneness with Smith and her
Mother find expression in the same words. When Smith leaves her,
she says, “You have killed the god in me.” Not only is the god ulti-
mately not in him; he destroys it in her, however temporarily.
Pocahontas’s declaration of Smith’s resemblance to the divine
unites her relationship to the goddess and the erotic context of the
prayer accompanying the swimmers montage with the speech in
which she quotes from Sappho 31. Together, these scenes form an
ode reminiscent of a marriage hymn. In its first half, the swimmers
montage introduces the viewer to a young girl in the society of her
gender peers, after which moment the groom arrives. In its second
half, Malick’s allusion to fragment 31 explores the complex nature of
Pocahontas’s desire for Smith.
As an epithalamium embedded in the film, it celebrates what is,
in Pocahontas’s view, a marriage— Smith does not take it as such, or
if he does, it proves the lesser of his concerns. Pocahontas’s words in
the previous speech also recall Whitman (One Hour, line 7): “O to
be yielded to you, whoever you are, and you to be yielded to / me in
defiance of the world!”19 In Whitman’s poem, the lines that precede
these support an epithalamic theme (One Hour, lines 5– 6): “O savage
and tender achings! . . . I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom
and bride.”
Desire and Loss
The film moves next to the English fort and Smith’s return. The fort is
bleak and full of starving colonists. The transition could not be starker.
Smith learns that he has been tried in absentia and sentenced to death
yet again, but as the president of the colony attempts to carry out the
sentence with his pistol, he is killed and Smith is made his successor. The
chain of office he receives evokes the earlier image of the empty noose.
Overwhelmed by its wretchedness, Smith flees the fort on the pre-
text of seeking new trading partners for the colony and soon reunites
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Sappho and Pocahontas 77
with Pocahontas. His inner dialogue recalls Pocahontas’s thoughts in
her Sapphic speech: “What else is life but living there.” For Pocahon-
tas, the issue is proximity to her beloved, and so her question is “What
else is life, but being near you?” For Smith, the issue is place. He can
live one way in one place, but not in another. It is in this that we see
how Malick’s Sapphic template redefines the film’s epic identity. The
heroic trial to be endured in this story is the quest to become and
remain, both in spite of and through desire, a whole person who lives
in a community despite the sufferings that differences of place can
impose. At Smith’s departure for the fort, Pocahontas again meditates
on her desire in voice- over. Her words are addressed, as before, to the
divine Mother: “My mouth is dry. My body trembles. My skin burns.
I have two minds.”
There are three poems of Sappho in play here. Pocahontas resumes
the narrative of fragment 31. Sappho goes on to enumerate the places
on her body that love has afflicted, as she looks at the young woman
whom she desires and the man next to her: “tongue breaks and thin /
Fire is racing under skin.” And “shaking grips me.”20 Desire afflicts
Pocahontas in like fashion: mouth, fire on the skin, and trembling body.
Pocahontas then sums up her experience: “Love has unbound my
limbs. This love is like pain.” The line “Love has unbound my limbs”
is C. M. Bowra’s translation of the first line of fragment 130.21 The
next, “This love is like pain,” appears to be a variation on the second
line of the same fragment, where Sappho describes eros as, in Bowra’s
translation, “a monster bittersweet and my unmaking.” Malick has
arranged his allusions so that the evocation of joy comes in the first
Sapphic voice- over (her “god” speech) and the disorienting physical
and mental effects in the second. We have seen in the former the sweet
side of this love. Now comes the bitter— “like pain.” Last, “I have two
minds” is a translation of fragment 51: “I do not know what to do; I
have two minds.”22
Summoning the Goddess
While the swimmers montage alludes to the context of the epitha-lamium, there remains another Sapphic mode in which to consider
this scene. Scholars have already identified the first words of The New
World as reminiscent of a Homeric invocation of the Muse: “Come,
Spirit. Help us sing the story of our land. / You are our mother. We,
your field of corn.”23 Although much remains to be said about this
aspect of the film’s classical coordinates, it is also important to keep in
mind the invocation’s nonepic dimensions.
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Seán Easton78
To seek the divinity’s help in narration is consistent with epic practice,
but to ask that it leave its place and come to one’s side is the province
of kletic, or “summoning” song. Sappho’s collection of poems begins
with a kletic hymn (fragment 1). As does Pocahontas, Sappho addresses
the deity, inviting her, then explaining how and why she should come:
“Intricate, undying Aphrodite, snare- weaver, child of Zeus, I pray thee, /
do not tame my spirit, great lady, with pain and sorrow. But / come
to me.”24 Sappho articulates her own privileged relationship to a god-
dess. She does not address her as mother, but in fragment 1 she calls
her “comrade- in- arms” (line 28) and in fragment 2 invites Aphrodite
to join her celebratory troupe of young women pouring nectar at a
religious festival (lines 13– 16).
A divinity addressed in this way may still play the Muse’s role, as
Marilyn Skinner argues that Aphrodite does in Sappho’s first poem.25
Yet the goddess does not act here as the authoritative arbiter of mem-
ory, after the fashion of the Muse of epic. Rather, she joins in the
audience, infusing both it and the poet with inspiration for the song at
hand. When she arrives, Aphrodite asks a question, as though part of
the audience: “Sappho, who wrongs you?”26 The answer to this ques-
tion explains the reason both for the summons and the poem itself.
Pocahontas speaks intimately to her Mother, but the answer is not
given in easy conversational fashion. It falls to Pocahontas to recog-
nize for herself, at the conclusion of her brief life’s many experiences,
the answer to her question, “Where are you?” Not until then does she
find the divine Mother in Thomas, her son with John Rolfe.
The Hero of Her Own Story
Epic is the political genre of the Greco- Roman world par excellence and also the category to which one intuitively assigns movies about
culture heroes and wars of foundation. One may envision The New
World as an Odyssey in which John Smith comes to Virginia as an
Odysseus figure, yet passes that mantle to Pocahontas who makes her
own great journey, not only into the life of the English settlers in Vir-
ginia, but to England itself.27 Still more, it resembles Vergil’s Aeneid,
in which Smith, a would- be Aeneas, misses his opportunity to become
the symbolic founder- ancestor of a new Roman nation born, like the
old, of two peoples. In his stead, Pocahontas emerges as a very dif-
ferent progenitor. In support of this conception of her character is
the comment of Russell Schwartz, president for marketing at New
Line Cinema: “Terrence said to me very early on, ‘This is our original
mother,’ meaning that her journey is that of America itself.”28
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Sappho and Pocahontas 79
The epic dimension of the film makes Sappho’s voice necessary,
for she offers a broader horizon of gender possibilities than does any
other Greek or Roman author, while remaining within the confines
of premodern patriarchy. Furthermore, the adaptation of her voice
from classical antiquity establishes a sense of cultural consistency in
the dialogue between the film’s approach to gender and that of the
epic tradition on which it draws. The result is that Pocahontas grows
within and, eventually, beyond a traditional epic role to develop a per-
spective that envisions, evaluates, and selects from possible destinies.
In the course of these experiences, she rejects self- destruction and loss
of original identity.
It is Pocahontas’s navigation both of her desires for John Smith and
John Rolfe and of the consequences of each relationship that enables
her to play the protagonist’s part. Smith is the obvious competitor
for this position, but he loses it through his refusal to acknowledge
his desires or to confront their consequences. Instead, by making the
traditional epic hero’s choice to continue his quest, he forfeits his role
as protagonist.
For his characterization of John Smith, Malick draws on Ver-
gil’s Aeneid, the signature epic of the Roman tradition, much as he
employs Sappho’s verse for Pocahontas. The first words heard from
Malick’s John Smith in the film are these, delivered in voice- over:
“How many lands behind me? How many seas? . . . What blows and
dangers? Fortune ever my friend.” These lines draw on Robert Fitzger-
ald’s translation of Vergil’s Aeneid. They come not from Aeneas, but
from his deceased father, Anchises, who awaits his son’s visit to the
Underworld. At his approach, Anchises utters this address: “I greet
you now, how many lands behind you, / How many seas, what
blows and dangers, son! / How much I feared the land of Libya /
Might do you harm.”29
Anchises worried about Libya, because Aeneas was in love with
Dido, its queen, and seemed ready to abandon his quest. By making
these lines part of Smith’s internal dialogue, Malick implants in him an
intuition that plays the part of an epic father figure concerned for his
son’s glory. This connection is unsurprising. There has been a Vergil-
ian presence in the Pocahontas tradition since 1801, when John Davis
published his romanticizing version of the tale, comparing Pocahontas
to Dido. When Aeneas and his followers, fleeing the Greek destruc-
tion of Troy, are washed up on the shores of Libya, Dido gives them
refuge. The goddess Venus, Aeneas’s mother, seeks to protect her son
by making Dido fall in love with him. She also arranges for Jupiter to
insist that he leave Carthage to pursue his destiny of founding a new
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Seán Easton80
people in Italy, which later on down the generations will become the
Roman nation.
When Aeneas leaves, Dido despairs and commits suicide. Aeneas’s
quest leads him to the Underworld to seek counsel from his deceased
father. There he encounters the ghost of Dido in the company of her
first husband, whose murder originally drove her to Libya where she
founded the city of Carthage. Aeneas greets her, expressing shock
and sadness at finding her there. Years after Smith leaves Virginia,
Pocahontas— now Rebecca Rolfe— visits England in the company
of her husband, John Rolfe. While there, she encounters John
Smith, whom she had thought dead. Davis characterizes Pocahon-
tas’s reaction to seeing him by repeating Dido’s response to Aeneas
in the Underworld: “Turned away, she kept her eyes fixed upon the
ground.”30 Malick accepts Smith as an Aeneas figure, but empha-
sizes Pocahontas’s difference from Dido through her resilience in the
face of loss and duplicity, whereas Davis’s quotation from the Aeneid
reduces her to silence.
Pocahontas’s declaration, “A god he seems to me,” offers a use-
ful point of departure for appreciating Malick’s film as a Sapphic
epic. “God- like” is a standard epithet in Homeric epic, marking the
superiority of one mortal over others.31 In both fragment 31 and The New World, resemblance to a god characterizes an attractive male,
for whom another, more compelling object of desire is substituted.
The Homeric echo in fragment 31’s “like a god” resounds still more
strongly in fragment 16.
This poem is important to the broader significance of Sappho for
The New World. It offers a model for approaching the content and
concerns of the Iliadic tradition while keeping Helen at its center. The
speaker of the poem finds in Helen an analogy for her own experience
of desire (fragment 16, lines 1– 8):32
Some say a host of horsemen, others of foot soldiers,
And others of ships, is the most beautiful thing
Upon the black earth, but I say it is
Whatever one loves.
It is entirely easy to make this understood
By everyone: for she who by far surpassed
All humankind in beauty, Helen,
Left her very noble husband,
And went sailing off to Troy
With no thought at all for child or dear parents
But she was led astray by . . .
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Sappho and Pocahontas 81
Although Malick does not quote from this poem directly, it merits
attention insofar as it draws together the ideas broached in his allu-
sions to Sappho’s god- like man, her characterizations of desire, and
the relationship of both to the context of Pocahontas’s story. The frag-
ment’s brief narrative of Helen offers parallels to the film in that both
women abandon their communities for a foreign visitor. Unlike Helen,
Pocahontas does not provide the occasion for her people to go to war.
Nevertheless, in the film’s version, the help she gives Smith prevents
the Powhatan from eliminating the English colony before the arrival
of the personnel, weaponry, and supplies that allow its preservation.
For Sappho’s Helen and Malick’s Pocahontas, desire informs their
decisions. Force may swirl about them, but they choose where they
go. In neither case, however, does this attribution of agency serve as
a basis for their condemnation or removal to supporting roles in the
stories of male lovers. Pocahontas’s father exiles her for her actions,
and she confesses to her uncle, late in the film, to having made “many
mistakes.” Even here, she is allowed to address the issue. Most impor-
tant, the man who resembles a god does not have final authority to
determine what Pocahontas does with her desire. Likewise, to look at
the film through the lens of fragment 16, Smith’s epic world with its
troops and ships does not command her attention. What, or whom,
one loves and why are the questions on which the film turns. Accord-
ingly, when Smith abandons love, he drops from the film. When he
returns briefly, it is to comment on that abandonment.
Film scholar Lloyd Michaels identifies four types of story in The New
World: epic, creation myth, love story, and personal story.33 Malick’s
Sapphic voice unites these four dimensions, combining allusions to
a male- centered epic tradition and Sappho’s woman- centered erotic
lyric. These allusions open narrative directions that enable Pocahon-
tas to experience the passion and loss characteristic of the abandoned
women of epic, yet to emerge, without any sense of anachronis-
tic gender identity, as the protagonist of a revisionist epic of desire
and discovery.
Notes
1. I would like to thank Monica Cyrino, as well as Yurie Hong, Sean
Cobb, Owen Goslin, Robert Kendrick, Laura Maki, and Kjerstin
Moody for their valuable comments on this chapter.
2. On the historical Pocahontas’s names, see Rountree (2006) 37– 38. No
name for her character is mentioned in the film until she is baptized
and takes the name Rebecca.
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Seán Easton82
3. Sappho is a female poet of love, desire, and marriage, who composed
on the Greek island of Lesbos around 600 B.C. On possible allu-
sions to Homer in The New World, see MacDonald (2009) 91– 92
and Walden (2011) 197, 209 n. 2. On allusions to Vergil and other
authors, see autochthonous88 (2008a). Although this video does not
mention Sappho, another on the same channel (2008b) features an
episode with the phrase “Eros the Bittersweet” in its title, which is a
direct quotation from Sappho (fragment 130).
4. The version of The New World released in theaters (135 minutes) was
issued on DVD in 2006. All references in this chapter, however, are to
the 2008 extended edition (172 minutes). This version restores much
that was cut from the theatrical release. The second of the two scenes
in which direct allusions to Sappho appear is featured only in the 2008
extended edition.
5. Blondell (2010) 351– 52.
6. Blondell (2010) 364.
7. Blondell (2010) 354.
8. On the figure of Helen in Sappho’s poetry, see Blondell (2010)
373– 87.
9. duBois (1996) 88.
10. Sinnerbrink (2011) 190.
11. On the composition of the scene, see Sinnerbrink (2011) 187.
12. Sinnerbrink (2011) 195– 96, n. 22.
13. Morrison (2007) 200 argues that the issue of colonial conquest is pres-
ent throughout, even “underlying the film’s most radiant idylls.”
14. On Pocahontas’s age, see Rountree (2006) 36.
15. For an introduction to Sappho, see Ormand (2009) 37– 45. On the
issue of sexuality in Sappho’s poetry, see Hallett (1996) and Stehle
(1996).
16. All texts of Sappho are from Campbell (1982). The translation here is
by Monica Cyrino.
17. Wall (2011) 74.
18. autochthonous88 (2008a). See Blodgett and Bradley (1965) 106.
19. autochthonous88 (2008a). See Blodgett and Bradley (1965) 106.
20. Translated by Carson (2002) 63.
21. Higham and Bowra (1938) 211.
22. The translation is mine.
23. MacDonald (2009) 91– 92.
24. Translated by Winkler (1990) 167.
25. Skinner (2002) 64.
26. The translation is mine.
27. Bleasdale (2011) 50. Bleasdale observes that Pocahontas is presented
as the successful explorer, and Smith the failed one.
28. James (2005).
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Sappho and Pocahontas 83
29. autochthonous88 (2008a); Fitzgerald (1981) 184. In Fitzgerald’s
translation the passage occurs at 6.927–30, while in Vergil’s Latin text
it is 6.692–94 (Mynors 1969).
30. Aeneid 6.469. The translation is mine. See Davis (1909) 292– 93.
31. Page (1955) 21 n. 1.
32. The translation is by Monica Cyrino.
33. Michaels (2009) 85.
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4
C h a p t e r 6
Soul Fuck
Possession and the Female Body
in Antiquity and in Cinema
Kirsten Day
The genesis for this chapter came about while I was watching Para-normal Activity (2009), a film that focuses on Katie, a woman tor-
mented since childhood by an evil spirit.1 When Katie moves in with
her boyfriend, Micah, he enthusiastically sets up a video camera to
record the supernatural activity. Later, while doing some research on
the Internet, Micah comes across the case of Diane, a woman whose
circumstances from childhood eerily mirror Katie’s. While showing
her the graphic footage, Micah explains to Katie that after the evil
spirit took full possession of Diane’s body, an attempted exorcism
failed, and Diane ultimately died from blood loss after gnawing off
her own arm. As the film progresses, Katie too is gradually possessed
by the demon, which takes more and more control until in the end,
she stabs Micah to death off- camera.
As I watched, it struck me that this sort of possession,2 which is
regularly engendered as feminine, finds a parallel in the ancient world
in the usurpation of women’s bodies by deities for the purposes of
prophecy. Although this connection has been broadly recognized,3 to
my knowledge it has not been examined in depth. In this chapter,
therefore, I propose first to look at how ancient possession is presented
in literature and then turn to depictions of possession in film in order
to show that in both cases, the violent overpowering of women’s bod-
ies and the scopophilic nature of these episodes enacts a sort of spiritual
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Kirsten Day86
rape. Ultimately, this connection demonstrates the persistence of the
ancient view of the female body as more “possessable” than the male,4
even in our supposedly enlightened postfeminist world.
Possession in the Ancient World
In the Phaedrus, Plato discusses two main kinds of divination: the one
a sane, rational process, as in augury, and the other an ecstatic state
where the soul is possessed by a deity.5 In literature, the former is
illustrated by prophets like Calchas in the Iliad and Teiresias in both
the Odyssey and in tragedy— men who deliver their prophecies calmly,
rationally, and in their own voices. The ecstatic variety, on the other
hand, is most commonly associated with the Pythia, who prophesies
for Apollo at Delphi, and with other oracular priestesses known as
Sibyls. While allusions to this sort of prophetic ecstasy date back to
the fifth century B.C.,6 perhaps the most famous description is found
in Vergil’s first century B.C. poem, the Aeneid. Vergil begins with the
god’s violent appropriation of the Cumaean Sibyl’s body as she pre-
pares to prophesy to the hero Aeneas (Aeneid 6.47– 51):7
Her face flushes and contorts,
her hair bristles wildly, while her breast heaves
and her stormy heart swells with frenzy; she seems to loom
and her voice is otherworldly, as the power of the god,
coming closer, has filled her.
Despite her desexualization at the human level— her position as Apol-
lo’s priestess and her advanced age make her both sexually unavailable
to mortal men and relatively unappealing— the grotesque description
of the god “entering” the priestess positions her prophecy as a kind
of rape by Apollo,8 and her resulting lack of bodily control while in
the throes of his power suggests some sort of orgasmic ecstasy. The
characterization of this episode as spiritual rape is reinforced as Vergil
lingers over his description while emphasizing the Sibyl’s resistance
and compulsion (6.77– 80 and 99– 100):
But not yet succumbing to the god, the priestess, monstrous,
rages in her cave, struggling to shake the great god
from her breast; but all the more he wears out her raving mouth,
subduing her wild heart; he bears down and molds her to his will . . .
Apollo shakes the reins
as she rages and twists the goad in her breast.
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Soul Fuck 87
Spread out over more than fifty lines, this prolonged emphasis
on the Sibyl’s frenzy not only sexualizes her but fetishizes her as
well, removing her from the subject position and making her into
an object of erotic fascination.9 The fact that this spectacle is subject
to the male gaze— that of Aeneas and his comrades— strengthens
this notion, as voyeurism in itself is read by gaze theorists as a meta-
phorical act of sexual penetration or assault. Thus the dominant
narrative voice uses the Sibyl’s ecstasy as a “tragic instrument”
directed at male sensibilities, since its aim, as Ruth Padel puts it,
is “to find a useful image of suffering: not so much imaginative
sympathy with, as literary exploitation of women’s victimised posi-
tion.”10 Ultimately, this victimization and objectification effectively
undercut any authority and power the Sibyl otherwise seems to
exert through her position as priestess and prophet,11 reducing her
to a sacrificial spectacle of suffering offered up for the benefit of the
male gaze.
Vergil’s description was enormously influential, with echoes
appearing in representations of the Sibyl in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and
Statius’s Silvae, as well as in Lucan’s description of the Pythia in his
Pharsalia. In the latter, Appius Claudius Pulcher compels a reluctant
Pythia to prophesy for him long after the oracle at Delphi had fallen
into disuse. Here, Lucan goes Vergil one better in positioning this
sort of “soul fuck” as rape by noting up front in his description of
the oracle’s suspension the coerced nature of the priestesses’ partici-
pation, along with the violent, destructive nature of these episodes
(Pharsalia 5.114– 20):
With the oracular voice silenced,
the Delphic priestesses do not mourn, but rejoice at the
reprieve. For any whose breast the god penetrates
earns an early death as punishment— or reward—
for allowing the god in. For indeed, the mortal frame gives way
under the prick and surge of frenzy, and the divine assault
crushes the fragile spirit.
The Pythia’s compulsion in this episode in particular is made clear
when Lucan describes her failed attempt to avoid surrendering her-
self to the god by making a pretense of possession; Appius, however,
is not fooled, and she is eventually compelled to submit through
fear of his rage. The scene that follows unambiguously positions
Apollo as assailant and the Pythia as victim (Pharsalia 5.161– 77
and 190– 93):
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Kirsten Day88
Finally, the terrified maiden
fled toward the vast chasm and sat tight, clinging
to the tripods . . .
At last Apollo masters
her breast; he bursts in, filling the body
of the priestess as never before, and he expels
her right mind, compelling her heart to yield to him
completely. Senseless, she rages through the cave,
her neck enslaved, and, flinging aside the fillets and garlands
of the god from her bristling hair, she sends them whirling
through the temple, her head thrashing; she scatters the tripods
in her frenzied path and seethes with blazing fire,
as she endures your anger, Apollo. And not only do you
abuse her with the lash and drive flaming goads through her guts,
but she also submits to the bridle . . .
Then her mouth, foaming with madness, spews through the vast
cavern
groans and howls, along with panting breath,
and a mournful wailing, until at last, with the maiden now
mastered, the voice of the god sounds forth . . .
Here, Lucan underscores the sense of erotic fascination by drawing
this scene out even longer than Vergil does, by making his description
of her frenzy even more vivid, and by the presence of male spectators—
Appius himself along with the temple priests. At the same time, the
implication of rape is sharpened by the Pythia’s characterization as
doubly victimized— first by Appius, then by Apollo. Thus Lucan, even
more explicitly than Vergil, presents the ecstatic prophecies of these
priestesses as divine rape conducted on a reluctant or resisting woman
who is fetishized and her struggles rendered orgasmic in that they are
presented through the lens of the male gaze.
Influenced by literary descriptions such as these, scholars up
through the mid- twentieth century assumed not only that real- life
oracular priestesses were subject to these sorts of violent ecstasies12 but
also, as a corollary, that they spewed only gibberish, which had to be
converted to comprehensible prose or verse by male priests. In 1907,
for instance, Lewis Richard Farnell argued that the Pythia’s ecstasy
was a product of the combination of the power of her belief in it and
the “neurotic effect” produced by the rituals and stimulants to which
she was subject beforehand.13 In 1950, however, Pierre Amandry
called these assumptions into question, noting among other evidence
that literary sources such as Herodotus represent the Pythia speak-
ing directly and articulately to the consultant, even if her message is
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Soul Fuck 89
ambiguous, and that scenes on vase paintings depict the Pythia sitting
calmly and serenely on her tripod.14 Nonetheless, the image of the
frenzied priestess spewing nonsense remains so ingrained in the mod-
ern imagination that it not only appears in the ninth edition of Lonely Planet’s guide to Greece15 but is even reiterated on an informational
placard placed at Apollo’s Temple at Delphi.16 Thus the prevailing
modern misconception replicates the bias found in literature, depriv-
ing historical oracular priestesses of rationality and voice altogether.
My concern here, however, is less with the historical situation
than with the ideological notions behind such misconceptions. As
Anne Carson has shown, women in the ancient world were viewed
as wet beings with leaky boundaries who were therefore unable to
keep themselves adequately under control, sexually or otherwise;17 as
a result, women’s bodies were seen as more “possessable” than men’s,
as is suggested by the regular appearance in literature of descriptions
of priestesses’ orgasmic ecstasies and by their opposition to compa-
rable passages involving males. As noted earlier, male prophets like
Calchas and Teiresias deliver their prophecies calmly, rationally, and
in their own voices rather than being positioned as literal “mouth-
pieces” of the god. Even Theoklymenos in Homer’s Odyssey, despite
the more mystical nature of his vision, manages to deliver his warnings
without the violent usurpation of his body.18 Where women are con-
cerned, however, examples of frenzy resulting from divine possession
abound: Cassandra in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon19 comes to mind, as
well as Agave in Euripides’s Bacchae20 and Amata in Vergil’s Aeneid.21
The persistence of this prejudice even into the modern world accounts
at least in part for the widespread acceptance of the prophetic ecstasy
of the historical Pythia and Sibyl through the mid- twentieth century:
indeed, Farnell supports his argument about the genuineness of the
Pythia’s ecstasy by noting that because “the female is more responsive
than the male, and the uncultured than the cultured intellect, to cer-
tain influences of religious mesmerism, the rulers of the oracle were
well advised in generally selecting for the prophetic seat a virtuous
woman of the lower classes.”22
Possession in Film
Because of the persistent notion of the female body as susceptible to
possession, it is not surprising that a similar dynamic manifests itself
in modern film. A striking illustration directly related to the ancient
examples is found in Zack Snyder’s 2007 film 300, where, while
consulting the Ephors— here, priests who oversee the temple— the
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Kirsten Day90
Spartan king, Leonidas, is treated to a drawn- out spectacle of an
attractive young “Oracle” writhing about in a divinely inspired (and
drug- enabled) ecstasy wearing only a transparent garment that has
fallen loose to expose one breast. Here again, the girl’s frenzy is clearly
presented as orgasmic, her participation coerced, and her subjection
to the male gaze— not just of Leonidas but also of the group of lech-
erous Ephors— highlighted, all of which contribute to the character-
ization of this scene as a spiritual rape. This idea is reinforced when a
grotesque Ephor licks the spent and helpless girl’s neck at the end of
the scene, while the voice- over informs us, “The Ephors choose only
the most beautiful Spartan girls to live among them as Oracles. Their
beauty is their curse, for the old wretches have the needs of men.”
As suggested previously, this trend also finds notable parallels in a
seemingly unrelated genre, the horror film, where women’s bodies are
regularly possessed in a violently sexualized manner, rendering them
disempowered victims subject to the male gaze, much as we have seen
with oracular possession scenes.23 One early example is found in the
1973 film The Exorcist, where the body of a 12- year old girl named
Regan is violently possessed by an evil spirit. Significantly, this film
was purportedly based on the true story of a young boy’s posses-
sion in 1940s Maryland, but screenwriter William Peter Blatty, who
initially dramatized the story in his 1971 novel, changed the gender
of the child in both book and film.24 Despite the grotesque disfigura-
tion Regan undergoes onscreen, the sexual nature of her possession is
made clear both linguistically— in the voice of the demon, she utters
such phrases as “Lick me, lick me” and “Stick your cock up her ass”—
and visually, most strikingly in the famous scene where she violently
masturbates with a crucifix and then forces her own mother’s head
Figure 6.1 The Oracle (Kelly Craig) in an ecstatic frenzy in Zack Snyder’s 300
(2007). Warner Bros.
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Soul Fuck 91
down into her crotch when she tries to intervene. Indeed, this scene
makes the idea of supernatural rape quite explicit: as Regan drives the
crucifix into her vagina, the demon voice chants, “Let Jesus fuck you,
let Jesus fuck you,” while at the same time we hear the girl’s voice
protesting, “No, no!” Later, Regan’s lack of consent is further high-
lighted when the words “Help me” appear on the skin of her stomach
like scar tissue. Moreover, as in the ancient world, the film situates
Regan’s struggles and writhing as for the benefit of the male gaze:
the title of the film, for instance, focuses on the priest who eventually
exorcizes the demon, subtly framing the spectacle from the perspec-
tive of the authoritative male.
A similar dynamic is seen in the 1982 film Poltergeist, in which a
suburban family home is disturbed by the activity of malevolent spir-
its. The pretty, very young Carol Anne serves as the initial conduit
of communication for the spirits, and she is eventually abducted and
taken into their dimension. Parapsychologists are called in, and Diane,
the girl’s mother, is chosen as the most appropriate agent for retriev-
ing the girl from the spirit world. While the use of females as “portals”
for supernatural activity is unsurprising, most relevant to our purposes
here is a possession scene that takes place after the house has mistak-
enly been declared “clean.” In the setup to this scene, a relieved Diane
indulges in a sensual, relaxing bath, emphasizing her attractiveness
and sexuality. Afterwards, she has just reclined on her bed when she
is suddenly attacked by the poltergeist: half- dressed, she writhes and
resists as the demon takes over her body, subjecting her to convulsions
of an orgasmic quality. The sexual nature of this possession is implied
by her recent emergence from the bath, her placement on the bed,
and her half- dressed state, while her terror, her resistance, and her
violent, unnatural movements characterize the episode as a rape scene.
While no male viewer is present onscreen, I would argue that the cam-
era’s emphasis on the presence of the dog watching as Diane bathes
alerts us to the scopophilic nature of this sequence; in addition, since
she is alone in the room when the demon attacks, Diane’s repeated,
futile attempts to keep her T- shirt pulled down can only be for the
benefit of the cinematic audience— whose gaze, as Laura Mulvey has
demonstrated, is engendered as male25— thus alerting us to our own
complicity in the voyeurism inherent in the scene.
While these two examples are now fairly dated, this dynamic persists:
films like Carrie (1976), Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986) and Pol-tergeist III (1988), Witchboard (1986) and Witchboard 2: The Devil’s Doorway (1993), The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), and Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) and Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) all feature young,
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Kirsten Day92
sexually attractive women whose possession carries an implication of
rape. As noted earlier, in the original Paranormal Activity, not only
is the spiritual rape of Diane put on display and that of Katie at least
implied, the voyeuristic element is highlighted when Katie’s boyfriend
Micah repeatedly sets up the camera, often over Katie’s protests. The
audience’s awareness of the camera in turn underscores their own role
as scopophilic viewers, while Micah’s charge of it helps to engender
this gaze as male. Indeed, in the scene noted previously where Micah
shows footage of Diane to Katie, the camera at several points lingers
not on the image of Diane but on Katie as she reacts in horror to the
information, again positioning Katie’s suffering as spectacle.
The Last Exorcism (2010) is another recent film that illustrates
some of these same principles. Once again, a young innocent girl, here
named Nell, is the victim of demonic possession, the sexual nature
of which is suggested by a promotional poster for the film that fea-
tures Nell in a suggestive position, hair in disarray, and clad in only a
nightgown that rides up her legs as if to invite a peek.26 The use of a
faux- documentary format helps to focus attention on the role of the
viewer, emphasizing the nature of Nell’s victimization as spectacle,
while the presentation of the events securely from the viewpoint of the
Reverend Cotton Marcus, who is called in to do the exorcism, again
engenders the gaze as male.
As a counterpoint, men in these films are generally not subject to
the same treatment; rather, like male prophets in the ancient world,
their characterization as more rational and self- possessed serves as
a contrast to the vulnerability of women. In Paranormal Activity, Micah’s zest in chronicling the paranormal events renders his interest
virtually scientific, and he is constantly playing the role of minor hero,
fearlessly investigating strange activities in the attic and rescuing Katie
from the clutches of the spirit. In The Last Exorcism, the skeptical
and worldly Reverend Marcus serves as a foil to the naïve and suscep-
tible Nell. In Poltergeist, the father maintains a relative emotional and
physical distance from the events throughout, but in the end, he man-
ages to whisk his family away to safety just before their house is sucked
down into a vortex. And in The Exorcist, Father Karras, the priest who
is called to assist the exorcism, is cast as a relatively detached observer
in opposition to Regan’s more emotional, “irrational” mother. In the
end, Karras succeeds in freeing the girl of her torment by first inviting
the demon into his own body and then jumping out the window to
his death rather than allowing himself to be subjected to this sort of
“soul fuck.” Significantly, despite its spelling, Karras’s name and his
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Soul Fuck 93
Greek origins also emphasize his more positive, active, and heroic role
by associating him with the notion of grace, or charis, in Greek.
Furthermore, when men are the focus of some kind of mind or
body possession in the horror genre, we generally see a very different
dynamic: in films like The Wolfman (1941 and 2010), Psycho (1960
and 1998), The Omen (1976 and 2006), and The Shining (1980),
the focus is not on the victimization of the male whose body or mind
has been usurped; instead, these men are presented as predatory, and
again, it is generally the women who are their prey whose victimiza-
tion is held up for the viewer’s pleasure.
This juxtaposition between male and female roles suggests that the
female body is being used in these episodes as a locus for male con-
cerns: Lisa Maurizio has argued that “male rhetoric about women
is motivated by anxiety and the need to dominate women,”27 while
Carol Clover says of the occult film in particular that “behind the
female ‘cover’ is always the story of a man in crisis.”28 In addition,
in her groundbreaking 1975 article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema,” Laura Mulvey demonstrated that the pleasure of looking
in cinema results from sexual stimulation that relies on separation of
self- identity from the image and the simultaneous identification with
the object on the screen, so that the women discussed here can work
both as fetish objects and as loci for male anxieties surrounding loss
of power and control.29 Following Freud, Mulvey positions this con-
cern as castration anxiety in particular,30 a dynamic suggested in The Exorcist when a statue of the Virgin Mary in a local church is des-
ecrated by the addition of a penis and elongated breasts. Clover, on
the other hand, sees possession films in particular as concerned not
with women’s lack, but with interiority as their primary difference,31
and the prevailing male anxiety being that of “slippage and fungibil-
ity,”32 which the nature of the statue’s desecration in The Exorcist can
alternately be seen to suggest. In both readings, however, the over-
riding dynamic is clear: woman serves not as subject but as a sign for
male concerns.33
Connections
I would like to acknowledge briefly an important difference in the com-
parison I am making: spiritual possession of priestesses in the ancient
world was conducted by Apollo, a god with generally positive func-
tions, and these incidences resulted in a constructive outcome— the
production of a prophecy. In the modern horror film, where spiritual
possession is predominantly found today, it is regularly carried out by
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Kirsten Day94
a malevolent spirit and outcomes are generally destructive. The most
obvious explanation for this discrepancy is the replacement of the
pagan system and its deities, who regularly conducted even literal rapes
on women without incurring a moral stain, with a Christian god who is
characterized as morally good. There are, of course, examples in mod-
ern cinema of ecstatic mystical possession by a benign, Christian spirit,
where the spiritual “rape” of a female body is likewise offered up as a
spectacle for the male gaze, as in Mariette in Ecstasy (1996)34 and Stig-mata (1999). Perhaps because Western audiences are uncomfortable
associating the notion of rape, or even sex, with a Christian deity, how-
ever, such narratives are far more popular and prevalent in the horror
genre, where possession can be assigned to devils and demons, allow-
ing the viewer to deny any affinity with the perpetrator. The Western,
Christianized audience of the horror film can thus see themselves as
repulsed by, rather than complicit in, the spectacle.
As a result, it is the horror film in general and the paranormal genre
more particularly that engage in pervasive and specific ways with
ancient depictions of prophetic possession. As Mulvey has shown,
the act of looking in cinema is intensified by the multiple layers: the
audience, which is gendered as male, watches the film recorded by
the camera while the (usually male) characters onscreen watch the
woman.35 I would argue that the ancient descriptions discussed above
have a similar dynamic with their presumption of male readership,
their emphasis on the internal male audience, and their positioning
of the female as a fetish object. In other words, as in cinema where
the look with its multiple layers is exposed, as Teresa de Lauretis puts
it, “to integrate voyeurism into the conventions of storytelling, and
thus combine visual and narrative pleasure,”36 ancient depictions of
possession achieve a similar goal by highlighting the presence of the
male viewer.
Moreover, ancient depictions of oracular possession are compara-
ble to possession scenes in the horror genre in particular through their
interest in the spectacle of the resisting female body out- of- control,
a display regularly subject to the male gaze and depicted as orgasmic.
Linda Williams hinted at this connection when she linked the hor-
ror film and pornography through their interest in “the spectacle of
a body caught in the grip of intense sensation or emotion,” which
is “featured most sensationally in pornography’s portrayal of orgasm
[and] in horror’s portrayal of violence and terror”; she then connects
these to “ecstasy,” which in antiquity referred more to an altered state
of consciousness, but in modern contexts means something more
akin to “sexual excitement and rapture.” Despite the evolution in the
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Soul Fuck 95
meaning of this term, Williams notes that each of these excesses is
marked visually by “uncontrollable convulsion or spasm” and aurally
by inarticulate cries.37 Thus, despite the shift in the nature of the pos-
sessing spirit, Williams implies that the pornographic presentation
of these ecstasies and their reception as such by the (primarily male)
audience is the same.
In addition, like ancient depictions of oracular possession, posses-
sion scenes in horror films represent the gaze as a sadistic, one- way
process in that its object is incapacitated not only by pain and fear but
also by loss of self and compromised faculties and is thus incapable
of reciprocity. Also like ancient epic, the horror genre with its pre-
dominantly male audience38 is able to disregard to a large extent the
problem of the female spectator— that for her, identification with male
viewer/subject or female viewed/object cannot be simple.39 Thus the
privileging of the male gaze and disregard of female problems of iden-
tification that are found in ancient epic are more overt in horror than
in other film genres, which assume a more gender- balanced audience.
Conclusion
It is not surprising to find examples of ecstatic possession of women
in fifth- century B.C. Athenian drama, since in this highly patriarchal
culture, women were seen not only as more vulnerable with regard to
their boundaries but also as possessions in a literal sense, a notion that
corresponds with the idea of feminine “possessability” quite well.40 In
the early Roman empire, the intensification of these literary descrip-
tions and their transformation into scenes more explicitly evocative
of spiritual rape in authors like Vergil and Lucan likely reflects the
anxieties felt by elite male authors who suddenly found themselves
disempowered, subject to the agenda and whims of the emperor.41
That a parallel dynamic crops up in American cinema in the late 1960s
and early 1970s may likewise be seen to reflect male anxiety at the loss
of power felt or perceived by elite white males in an era of emerging
feminism.42 The resurgence of such displays once again in the past
few years, one could speculate, is perhaps attributable to similar white
male anxiety provoked both by the increasingly insecure position of
Americans in a post- 9/11 world and by the current political climate,
where the run- up to the 2008 presidential election featured the first
woman and the first black male considered electable to the nation’s
highest office. The parallels I have examined here thus suggest that
despite huge advancements in gender dynamics, the use of women’s
bodies as a locus for projections of male anxieties still persists. While
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Kirsten Day96
we are often eager to recognize sexist strategies in ancient narrative,
we should not presume to look on these with a sense of superiority or
detachment. The acknowledgement that such dynamics endure not
only gives us a better lens with which to view the past but also offers
us insight into our own unexamined preconceptions as well.
Notes
1. This chapter was first presented at the 2010 Film and History con-
ference. Thanks are due to Lindsey Haines for research assistance; to
Sean Chapman and Kelvin Mason for technological support; to Mischa
Hooker and Augustana’s Faculty Research Forum for comments; to
Monica Cyrino for organizing both the original conference panels and
this volume; and to Augustana College for funding.
2. I use the term possession to refer to the appropriation of a mortal body
by a divine (whether benign or malevolent) spirit; the term ecstasy to
refer to the altered state that results; and frenzy to refer to the involun-
tary movements and utterances that constitute evidence of this state.
For a discussion of these terms as used by anthropologists interested in
spirit possession, see Maurizio (1995) 72– 76.
3. Clover (1992) 70 has noted that women in films about possession
“stand in a long line of female portals,” which include the Sibyls and
prophetesses of antiquity. See also Williams (1999) 269– 70.
4. Padel (1993) 3, 11– 14; Maurizio (1995) 75; Fowler (2002) 149.
5. Phaedrus 244a– 45c.
6. Heraclitus, fragment 92.
7. All translations from the Greek and Latin are mine.
8. See Skulsky (1987) 57– 63; Sissa (1990) 53– 70; and Padel (1993) 12.
While some would argue that other forms of inspiration, such as poetic,
can also be viewed as “an invasive process, like being the ‘passive’ and
‘penetrated’ partner in intercourse” (Fowler 2002, 150), prophetic
inspiration visited on women is the only form that is regularly depicted
as painful, violent, and subject to the male gaze.
9. Mulvey (1975) 7: “Woman . . . stands in patriarchal culture as signi-
fier for the male other, bound by a symbolic order in which man can
live out his phantasies and obsessions through linguistic command by
imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as
bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.” Maurizio (1995) 80– 83
argues one of the purposes of divine ecstasy was to serve as a ran-
domizing device— much like using lots, birds, or bones— in order to
ensure the authenticity of the divine message, further illustrating this
objectification.
10. Padel (1993) 16. Although Padel is discussing Greek tragedy, her
observations apply here as well.
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11. At the same time, Maurizio (1995) 75 suggests that historical women
who otherwise would not have a political or religious voice may have
capitalized on societal notions of ecstatic prophetic possession in order
to exert authority.
12. The Sibyl has fared slightly better: for instance, Parke, who had
explained the Pythia’s ecstasy as “self- induced hypnosis” in Parke and
Wormell (1956) 39, later took pains to distinguish the Pythia’s frenzy,
where her personality was completely suppressed by the god, from the
Sibyl’s, whom he saw as prophesying without “los[ing] her personality”
in Parke (1988) 9. For a discussion of the influence of literary presen-
tations of the Pythia’s oracular pronouncements on modern scholarly
notions of the historical situation, see Maurizio (1993) 69– 72.
13. Farnell (1907) 189.
14. See Fontenrose (1952). For further discussion, see Fontenrose (1978)
204; Price (1985) 128– 42; and Maurizio (1993).
15. Lonely Planet: Greece (2010) 243.
16. According to the placard, “vapours . . . were inhaled by the Pythia,
who entered a state of delirium uttering inarticulate cries, which
were then turned into equivocal oracles by the priests” (noted in situ
August 2011).
17. Carson (1990).
18. Odyssey 20.351– 57, 364– 70.
19. Clytemnestra first implies that Cassandra is speaking gibberish
(Agamemnon 1050– 52), then characterizes her as “mad,” saying that
she “heeds a sick passion” (1064). Cassandra herself demonstrates the
suffering her prophetic visions entail when she laments, “Alas! Alas!
Oh, oh, what evil! Once again the dreadful pain of true prophecy whirls
me around, driving me mad at its ominous onset” (1214– 16) and later,
“Alas, what fire! It comes upon me! Woe, woe! Lycian Apollo! Ah me,
ah me!” (1256– 57).
20. See Dodds (1960) for Bacchae 1088– 147, 1165– 329. Agave and her
sisters are “maddened by the breath of the god” (1094).
21. Aeneid 7.341– 405.
22. Farnell (1907) 189. While less relevant to this particular study, the
ancient notion (to which Farnell apparently subscribes) attributing sus-
ceptibility to this sort of possession to women of the lower classes in
particular is also of interest.
23. Perhaps the most explicit of these “divine rape” films, and one of the
earliest, is Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968), where a young
housewife’s body is appropriated, with the cooperation of her hus-
band, as a vessel for producing the devil’s spawn. Because this rape is
more literal than spiritual, however, I have not included it here.
24. Blatty’s explanation for this change is that he was attempting to ease
the anxiety of “Robbie’s” exorcist; see Opsasnick (2000). Clover
(1992) 101– 2, however, suggests that Blatty’s subconscious reasoning
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Kirsten Day98
has more to do with the idea that being emotionally open is regularly
gendered as feminine.
25. Mulvey (1975) 11– 13.
26. Available through IMDb.
27. Maurizio (1995) 71.
28. Clover (1992) 65, see also 85– 97.
29. Mulvey (1975) 10.
30. Mulvey (1975) 6, 13– 14.
31. Clover (1992) 13– 14, 108– 9.
32. Clover (1992) 14.
33. This tendency is made explicit in Blatty’s novel by the demon’s state-
ment to Father Merrin, “You have made her a contest between us!”
and later when Merrin tells Karras, “I think the demon’s target is not
the possessed: it is us . . . the observers . . . every person in this house,”
as noted in Clover (1992) 88. As Clover (1992) 88 puts it, “The acces-
sory nature of Regan’s story could hardly be clearer.”
34. Significantly, Mariette in Ecstasy was not released in the United States,
ostensibly due to Savoy Pictures’s financial problems and eventual clo-
sure, but perhaps also as a result of a poor reaction by audiences at a
prerelease screening, according to IMDb.
35. Mulvey (1975) 11– 12, 17.
36. de Lauretis (1999) 87.
37. Williams (1999) 269– 70.
38. Clover (1992) 6.
39. See de Lauretis (1999) 88– 91.
40. See Padel (1993) 4.
41. This strong sense of disempowerment is indicated in authors like
Tacitus, who says that in Augustus’s reign, the means to success was
“through servitude” (Ann. 1.1.25), and that in the reign of Tiberius,
even the greatest men “fell into servitude” (Ann. 1.7.1). This resulted
in a sort of “feminization” of the elite male, a concern that manifested
itself in Roman literature in general. Wyke (1994) demonstrates that
the genre of elegy as a whole developed an overriding concern with
male alienation from positions of power.
42. This development was also likely enabled by the post- 1950s shifts in
the Hollywood system and technological advances noted by Mulvey
(1975) 7.
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4
C h a p t e r 7
Ancient Allusions and
Modern Anxieties in S E V E N B R I D E S
F O R S E V E N B R OT H E R S ( 1954)
Christopher M. McDonough
While there is a rich literary and pictorial tradition of the Rape of
the Sabine Women, the only song about it may be “Those Sobbin’
Women” from MGM’s 1954 musical comedy, Seven Brides for Seven
Brothers. For Hollywood in the 1950s, movies about Rome were gen-
erally either quasireligious epics set in and against the ancient city,
such as Quo Vadis (1951) or Ben Hur (1959), or romances employ-
ing the modern city as a charming backdrop, such as Roman Holiday (1953) or Three Coins in a Fountain (1954). Seven Brides, on the
other hand, involves neither ancient Christians nor postwar jetsetters
but rather a group of lonesome homesteaders living nowhere near
Italy but instead in the “God- fearing territory” of 1850s Oregon.
Some of the preconceptions in the film, and particularly this song,
in fact, may be brought into sharper focus by a consideration of the
times of the Pax Romana under the emperor Augustus. Behind the
invocation of the ancient Roman story can be found deeper insecuri-
ties about the genders in the period of the Pax Americana.
The film’s plot centers on the Pontipee brothers, backwoodsmen
encouraged by their eldest brother, Adam, to remedy their lack of
spousal companionship by taking a page from the second century
A.D. ancient Greek author, Plutarch (apparently the only time that
Plutarch has ever been invoked in a musical).1 The opening lyrics of
the song he breaks into go like this:
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Christopher M. McDonough100
Tell ya ’bout them sobbin’ women
Who lived in the Roman days.
It seems that they all went swimmin’
While their men was off to graze.
Well, a Roman troop was ridin’ by
And saw them in their “me oh my,”
So they took ’em all back home to dry.
Least that’s what Plutarch says.
Oh yes!
Them women was sobbin’ sobbin’ sobbin’
Fit to be tied.
Ev’ry muscle was throbbin’ throbbin’
From that riotous ride.
Oh they cried and kissed and kissed and cried
All over that Roman countryside
So don’t forget that when you’re takin’ a bride.
Sobbin’ fit to be tied
From that riotous ride!
They never did return their plunder
The victor gets all the loot.
They carried them home, by thunder,
To rotundas small but cute.
And you’ve never seen, so they tell me,
Such downright domesticity.
With a Roman baby on each knee
Named Claudius and Brute.
The tune, by Gene de Paul, is an irresistibly catchy “ear- worm”—
while I was working on this essay, in fact, I whistled it so incessantly
that my wife threatened to divorce me— but it is the lyrics by Johnny
Mercer (who also composed the words to “Moon River,” “Jeepers
Creepers!” and “Ac- Cent- Tchu- Ate the Positive”) and the ideas they
express that are of special interest.2
Although the film will go on to undercut the blunt image presented
in the song, what “The Sobbin’ Women” offers is a picture of an arche-
typal relationship between men and women sanctioned by classical
authority. Adam tells one of his brothers, “Why, this is history! This
really happened!” as he holds up his copy of the book, later singing,
“Now, let this be because it’s true / A lesson to the likes of you.”
The story, as found in Plutarch’s original text, runs as follows:3
In the fourth month, after the city was built, as Fabius writes, the
adventure of stealing the women was attempted . . . [Romulus] took
in hand this exploit after this manner. First, he gave it out as if he had
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Ancient Allusions and Modern Anxieties 101
found an altar of a certain god hid under ground . . . Upon discovery
of this altar, Romulus, by proclamation, appointed a day for a splendid
sacrifice, and for public games and shows, to entertain all sorts of peo-
ple: many flocked thither, and he himself sat in front, amidst his nobles
clad in purple. Now the signal for their falling on was to be whenever
he rose and gathered up his robe and threw it over his body; his men
stood all ready armed, with their eyes intent upon him, and when the
sign was given, drawing their swords and falling on with a great shout
they ravished away the daughters of the Sabines, they themselves fly-
ing without any let or hindrance . . . [T]hey had taken no married
woman, save one only, Hersilia by name, and her too unknowingly;
which showed that they did not commit this rape wantonly, but with a
design purely of forming alliance with their neighbours by the greatest
and surest bonds.
Adam (or rather Johnny Mercer) has embellished some of the
details— in the original, none of the Sabine women has gone swim-
min’, for instance, nor are they caught in their “me oh my”— but the
essential elements of Plutarch’s story are intact.
But if the particulars of the Sabine tale in Adam’s recitation are
imprecise, the point of his telling could not be clearer. Holding up his
copy of Plutarch, he sings, “Now, let this be because it’s true / A les-
son to the likes of you.” Certainly Adam is not alone in citing Plutarch
as a faithful guide to human nature. Harry Truman was reported to
have said once, “When I was in politics, there would be times when I
tried to figure somebody out, and I could always turn to Plutarch, and
nine times out of ten I’d be able to find a parallel in there.”4 Beneath
the appeal to the Roman past, however, can be sensed an anxiety about
the American present and the place of traditional marriage within that
Figure 7.1 Adam Pontipee (Howard Keel) uses Plutarch to explain gender relations
in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). Metro- Goldwyn- Mayer.
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Christopher M. McDonough102
present. It is as a matter of consolation to his lovesick brothers that
Adam trots out his parallel from Plutarch in the first place:
Adam: If you’re sweet on them, why don’t you do something about it?
Why don’t you go marry them?
First Brother: Sure, “Go marry them,” as easy as that!
Second Brother: They wouldn’t marry us in a thousand years.
Adam: Do as the Romans did with the “Sobbing Women” or “Sabine
Women” or whatever they called them.
In the brothers’ diffidence, their certainty that no women will want
them “in a thousand years,” we can hear what Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
was to call in 1958 “the crisis of American masculinity.”5 It is this loss
of male nerve that Adam seeks to remedy with an appeal to classical
antiquity via a Tin Pan Alley tune. According to this line of thinking,
the solution to the ailments of the modern world (whether it is the
1850s or the 1950s) can be found in a foundational text of the West-
ern tradition, if only we know how to listen for it.
To be sure, the song offers an intentionally ridiculous and regres-
sive portrait of relations between men and women not much advanced
beyond “Me Tarzan, You Jane.” As eldest brother, Adam, played by
Howard Keel, goes on to assure his brothers, their quintessential
machismo will not in any way be compromised should they follow this
classical example and take wives:
Oh, yes, them a- women was sobbing
Sobbing, sobbing, passing them nights
While the Romans was going out
Hobnobbing, starting up fights.
The proper spheres of the sexes are thus defined for antiquity and, by
extension, for all times after. While Roman men went out to hobnob
and start fights, their wives stayed home to sob, and, as we hear in the
next verse:
They kept occupied by sewing lots
of little old togas for them tots
and sayin’ “Someday women folk’ll have rights.”
While he sings the last line, Keel lifts a hammer he has grabbed from
one of his brothers and, now striking a pose of protest, stands for a
moment as a mock Communist agitator before returning to the chorus
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Ancient Allusions and Modern Anxieties 103
of Mercer’s song. Women’s rights, after all, concern neither the Pon-
tipees of Oregon nor the ancients in Plutarch, but are a matter to be
dealt with “someday,” far off in a distant future that is in fact the audi-
ence’s present day. For his own present day, Adam is attempting to
establish some “downright domesticity”— a frontier version, by way of
Rome and Hollywood, of Kinder, Küche, und (“this being Oregon, and
God- fearing territory”) Kirche. In introducing his historical parable,
Adam drives home its relevance for his siblings by a final challenge
to their manhood: “Now, if you can’t do as good as a bunch of old
Romans, you’re no brothers of mine.”That the movie presents a reductive picture of gender relations is
in itself not a new insight, of course. In a collection of essays from
1991 called The Movie That Changed My Life, novelist Francine Prose
noted that, although she had loved the movie as a girl, she now had a
very different reaction to it: “Not to put too fine a point on it, Seven
Brides for Seven Brothers is, it seems to me, one of the most repulsive
movies about men and women and sexual relations that has ever been
made.”6 Prose goes on to observe that “it is still, as far as I know, the
only extant musical about rape,” although this requires some stip-
ulation. Roman legal historian Judith Evans- Grubbs notes that the
“crime of raptus . . . is not rape. Rather, [it is] . . . the abduction of
an unmarried girl by a man who has not made a formal betrothal
agreement with her but who hopes to force her parents’ consent to
what is essentially a de facto marriage.”7 Plutarch tells the story of the
Sabine Women’s raptus, strictly speaking, and it is this that the Ponti-
pee brothers are emulating. That there is a connection, both socially
and etymologically, between the concepts of rape and raptus is not to
be denied, yet the distinction is worth noting.
Anthropological considerations notwithstanding, however, there is
much to consider in Prose’s further contentions about the movie as an
expression of its political period: “What’s chilling about Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is its innocence, its fifties naiveté, its unexamined
goodheartedness: what an insidious, sinister piece of fluff it has come
to seem over time.”8 Prose is absolutely right when she compares the
opening half of the movie, with Jane Powell as the sole woman in the
brothers’ house, to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937), add-
ing the provision that “this Snow White has rewarding monogamous
sex with the eldest dwarf.”9 Still, it is my sense that her criticism, witty
as it is, is motivated more by the embarrassment felt later in life for
youthful obsessions than by any sustained examination of the film.
Seven Brides, seen in a context fuller than that of “fifties naiveté,” can
easily be understood to be taking part in the formation of what Betty
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Christopher M. McDonough104
Friedan only a few years later was to call the “feminine mystique,”
that counterrevolutionary tendency to reestablish women’s roles along
more domestic, traditional lines following the end of the Second World
War.10 As an example of this deliberate redefinition, Friedan quotes a
commencement speech given by Adlai Stevenson at Smith College in
1955, less than a year after Seven Brides’s release. Stevenson notes that
a woman’s role now is to withdraw from public life, and instead “to
inspire in her home a vision of the meaning of life and freedom.” As he
continues, “This assignment for you, as wives and mothers, has great
advantages. In the first place, it is home— you can do it in the living
room with a baby in your lap or in the kitchen with a can opener in
your hand. If you’re really clever, maybe you can even practice your
saving arts on that unsuspecting man while he’s watching television.
I think there is much you can do about our crisis in the humble role
of housewife. I could wish you no better vocation than that.”11 So
stated Stevenson, the decade’s leading liberal, to a graduating class that
included some of America’s most intelligent young women, among
them Sylvia Plath, who would later write in The Bell Jar, “I began to
think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children
it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb
as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.”12
Without engaging the various criticisms that have been made of The Feminine Mystique, let me note that there is still some broad accep-
tance of its characterization of the 1950s as the era in which women
were encouraged to leave the workplace to return to home and hearth,
the period in which Rosie the Riveter had to be reformed as a happy
homemaker.13 But for many working women of the period, the genie
was not so easily coaxed back into the bottle. “A Woman’s Bureau
survey of ten areas showed that three out of four women who had
taken jobs in the midst of the war wanted to continue working,” writes
historian William Chafe, who goes on to quote one female steelworker,
interviewed at the time, as saying, “The old theory that a woman’s
place is in the home no longer exists. Those days are gone forever.”14
Viewed against this background, the image of the Pontipee brothers
rushing into town and carrying the women back to their homes seems
like a genuine document of the Zeitgeist or, perhaps more accurately,
the expression of a male fantasy. In any event, the political application
of the ancient legend to the 1950s is perhaps more apt than the silly
musical number set in the 1850s might initially suggest.
Yet, to dismiss the schmaltz of the song as being somehow super-
fluous is to miss a part of the movie’s context that also bears heavily
on the depiction of gender. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is, after all,
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Ancient Allusions and Modern Anxieties 105
a Hollywood musical, a genre with rigid laws of its own. Indeed, Seven
Brides was made by MGM, under the auspices of the famous “Arthur
Freed Unit,” and was directed by the genre’s great master, Stanley
Donen, who also made On the Town (1949), The Pajama Game (1957), Funny Face (1957), Damn Yankees (1958), and of course,
perhaps his most famous film, Singin’ in the Rain (1952).15 Historians
of the genre often speak of his work as representing its “golden years,”
and, as it is stated on the Turner Classic Movies website, “between
1949 and 1959, Stanley Donen was either the key creative force
behind or an essential element in the production of some of the most
critically acclaimed musicals in Hollywood history.”16 When Donen
was awarded a special Lifetime Achievement award by the Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1998, instead of giving a speech,
he danced by the podium with his Oscar cheek- to- cheek.
In so strictly formulaic a genre as the musical, there are no creators,
only re- creators, whose success is judged not by how original their
work is but by how well it conforms to predetermined (if shifting)
expectations. What makes Seven Brides so choice a specimen of the
genre is the fact that it is so contrived: let us remember in this con-
nection that MGM’s motto was Ars Gratia Artis: “art for art’s sake.”
As a matter of art, film historian Rick Altman points out, the central
trait of the American film musical is its concentration on the behavior
of a pair of lovers rather than the lot of a single protagonist; this “dual
focus,” as he terms it, produces not a straightforward linear narra-
tive but one that tells its story by skipping back and forth between
roughly balanced episodes about a pair of lovers- to- be.17 Since the
audience is well aware of what will happen, the focus of the musical
is not on how it will end but on how it will get there. Consequently,
the goal is to find a way within this predetermined structure to avoid
tedium. Embedded in every musical’s plot, then, is the conflict that
exists solely to provide a happy resolution— the coup de théâtre for
Donen in Seven Brides is to pull this off not once, not twice, but seven
times, and this he does in nearly one fell swoop, when the brothers are
encouraged to follow the example set out by Plutarch.18
If we glance back to the tradition out of which Seven Brides grows,
we can see that many of the same concerns about gender and genre
that are evident in the Hollywood film are also to be found in the
works of classical authors recording the Rape of the Sabine women.
In particular, we might profitably think about not the fairly straight-
forward version of the legend given to us by the Greek biographer
Plutarch (whose work dates to the late first century A.D.) but rather
the more ironic account by the Roman poet Ovid (who wrote eight
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Christopher M. McDonough106
decades earlier).19 In his Ars Amatoria— “The Art of Love,” an ancient
guidebook to seduction written in elegiac couplets— Ovid presents
what might be called a burlesque of the Sabine legend. The work’s
narrator calls himself praeceptor amoris, “the professor of love,”
and it is unsurprising that, as presented by this would- be Casanova,
the legend is rendered in a stylized fashion that alternates between
enchanting and offensive:20
You, Romulus, first made the games scandalous
when the rape of the Sabine women delighted your
wifeless men.
At that time no awnings hung over a marble theater,
no spraying saffron drenched the platformed stage.
The woods of the Palatine provided foliage; arranged in simple design
it adorned the artless stage.
The people sat on steps created from the sod,
shading their foreheads and shaggy hair with leaves.
They scanned with their eyes, and each one marked for himself
the girl he wanted; in his silent heart stirred many feelings;
And while the Etruscan flute was sounding a crude melody,
and an actor stamped the level ground three times,
Amid the applause— even cheering applause was natural—
Romulus, the king, gave the sign to the men waiting for
the booty.
Up they leapt, their shouts attested to their intention;
they grabbed the women in their lustful hands:
As frightened flocks of doves flee the eagle,
and the youngest lamb flees the sight of wolves,
So these girls feared the men as they rushed about helter- skelter.
Not one of them maintained her color.
The fright was the same, but each expression of fear was different:
some tore their hair, others sat bewildered.
One is silent in grief, another calls uselessly for her mother;
one moans, another is in shock, one stays, another flees.
The girls were seized and led away, the prize for marriage,
and fear made many of them more attractive.
If one struggled too much or refused her captor,
he lifted her up and held her to his lustful breast
And said: “Why do you spoil your tender eyes with tears?
What your father is to your mother, I will be to you.”
If Seven Brides is a “sinister piece of fluff,” as Prose put it earlier,
how much more is there to be offended by in this ancient rendition
of the legend? And yet moviegoers of the mid- 1950s did not react
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Ancient Allusions and Modern Anxieties 107
strongly to the reductive gender politics of the film, and it is only in
the past few decades that scholars have begun to tackle similar issues
at work in The Art of Love. In her discussion of rape in Ovid’s work,
classical scholar Amy Richlin has noted how the content of this epi-
sode is overshadowed by the charm of its artistry, and she alludes to
Hollywood to make her point: “We have this myth, too, in comedies
and action romances (squeaky voice: ‘Put me down!’).”21 The dis-
tinct image of the Pontipee brothers comes to mind here, as does
Rock Hudson carrying off Doris Day in Pillow Talk (1959) or Prin-
cess Fiona similarly treated in Shrek (2001); countless other examples
could be adduced. In Richlin’s words, “There are indeed quotation
marks around the text, the marks that tell the reader ‘this is amus-
ing’; but they act not to attack the content but to palm it off.”22 A
similar sense of self- ironizing is at work in Seven Brides, and perhaps
the entire musical tradition, which, eager to cover itself in “camp,”
reminds us that this is not Life but Art, and Art for Art’s Sake at that.
Still, underlying the artificiality of Seven Brides, as noted previously,
is an authentic preoccupation with matters of gender in the period of
the film’s making. Similar issues are in effect in Ovid’s work, as clas-
sicist Alison Sharrock has recently discussed, with specific reference to
the political conditions of the poet’s day. “The entire Ovidian corpus
is in dialogue with the most powerful contemporary signifiers of the
masculine order,”23 in particular, the emperor Augustus, whose con-
trol over both the army and the arts was nearly absolute in this period.
It would seem Mercer’s characterization of proper Roman male
behavior as involving “hobnobbin’, startin’ up fights” is not without
some ancient support, after all. For poets of the Augustan era, the
portrait of the amator or “lover” ironically counters the messages of
imperial propaganda, a matter Sharrock discusses further:
The images for love which help to construct [Ovid’s] elegiac world
both oppose and partake in the norms of Roman masculinity. The well-
known figure militia amoris (the soldiery of love) is the most obvi-
ous example. [In one important poem, Ovid] ‘outrageously’ compares
the lover and the soldier down to the finest detail: it is outrageous
because conventionally the lover is the exact opposite of the soldier, as
the effeminate is of the super- masculine. But on the other hand Ovid is
exactly right: his poetry is constantly showing us both the violence and
the vis of love and also the vulnerability of violence.24
If one were looking for a cinematic equivalent to the Ovidian conceit
that militat omnis amans (“every lover is a soldier”), a good example
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Christopher M. McDonough108
might be Robert Altman’s boisterous antiwar satire M*A*S*H. Released
in 1970— the same year as Patton, which would go on to sweep the
Academy Awards— Altman’s antimilitary heroes were depicted as
charming Lotharios, whose amatory prowess precluded any question
about their masculinity. That the manhood of M*A*S*H’s male charac-
ters was established for the audience by humiliating its female characters
was a criticism disregarded at the time as “women’s lib” extremism but
that now seems all too obvious. Likewise, Ovid’s preceptor strikes a wry
pose of detachment from the shocking sexual behavior he describes in
order to seem “manly” and, significantly, to sidestep more serious issues
connected with masculinity in the culture of Augustan Rome.
To return, however, from ancient apprehensions to modern ones,
we might take these insights about Ovid into account in reassessing
how both gender and genre shape the story of Seven Brides. Since it is
clear from the start that the lovers are “fated to be mated,” the point
is to keep the lovers apart for as long as the audience’s patience will
allow. As in every musical, the bigger the obstacle the lovers must
overcome, the further the personal distance they must travel to come
together, the greater the entertainment value of the resolution. So
perhaps he is an uptight Austrian officer with a large family and she is
a free- spirited singing nun, or maybe he is a very proper professor of
phonetics and she a Cockney flower girl. Seven Brides is an exagger-
ated version of this same basic trope, but one that dispenses with the
elaborately spelled- out differences that are found in either The Sound
of Music (1959) or My Fair Lady (1964). For Plutarch and Ovid, the
hindrance to be surmounted in the Sabine legend was the refusal of
the parents to allow intermarriage with the Romans; in Seven Brides the obstacle is the simple fact that the women do not wish to be wives.
In its own way, Seven Brides is the most perfect of social commentar-
ies for midcentury American gender relations because its adherence to
the musical genre is so perfunctory. The manner of courtship is what
strikes us now as outrageous, because it happens against the women’s
will, but the real issue the film was exploring had to do with marriage
itself— was it being married at all that women really objected to? With
this question in mind, it is worth returning to Friedan’s observation
that the feminine mystique was an ideology accepted by women to
some degree voluntarily. After the war, she writes, “women went home
again just as men shrugged off the bomb, forgot the concentration
camps, condoned corruption, and fell into helpless conformity . . . it
was easier, safer to think about love and sex than about communism,
McCarthyism, and the uncontrolled bomb . . . There was a kind of
personal retreat, even on the part of the most far- sighted, the most
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Ancient Allusions and Modern Anxieties 109
spirited; we lowered our eyes from the horizon, and steadily contem-
plated our own navels.”25
Friedan identifies here a not entirely reluctant acquiescence to
traditional gender roles that, despite deep ambivalence, was also
something of a relief. It may be that the uneasy arrangement between
these male anxieties and female ambivalences is best captured in the
poster for Seven Brides’s theatrical release. It features at the center one
of the brothers transporting his intended home in a classic “fireman’s
carry.” Over his shoulder, we can see the woman’s face; she is look-
ing back at us, gently waving, and smiling, as if to indicate her own
consent to the events at hand. While this may not accord exactly with
youngest Pontipee brother’s observation that “They acted angry and
annoyed / But secretly they was overjoyed,” perhaps it is not so far off,
either. Musicals, after all, do not traffic in ambiguities or anxieties, but
instead paint romantic absolutes in the brightest of Technicolor hues.
The genre demands that the man and the woman get together against
all odds, with the cultural weight of Augustan Rome, the American
frontier, and the Eisenhower era thrown in for good measure.
Notes
1. The movie had been based on a rather bookish short story from 1938
by Stephen Vincent Benét, “The Sobbin’ Women,” on which see Fen-
ton (1958) 173.
2. On the collaboration of de Paul and Mercer for this movie, see discus-
sion by Furia (2003) 192– 93.
3. Plutarch, Life of Romulus, chapter 15, translated by Dryden (2008)
50– 52.
4. Miller (1974) 68; although see Heller (1995) on the authenticity of
Miller’s interviews with Truman.
5. Schlesinger (1962). See Cuordileone (2005) 140, who puts this anxi-
ety into social context.
6. Prose (1991) 244.
7. Evans- Grubbs (1989) 60– 61.
8. Prose (1991) 244.
9. Prose (1991) 247.
10. See Eldridge (2006) 121.
11. Friedan (2001) 113.
12. Plath (1972) 69.
13. See in general the discussion by Coontz (2011).
14. Chafe (1991) 157– 58.
15. See Silverman (1996), esp. 185– 98 on Seven Brides.
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Christopher M. McDonough110
16. Turner Classic Movies, http:// www .tcm .com/ tcmdb/ person/ 51745
|141911/ Stanley -Donen.
17. Altman (1989) 19.
18. Altman (1989) 32.
19. The comparison has also occurred to Labate (2006) 204.
20. Ovid, Art of Love I.101– 34, translated by Alessi (2003) 296– 97.
21. Richlin (1992) 168.
22. Richlin (1992) 168.
23. Sharrock (2002) 102.
24. Sharrock (2002) 102.
25. Friedan (2001) 274.
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4
C h a p t e r 8
Gorgo at the Limits of Liberation
in Zack Snyder’s 300 (2007)
Vincent Tomasso
The ancient Greek city- state of Sparta has been and continues to be
notorious for the position of women in its society.1 Ancient accounts
state that Spartan women were treated and acted differently than
Greek women in neighboring areas. In Athens, for instance, women
were expected to stay in their homes, away from the public sphere
their husbands would encounter daily.2 By contrast, young Spartan
women had to be outdoors, since they were required to be educated
in dancing, music, and athletics, among other pursuits.3 The modern
West has often regarded Spartan women as protofeminists, unusual in
the ancient world for their “freedom” and shining exceptions to wide-
spread Greek misogyny. Zack Snyder’s 300 (2007), a film that depicts
the battle of Thermopylae and the Spartans’ role in it, is no exception
to this, but it portrays Gorgo, the Spartan queen, in ways that make
her liberation problematic.
In a film dominated by the male physique and masculine martial
identities of the Spartan warriors, women’s roles are few and mostly
inconspicuous. The only women with spoken lines are Gorgo and
the Spartan oracle; the latter appears in only a single scene with a
handful of lines and is completely controlled by male priests. A few
female extras are present in the scenes at Sparta, and Xerxes’s orgy
tent is frequented by women, but all these figures appear onscreen
only briefly without spoken lines. Thus, by means of her considerable
presence throughout the film, Gorgo plays a major role in articulating
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Vincent Tomasso114
the female in 300, especially in contradistinction to the disempowered
women and general impression of misogyny in the rest of the film.
This chapter seeks to interrogate how the film constructs feminin-
ity through the Spartan queen and how that construction is in turn
predicated on modern ideas about womanhood. This depiction of
Gorgo challenges traditional gender boundaries, but the very scene
that evokes female empowerment, Gorgo’s murder of Theron, also
undermines her as a strong woman. This problematic scene and the
depiction of Gorgo in the film represent an issue in modern percep-
tions of the ancient world: when and how should ancient women be
depicted as emancipated?
Snyder’s film is based on a graphic novel of the same name by
Frank Miller, which adapts the story of the battle of Thermopylae,
an important episode in the Persian Wars of the fifth century B.C. In
480 B.C., Greeks from a variety of city- states, including Sparta, took a
stand at Thermopylae, a pass in northern Greece, and held it for three
days against the invading troops of the Persian king, Xerxes. Although
the Greeks were eventually killed, their sacrifice allowed their coun-
trymen enough time to prepare for the Persian onslaught, and a year
later the Greeks were victorious in the battle of Plataea. The story of
Thermopylae is told in a number of ancient sources, but it receives
its most expansive treatment in the Histories by the fifth century B.C.
Greek historian Herodotus. It is not clear whether Miller consulted
this text directly, though he speaks of “an intense period of research”
for 300, using “old texts” and reading a lot of “Greek history”;4 on
the “recommended reading” page of the 300 hardback edition, in
which all four issues of the graphic novel are collected together, he
lists Herodotus’s Histories second.5 Still, Miller could have acquired
his knowledge of Herodotus’s account from a secondary source, and
the same is true of the Sayings of Spartan Women by the late- first- /
early- second- century A.D. Greek writer Plutarch; one quotation from
this work appears in Miller. The sources of Snyder’s 300 are even more
difficult to tease out. The director has consistently stated that Miller
was his main source and that his primary aim was to reproduce Miller’s
work as a film.6 He has said that “about 90 percent” of his film is
Miller; the rest consists of his additions to Gorgo’s role.7 For the lat-
ter, he did some original research into the historical nature of the
Spartan queen, though he never explicitly names his sources.8 Sny-
der’s Gorgo speaks the same line from Plutarch as Miller’s Gorgo,
and she also uses another quotation, implying that Snyder either read
Plutarch or a secondary source that repeated the information. Ulti-
mately, the precise dimensions of Snyder’s research and knowledge of
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Gorgo at the Limits of Liberation in Zack Snyder’s 300 (2007) 115
the ancient sources are unknown, but in any case, his comments about
the historical nature of particular elements in the film demonstrate
that his 300 engages with antiquity.
Debates about the merits of films on historical subjects have often
centered on whether or not the filmmakers have created “authentic”
accounts of history.9 This is not an issue for 300, since both Miller and
Snyder have stated that their work is not realistic, and so it is neither
sensible nor productive to criticize them for their departures from
the ancient evidence. In the supplemental feature “The Frank Miller
Tapes,” Miller characterizes his 300 and Snyder’s film as “historical
evocation,” and in the feature “300: Fact or Fiction?” Snyder draws
attention to the fact that the film is narrated by the Spartan soldier,
Dilios, who mixes fact with fiction.10 Instead of attacking the fictional
nature of these texts, I want to use their differences with their source
materials to contextualize their depictions of women and, in turn,
to understand how this process reveals an aspect of our relationship
with the ancient world. In doing this, I am adopting the position that
modern films about the past are about both past and present in that
they negotiate relationships between the two.11
Gorgo’s appearances in Herodotus’s Histories are little more than
cameos; nevertheless, in these brief episodes she plays important roles
in Spartan society and in the outcome of the Persian Wars. When
another Greek ruler tried to bribe the Spartan king, Cleomenes,
to help him in a revolt against Persia, Gorgo, Cleomenes’s daugh-
ter, intervened: “Father, the stranger will corrupt you, if you don’t
leave.”12 Here Gorgo gives voice to the antiluxury values of Spartan
society and its fear of foreign influence, a common role played by
women in the Histories.13 Herodotus notes that she was “eight or
nine years old,” a precocious age for anyone, much less a female, to
intervene in delicate political proceedings that were the exclusive pre-
rogative of males in the ancient world. For modern audiences, this
episode is not particularly striking as an example of female liberation,
but for ancient Greeks the young Gorgo’s behavior would have been
viewed as very much outside of the norm for her gender.
Many years later, after the start of Greek hostilities with Persia,
Demaratus, an exiled Spartan king, found out about the Persians’ plan
to invade Greece. He sent a warning to the Spartans, and, because
he feared that the Persians would discover his treachery, he devised
a clever ruse. Instead of inscribing his message in wax on a tablet
as was the usual practice, Demaratus carved it into the wooden tab-
let itself and then covered it with wax so that the courier would not
discover the message. The Spartans were puzzled at this apparently
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Vincent Tomasso116
blank missive, but Gorgo had an idea: “The daughter of Cleomenes
and wife of Leonidas, Gorgo, suggested to them that they would find
letters on the wood, since she herself recognized it, urging them to
burn off the wax.”14 Herodotus’s words here, particularly the phrase
I have italicized, emphasize Gorgo’s active and unusual role in com-
parison with other characters, male and female, in the Histories.15 Her
decipherment of Demaratus’s message allows the Spartans to make a
stand at Thermopylae, since they were unaware of the invasion at this
early stage. Herodotus thus depicts Gorgo as an enabler of mascu-
line heroic glory; without her quick thinking, Sparta and the rest of
Greece might have been defeated by the Persians. This episode, while
clearly signaled by Herodotus as portraying the cleverness of Gorgo,
is not very dramatic in cinematic terms, even though one of Miller’s
influences, the earlier film The 300 Spartans (1962), depicts a version
of this. Women in epic films of the early twenty- first century, like Sny-
der’s 300, must be action heroines more than intellectual ones.
In the Sayings of Spartan Women, Plutarch attributes six quotes to
Gorgo, four to other named Spartan women, and thirty to anonymous
Spartan women. The Gorgo of Snyder’s film uses one of the quotes
attributed to her historical counterpart: “When asked by a woman
from Attica, ‘Why do you Spartan women alone rule the men?’ she
said, ‘Because we alone give birth to them.’ ”16 In both Miller and Sny-
der, Gorgo speaks one of the anonymous quotes: “Another woman,
in handing over a shield to her son, said to him in admonishment,
‘Child, either with this or on it.’ ”17 Some commentators argue that
these quotes show that Spartan women could voice their opinions
in public and had much control over how Spartan men were viewed
by society.18 Others feel that these quotes demonstrate that Spartan
women were given more freedom than other Greek women, but this
freedom was directed toward supporting masculine heroic (i.e., patri-
archal) values.19 The balanced view of Sarah Pomeroy that Spartan
women, while not liberated in the sense of modern women, had better
lives than women in other Greek city- states, is preferable.20
When the ancient depictions of Gorgo are taken out of context by
modern representations, they give audiences the impression that she
was liberated. Whether or not Gorgo was in reality emancipated is a
different and much- debated question that is not cogent to the current
argument.21 What is of interest here is how Snyder viewed the issue
and consequently shaped the film’s Gorgo to fit his perceptions. His
view is revealed in the DVD supplement by the comments of Bettany
Hughes, a historian and producer of several documentaries about the
ancient world: “Spartan women were special anyway . . . they had a
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real sense of themselves. I mean, unusually in the ancient world, Spar-
tan women were not repressed.”22 This position is reflected in many
popular reviews and publications in the wake of 300’s release.23
Snyder’s Gorgo is based on the Gorgo depicted in Miller’s 300, but
in the graphic novel she appears on only two pages, while in the film
she has a substantial role. Gorgo (Lena Headey) first appears about
eight minutes after the start of the film with her husband, the Spartan
king, Leonidas (Gerard Butler), and their son. Leonidas concludes
the day’s lesson in combat techniques by proclaiming, “First you
fight with your head,” to which Gorgo adds, “Then you fight with
your heart.” Dan Hassler- Forest argues that this scene, which does
not appear in Miller, contradicts the earlier Spartan agoge, or tradi-
tional training, sequence:24 Leonidas’s son is exempt from that brutal
method of training, which Snyder does to humanize Leonidas in the
context of his loving relationship with his son. Whereas the young
Leonidas was led away to the training while his distraught mother was
restrained, Gorgo uniquely becomes part of her son’s training pro-
cess. Even though the intellectual (“head”) vs. emotional (“heart”)
dichotomy is a stereotypical masculine- feminine division of labor, the
film suggests that men and women are equally important in the train-
ing of some Spartans. In fact, in ancient Spartan society, women had
no part in the training of warriors.
Gorgo curtly warns the leader of the Persian messengers against
asking for Sparta’s submission to Xerxes, and he, shocked, asks Leoni-
das why a woman is able to speak so boldly. Gorgo replies with a
quote from Plutarch that Miller does not use: “Because only Spar-
tan women give birth to real men.” On the face of it, this statement
validates Gorgo’s assertive and independent character, since it clearly
establishes that her outlook and attitude are different from the norms
of other contemporary societies. It encourages Western audiences
to identify with the Spartans as a “liberal” (for the ancient world)
society and to be distanced from the Persians as backward- thinking
barbarians. Gorgo’s quip also establishes that her society produces
warriors (“real men”), implying that the Persians produce cowards,
and it mirrors Leonidas’s later statement that Spartan women would
make better fighters than the Persian army. Thus the initial scenes
of Spartan- Persian interaction establish their differences in male and
female terms, and Gorgo is put on equal footing with her husband.
But this first scene also demotes Gorgo and Spartan women to sup-
porting roles, since Gorgo’s ability to enter into the male- dominated
world of discourse is attained only through her reproductive capacity
to produce male warriors. The episode from Plutarch on which this
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Vincent Tomasso118
scene is based is commonly interpreted this way by both scholars of
the ancient world and nonspecialists.25 Bella Zweig suggests that this
(mistaken) attitude is due to Western conceptions of motherhood as
well as modern feminist ideas about how women should be emanci-
pated.26 She demonstrates through a cross- cultural comparison with a
Native American society that different cultures have different under-
standings of female power. Just because a Westerner might not see
motherhood as characteristic of a liberated woman does not mean that
other cultures would feel similarly. Moreover, the context for Gorgo’s
statement in the film is different from the same quote’s context in Plu-
tarch.27 Snyder stages the dialogue as if it represented proto- Western
feminism taking on misogynist males, whereas in the Sayings of Spar-tan Women it demonstrates the differences between Athenian society,
in which women were mostly repressed, and Spartan society, where
women were highly valued for their role as mothers. In Plutarch, Gor-
go’s words represent the relative liberation of Spartan women, while
in the film they suggest a reframing of that sentiment in a modern
Western context, in which the statement no longer represents femi-
nist ideals. At the same time, Pomeroy observes that feminism is not
monolithic and embraces a variety of different goals; indeed, some
feminists have embraced motherhood.28
When Leonidas is trying to decide whether to kill the messengers,
he looks at Gorgo, whose nod helps him make the fateful decision.
This scene demonstrates that Leonidas and Gorgo think on the same
level and have a relationship so strong that they can communicate
through facial expressions and gestures. Yet it also depicts Gorgo as
a supporter rather than an actor in her own right. Although Gorgo’s
role in this episode does not appear in ancient accounts, it parallels her
role as an enabler of Spartan glory at the end of Book 7 of Histories. But whereas Herodotus highlights her intelligence in that none of
the (male) Spartans is able to figure out Demaratus’s scheme except
Gorgo, in 300 she is little more than a reflection of her husband.
The first of two explicitly sexual acts that are depicted in 300
occurs between Gorgo and Leonidas before he leaves for Thermo-
pylae. Hassler- Forest describes it as “shot in slow motion, in the
style of high- gloss Hollywood glamour,” and for this reason Monica
Cyrino argues that such an explicit scene is unusual for a film of this
genre, where it is the male action star who is usually fetishized to
the near- exclusion of female figures.29 There are sexual elements in
other scenes, which serve to distinguish the “good” Spartans from the
“evil” Persians, but they are merely suggestive;30 the scene between
Leonidas and Gorgo is emphasized by virtue of its explicit nature and
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Gorgo at the Limits of Liberation in Zack Snyder’s 300 (2007) 119
length. Note too that Gorgo’s upper body is visually fetishized in this
scene, with Headey’s upper torso fully nude; Butler’s nudeness, by
contrast, is shown selectively.
While Leonidas is fighting at Thermopylae, Gorgo seeks the coun-
cil’s support for the conflict, but Theron (Dominic West), a corrupt
politician, makes this difficult. At first she is able to secure the support
of an older councilor, who sponsors her so that she is able to enter the
Spartan council chamber and give a speech. This underscores Gorgo’s
shrewd tactics at the same time as it shows that she is politically depen-
dent on male power. This is in keeping with the ancient world, in
which adult citizen males held almost all the political capital, but it
appears repressive to modern audiences. Later, Gorgo is informed that
she must also secure the support of the younger councilman, Theron.
When they first meet, Gorgo offers Theron a cup of water, which
he suggests is poisoned. Although Gorgo has not used poison, his
accusation gives voice to a stereotypical behavior of female antago-
nists: destroying males not through direct physical confrontation but
through their roles as domestic stewards, as demonstrated in ancient
Greek literature by figures such as Euripides’s Medea and Aeschylus’s
Clytemnestra. Later, Gorgo offers her body in exchange for Theron’s
political support. Theron handles her in a very rough way, and so the
scene becomes Gorgo’s sacrifice for Sparta.31 The film treats the act as
a rape and thereby assimilates Gorgo to the “rape- avenger” character
type. Thus certain aspects of Gorgo’s character draw on cinematic tra-
dition to imply an empowered woman, while the narrative undermines
that implication by having Gorgo willingly enter into a sexual bargain
on the model of ancient Sparta. Hughes claims that Gorgo’s behavior
has historical precedents, but I am unable to determine the accuracy
of this statement.32 In any case, what matters is that Hughes’s “histor-
ical facts” accorded with Snyder’s vision and that Gorgo’s sacrifice is
made parallel to the sacrifice of the male Spartans at Thermopylae: this
is shown visually in the film through a match cut of Gorgo’s pained
face with the wincing of a Spartan hoplite as his wound is cauterized.
But not all sacrifices are created equal. Although Leonidas’s death at
Thermopylae and Gorgo’s sex with Theron are supposed to be equal
gestures, they both trade on stereotypical male and female roles.
Gorgo next addresses the council chamber. The all- male councilors
mutter in misogynistic disgust at the unprecedented event of a woman
speaking to them. Ancient Greek women were not accorded citizen
status along with their male relatives, so they could neither vote nor
participate in political bodies. Thus the actions of Snyder’s Gorgo
here are effective transgressions of normative gender behaviors of
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Vincent Tomasso120
antiquity. Victor Davis Hanson, an academic consultant for the film,
argues otherwise: “The idea of emancipated, strong women taking
part in politics is very Greek.”33 Hanson is here apparently referring
to the fifth- century B.C. Athenian comedies Lysistrata and Assembly-women, by the playwright Aristophanes, in which women temporarily
take over Athenian politics. However, these are pure comic fantasies
that at their heart are about male anxieties over the potential power
that women could wield within the city- state; they are not about
female emancipation.
Gorgo’s speech in support of her husband is passionate and rhetori-
cally effective, but Theron derails her plan by calling her a warmonger
and framing their sexual liaison as her licentiousness. Theron orders
her to be restrained and removed, but Gorgo seizes a guard’s sword
and stabs Theron in the torso. Even though this revenge moment is a
common cinematic trope for the “liberated woman,” Gorgo’s behav-
ior in this scene destabilizes her authority as a strong female figure in
two ways. First, her murder of Theron is a mirror as well as a foil to the
Spartan masculine violence occurring simultaneously at Thermopylae.
Whereas Leonidas’s stand against the Persians involves direct assault,
the clashing of two armies in combat with both sides literally facing
death, in a moment of passion Gorgo murders Theron before he can
react: it is the stereotypical “fight with your head/heart” dichotomy
again. On the other hand, she stabs him to his face rather than his
back, the latter being the stereotypical refuge of cowardly assassins.
Yet even this narrative image of a “heroic” Gorgo is destabilized in a
Figure 8.1 Gorgo (Lena Headey) penetrates Theron (Dominic West) in 300
(2007). Warner Bros.
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Gorgo at the Limits of Liberation in Zack Snyder’s 300 (2007) 121
poster advertising the film, in which Gorgo’s back is turned toward the
viewer, with a sword clutched behind her back. By contrast, Leonidas’s
poster depicts the king holding a spear and shield with his body turned
toward the viewer. These images of Leonidas and Gorgo suggest that
direct confrontation is not part of Gorgo’s identity and consequently
that she must resort to treachery to accomplish her goals.34 Second,
it is not Gorgo’s violent act or her speech that ultimately result in the
Spartan councilors’ declaration of war on Persia, but rather the fact
that there is physical evidence that Theron had been paid to get Sparta
to not intervene in the war.35 This climactic scene in the film is also
the greatest departure from the ancient sources: it in effect replaces
Herodotus’s Gorgo discovering the true nature of Demaratus’s mes-
sage. The change from Herodotus’s “master of signs” to Snyder’s
violent avenger is motivated by the semiotics of action cinema that
codes female power through violence. While the film is not required
to be faithful to the ancient sources, Snyder has clearly chosen to pres-
ent Gorgo to a modern audience in ways that allow her character to
respond to the contemporary demands of the action film genre.
The rest of Snyder’s cinematic oeuvre and his comments about
Gorgo suggest that the director, if not a feminist, portrays himself
as an advocate for female empowerment. In his 2011 film Sucker
Punch, for instance, a woman is unjustly committed to an insane asy-
lum and tries to escape with the help of four other female patients.
It has been labeled misogynist by a number of critics, including New
York Times film critic, A. O. Scott: “Mr. Snyder’s pretense [is] that
this fantasia of misogyny is really a feminist fable of empowerment.”36
Snyder, by contrast, argued that the film was about female liberation:
“So hopefully by the end the girls are empowered by their sexual-
ity and not exploited.”37 Snyder’s female empowerment aesthetic is
also revealed through the difference between Gorgo’s appearances in
Miller’s graphic novel and in the film. In Miller, Gorgo appears only
on the seventh and eighth pages of the second chapter. She suggests
that her husband take three hundred “bodyguards” with him, which
helps him to circumvent the Ephors’ forbidding of a Spartan force
being sent north. This suggests her intelligence, but just barely. Then,
Miller depicts Gorgo as her husband leaves, tears streaming down her
face, whereas Leonidas never expresses emotion: this firmly delineates
traditional gender behaviors.
To Miller’s brief cameos, Snyder added the subplot of intrigue on
the home front, giving Gorgo a major supporting role that she enjoyed
neither in the graphic novel nor in the ancient sources. The reasons
for doing this were complex, partly narrative and partly financial. In
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Vincent Tomasso122
narrative terms, Snyder said that Gorgo’s subplot was created in order
to remind the audience of what the Spartans are fighting for.38 At the
same time, Gorgo’s prominence in the film translated into a greater
appeal to potential female audience members.39 Thus Gorgo’s beefed- up
role could be read as a cynical marketing ploy to draw in a greater
audience share but also as a genuine attempt to create more imagina-
tive space for female audience members to project themselves into the
narrative world of the film and identify more closely with the film’s
overall ideology. Indeed, Snyder’s comments suggest that he put some
thought into imagining what Gorgo would have been like from a few
quotes in Plutarch: “What kind of character is that? Who is that woman
who said those things? That’s really what we used to sort of build
her and flesh her out.”40 Snyder’s 300 has a different agenda from
Miller’s 300 when it comes to sexuality, as Miller’s reaction to Gorgo’s
larger role demonstrates: “This is a boys’ movie. Let it be that.”41 This
expression of misogyny goes hand- in- hand with Miller’s criticism of
what he sees as a recent tendency “to apply modern civilized standards
to historical figures”; one wonders whether Miller’s conservative ideas
about gender dynamics are partly responsible for the problems with
Gorgo’s liberation in the film.42
In contrast to societies in the modern West, ancient society was
overwhelmingly misogynistic and repressive. There have been a vari-
ety of responses in recent popular texts to the ancient world’s gender
relations: some reproduce antiquity’s male- centric and gynephobic
cultures, such as the film Hercules and the Amazon Women (1994);
while others overturn that vision and depict a unique mix of ancient
and modern ideas about women, as in the television series Xena: War-rior Princess (1995– 2001).43 An example of a text that falls in the
moderate range is the premium cable series Rome (2005– 7). The pro-
ducers of that series have claimed the Roman women portrayed in
their program could not wield political power overtly and were thus
forced to act in covert ways. Scholars have argued that the series Rome portrays these women in positive ways rather than reverting to stereo-
types of women in the ancient world:44 this demonstrates that modern
artists can portray women and the misogynistic realities of ancient cul-
tures realistically and simultaneously create powerful female characters
within those limitations. Creators can thus subtly advance modern
ideas of ideal womanhood while portraying the conditions of ancient
life. The other alternative, taken by Xena, is to explode the limitations
imposed on ancient women in favor of valorizing modern ideals. 300
tries both to portray the misogynistic attitudes of the ancient world as
well as deconstruct them, but it ultimately fails at the latter.
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Gorgo at the Limits of Liberation in Zack Snyder’s 300 (2007) 123
Because classical antiquity was often quite different from the mod-
ern West, films about the Greco- Roman world are in constant danger
of creating too little identification between characters and viewers.
If filmmakers hew too closely to ancient sources, they risk alienating
their modern audience, as was the case with Oliver Stone’s Alexan-der (2004), whose eponymous protagonist viewers could not identify
with partially because of his sexuality and his inability to engage a nar-
rative outcome like typical Hollywood action heroes.45 The ancient
Spartans are another good example of this problem: it is difficult for
audiences to identify with a society that existed in a distant time and
practiced infanticide, slavery, and wife sharing. Snyder’s Gorgo is one
of the bridges between the Greek past and the contemporary audi-
ence, where the audience can see something of themselves and their
values in a narrative about antiquity. The status of Spartan women is
especially contested in modern Western culture because it turns on a
crucial point of audience identification, the issue of female rights.46
Through Gorgo, Snyder’s 300 emphasizes the blatant misogyny of the
ancient Greek world and thereby increases its otherness, since in gen-
eral misogynistic behavior is no longer acceptable in public in modern
Western societies. At the same time, that otherness also supports audi-
ence identification, since it creates a backdrop against which Gorgo
may act. This technique of indicating the limitations of the ancient
world and inserting some aspects of modern behavior into it is not by
itself problematic; the issue is rather the way in which these limitations
are interrogated. Snyder’s Gorgo is stuck between fifth century B.C.
Sparta and twenty- first century A.D. Hollywood, simultaneously a
woman with much more power than was possible for her gender in the
ancient world and a caricature of female power in the modern world.
Western cultures, especially American culture, commonly believe
that they are descended from ancient Greece and especially Rome.
This belief in cultural inheritance, however true it may be, can encour-
age artists to elide the distance between “us” and “them.” This elision
is not easy, complicated as it is by the gap between modern expecta-
tions and ancient realities. Snyder’s 300 is an example of how this
elision does not always succeed. The film’s depiction of Gorgo raises
an issue that merits further exploration by classicists and film scholars:
how should popular representations of the classics deal with repre-
senting the realities of gender relations in the ancient world, as well
as the realities and ideals of those relations in the modern world? This
presents a challenge to the traditional study of classics, interested as
it is in unearthing factual evidence and carefully reconstructing the
ancient world “as it was”; how can we present an ancient Greece and
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Vincent Tomasso124
Rome that addresses the gender issues of those societies while also
incorporating modern societies’ progressive views? Snyder has not
succeeded in his attempt to deal with this issue, but his failure plays
an instructive role in determining its contours. The ancient Spartan
mirror pictured on the cover of Paul Cartledge’s recent book, Spartan
Reflections (2001), is a good analogue here: while the bronze mirror
has oxidized over the centuries, leaving a brown, pockmarked surface,
it originally was able to reflect the image of the real woman gazing
into it. Only the sculpted figure of a nude woman, which forms the
handle of the mirror, is comprehensible to us, as we try to see dis-
torted reflections of ourselves in the mirror of antiquity.
Notes
1. I would like to thank the audiences and fellow panelists at the 2007
Pacific Ancient and Modern Languages Association meeting and at the
2010 Film and History conference. Special thanks go to Ruby Blondell
and Monica Cyrino for their insightful comments and encouragement
and to Erin Pitt for her support and careful eye.
2. Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin (1988) 43 note that in the classical
period, “the status of women seems to have achieved some kind of
nadir in Western history.”
3. See further Pomeroy (2002) 3– 32.
4. George (2003) 65, 71.
5. Miller (1998).
6. Hassler- Forest (2010) 121.
7. Murray (2007).
8. References in this chapter to “Snyder’s 300” simplify the creative
process surrounding the film. The film’s Gorgo was shaped by many
different individuals, including the director, writers, and actors. For
readability’s sake, however, in this chapter I have equated the film’s
depiction of Gorgo with Snyder’s vision. Note that in many interviews
Snyder portrays Gorgo’s role in the film as his contribution.
9. For an outline and discussion of the debate, see Hughes- Warrington
(2007) 16– 35.
10. “The Frank Miller Tapes” and “300: Fact or Fiction?” are both sup-
plemental features on the 300: Special Edition DVD, Warner Bros.
(2007).
11. See Wyke (1997) 13 and Burgoyne (2008) 11.
12. Herodotus, Histories 5.51. The Greek text is from Legrand (1932–
68). All English translations of Greek texts are my own.
13. Dewald (1981) 105.
14. Histories 7.239.
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15. In the original Greek, the italicized phrase consists of a participle and
an intensive pronoun that emphasize Gorgo’s active role in this epi-
sode; Herodotus uses the participle in the Histories only once of a
male. Furthermore, the particular verb from which the participle is
derived appears a total of seven times and is used almost exclusively
with men. See Hollmann (2011) 45– 46 and 229– 30.
16. Plutarch, Sayings of Spartan Women 240.E6, from the Greek text in
Nachstädt (1935).
17. Sayings 241.F4. See Kunstler (1987) on whether Plutarch’s words
reflect actual quotes.
18. E.g. Cartledge (2001) 114– 15.
19. E.g. Goff (2004) 118.
20. Pomeroy (2002) 160.
21. The main arguments pro emancipation are Kunstler (1987) and Pome-
roy (2002), while on the anti emancipation side is Cartledge (2001).
See also Figueira (2010) (anti, with qualifications), with further bib-
liography. Dewald (1981) approaches the issue from a literary view-
point, arguing that women in Herodotus play important roles in the
narrative of history.
22. “300: Fact or Fiction?” DVD feature (2007).
23. E.g. Corliss (2007).
24. Hassler- Forest (2010) 123.
25. See Goff (2004) 118.
26. Zweig (1993) 47.
27. Daryaee (2007) argues that this quote “is inserted wrongly in the
dialogue,” but his complaint seems to rest primarily on the notion
that Snyder does not carefully reproduce every aspect of the ancient
sources.
28. Pomeroy (2002) 160. On motherhood and feminism, see Umansky
(1996).
29. Hassler- Forest (2010) 123; Cyrino (2011) 23.
30. Roos (2010) section 31.
31. See Cyrino (2011) 28.
32. “300: Fact or Fiction?” DVD feature (2007).
33. “300: Fact or Fiction?” DVD feature (2007).
34. Although posters are texts separate from films, they are paratexts that
add to and indeed are parts of the film’s meaning; see Gray (2010)
52– 56.
35. See Cyrino (2011) 24.
36. Scott (2011).
37. Wilkins (2011).
38. Murray (2007).
39. As suggested by Daly (2007).
40. Murray (2007).
41. Quoted in Daly (2007).
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Vincent Tomasso126
42. Quoted in George (2003) 72. Miller’s comment also points to a meth-
odological issue that has not been addressed in this chapter. As Mulvey
(1975) argues in her seminal article on film’s representation of women,
sex is not mutually exclusive; we cannot study the representation of
women without also considering the representation of men. Thus a
fuller treatment of the depiction of sex in 300 is in order, though this
study tries to nuance that future discussion. On masculinity in 300 see
Turner (2010).
43. On Hercules, see Blondell (2005); on Xena, see Futrell (2003).
44. Both Cyrino (2008) and Augoustakis (2008) argue this point.
45. See further Paul (2010b) 17– 18.
46. See Cyrino (2011) 27, who argues that epic films like 300 “are now
crafting their narrative strategies to engage with and promote broad
cross- cultural and even universal structures of identification, affinity
and inclusivity.”
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4
C h a p t e r 9
Oliver Stone’s Unmanning
of Alexander the Great
in A L E X A N D E R (2004)
Jerry B. Pierce
When the film Gladiator hit the big screen in 2000, its financial
success began a revival of the sword- and- sandals epic that had been
defunct since the last major classical- era film, Anthony Mann’s The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), spurring production of stories
ranging from the fall of Troy to the battle of Thermopylae to the
conquests of Alexander the Great.1 While Gladiator, Troy (2004),
and 300 (2007) tend to share a common patriarchal characterization
of the male protagonist as a hero who is strong, active, and above
all, heterosexual, Oliver Stone’s film Alexander (2004) presents the
Macedonian general as excessively emotional, under the sway of his
overbearing mother, and, unlike the male leads in the other films,
sexually ambiguous: bisexual if not homosexual. Ancient epic films,
in general, often use the male lead to represent a powerful standard
of masculinity through the main characters’ familial and/or sexual
relationships, their agency, moral fortitude, and the “safe” hetero-
sexualizing of their bodies. Such representations starkly contrast male
antagonists in the same films who appear as feminized, weak, and
cowardly and who often tend to exhibit “aberrant” sexual behavior
such as incest and possible pedophilia, who transgress traditionally
held concepts of gender, or who simply fail to follow convention-
ally accepted masculine stereotypes. Gladiator, Troy, and 300 present
traditional masculinity and heterosexuality not only as positive but
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Jerry B. Pierce128
also as an antidote to the tyranny and despotism that threatens their
patriarchal and democratic worlds.2
Oliver Stone’s Alexander differs markedly from this shared rep-
resentation of ancient patriarchal masculinity, as the eponymous
character fails to conform to the standard tropes for male protago-
nists, especially in his public and private displays of love and affection.
The result is that this Alexander the Great ultimately resembles many
of the “villains” in ancient films, and indeed he is portrayed as acting
less “manly” than his recent cinematic counterparts, such as Maxi-
mus, Hector, Achilles, and Leonidas. Therefore, while these films
present traditional masculinity and heterosexuality as positive, heroic,
and admirable, Alexander inverts these traits, challenging the typical
representation both sexually and emotionally. In other words, as the
elder narrator— Ptolemy, one of Alexander’s generals— explains, Alex-
ander’s only defeat was by his friend Hephaestion’s thighs. The result
of this inversion is the rendering of his masculinity and ultimately his
heroism as ambiguous at best. While most of the other films were
commercially successful, the story of Alexander of Macedonia failed
both financially and critically, which may have resulted from its atypi-
cal portrayal of a classical hero.
These cinematic representations of proper masculinity rely on and
in fact reinforce heteronormativity, a constructed perception that
holds heterosexuality as the normal, default identity for members
of a society, and therefore the only accepted expression of sexuality.
Indeed, it is considered so “natural, universal, and monolithic” that
any variations from heterosexuality are considered deviant and thus
are devalued and shunned.3 According to Wheeler Winston Dixon,
in most films the “state of nonstraightness is essentially suspect.”4 To
demonstrate one’s heterosexuality and therefore follow the “norm,”
one can engage in heteroperformance. Marriage, male- female sex,
and procreation all are deemed suitable displays of heterosexuality
precisely because they reinforce traditional patriarchal gender roles.
This heteroperformance can occur either actively, through character
dialogue or action, or passively, via clothing, an actor’s body type, or
a prop such as a wedding ring.5
Each of the male protagonists in Gladiator, Troy, and 300 fit the
mold of a strong, heteroperformative male in terms of both their phys-
ical bodies and their actions or, more precisely, their interactions. The
toned bodies of Maximus, Achilles, Hector, and Leonidas are all on
display in these films, ranging from Maximus’s one shirtless scene, to
a partially nude Achilles, to a completely nude Leonidas. Their bodies
are also depicted as engaging in manly action like fighting hordes of
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Oliver Stone’s Unmanning of Alexander the Great 129
barbarians, single- handedly killing numerous Trojans, or slaying wave
after wave of Persians. Strength and aggression then become active
indicators of each hero’s masculinity. As Lynne Segal argues, concep-
tions of “true manhood” typically involve “toughness, struggle and
conquest” and an “increasing glorification of a more muscular, milita-
ristic masculinity.”6 As evidence, one need only consider the film 300,
where the sculpted bodies of the Spartans are as much a spectacle as
the battles themselves.
Each of these films goes to great lengths to try to ensure that none
of these male bodies appear in a homoerotic fashion by safely heterosex-
ualizing the scenes with easily identified heteroperformative markers.
The reason for these markers is to ease the (usually American) audi-
ence’s apprehension and perhaps expectation that male bodies in any
stage of undress in a film set in the classical world are a possible gateway
to homosexual desire. Onscreen male- male relationships, according to
John M. Clum, are rife with anxiety because they have the potential
to threaten the demarcation between heterosexual and homosexual
interaction.7 Thus the all- male gladiators in Gladiator wear knee- length
tunics that conceal their bodies from both the audience and espe-
cially from their fellow warriors, and they never, ever are seen bathing
together or even sleeping in close proximity. Maximus’s own hetero-
sexuality is always reaffirmed through constant reference to his wife and
child, reinforcing his status as both husband and father. His desire to
return to his murdered family, if only in the afterlife, supersedes all other
desires, both political and sexual, and indicates that his heteroperforma-
tive role as father and husband is key to his masculine identity.
In Troy, Hector likewise is identified through his role as husband,
father, and protector, all traditionally masculine functions, and it is
only during such scenes with his wife and infant son where his body
is safely on display. These scenes thus provide proof that Hector is a
“proper” heterosexual male who has married and produced a legiti-
mate heir, thereby fulfilling his expected manly duties. Achilles is also
portrayed as a heteroperformative male from his first scene dozing in
postcoital bliss with two women to his “romance” with the Trojan
priestess, Briseis. Though not a father in the film, Achilles is depicted
as paternalistic through his safely heterosexual relationship with the
young Patroclus, now conveniently changed to his “cousin,” thereby
cancelling out any homoerotic relationship between the two and
eliminating the potential for the affection shared between them to be
construed as anything other than solidly heterosexual.8
Finally, 300 goes to exceptional lengths to depict the Spartans, espe-
cially Leonidas, as staunchly heterosexual, by attempting to mask any
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Jerry B. Pierce130
homoeroticism with hypermasculinity and even deflecting accusations
of homosexuality onto others, such as the Athenian “boy- lovers.” The
Spartan warriors are portrayed as safely heterosexual either through
noting that all assembled have “grown sons to carry on their names” or
through the presence of both father and son in the army together. In
both cases, the presence of male heirs reaffirms the Spartans’ performa-
tive heterosexuality. And then there is Leonidas himself, who literally
engages in heteroperformance by being the only one of these males
shown having intercourse (with his wife, naturally). Unlike Gladiator
and Troy, 300 has the only extensive and graphic sex scene involving
the male protagonist, which serves to further normalize Leonidas’s
heterosexuality and, perhaps more important, also provides a safe set-
ting for the gratuitous display of the male body.
While Gladiator, Troy, and 300 all present a common conceptualiza-
tion of normative masculinity and its expression through heterosexual
activity, they also share a common depiction of aberrant or nonnorma-
tive masculinity, which is presented in the form of each film’s villain.
These exclusively male antagonists are generally presented as femi-
nized, excessively irrational and emotional, sexually “confused,” or
some mixture of these qualities. One thing is for certain: these villains,
in spite of being male, lack the heteronormative masculine qualities of
their adversaries and typically seek to quash the “real” man who stands
against them. In fact, these antagonists have not only blurred the tra-
ditional boundaries of masculinity but also intentionally disrupted the
formerly tranquil, “democratic” political system. According to Ina Rae
Hark, ancient epic films tend to follow a predictable political narrative
that centers on proper (masculine) political power being “perverted
by unmanly tyrants” who themselves are unmanned because they lack
the traditional “signifiers of masculinity” and appear as effeminate or
possess nonnormative bodies.9 This feminization is therefore both the
source and the telltale sign of their tyranny.
The emperor Commodus, the antagonist of Gladiator, fits this
stereotype from his very first scene where he is seated in an ornate,
armored wagon while wearing luxurious furs and purple robes. This
physical decadence indicates that Commodus is pampered and leads a
life of ostentatious wealth and luxury, a stark contrast to the harsh life
of the Roman soldiers, especially Maximus. Commodus’s effeminacy
is made apparent not simply by his contrast with the soldiers but by
his similarity to the only other person in the scene similarly dressed:
his sister, Lucilla. In later scenes, Commodus always appears in fresh,
vibrant clothing or armor that seems too perfect and clean, implying
simply ceremonial usage instead of actual combat use. Commodus’s
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Oliver Stone’s Unmanning of Alexander the Great 131
wicked nature is made vividly apparent through his violent mood
swings and his deviant and dangerous sexuality, which includes an
overt incestuous desire for his sister and leering, pedophilic intima-
tions toward his young nephew. His excessive emotionality paints
Commodus as both unstable and dangerous, to those close to him as
well as the Roman state itself, since most of his political activities are
costly attempts to make the people of Rome love him. Moreover, as
Commodus himself says, he is “terribly vexed” throughout the film,
and this vexation leads him into a downward spiral of paranoia and
murderous violence. But it is his deviant sexuality that is the most
insidious danger, since it threatens the heterosexual family unit (both
his own and that of Maximus), one of the core elements that defines
proper heteroperformance.
In Troy, Hector’s brother, Paris, embodies some aspects of the
feminized villain, and he is mostly responsible for the Trojan War,
although his role in the film is not so much as a direct antagonist to
the hero as it is a foil by which the masculinity of Hector and Achilles
can be contrasted. In terms of his physical body, Paris’s feminiza-
tion is conveyed by his slight build and smooth features, which are
augmented by his frequent wearing of silky, open- chested robes; this
physical weakness is compounded by his complete lack of any skill in
battle, one of the defining traits of the masculine hero. In fact, even
when Paris finally attempts to be strong and courageous, by facing the
significantly larger and stronger Menelaus, he fails miserably by ignor-
ing Hector’s tactical advice and then quite literally crawling away from
the fight to cower between his brother’s legs. However, it should be
noted that despite these numerous antiheroic traits, Paris’s masculin-
ity is not entirely unredeemable, since the entire cause of the war was
his heterosexual seduction of Helen. His physical relationship with
Helen thus somewhat mitigates his effeminacy.
Paris’s counterpart in terms of feminization is Agamemnon, whose
antimasculine qualities are witnessed more though his actions (or lack
thereof) than through his physical body or sexuality. If one aspect of
heteroperformance in these films is for men to physically exert them-
selves through battle, then Agamemnon comes up short because, with
one (cowardly) exception where he stabs king Priam in the back, he
does not directly engage in fighting. In fact, rather than enter the fray,
Agamemnon avoids the battles, preferring instead to send other men
to fight and die in his place. This avoidance of warfare and cowardly
slaying of an unarmed old man, in a temple no less, proves he is not
honorable, either as a warrior or as a man.
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Jerry B. Pierce132
But none of these come anywhere close to 300’s effeminate extrav-
aganza of the Persians and their tyrannical leader, Xerxes. Virtually
every Persian seen up close wears “Eastern” attire (silky robes, scarves,
or headdresses), which, combined with an abundance of eyeliner and
ubiquitous piercings, represents feminized decadence and stands in
obvious contrast to the simple, unadorned, and thus masculine attire
of the Spartans. Literally arriving on the backs of countless slaves,
Xerxes himself is a hyperfeminized male. He has the muscular and
toned physique of the Spartans, but it is a body awash in feminized
accessories and modifications, such as ornate bracelets and necklaces,
a head- to- toe coating of gold makeup, long, manicured fingernails, a
thoroughly shaved body (even down to the eyebrows, which are pen-
ciled in), and countless piercings. In short, there is not the slightest
indication that Xerxes is a typical male, least of all a heterosexual one.
Unlike these other films, Stone’s Alexander offers up a nontra-
ditional hero, defying and even flouting conventional depictions of
male protagonists. Rather than resembling heroes such as Maximus,
Achilles, Hector, and Leonidas, Alexander instead recalls (sometimes
literally) the feminized and tyrannical antagonists such as Commodus,
Agamemnon, and Xerxes. Stone’s presentation of Alexander, ancient
conqueror of the “known world,” challenges the heteronormative ste-
reotype in a variety of categories, including his clothing and physical
appearance, overt homosexuality, inability to engage in heteroperfor-
mative acts, excessive emotionality, and feminized conduct in both
political and personal affairs.
Considering the importance of the visual representation of a char-
acter for conveying hetero- or homosexuality, rarely does the body
or attire of Alexander convincingly suggest normative masculinity.
Throughout the film, Alexander’s clothing makes him appear young
and boyish, if not infantile. For example, as a child of about five and
later ten, Alexander is clothed almost exclusively in white robes, which
naturally indicate innocence and purity. However, as an adult (of 18
years), Alexander still wears the white clothing of his youth. Juxtaposed
with the presence of his overbearing mother, Olympias, this dress hin-
ders the audience’s acceptance of Alexander as an independent adult.
Strikingly, on the eve of the great battle of Gaugamela against the Per-
sian emperor, Darius, Alexander’s battle attire, including his armor, is
again white (with the exception of a red cloak) and recalls the white
armor worn by the villain, Commodus, in his gladiatorial combat with
Maximus. Alexander’s masculinity, and by extension his leadership and
battle prowess, are further brought into question by the exceptional
shortness of the lower half of his tunic, or “skirt.” Whereas the tunics
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Oliver Stone’s Unmanning of Alexander the Great 133
of the other Greek soldiers extend down to near their knees, Alexan-
der’s barely extends past the lower groin. This childishly short “skirt”
and white attire consistently undermine the supposed greatness and
masculinity of the protagonist, yet they are understated in comparison
to Alexander’s attire after his arrival in Babylon.
After Alexander and his men discover the royal harem, from this
point forward Alexander’s traditional/heroic masculinity is openly
and permanently compromised. As Alexander and his generals take
in the sights of the harem, they are greeted by numerous beautiful
and seductive women who dance and writhe in an effort to entice the
men. Noticeable among them are several groups of women wearing
open- chested robes and sporting long, dark, luxurious hair. It is only
on further examination that these “women” are in fact recognized
as men, or at least eunuchs. After a brief interlude with one of the
eunuchs, the next time Alexander appears, his clothing replicates the
fine robes of the harem eunuchs and, also like them, he is shown wear-
ing heavy eyeliner, a trait that will continue throughout the rest of
the film. Like the choice of boyishly white clothing, the direct appro-
priation of eunuch attire visually emasculates Alexander in front of his
men and the audience.
This visual emasculation of Alexander is only strengthened by his
overt disdain for heterosexual relationships and avid embrace of an
alternative sexuality. Guided by the narration of an elderly Ptolemy,
the audience learns that Alexander was never once defeated in battle,
“except by Hephaestion’s thighs.” Thus begins a series of flash-
backs establishing a long- standing homoerotic relationship between
Alexander and his companion Hephaestion, starting with their early
childhood. During his youth at the feet of Aristotle, the young Alex-
ander learns that homosexual relations between men is not a corrupt
thing, provided that it is not simply an expression of passion or lust.
When the relationship pushes each to exceed the other in virtue, then
it is entirely acceptable.10 Yet the film pointedly fails to establish a vir-
tuous homosexual relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion,
and it instead gives the impression of a relationship based on emotion
instead of reason. In light of Aristotle’s rule about male relationships,
the film provides no tangible, virtuous byproduct of their relationship.
Although no overt homosexual love scenes occur between Alexan-
der and Hephaestion in the film, their relationship is a constant theme
that undermines any even remotely heteroperformative acts. Even as
a young boy, Alexander expressed an interest in Hephaestion, albeit
obliquely. While observing with his father a series of cave paintings
depicting various Greek myths, Alexander explains that his favorite
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Jerry B. Pierce134
hero is Achilles, not because of his strength or god- like qualities, but
because Achilles “loved Patroclus and avenged his death.”11 Much
later, after entering Babylon and looking out over the darkened city,
Alexander confides in Hephaestion: “It is you that I love. No other.”
As the two embrace, it is important to note that this first scene overtly
expressing love between the two is also the first scene where Alexan-
der appears in the above- mentioned Eastern, “feminized” attire and
makeup. These two elements, the homosexual relationship and the
feminization, work together to undermine the traditional masculine
and heroic nature of the classical male protagonist.
Although the relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion
would not have raised any eyebrows among their contemporaries,
provided that each ultimately engaged in heteroperformative activi-
ties such as marriage and parenthood, Alexander’s open relationship
with the eunuch Bagoas further highlights his character’s active nega-
tion of traditional masculinity.12 During the harem scene, where by
all conventionally masculine standards, Alexander should be inter-
ested in the women, they instead are literally just passing through
the scene, as he sets his sights on the eunuch Bagoas, much to the
dismay of a visibly jealous Hephaestion. As eunuchs are often used in
classical films to display imperial decadence and imply some form of
deviant sexuality, Alexander’s open courting of Bagoas clearly con-
nects him to these “negative” stereotypes. Even by Aristotle’s own
standard within the film, Alexander’s sexual interest in the eunuch,
made abundantly clear by Bagoas’s erotic and suggestive dance in
a later scene, indicates more a surrender to passion than to reason
and virtue. Tellingly, when Alexander openly embraces then kisses
Bagoas after the dance, his Macedonians— and even the purportedly
Figure 9.1 Alexander (Colin Farrell) receives a shoulder massage from Hephaestion
(Jared Leto) in Alexander (2004). Warner Bros.
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Oliver Stone’s Unmanning of Alexander the Great 135
“feminine” Indians— are taken aback by this brazen repudiation of
expected masculine behavior.
While it is true that some of Alexander’s men engage in quasihomo-
sexual activities, these instances are fleeting and do not appear to be
defining features of their sexuality. During the Babylonian harem scene,
Parmenion is briefly shown caressing the face and cupping the chin of
one of the eunuchs. In another instance, during Alexander’s wedding,
when he offers to make the Bactrian women the official wives of the
men, some men in the crowd ask, “What about the boys?” But since
the question is followed by hearty male laughter, the request appears as
jest. Even so, both of these instances treat any inclination toward bi- or
homosexuality on the part of the Macedonian men as merely secondary.
In fact, the wives and children of Alexander’s men come up frequently
in conversation, and the mutiny that occurs on the riverbank in India
is the direct result of the men wanting to return to their families. Such
concern and longing for their heterosexual relationships clearly over-
shadows any marginal references to homosexual activities. By contrast,
Alexander’s flagrant sexual excesses, especially with Bagoas, challenge
the traditional expectations of both his onscreen cohort and the film
audience to such a degree that his character is more deviant than nor-
mative and thus shares more in common with the likes of Commodus
and Xerxes than with Maximus or Leonidas.13
Though male sexual relationships were generally accepted among
the classical Greeks (and by extension, the Macedonians), it was also
generally expected that a man would eventually take a wife and pro-
duce a legitimate heir. According to the film, Alexander technically
accomplishes both of these tasks, but they are done with great reluc-
tance, possibly even revulsion, which undercuts their very significance
as cinematic markers of proper masculinity. A husband/father such
as Maximus, Hector, or Leonidas does not shirk his familial respon-
sibilities, but rather embraces them. In the case of Alexander, several
of those close to him, including his mother, his generals, even Hep-
haestion himself, all urge him to have a son. On the surface, these
requests appear mostly political because such offspring would allow
the smooth continuance of his empire should anything happen to
Alexander. In fact, to bolster the notion of political utility, the Mace-
donian generals demand that Alexander take a Macedonian wife as his
first, in order to produce a legitimate Macedonian heir. When Alex-
ander spontaneously chooses Roxane, a Sogdian princess, as his first
wife, not only does the action fail to mollify the Macedonians, but it
also fails to provide convincing evidence of Alexander’s heteroperfor-
mative masculinity.
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Jerry B. Pierce136
Although it could be argued that the marriage to Roxane was a
political maneuver of alliances, as was the case with many ancient
rulers, the scene of Alexander’s wedding night reveals that even the
heterosexuality implied by the marriage is illusory. In his bedchamber,
Alexander is waiting for Roxane but is instead greeted by a somber,
and possibly drunk, Hephaestion. Apparently fearing that he will lose
Alexander to his new wife, Hephaestion presents him with a gold ring
set with a large red stone, which Alexander promptly places on his ring
finger. Even though Hephaestion appears to be letting go of Alexan-
der and their relationship, especially when he wishes a son for the new
husband, the exchange of the ring and its placement on a finger obvi-
ously associated with matrimony clearly represents an inversion, or
perhaps a repudiation, of the recently concluded marriage ceremony
between Alexander and Roxane. As such, at the very moment that
Alexander appears to be engaging in a highly significant heteroper-
formative act, it is in fact negated by what essentially amounts to a
wedding ceremony between himself and Hephaestion.14
Even during the awkward consummation scene between the
husband and his new bride, Alexander’s full potential as both a (het-
erosexual) man and an adult are called into question. During a virtual
reenactment of an earlier scene between Alexander’s father and his
mother, where Alexander witnesses Philip essentially raping Olympias,
Alexander violently forces Roxane upstairs to a bed where the two are
disrobed during their struggles. As Roxane appears to submit to Alex-
ander’s advances, she notices Hephaestion’s ring on his finger, which
he promptly removes, only to have her throw it across the room. With
this connection to his homosexual relationship (temporarily) out of
the way, Alexander once again attempts to consummate his marriage,
only to be stopped by the snakelike armband on Roxane, an immedi-
ate reminder of Alexander’s mother, conveniently conveyed by a quick
flashback to Olympias’s snake- filled quarters.
This sexually charged and confused scene presents several obsta-
cles to a heteroperformative, masculine Alexander. First, the violence
between the couple differs markedly from the intimate scenes between
the normative masculine heroes and their wives, and if the proper
sexual relationship in such films between husbands and wives is more
about intimacy than brutality, then Alexander easily fails to measure
up. Second, the violence is a direct link back to the sexual aggression
of Alexander’s father, whom the film consistently portrays as an out of
control political and sexual tyrant.15 Finally, the overt association of
Roxane with Alexander’s mother fails to normalize their matrimo-
nial relationship and instead problematizes it as Oedipal and thus
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Oliver Stone’s Unmanning of Alexander the Great 137
deviant.16 The final nail in the coffin of Alexander’s traditional mas-
culinity during these wedding night scenes is when, after intercourse
with Roxane, he quietly picks up Hephaestion’s ring and replaces it
on his finger, effectively negating any heteroperformance that had
taken place.
Perhaps one of the most important heteroperformative duties that
Alexander neglects is the siring of a legitimate heir. After his wedding
night, the next time he has any significant interaction with Roxane
is immediately after the sexually charged dance of Bagoas during a
drunken interlude in India. As Roxane departs to her chambers in dis-
gust after his passionate kiss with and embrace of Bagoas, Alexander
stops her, and pleads, “I will come tonight.” Roxane’s response—
“And I will wait”— clearly indicates not only that Alexander will not
be joining her intimately but that he apparently has not done so for
quite some time, perhaps not even since their wedding night.
By contrast, the one constant factor in any domestic scene with
Alexander post- Babylon is not his wife but the unmistakable presence
of Bagoas, often in various stages of undress. The unmistakably sexual
nature of their relationship is first alluded to through shared seductive
glances, and of course with the kiss and embrace following Bagoas’s
dance, but most obviously in a scene in Alexander’s tent where he
disrobes completely, then watches as Bagoas does the same, and finally
motions the eunuch to join him. These openly sexual scenes between
Alexander and Bagoas far exceed any screen time given to Alexander’s
intimacy with Roxane (let alone Hephaestion), further distancing him
from the traditional husband’s matrimonial and, above all, sexual role.
As per the masculine norm, it is the duty and obligation of a husband
to have intimate relations with his wife and even more so to father a
child, especially for Alexander since his role as king/emperor obligates
him to provide an heir. Alexander’s general failure in this regard is
striking and presents him as either unable or, more likely, unwilling to
fulfill this critical responsibility.
This rejection of his proper masculine role peaks during the film’s
climax, and, as on his wedding night, when Alexander has an oppor-
tunity to embrace his role as a heteroperformative male, he literally
rejects it. In a telling scene immediately after the death of Hephaestion,
Roxane surprisingly informs Alexander that she is pregnant with a son,
a development never clarified by the filmmaker. Instead of embracing
her (and his unborn heir), Alexander actually recoils in horror from
Roxane when she tries to place his hand on her abdomen, screaming,
“Never touch me again!” Thus, at the film’s end, one of Alexan-
der’s last acts is a direct renunciation of his expected duties as both a
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Jerry B. Pierce138
husband and a father, spurning both his wife and child. Such selfish
disregard for the heterosexual family unit completely negates his mas-
culinity and, by association, his heroism for the audience.
Alexander’s inability to comply with the heteroperformative mascu-
line ideal is compounded by his emotional instability, a trait he shares
with the antagonists of the other films and which is similarly connected
to his descent into despotism. In sharp contrast to the reserved and
stoic natures of Maximus, Hector, and Leonidas, Alexander is con-
stantly prone to emotional outbursts, bouts of weeping (or at least,
he is frequently teary- eyed), and other stereotypically feminine expres-
sions of emotion. He is often near tears in scenes with his mother, his
father, and members of the Macedonian nobility, on the battlefield
after Gaugamela, and directly in front of his own troops as he tried
to quell a mutiny. Recognizing his constantly fragile emotional state,
Philip at one point tells him, “Don’t look so hurt all the time, Alexan-
der. Be a man,” while his mother later orders Alexander to “stop acting
like a boy.” In both of these instances Alexander’s masculinity as well
as maturity are both challenged, once again undermining his manliness
by calling attention to his excessive emotional instability.
Scenes between Alexander and his mother typically display emo-
tional outbursts that are in marked contrast to Olympias’s strength
of character and determination. For example, immediately after the
death of Philip, Alexander, in a frenzy, tries to blame Olympias for his
murder but instead is forced to listen to her well- laid plans for secur-
ing his political future, plans that include executing his opponents,
confiscating their lands, and seizing the throne. Because she has to
spell out these actions to Alexander as if he had never thought of
them before, Olympias appears much more decisive and active than
her son, and thus that much more masculine. In another instance, also
regarding succession, Olympias again has to tell Alexander the appro-
priate way to become Philip’s legitimate heir, which includes taking
a Macedonian wife and siring a child of his own. When Alexander
balks at this idea, his stated reason is that he and Hephaestion love
each other, implying their love would preclude him from a traditional
marriage. Olympias’s response, that Alexander must “never confuse
feelings with duties,” reveals that he is ruled by emotion instead of the
more masculine reason. Such an admonition challenges Alexander’s
masculinity, first because it shows that his unstable emotions override
his sense of political duty and, second, because the rebuke comes from
a woman who appears to have more masculine qualities than he does.
The underlying question about this portrayal of Alexander is
whether Stone intended to invert the standardized classical film traits
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Oliver Stone’s Unmanning of Alexander the Great 139
of masculine protagonist with feminized antagonist. Stone himself has
said in numerous interviews that his vision of Alexander was crafted to
be nuanced, complicated, and somewhat ambiguous, not the typical
hero movie- going audiences— especially American ones— expect. As
Stone explained, “Alexander was not only a conqueror, a builder, but
he also had a fascinating blend of masculine and feminine qualities.
Many of the Greek heroes were known for their sensuality, for their
femininity as much as for their masculinity.”17 By presenting both
“masculine” and “feminine” aspects of Alexander’s character, Stone
contends that he was creating a more historically accurate portrayal of
his personality. In contrast to the other three films’ heterosexualized
and sanitized masculinity, Stone’s hero was intended to be a more
progressive reading on the Macedonian leader that embraced the pan-
sexual aspects of his nature. Stone himself has correctly noted that
by the standards of the ancient Greeks, there was “nothing unusual”
about Alexander’s relationships with both men and women, and defin-
ing him as “polymorphous or pansexual” would not have challenged
the ancient world’s reception of Alexander as a hero.18 Coupled with
his public displays of emotion, which Stone refers to as an expression
of the hero’s compassion, Alexander does indeed defy the mold of the
typical classical hero onscreen.
The problem with Stone’s presentation of Alexander is not that he
crafted a multifaceted, sexually nuanced hero, but that he tried to do
so in a genre of film that has generally eschewed such subtleties. If
Gladiator, Troy, and 300 are any indication, heteronormative heroes
are not only a general rule; they are expected by audiences. The direc-
tor even noted that his own 19- year- old son and his friends were put
off by the “gay scene” between Alexander and Hephaestion, which
spoiled the notion of Alexander’s heroism for them. Stone mused,
“They wanted a warrior and nothing else. They did not want to see
a man with vulnerabilities . . . We only want clearly defined heroes
and villains, no subtleties in between.”19 His son’s interpretation of
the film was not isolated, as indicated by the scarce return at the US
box office and the ubiquitous negative reviews of the film, many of
which savaged the casting decisions and the editing in addition to the
concept of a sexually ambiguous hero.20
What Stone further failed to realize is that all the qualities he
ascribed to Alexander, despite their historical accuracy, have long been
considered cinematic tropes of villains and tyrants. Where Maximus,
Achilles, Hector, and Leonidas are paragons of heteroperformativ-
ity, Alexander is their feminized antithesis. They are defined by their
unwavering devotion to their heterosexual unions, yet Alexander
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Jerry B. Pierce140
purposefully shirks his expected masculine duties and abandons him-
self to his decadent desires. In complicating the figure of Alexander,
Stone either unconsciously or uncritically undermined the very her-
oism he was trying to glorify. Ultimately, the portrait of Alexander
that emerges is not that of a classical hero, but that of the classical
feminized tyrant, a corrupted and degraded inversion that unmans
Alexander’s supposed greatness.
Notes
1. This chapter is an extensive revision and expansion of an argument first
presented in Pierce (2008).
2. The following discussion of heteroperformance in Gladiator, Troy, and
300 is partially derived from my lengthier treatment in Pierce (2011)
40– 57.
3. Ingraham (1994) 207.
4. Dixon (2003) 1– 2.
5. See Chopra- Grant (2006) 96 for discussion of how performance con-
nects to masculine identity.
6. Segal (2007) 89, 91, 92.
7. Clum (2002) xix.
8. On the long history of the likely homosexual relationship between
Achilles and Patroclus in both the Iliad and Greek literary culture in
general, see Crompton (2006) 3– 6.
9. Hark (1993) 152.
10. For the focus on virtue, as opposed to self- gratification, in male- male
relationships and their acceptance in classical Greek society, see Skinner
(2010) 123– 24.
11. On the sexual relationship between Alexander and Hephaestion as a
mirror of that of Achilles and Patroclus, see O’Brian (1992) 57.
12. See Cartledge (2004) 228 for the lack of stigma attached to Greek
homosexual relations.
13. Winkler (1990) 45– 47 notes that the classical Greeks had a conception
of an antitype of masculinity, a kinaidos, a socially and sexually devi-
ant male, who by definition did not exhibit appropriate “manliness”
(andreia), and thus his identity was demoted from manly to feminine.
14. As O’Brian (1992) 59 has argued, “Alexander proved to be a reluctant
homosexual.”
15. In addition to Philip’s near- rape of Olympias, he also impregnates
another wife, whose Macedonian lineage threatens the status of
foreign- born Olympias, while the new child rivals Alexander’s chances
of succession. Furthermore, Philip’s constant drunkenness reveals him
to be dangerous and volatile, prone to violent outbursts or deviant
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Oliver Stone’s Unmanning of Alexander the Great 141
sexual behavior, such as his sodomizing of a young man during a drink-
ing party.
16. For more on Alexander’s confused and Oedipal sexuality, see Cart-
ledge (2004) 230.
17. Crowdus (2005) 22.
18. Crowdus (2005) 22.
19. Craig (2005).
20. See Cyrino (2010b) 177, who argues the film’s negative reception is
partly due to its “lack of coherence about sexual and emotional issues.”
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4
C h a p t e r 1 0
The Order of Orgies
Sex and the Cinematic Roman
Stacie Raucci
When the movie Gladiator (2000) was released, critics, scholars, and
general audience members alike quickly noted a specific absence in the
film: the Roman orgy. John Simon titled his review, “What, No Orgy?”1
Another critic, Andrew Sarris, likewise emphasized the absence of orgies
in his title: “Russell Crowe in a Toga, but not a Single Orgy.”2 Other
viewers praised director Ridley Scott precisely “for not turning Gladi-ator into another cheap sexploitation epic of Roman imperial orgies.”3
Scott himself rather laconically defended his choice of not including
orgies: “I didn’t want any orgies because orgies are boring.”4
Since the early days of cinema, viewers of ancient Rome onscreen
have expected the same familiar scenes of decadence: beautiful ban-
quets at which guests gorge themselves on food and wine, extravagant
military triumphs in the streets, gladiatorial games, and of course,
not least of all, orgies. Although there have been toga epics without
orgies in the past, such as Anthony Mann’s Fall of the Roman Empire (1964),5 the orgy for the most part has become a “de rigeur” scene
of the genre.6 One need only think of the comedy, A Funny Thing
Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), in which all the standard
tropes appear and the orgy is no exception. In this film, the general
Miles Gloriosus orders a “sit- down orgy for forty.”7 By the 1960s, the
Roman orgy had clearly become ingrained into the pop culture con-
sciousness. This continues to be true in the most recent incarnations
of the Romans onscreen.
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Stacie Raucci144
This chapter proposes to survey selectively the type scene of the
orgy, which, although often mentioned by scholars, has not been col-
lectively examined across time periods of production.8 The Romans
onscreen are often discussed as being more sexually liberal than the
modern movie audience. Yet a close analysis of sexual scenes reveals
that not all onscreen orgies are equal in this regard. Although the orgy
scene is often imagined as the quintessential frenzied event where all
rules disappear, this essay argues for a more nuanced understanding.
Cinematic orgies can indeed vary in their degree of disorder, either
because they remain somewhat organized and tame as a whole, or
because they introduce elements of order within the general disorder.9
Some orgies are indeed quite orderly and seem almost choreo-
graphed, with distinct groups of people engaged in activity in small
divisions and each group placed apart from the others. Bodies are
placed carefully in position and limbs flow smoothly from one move-
ment to the next. By contrast, the more chaotic orgies, which often
include animals, drugs, and in some instances even have a “foreign”
(non- Roman) overtone, tend to have people with arms flailing, their
limbs tangled haphazardly, and often performing sudden and erratic
movements. The participants usually appear as a large, indistinguish-
able mass of bodies, groping indiscriminately.
Regardless of the general organization of orgies, within an orgy
there are often characters who represent an ideal of moral order, which
then becomes all the more noticeable when it is set against the back-
ground of the other orgiastic participants. The aesthetics of the order
of orgies onscreen has the ability to typecast characters for the viewing
audience. These sexual scenes offer the audience a subtle, yet effective
means of appreciating the virtue and morality of the different char-
acters of a production. They tell the viewers with whom they should
identify and to whom they should have positive reactions. The Roman
orgy further offers the audience a chance to judge the immorality of
the characters while enjoying the visual stimulation of the taboo acts
onscreen. As Joshel, Malamud, and Wyke have noted, “projection is
complex and ambiguous because identification and distancing occur
simultaneously.”10 There is the excitement and allure of luxury and
the safety of morality all rolled into one package.
Although a logical place to find the most explicit orgy scenes would
be in the cinematic genre of pornography, this chapter deals only with
mainstream films and does not delve into films officially labeled as
pornography, such as Private Gladiator (2001).11 Further, it does not
deal with the historical accuracy of Roman orgies.12 Rather it examines
select cinematic orgies from their early appearances onscreen to the
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The Order of Orgies 145
present time to demonstrate the existence of a stable approach to the
crucial narrative role of orgy scenes.
Roman Orgies
The Roman orgy had a place even in early cinematic undertakings,
for instance in a short and silent French film entitled L’Orgie romaine (The Roman Orgy, 1911) by Louis Feuillade. Despite its name, it con-
tains only one orgy scene very close to the end of the film. Although
the whole film only lasts eight minutes, it manages to reduce ancient
Rome to one basic idea, decadence. The orgy, which depicts a scene
from the reign of the emperor Heliogabalus (A.D. 218– 22), begins as
an event orderly in its organization. The participants are not depicted
negatively: they are dressed, they sit, drink wine, and somewhat calmly
wave their arms back and forth. The lack of explicit sexual activity is
not surprising given the early time period of production.13 Even with-
out onscreen sex, however, the screen caption clearly signals this scene
is an orgy: “After the sacrifice, the banquet and the orgy.” The relative
calm at the orgy indicates that these are Romans with whom the audi-
ence should identify. The people enjoy a tame performance by danc-
ers, who stand on tables and perform a choreographed dance. Rose
petals fall from the sky in a dreamlike sequence and coat the partygo-
ers who look at the flowers in childlike awe. These same people were
identified as moral Romans in an earlier scene when they displayed
shock at the killing of a man by lions at the order of the emperor. It
is only when the emperor Heliogabalus (Jean Aymé) introduces lions
into the feast that the scene becomes frenzied, with everyone running
in fear. The calm of the orgy is broken by the screen caption warning
ominously of the entrance of the beasts, “but suddenly, a frightening
howl,” and shortly after another caption attributing the disruption
to the evil emperor: “Heliogabalus releases unexpected guests.” As
the partygoers flee, multiple lions run down a flight of stairs into the
party room. Heliogabalus watches these events unfold, smiling from
above the chaos, marking his downfall. The emperor, who made the
orgy into a chaotic event, ends the film by dying, while the calm orgy
participants survive.
Roman orgies have found a place not only in toga epics but also in
films that do not take place entirely in ancient Rome. Manslaughter
(1922), a silent film by Cecil B. DeMille, is, for most of the movie,
set in the 1920s. Yet it makes an explicit connection between cha-
otic orgies and the downfall of civilization with a brief scene set in
Roman times. The film revolves around a young woman named Lydia
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Stacie Raucci146
(Leatrice Joy) who engages in publicly wild behavior, going to parties
and drinking a great deal. Prior to the orgy scene, there is an image
of flappers dancing enthusiastically at a champagne- soaked party.
One woman looks ready for ancient Rome with a crown of laurel
on her head. The scene then morphs rapidly from the flappers to a
Roman orgy, as a district attorney watches the action and declares (in
a caption) the society of the 1920s to be the same as ancient Rome:
“Why, we’re no different today than Rome at its worst! This Dance—
with its booze and license— is little better than a Feast of Bacchus!”
This orgy shows crowds of people dancing in circles, running about
with arms flapping rapidly in the air. Lydia presides over the festivi-
ties from a throne, laughing and throwing coins out to the people.
She reclines on a couch, is fed grapes by a male servant, and kisses
him passionately. Women are carried off violently by men, people pull
each other’s hair, and gladiators even enter and start to fight. After
this scene, the district attorney later makes another declaration about
decadence: “The over- civilized, mad young set of wasters— to which
this defendant belongs— must be STOPPED! Or they will destroy
the Nation— as Rome was destroyed, when Drunkenness and Plea-
sure drugged the Conscience of its Young!” These are the Romans at
their worst and most chaotic, and the reckless Lydia is at the center of
this chaos. Her role in this commotion is a marker that she is not the
person with whom the audience should identify. She leaves the party
drunk, drives, and kills someone. She is publicly placed on trial, at
which lawyers show how “Roman” and thus guilty she really is. The
audience is taught a lesson: if they do identify with this character, they
may meet a similar fate.
DeMille continues with his orgiastic theme in the well- known epic
The Sign of the Cross (1932), set in the time of Nero. In this film, a
Roman prefect, Marcus Superbus (Fredric March), falls in love with a
young Christian girl, Mercia (Alissa Landi), and shows his affection by
bringing her to an orgy. At the start of the scene, there is the opening
of curtains and the orgy literally bursts into the room. We see an older
man frolicking with two women on top of him. The one obviously
moral character, the Christian Mercia, is in a corner away from the
activity of the orgy. She is then pulled forward and her body is put on
display to the orgiasts, but she never herself participates in the orgy. As
another woman, Ancaria (Joyzelle Joyner), sings a song to Mercia, the
other immoral Romans breathe heavily with chests rising in apparent
lust, while they stroke and kiss each other. The orgy reaches its pin-
nacle at the end of the scene when the Romans are shown streaming
out of the gathering en masse, looking inebriated, with men carrying
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The Order of Orgies 147
women over their shoulders, and people pulling each other’s hair
aggressively. The good woman, Mercia, is further defined in this orgy
by her light colored hair, while the indecent Romans have dark col-
ored hair and clothing.
Some years later in Quo Vadis (1951), an orgy appears in yet
another biblical epic. A Roman, again named Marcus (Robert Tay-
lor), who again lives in the time of Nero, falls in love with a Christian
girl, Lygia (Deborah Kerr). She stands apart from the Romans who
participate in their orgy, with people kissing and performing another
standard trope, eating grapes. When Lygia enters, the scene is over-
whelming, as the viewer first witnesses the orgy through her eyes.
She sees dancers with flowing yellow and black dresses swirling in
the middle of the room, with the colors flying in the air making the
scene move faster. The scene shifts from her point of view to that of
the audience. Once she begins to speak to others, the camera focuses
on this young innocent woman and helps to distinguish her character
from the others, as it shows the Romans directly behind her partici-
pating in their feasting. The changing perspective of the camera gives
the viewer a chance to participate in the orgy from two points of view,
allowing for different points of identification.
Although both The Sign of the Cross and Quo Vadis have serious
implications in their presentation of orgies for their time of produc-
tion,14 these are not the most interesting examples of cinematic orgies.
By itself, the distinction between Romans and Christians already
makes clear with whom the audience should identify; the orgy scenes
then merely reinforce this identification. In later, nonbiblical settings,
the divisions between Romans become blurrier and the orgies must
serve a stronger purpose of identification.
More than two decades later, the iconic BBC series I, Claudius (1976) depicts more explicit orgies. The most significant orgy is in
Episode 10 (“Hail Who?”). Caligula turns the imperial palace into
a brothel complete with orgies and gambling. The audience is privy
to people having sex on the floor, including with some women being
forced into the act. People are drunk, laughing, and hang onto each
other. There are two connected rooms involved in this scene: one in
which the orgy itself takes place and another right outside the fes-
tivities. In the external room, unwilling Romans wait to enter the
orgy room. One man even begs for his wife not to be taken into this
“brothel.” A woman is forcefully taken by the arm into the orgy room
and thrown at the orgiasts, who pounce on her. The spatial division
in the scene represents the pull of identification that might be felt by
a viewer. Although there is the possibility of visual pleasure within the
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Stacie Raucci148
orgy, the viewer might feel sympathy for the innocent women being
led to their own rapes. The innocents wait outside in the calm area,
while the chaotic scene rages on inside with the deviant Romans. The
calm in the external room is further emphasized by other Romans
lining up to pay an entrance fee. The order of the queue and the sub-
sequent mayhem of these paying customers after they have entered
the internal room mark a visual change in the identification of these
Romans from calm to disorderly, moral to immoral.
Just three years after the airing of I, Claudius comes the most
graphic of all the depictions, even more so than the most recent ones
on cable television: Caligula (1979), starring Malcolm McDowell
and Helen Mirren. The edition originally released in US theaters was
a toned- down R- rated edition. This chapter addresses the less severely
cut “Imperial Edition” released in 2007.15 This film about decadence
and corruption, written by Gore Vidal, was sponsored by Penthouse magazine, setting the tone of the sexual scenarios of this film. It even
included many of the women known as Penthouse Pets. While Vidal
did try to separate his name from the film due to differences in artistic
vision, his overarching idea of corruption remains.
The most significant orgy scene depicts the same type of scene previ-
ously discussed in I, Claudius in which Caligula (Malcolm McDowell)
gathers elite women, including the wives of the senators, for what he
calls an “imperial bordello.” A golden penis waves in the background
and the audience is treated to images of people having sex, perform-
ing fellatio, and dancing wildly. Although the orgy scene was perhaps
highly choreographed, the tangling of limbs and the image of people
at all angles, combined with rapidly changing camera angles, give the
feeling that this orgy scene is chaotic. All positions and combinations
of people are possible at this orgy.
The immoral and the moral are again divided spatially, but this time
within the same room. The camera pans back and forth between the
orgiasts and the elite women who are being sold. These moral women
stand off to one side and watch the events with disgust and fear on
their faces, as Caligula announces they are for sale. Caligula himself
roams throughout the orgy, clearly in charge of the event and dem-
onstrating his lack of morality. As the camera follows him through the
orgy, the viewer is allowed a voyeuristic look into the scene.
In keeping with the public’s identification of sex with the Romans,
the image of Caligula’s orgies was recreated more than twenty years
later at the Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2005 and again at the
Whitney Museum in New York in 2006 by Francesco Vezzoli. A trailer
for a hypothetical remake of Caligula was shown, with costumes
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The Order of Orgies 149
designed by Donatella Versace draped on the bodies of actors Milla
Jovovich, Benicio del Toro, Courtney Love, and Helen Mirren. The
five- minute film, Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal’s Caligula, is now
an acquisition at the Guggenheim Museum. Vidal reclaims his credit
to the film, “explaining his original vision for the film as an allegory
of the universal tendency for unbridled power to lead to madness and
violence.”16 The orgy image from the trailer was reenacted in a photo
in Italian Rolling Stone.17
The presence of the orgy on the small screen continued with the
six- episode miniseries Empire (2005). The screening of an orgy, and
an explicit one at that, is particularly surprising in this show, since
it aired in the United States on prime time and on a major network
channel, ABC. The orgy scene opens as somewhat chaotic with a shot
from above and a spinning movement, drawing the viewing perspec-
tive to numerous people on the floor kissing and groping, and women
in red dresses dancing in their midst with convulsive movements.
Although there is the music of drums present, the sound rising above
the music is of people moaning in sexual pleasure. The camera fades
in and out to black as it moves from one couple to the next, focusing
on specific movements such as a hand reaching up a dress and a per-
son kissing another’s neck as eyes close in ecstasy, creating a sensuous
ambiance to the scene.
The camera then returns to the full scene, showing a couple hav-
ing sex, and directly behind them is the character about whom the
audience should care: Octavius (Santiago Cabrera). Most important,
although present at the orgy, he is somewhat removed from the activ-
ity of the gathering, merely talking to two women. The audience does
not see him engage in any sexual way until he is outside of the orgy
and in a closed room with these two women. His tame, almost loving,
sex acts are shown interspersed with shots of the increasingly wild orgy
in the other room. There are numerous shots of the dancers turning
and tossing their heads and hair in a circular motion. The camera
spins rapidly, allowing the audience to participate in the rising energy
and out- of- control feeling of the room. Octavius falls asleep only to
awaken to his female companions dead and then to find all those at
the orgy dead. The voice- over of a Vestal Virgin (Emily Blunt) tells
the audience that forty Romans were assassinated at this gathering.
Octavius’s separation from the chaos of the orgy stresses what the
series wants to project to the audience: Octavius is the character about
whom they should care.
Following just two months after the airing of ABC’s Empire (in
June 2005), HBO- BBC premiered a cable television series, Rome
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Stacie Raucci150
(in August 2005). Although there is a great deal of sex in the series,
there are only two actual orgy scenes during two seasons of broad-
cast, both of which appear in Season Two.18 In the first orgy scene
(Episode 17, “Heroes of the Republic”), Octavia (Kerry Condon),
sister of Octavian (Simon Woods), is discovered at an orgy by Octa-
vian’s right- hand man, Agrippa (Allen Leech). Upon finding her there
under the influence of drugs, Agrippa picks her up and carries her off,
thrown over his shoulder like a sack of flour. The scene, although able
to be marked visually as an orgy, can also be easily identified by the
repetition of the word “orgy” itself in the mouths of the characters,
demonstrating a marked desire by the writers to have the audience
recognize it as such. The word is repeated five times in the space of
one and a half minutes of screen time, all of which occur after the
event itself is over. The delay of using the word has the possibility to
remind the audience of the images seen.
The orgy shows a certain level of disorganization. Some women
dance, bare- chested, as others play the flute and orgy participants
mingle with them. Octavia and Agrippa do not participate fully in the
revelries. Agrippa stands far apart from the actual activity and chooses
to leave quickly, whereas Octavia seems to be a more liminal figure.
She is clearly under the influence of drugs, and while she does not
touch anyone, as the camera pans to her, people can be seen engaged
in sexual activity very near to her. Her position and use of drugs stress
her liminal status at this event. The placement of the main characters
in these scenes categorizes them for the audience, with Agrippa in
the solid position of the pious Roman and the liminal Octavia being
rescued by him from the decadent side.19
This scene is particularly important in the narrative of the show,
since it opens the door for later sex scenes involving Octavia and
Agrippa during which it is clear that they are in love. With his help,
she overcomes the temptations of the corrupt Roman society (rep-
resented by the orgy) to move into the more acceptable coupled- off
relationship.
The second orgy appears in the last episode of the series (Episode 22,
“De Patre Vostro”). Cleopatra (Lyndsey Marshal) and Marc Antony
(James Purefoy) have already been defeated at Actium and are back
in Alexandria; the orgy follows on scenes in which Livia (Alice Hen-
ley), wife of Octavian, has called Marc Antony a “cowardly villain.”
The orgy is among the most chaotic of recent onscreen sexual depic-
tions, appearing the least choreographed. There are many Egyptians
on the floor with limbs tangled, their bodies draped over each other
as they have sex. There are hazy close- ups of various body parts as
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The Order of Orgies 151
the camera moves over the crowd and eventually shows the orgy from
above, giving the audience an overview of the number of people and
their various sexual positions. Of particular note is the way in which
the camera swirls, making the viewers feel as if they are part of the orgy
itself, in a drug- induced haze. A Roman soldier in full battle dress, sent
by Octavian, stands directly in front of the orgy and addresses Ant-
ony and Cleopatra. Each time the camera pans to the Roman soldier,
there is a view of the orgy continuing directly behind him, thereby
creating a striking visual contrast between the civilized Roman and the
debauched Egyptians. Only one other person remains in Roman dress
in the room, Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd), who is off to the side
of the orgy. His distance from the orgy is fitting, since he has been a
constant symbol in the series of the loyal Roman soldier.
Antony, sitting apart from the orgy itself, acts as a liminal figure
between the moral and the immoral sides. He has transgressed the
norms of Roman society and gone over to the Egyptian side. He
appears somewhat drugged and is in Egyptian dress and makeup. Yet
he is not fully Egyptian, and he does not directly take part in the chaos
of the orgy, but sits above it. He himself notes the questionable cast of
characters that surround him and participate in the activity: “Whores,
hermaphrodites, and lickspittles, this is our army now.” Still, he is
more involved in the orgy than Agrippa had been in the previous orgy
scene: if he is somewhat disconnected from the orgiastic action, it is
because he is presiding over it.
Antony at last stands up in the midst of the orgy, calls to the Roman
soldier sent by Octavian, and requests one- on- one combat with Octa-
vian, since he thinks it an honorable way to end the battle. In the next
Figure 10.1 Agrippa (Allen Leech) lectures Maecenas (Alex Wyndham) on the
impropriety of attending an orgy in Rome (2007). HBO- BBC.
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Stacie Raucci152
scenes, he will leave the orgy, dress once again as a Roman soldier, and
kill himself, thus leaving his liminal state and returning to his status as
a good Roman man.
The most recent orgies appear in the cable television series Sparta-cus: Blood and Sand (2010) aired in the United States on the Starz
network. Although the series is known for its sexual content (to the
point where there were attempts to ban the series from UK televi-
sion), this chapter restricts itself to two clear examples of orgiastic
activity. The first orgy (Episode 6, “Delicate Things”) appears during
the first season of the show. The gladiators are having a celebration,
which turns out to be a wine- soaked orgy. There are many nude bod-
ies, people grope each other, and there is explicit sex. The bodies
appear almost as one mass, thrusting and writhing, with larger groups
than in most scenes. At one point, the series protagonist, Spartacus
(Andy Whitfield), walks through the middle of the orgy, but barely
blinks at it and leaves, signaling clearly that he is the good one in the
series, the one who resists temptation, unlike the corrupt characters
who succumb. In fact, he requested and offered to pay for the orgy in
order to provide distraction for plans to escape with his wife. Similarly,
the dedicated trainer of the gladiators, Oenomaus (Peter Mensah) is
not even present at the gathering. Spartacus and his friend Varro (Jai
Courtney) note that he is a “man of higher principle, not so easily
distracted.” In a later scene, the audience learns that Oenomaus still
mourns for his deceased wife.
There is one other orgy in the second installment of Spartacus, a
prequel entitled Gods of the Arena (2011), which takes place in Epi-
sode 4, “Beneath the Mask.” Instead of gladiators, the orgy scene
includes the elite members of society and takes place in the house
of Batiatus. Like the first season orgy, this one too is disorderly with
the writhing and thrusting of bodies. In an interview, the actor who
plays Batiatus, John Hannah, noted the reasoning for the aesthetics
of the scene: “There is one scene where we have an orgy. It’s shown
as a kind of cool, drug- induced montage, so we needed lots of dif-
ferent sexual positions. You can show people having sex, but it’s not
that easy to find that many different ways.”20 The orgy scene ends
with the participants sleeping naked on the floor, with bodies draped
over each other, as the camera films them from above. This chaotic
orgy ends badly for the household, with Gaia (the friend of Batiatus’s
wife, played by Jaime Murray) murdered and word of the doings of
the household under threat of seeping out. Prior to her murder, Gaia
had presided over the orgy with Lucretia (Lucy Lawless), an event
at which the slaves of the household were forced to perform sex acts
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The Order of Orgies 153
with the elite men. This orgy is also relatively calmer than the one in
the first season, giving the impression to the audience that orgies of
lower class people (gladiators and slaves) should be watched with a
different eye than those of the elite.
Orgies and Audience Identification
A survey of orgies thereby raises larger questions about the effect of
viewing them. What can the type scene of the orgy and its cinematic
aesthetics tell us about audience identification and pleasure? Gideon
Nisbet has noted that one of the reasons the Romans fare so well in
popular culture is the connection to decadence. According to Nisbet,
the Greeks are often seen as dull philosophers, so they do not get the
same onscreen treatment as the Romans.21 In this commercial age
of ubiquitous reality television shows, Nisbet’s reasoning certainly
makes sense: everything seems to indicate that modern spectators
would rather identify with partying Romans than with philosophical
Greeks. Alastair Blanshard, in his description of orgies, explains fur-
ther that the modern fascination with the orgy lies in the fact that it
“transgresses notions of monogamy, the distinction between private
and public space, and the idea that sex should be aiming towards
reproduction rather than pleasure. It promises multiple thrills. Voy-
eurism mixes with the opportunity to have every appetite satisfied.
There is always more at an orgy. More bodies, more orifices, more
positions.”22 The viewing audience perhaps wants to see itself as
liberal as the Romans, or at least as liberal as we moderns imagine
them to be.
But this conclusion raises another question: if orgies are so appeal-
ing to the modern audience, why do they not exist in every film?
Orgies are either relegated to the realm of pornography or, when it
comes to mainstream movies and television shows, appear typically in
the context of films about or related to antiquity. The appropriate way
for a modern audience to enjoy orgies seems to be in the company of
the ancients. Beyond the examples mentioned previously, one might
think of the recent big hit on HBO, the vampire show True Blood
(which premiered in 2008) based on the books by Charlene Harris.
There are multiple episodes that revolve around an orgy (Episodes 6
and 7 in Season Two, 2009). Even in the contemporary supernatural
context of this series, a connection to the ancient world is made: a
Bacchanalia is encouraged (magically) and led by a Maenad, Maryann
Forrester (Michelle Forbes), an acolyte of the god Dionysus. College
party films have also taken on the air of the Romans, with the tradition
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Stacie Raucci154
of movies like Animal House (1978) in which the fraternity brothers
sport togas for their wild parties.
As other scholars have argued, the temporal distance of the Romans
allows, to some extent, the audience to enjoy onscreen decadence with
less taboo. The audience wants to project itself onto the Roman experi-
ence and allows itself to do so without guilt because the Romans live at
a safe enough distance from us. As Joshel, Malamud, and Wyke note,
“Moralism is elided in an invitation to join a city of limitless power
and fabulous parties.”23 This chapter has argued that the play between
distance and identification is not effectuated only by creating a tempo-
ral distance. Moviemakers have also made it present in the orgy itself,
either by making orgies somewhat orderly and therefore more moral, or
by juxtaposing both moral and immoral characters and letting specta-
tors identify with whomever they want. Far from being the place where
morality disappears, the orgy is where morality reveals itself.
Notes
1. Simon (2000).
2. Sarris (2000).
3. Ward (2004).
4. Hunt (2000). For the major scholarly work on this film see Winkler
(2004).
5. Winkler (2009a) 152 notes the lack of orgies in Fall of the Roman
Empire, noting that Mann wanted to signal that his film was “some-
thing different from standard cinematic fare about Romans.”
6. Joshel, Malamud, and Wyke (2001) 8: “Some sort of orgy . . . became
almost de rigueur in Hollywood epics.”
7. See Cyrino (2005) 4 on the use of stock scenes in comedy.
8. More often, if an orgy scene has been analyzed, it is only with reference
to a specific film (most often Caligula) or to one specific time period.
9. See Singy (2006) on the possibility of different types of orgies with vary-
ing levels of order, from which this essay takes its inspiration. Singy’s
focus however is not the ancient world, but the Marquis de Sade.
10. Joshel, Malamud, and Wyke (2001) 9. On the identification of the
viewer with the Romans, see also Cyrino (2005) 20, 238; Fitzgerald
(2001); Wyke (1997).
11. On this film, see Nisbet (2009).
12. On this question, see Blanshard (2010) 48– 54. Blanshard further
examines the reception of the orgy in noncinematic contexts.
13. On the lack of sex, see Williams (2008) 4. Scenes do not need to reveal
lots of skin to constitute a cinematic orgy.
14. See for instance Malamud (2008) on The Sign of the Cross and the
Great Depression. See also Malamud (2009) 186– 207.
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The Order of Orgies 155
15. According to the notes included in the DVD, there still remain scenes
unseen on the US side of the Atlantic and only included in the Italian
version Io, Caligola.
16. Mann (2005).
17. Rolling Stone, Italy, June 2005.
18. For the major scholarly work on this series, see Cyrino, ed. (2008).
19. After the orgy, Atia (Polly Walker) scolds Octavia: “While he [Octa-
vian] is at the forum preaching piety and virtue to the plebs, you’re
sucking slave cock at an orgy.” Octavia replies, “It hadn’t gotten to
that part,” showing her intent to participate in the sexual activities pos-
sible at the event.
20. James (2011). Indeed, the sex in this orgy is more graphic than most
before, but this can certainly be attributed to the time and venue of
production, with some critics going so far as to call it “soft- core porn,”
or as Bianco (2010) called it, “Debbie Does Rome.”
21. Nisbet (2006) 1– 44.
22. Blanshard (2010) 49.
23. Joshel, Malamud, and Wyke (2001) 11.
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4
C h a p t e r 1 1
Partnership and Love in S PA R TA C U S : B LO O D A N D S A N D (2010)
Antony Augoustakis
In the first season of Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010), the viewer is
presented with a new version of Spartacus, the hero of the slave rebel-
lion in 73 B.C., an updated revision of the 1960 Stanley Kubrick epic,
and one that follows in the footsteps of major twenty- first century
productions, both big and small screen, such as the Gladiator (2000)
and HBO- BBC’s Rome (2005– 7).1 During the 13 episodes of the first
season, we witness Spartacus’s transformation from a Thracian nomad
to a leader in a revolution against his master and lanista, Quintus Len-
tulus Batiatus. The evolution of Spartacus’s heroism, however, is dra-
matic and undergoes all the phases expected in the making of a hero
in a sword- and- sandal historical series: excessive hope for a reunion
with his wife, Sura; followed by shock, grief, anger, thirst for revenge;
and finally the much longed- for and expected action of breaking out
from the ludus. In a way, in this preparatory season, we are invited to
watch the creation of Spartacus and look deeply into the process of
hero- making, as it is fitting for an ordeal that lasted three long years
(73– 71 B.C.) and passed through many stages that are not often dis-
cernible within the boundaries of a three- hour big screen movie.2 In
fact, the advantage of this Spartacus series is that we are able to watch
the enslaved Thracian become a hero during the show, since in the
very beginning he is by no means a skilled gladiator.
The show underscores well the conditions that prepare the ground
for Spartacus’s unquestionable heroism, which eventually leads to his
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Antony Augoustakis158
daring act in the climax of the first season. Spartacus learns the art of
fighting, as he connects with his surroundings, and as he rediscov-
ers partnership after the loss of his wife, first in the figure of Varro
and then in the presence of his fellow slave, Mira, who becomes first
his confidante and then his partner and lover. What fuels Spartacus’s
hatred against the Romans, and Batiatus in particular, is deep love
for his wife first and foremost, and ultimately the abstract idea of
freedom, which becomes more concrete as the show progresses. The
loss of his spouse because of Batiatus’s machinations makes Spartacus
organize the escape in the final episode, which is the outcome of a
series of revelations that demand revenge, unquestionable and unam-
biguous, as the climax of the first season. Love and partnership then
become prominent themes in this show: love toward one’s partner
(heterosexual or homosexual) or toward one’s fellow gladiators (as
in the friendship between Spartacus and Varro) sets in motion the
revolt, as we observe each member of the school join the team and
cause of Spartacus (Crixus, Doctore/Oenomaus, Aurelia, and Mira).
As we shall see in the following analysis, it is this brotherly love that
bonds the slaves through a nexus of relationships and friendships that
mirrors and counters those of the Roman elite (for example, Lucretia
and Ilithyia, Batiatus and Glaber). What binds the slaves together is
the thirst for freedom and justice, not the boundless ambition for self-
promotion and social mobility.
Through this nexus of partnerships, often forced and failing, cer-
tainly eventually doomed to lead to misfortune, the well- known story
of Spartacus is reworked and refashioned in a refreshing way, one
that twenty- first century audiences will find appealing both culturally
and sociopolitically.3 If, as Monica Cyrino has perceptively suggested,
in 1960 Spartacus pushed the envelope in confronting many issues
important to liberal America, from the heightened intensity of the
discourse of civil rights to its provocative treatment of sexuality (with
the (in)famous “oysters and snails” exchange),4 this new Spartacus interrogates familiar issues in contemporary America and the world:
love and partnership emerge as prominent themes that contest our
own prejudices and taboos, especially with regard to the extensive
depiction of homosexual relations.
Conjugal Love: Spartacus and
Sura, Varro and Aurelia
Love and romance are important elements that push the story forward
in the first season of Spartacus. Lesley- Ann Brandt, who plays Naevia,
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Partnership and Love in Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010) 159
observes in the Special Features of the DVD that finding love emerges
as an important factor in the heroes’ lives, especially in the case of
Crixus, who becomes her lover. Sex scenes are really love scenes that
“a woman can appreciate”: by watching them, women can appreciate
the moment, the intensity of eros, and the love between two partners.
This becomes clear from the beginning episode of the show: con-
jugal love fuels Spartacus’s actions and passion. In the first episode
(entitled “The Red Serpent”), we are exposed to the intensity of the
sexual connection between Spartacus and his wife, a sexual attraction
that is fostered by a deep emotional bond and love for one another.
Soon afterwards, however, the separation from Sura turns the hero’s
life into a nightmare. Dreams function organically as a cohesive glue
throughout the series, and when it comes to Spartacus’s love for Sura,
it is not coincidental that dreams turn love into blood, as in Episode 2
(“Sacramentum Gladiatorium”): in this epic dream, Sura appears to
Spartacus, they engage in intercourse, and soon her head explodes
spurting blood everywhere. This scene functions as preparation for
the entrance of Glaber, who tells Spartacus that he had actually raped
Sura and shared her with his men before selling her to an unpleasant
Syrian. He then tosses at Spartacus’s feet a love token that Spartacus
once upon a time had given to Sura. Later in Episode 4 (“Thing in
the Pit”), Sura’s ghost reappears to urge Spartacus on, to keep him
focused. Love that once fueled Spartacus’s desire for the salvation of
his fellow people has now turned the man into an effigy of his former
self: he is now clearly hallucinating, talking to his friend Varro, while
at the same time he can hear Sura whisper into his ear and ask him
about the time of freedom. Sura insists that it is the thought of their
eventual reunion that keeps her alive, but Spartacus is already too lost
in his own hallucinations and deep thoughts to carry on a sensible
conversation with Varro. Spartacus’s condition is serious; a morale
that borders insanity and madness, a schizophrenia of sorts. Love sets
him free, wakes him up, and most importantly underscores the corre-
lation of Spartacus’s relationship with Sura and with Varro. As another
Medea, Varro brings the mandrake, the numbing pharmakon that will
save the day, but Spartacus declines to take the drug.
Episode 6 (“Delicate Things”) becomes an important turning point
in the series, especially from the point of view of love and partnership
at the lower social strata of Batiatus’s ludus. Batiatus reveals to Sparta-
cus the stunning news that Sura has been found, recently sold to a
merchant, and asserts that his promise is kept— namely, that she is on
her way to the gladiatorial school. Spartacus is astonished, making the
ironically tragic observation about what an honorable man Batiatus is.
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Antony Augoustakis160
He shares with Varro that once he is reunited with Sura, he plans for
both of them to escape from the ludus, and he spells out an elaborate
scheme to overcome the guards and to take advantage of the distraction
caused by the celebration of Spartacus’s victory. Varro tries to dissuade
him, but to no avail. This scene epitomizes Spartacus’s narrow focus on
freedom defined by his reunion with Sura. “We will have our freedom,”
he exclaims. Liberty and love are confounded, and it is through the
separation of the two that Spartacus’s heroism will emerge. Loss of love
will become inspiration for revenge, through which Spartacus will con-
ceive another love, love for justice and freedom for all his fellow slaves/
gladiators. Spartacus here stresses the significance he puts on a future
reunion with Sura: she will call his real name, “not the one the Romans
branded me with,” thus defining the gradual process whereby the pro-
tagonist slowly comes to terms with his new identity, his new name, and
his new mission. Varro declines to help his friend, as he thinks Spartacus
is crazy and out of touch with the harsh reality of severe capital punish-
ment, should he be caught trying to break out from the ludus.Of course at the end, we realize probably for the first time the enor-
mity of Batiatus’s scheming and calculating personality: the carriage was
attacked, and the hero’s wife was butchered and fatally wounded. The
reunion takes place for a last time before she dies in his arms. Batiatus’s
sardonic “they are reunited, my word is kept” will be a memorable line
that no one forgets until the lanista receives the payment he deserves
in the last episode of the show. There is, however, another level to this
sad conclusion of Spartacus’s love for Sura: it is at the exact moment
when his love for his spouse is transformed into a homosocial bond
with Varro, in the place they call “the shit hole.” Varro is a Roman
who sold himself into slavery in order to pay his debts and support his
family, including his wife, Aurelia. Spartacus and Varro share the same
predicament, even though they are ethnically different: Spartacus is a
Thracian, Varro is a Roman. And here let us not forget that the Latin
classical authors repeatedly point out the obvious difference between
Romans and non- Romans, namely that real virtue and morality is to be
found in the periphery, not the center of the empire.5 In other words,
real friendship and love materialize among people of ethnically differ-
ent backgrounds and certainly nonelite parties.
Domesticated Love: From the
Homosocial to the Homosexual
To this pair of friends who discover a special bond that unites them, let
us now look at another pair from the periphery: Barca, the handsome
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Partnership and Love in Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010) 161
“Beast of Carthage” and one of the most successful gladiators, and
his dark- skinned boyfriend, Pietros. In Episode 6, it is not Spartacus
alone who contemplates freedom; Barca also shares with Pietros his
hopes about the possibility of buying their freedom, in a scene heavily
loaded with metaphors, especially the doves that will be set free even-
tually, and a context reminiscent of a Catullus poem, as the episode
title “Delicate Things” alludes to the Latin word deliciae, the object
of one’s desire. From what we can glean from the prequel series to the
first season, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (2011), Barca has changed:
his former partner, Auctus, was a competent gladiator, diametrically
opposed to the young and innocent Pietros. Whereas in the prequel
series, Auctus and Barca seem to share a purely physical attraction,
Barca in these later years is portrayed as the domesticated husband of
Pietros, someone who works for the interests of both slaves and above
all for their interests as a couple. While the homosocial bond between
Spartacus and Varro is strongly reminiscent of the relationship between
the epic warriors Achilles and Patroclus, the union of Barca and Pietros
exemplifies such a bond with the addition of an intense sexual relation-
ship, perhaps suggestive of the Achilles/Patroclus erotic connection
that many scholars are willing to see in the Iliad.
The portrayal of gay sex is certainly pushing the envelope in this
show, especially between two mates that share and willingly submit to
it, unlike other depictions elsewhere where the passive partner sub-
mits to the active penetrator unwillingly, mostly to achieve or obtain
status or manipulate one another. The viewer may find it intriguing
Figure 11.1 Pietros (Eka Darville) and Barca (Antonio Te Maioha) enjoy an
intimate moment in Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010). Starz.
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Antony Augoustakis162
that this relationship cannot last for long, however, and is bound to
mirror the doomed one between Sura and Spartacus. Batiatus soon
claims that Barca has broken trust, falsely accused by Ashur, and he is
put to death, while in Episode 7, Pietros hangs himself after believ-
ing that Barca abandoned him and betrayed their love and trust. The
boy has now become the object of ridicule, bullying, and abuse. Just
like Spartacus’s dreams are shattered forever with the loss of Sura,
the tragic end of this couple exposes the harsh realities of slave life in
the ludus and adds a gruesomely foreboding tone to what ensues, as the
plot unravels. Here viewers are invited to draw parallelisms with
contemporary twenty- first century issues, such as bullying (and in
particular how minorities are exposed to such abuse) and the issue
of domestic rights for couples of the same gender. By making such
concerns diachronic, from ancient Capua and Rome to contemporary
America and the world, the series underlines the significant nature of
these issues and the need for immediate solutions to some of them.6
Roman Matronae and Sl ave Gl adiators
The nexus of relationships and friendships, especially developing
among the men of the ludus, is enriched and sharply contrasted to a
fascinating pair of women emerging as key players in the first season:
Lucretia and Ilithyia, respectively the wives of Batiatus and Glaber.
These two women, always antagonizing and manipulating each other,
lock horns over the two foremost gladiators: Crixus and Spartacus.
When Licinia, the prominent cousin of Crassus, expresses an inter-
est in experiencing the pleasures of the ludus and a night of sex with
Spartacus, Lucretia arranges Spartacus to sleep with Ilithyia instead.
When Licinia and Lucretia discover Iliythia having intercourse with
Spartacus, Licinia herself wonders at the impact such a tale— namely
of the wife of Glaber sleeping with his most hated enemy— would
have on her reputation as a distinguished Roman matrona. Enraged
at Licinia’s uncontrollable giggling, Ilithyia smashes her tormentor’s
head on the marble floor and kills her. The revenge of Ilithyia against
Spartacus is not delayed much; in Episode 10 (“Party Favors”), she
puts the young Numerius up to asking for the death of Varro. In a
remarkable scene on the balcony that faces down to the open court-
yard where the gladiators practice, Ilithyia seals the pact with a cun-
ning, yet credulous and easily manipulated Lucretia.7 The two women
agree on helping each other out: Ilithyia will receive what she wants,
namely to inflict enormous pain on Spartacus, while Lucretia will get
in return approval for the games that she and her husband have been
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Partnership and Love in Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010) 163
craving so much. The lens zooms in on Spartacus and Varro practic-
ing in a playful mode in the training arena, while a vengeful Ilithyia
expresses her views on friendship from the balcony, her lips almost
pursed: “The value of a friend cannot be expressed by the clever
grouping of letters; it is blood and flesh granting life to the world.”
Soon afterwards, Spartacus’s relationship with Varro comes to an
end, after the heroic dilemma faced by the gladiator and his compan-
ion. Even though Spartacus and Varro engage in combat before the
spectators at Batiatus’s house for the entertainment of the bystand-
ers, the show ends tragically when Numerius asks Spartacus to kill
Varro, who has conceded defeat: death would be a very unlikely out-
come, since in such cases, the defeated in usually granted pardon.
Thus Spartacus loses a friend, because of the machinations of Ilithyia
and Lucretia’s thirst for power and money. It is only through pain
and suffering after all that Spartacus is led to the big decision of plot-
ting the rebellion. Not unlike Sura’s ghost, now Varro’s ghost makes
frequent appearances in Episode 11 (“Old Wounds”). The revelations
are shocking for Spartacus and come as an avalanche on him: Batiatus
was behind everything after all. Now revenge is in his eyes; this is all
the Thracian wants. The demise first of his wife and then of his best
friend is accompanied by the emergence of Mira who comes to attend
his wounds; Mira and Spartacus are indeed two damaged souls that
become one.
Spartacus and Crixus:
The Journey toward an Alliance
Still there is a further commitment that Spartacus needs to make
on his way to becoming the hero and leader of the revolt, and this
involves a compromise with Crixus, the champion Gaul. The Thra-
cian and the Gaul go through a tumultuous relationship throughout
the series. In the beginning, Spartacus is not as good as Crixus. What
drives Spartacus is love, whereas Crixus experiences permutations of
love and desire through his liaison with Lucretia, an affair of con-
venience and not one of choice. But then Naevia comes to the fore
as a slave that attracts Crixus like no other. In Episode 5 (“Shadow
Games”), Crixus and Spartacus have to collaborate, and by confront-
ing Theocles in the arena, their partnership is fleshed out as a result of
love: Spartacus’s love for his wife, and Crixus’s love for Naevia.
In the final episode of the first season (Episode 13, “Kill Them
All”), we see the further development of the relationship between the
two leading men, as Spartacus promises Crixus a reunion with Naevia:
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Antony Augoustakis164
they make a pact to find Naevia and kill Batiatus, if one of them dies.
Spartacus has by now grown closer to Mira; he is ready to turn the
page and start anew, as a free man. Crixus may not be completely on
board with the idea, but the two men have come to share more than
has ever divided them. Spartacus makes a clear and unambiguous offer
to Crixus: freedom can only be found outside the ludus, and it can no
longer exist separate from the women they love. Crixus then accepts
that he had never had stronger reasons to want to leave, now that
Naevia is in his heart. The two men can connect: Spartacus makes a
confession that he had once experienced the same feelings of deep,
unending love for Sura. This is the moment when Crixus realizes
Spartacus’s pain; Batiatus will never give him Naevia, but rather he
will kill them, just as he plotted Sura’s death. The bonding between
the two men takes place during a crucial turning point in the show, at
the decision to rebel, when the Thracian decides to become Sparta-
cus. The two gladiators have changed, and this has happened because
of love, which may eventually lead to friendship and the homosocial
bonding we have seen earlier. In an emotional outburst, Crixus admits
that he and Spartacus could have been “brothers” in another life. So
Spartacus and Crixus make a pact, joining their right hands and prom-
ising assistance to one another in the next day’s fight, the combat that
will lead to the revolution, the slaughter that ensues, and the breaking
out from the ludus.Thus Spartacus: Blood and Sand offers a remarkable array of trans-
formations. Batiatus is metamorphosed from an honorable man on
the surface to a social- climber, thirsty for glory and money; while
conversely, Spartacus is elevated from an ignorant, reclusive Thracian
warrior who at first does not know how to collaborate with his fellow
slaves. As Joanna Paul astutely observes on the 1960 Spartacus, “When
Spartacus is properly understood, in the context of the conflicts that
surrounded production, we can see the extent of its questioning and
challenging of what it means to be a hero, even if that is sometimes
only implicit. Such questioning is valuable because . . . understandings
and interpretations of heroism are continually changing, becoming
conflicted and muddied, but no less potent in the modern world.
Heroism cannot be taken at face value, and films such as Spartacus have a role to play in helping society work out what it wants or needs
from its heroes.”8
By the end of the first season of Spartacus: Blood and Sand, the
Thracian has become the Spartacus whom the viewer expects to
see, but it is only through love and partnership that this transfor-
mation becomes viable. Such relationships mark Spartacus for life:
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Partnership and Love in Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010) 165
even though Batiatus has always felt a special connection with Sparta-
cus, such a partnership is only one of convenience and can never be
developed further: it is one of opportunism and exploitation. And
yet Spartacus is the only one in the equation who comes to embrace
his new identity, who can shout “I am Spartacus” and move forward
toward a new life, through much wavering and doubt, but ultimately
with only one thing in sight: freedom.
Notes
1. My sincerest thanks to Monica Cyrino for her inspiring and indefati-
gable labors as conference organizer and volume editor.
2. A most up- to- date account of the revolution is offered by Strauss
(2009); the ancient sources have been collected and are readily avail-
able at Winkler (2007) 233– 47.
3. On the 1960 epic Spartacus, see the various essays in Winkler (2007),
and in particular Winkler’s essay on American ideals in the film.
4. Cyrino (2005) 89– 120.
5. As described, for instance, in the histories of Tacitus; for example, Cal-
gacus in the Agricola or the virtuous German wives in the Germania.
6. On Roman attitudes towards homosexuality, see extensively the land-
mark study by Williams (2010).
7. As we can see in the prequel to the first season, Spartacus: Gods of the Arena, Lucretia has in the past experienced deep bonding with
another woman, Gaia, and suffered tremendously when Gaia is brutally
murdered.
8. Paul (2013) in Chapter 5, “Spartacus: Identifying a Cinematic Hero.”
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4
C h a p t e r 1 2
Objects of Desire
Female Gazes and Male Bodies in
Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010)
Anise K. Strong
Despite initial expectations, the Starz 2010– 11 original television
series Spartacus offers a remarkably female- positive portrayal of sexual
relations and an intriguing inversion of normative cinematic represen-
tations of erotic relationships. The series thus presents a sharp contrast
with the sexualized objectification of women present in many earlier
television series and films about the ancient world or other contem-
poraneous television costume dramas. Through its female characters’
sexual dominance and agency, Spartacus explores the nature of social
hierarchies and the corruption of slave- owning societies.
When Starz originally showed the teaser for its 2010 original series
Spartacus: Blood and Sand, many television critics initially dismissed
it as low- brow entertainment, full of gore and cheap pornography. At
best, it was deemed “deliciously, marvelously bad,”1 according to the
Washington Post, although reviewers who revisited it at the end of the
season had a much higher opinion, calling it, only four months later,
“dramatic, suspenseful and brilliantly constructed.”2 In any case, there
is no point in denying that Spartacus does indeed feature an immense
volume of blood and violence. Random gladiators die frequently, and
at least one major character every episode is killed or badly injured.
The violence pays homage to video games like Mortal Kombat or,
more recently, the exaggerated, gory style of Zack Snyder’s film 300
about the Greek and Persian battle at Thermopylae.
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Anise K. Strong168
This chapter focuses on the claim that Spartacus is a vehicle for
soft- core pornography and, by implication, is thus less deserving of
serious scholarly consideration or ethical approval. There is no need
to pretend that there is no sex or nudity in Spartacus: the bare breasts
number in the dozens, mostly on the bodies of mute extras who serve
as gladiatorial cheerleaders or random slave girls in the background.
The level of simulated intercourse is fairly explicit, although no sexual
penetration is directly shown.
However, Steven S. DeKnight, Spartacus’s creator and lead screen-
writer, argues that the show is not pornography at all— that it merely
depicts “a brutal, visceral time filled with violence and passion.”3 After
the second season, DeKnight commented, “I don’t want to have sex
just for sex’s sake or violence for violence’s sake . . . When the show first
came out, there were a lot of cries that it was softcore, or pornography,
which really made me think that the people who’ve been saying that
haven’t been on the Internet in the last ten years . . . But the difference
between a softcore movie and Spartacus is, softcore is all geared toward
seeing people have sex. This show actually isn’t. The sexual act is part of
a bigger story. Something vital to the story is going on here.”4
If the sex and violence themselves are not the primary focus of
Spartacus, they nevertheless form a substantial part of its content and
drive the plot. The particular choices DeKnight and the other creators
make in their representation of such material contribute significantly
to the modern discourse about gender and sexuality and especially to
the representation of the ancient world in mass media.
Spartacus’s actual portrayal of sexual relations differs strikingly
from conventional twentieth century “pornography.” Ironically, the
word “pornography” itself was first used in English to refer to the
sexually explicit Roman wall paintings found in Pompeii from the first
centuries B.C. and A.D., close to the time and locale of the histori-
cal Spartacus.5 In the late twentieth century, “pornography” was
frequently, if controversially, redefined as an explicit act of violence
against women, which not only encourages assault and rape of women
by men but is in itself a symbolic assault on women.6 Radical femi-
nist theory argues that it is impossible for female representation to
escape the sexist hierarchies of Western culture. As stated originally
by the 1986 Federal Meese Commission, “Pornography is the theory,
rape is the practice.”7 The twentieth- and twenty- first- century typical
audience for pornography is also generally assumed to be a solitary
heterosexual young male.8
On the other hand, Gayle Rubin and other queer theorists have
argued that pornography should not be universally rejected as a tool
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Objects of Desire 169
of patriarchal oppression, and that it is simplistic to assume an audi-
ence of only heterosexual males. The female porn producer Candida
Royalle now makes popular mainstream hard- core porn videos for
“women and couples,” claiming that she likes “to focus on sensuality,
tenderness, and mutual respect— a holistic approach, instead of a col-
lection of body parts.”9 Susan Faludi argued in 2000 that the modern
pornographic film industry is largely controlled by the female stars and
emphasizes exclusively consensual, nonviolent sexual encounters.10
This reclamation of pornographic films for a female audience and from
a female perspective offers the possibility of sexually explicit depictions
that do not victimize women. At the same time, the dominant cultural
meme continues to categorize pornography as a male- created genre
designed for a solitary straight male audience.
Most mainstream media that depict sexualized scenes or nudity
continue to presume a straight male gaze and male audience. For
instance, HBO’s acclaimed Rome series, about the dying days of the
Roman Republic, contains a multitude of sex scenes in which men
are the dominant partners and women are either explicitly or implic-
itly raped (e.g. Episode 2, in which Antony casually rapes a random
farmwoman in full view of his army.) While women like the noble
Atia, who has sex with grooms and slaves, are sometimes the socially
dominant partners, the cinematography still tends to objectify the
female figures rather than the bodies of their male partners. Although
Monica Cyrino notes that the series represents Atia (Polly Walker) as
a forceful, independent, sexually voracious character,11 the multiple
sex scenes featuring her have more in common with Samantha Jones’s
brief, casual flings on HBO’s Sex and the City (1998– 2004) than with
the intimate romantic moments of the couples in Spartacus, as dis-
cussed later.
On the male side, we see Antony’s nude body in multiple episodes of
Rome. However, while he becomes the object of the viewer’s gaze, he
retains authority and control over his sex scenes.12 The other prominent
male nude, a slave gift- wrapped for Atia’s rival Servilia in Episode 6,
is indeed objectified and powerless.13 However, given the paucity of
his role as a mute extra, this character is inherently an object; the
audience confronts no reversal of expectations in the camera’s callous
focus on the slave’s genitals.
If we compare Spartacus to sexually explicit depictions in more
contemporaneous media, HBO’s current medieval fantasy series,
Game of Thrones (premiered in 2011), seems to be a particularly apt
parallel. Like Spartacus, it features frequent nudity and sex scenes, as
well as the nearly ubiquitous presence of naked female extras in the
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Anise K. Strong170
background. In both cases, these nude bodies are apparently intended
to provide visual stimulation while the lead actors advance the intri-
cate plot or describe their complex personal histories, often referred
to as “sexposition.”14 This technique perhaps inadvertently echoes
the infamous Bob Guccione hard- core pornographic film Caligula
(1979), in which John Gielgud and Helen Mirren declaim portent-
ously in the foreground while Penthouse Pets romp with each other
in the background.
Game of Thrones, however, also features numerous examples of men
raping and abusing women, sexualized coaching of women by men on
how to appeal more to a straight male audience, and a distinct lack of
sexualized male bodies, with the exception of one romantic gay male
scene. The cinematography in these scenes is relatively conventional,
evoking the classic Mulveian “gaze,” in which the audience takes the
perspective of a male viewer objectifying women.15
A Different Kind of Pornography
Where, then, does Spartacus fall in the realm of “pornography,” or
indeed within the standard Mulveian cinematic analysis focusing on
the objectification of female characters through a male- centered gaze?
To begin with, despite the violence, unlike 300 or Rome, there is no
onscreen rape in the entire first season. The single onscreen rape of
a named character during the second season, discussed later in this
chapter, becomes one of the traumatic turning points of that season’s
arc. Indeed, in the pilot episode, Spartacus’s wife Sura effectively (if
implausibly) defends herself against multiple rapists. Nearly all the
major sex scenes are between either married couples or couples whose
deep romantic love has been well established. These interludes are
frequently initiated by women and show sexual pleasure on the part
of both women and men.
The actresses on Spartacus have differed in their assessment of the
audience’s likely reaction to the nudity and sex on the show. Viva
Bianca, who plays the elite Roman matron, Ilithyia, comments, “The
guys will go for . . . the eye candy, hands down.” Erin Cummings,
who played Spartacus’s Thracian wife, Sura, argues in contrast, “This
show will probably appeal more to women than to men; all these men
covered in dirt and sweat and wearing nothing but loincloths; it’s the
most insane display of male testosterone . . . very exciting.”16
Cummings also praises the sex scenes in terms very reminiscent
of Royalle: “There are some really beautiful love scenes that are not
gratuitous; they are scenes that a woman can watch and say, ‘that’s a
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Objects of Desire 171
great scenario. I would like to be that woman; I would like to have
that experience— the man who looks at me and touches me and kisses
me in that way.’ ” In Cummings’s imagination, then, the scenes are
attractive to women, but they still cast women in traditional cine-
matic gender roles as the object of the masculine gaze and touch.
The female spectator is supposed to desire to be the object of Sparta-
cus’s eager gaze and sweaty embrace. Such discourse fits within the
contemporary psychological analysis of normative sexual fantasies, in
which women tend to view themselves as the objects of sexual desire,
whereas men view others as the objects of their sexual desire.17
But is this really the underlying subtext of Spartacus? Is it merely
“romantic” pornography offering a space for women to indulge in
sexual fantasies involving buff men, more properly categorized in
the subgenre of series like Sex and the City? While Spartacus indeed
emphasizes the value and sexual appeal of loving relationships, its true
innovation in the representation of female desire is its frequent depic-
tion of women as sexually dominant figures who control not just the
sexual encounters themselves but the gaze and perspective of the audi-
ence. Spartacus is not simply “pornography for women”; it is both
“romantic” and “conventional” pornography for women, in which
women usurp the normal male roles and thus subvert our expecta-
tions. While not “sex for sex’s sake,” as DeKnight suggests, it certainly
self- consciously adopts the style and tools of the traditional objectify-
ing male gaze even as it reverses subject and object.
Women’s Gazes and Sl avery
As a close study of several scenes from the series will demonstrate,
the major power dynamic between characters in Spartacus is funda-
mentally not one between man and woman but between master and
slave. Ancient Roman settings permit a discourse about slavery that is
simultaneously critical and fetishistic. To offer a counterexample, it is
nearly impossible to imagine a television series in which the Ole Miss
of an antebellum Southern plantation summoned the black field slaves
before her, paraded them nude, and then chose the most attractive
as a sexual partner. Such a scene would naturally be viewed as deeply
racist and offensive.
In contrast, Roman slavery does not stigmatize any particular ethnic
or religious group. Furthermore, even if inaccurately, Roman slavery
is frequently represented as potentially temporary, a mere stage of
indenture on the path to success as a freed citizen. It can be seen as an
artificial construct, rather than as a sober historical record of oppression
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Anise K. Strong172
and cruelty. Of course, modern works still condemn Roman slavery;
indeed, such criticism forms the backbone of works like Spartacus. However, unlike American slavery, Roman slavery’s temporal distance
and ethnic ambiguity allow writers and directors to explore its social
impact without fear of directly offending modern audiences or descen-
dants of slaves. Indeed, most Europeans and Americans are descendants
of Roman slaves, however distantly, but this fact forms little part of their
cultural identity.
Due to these nuances, ancient Roman society allows modern film-
makers a morally acceptable context in which to explore a Bakhtinesque
inversion of conventional power relationships— one in which women
can dominate men, black men can whip white men, and crippled men
can sneer at the tall and strong. In particular, slaves can be refigured
as emasculated regardless of their gender, and their powerlessness, in
both modern film and in the Roman world itself, is often coded as
feminine.18 This inversion can be seen in most cinematic representa-
tions of the Roman world— Ben Hur (1959) and Gladiator (2000)
stand out as two obvious examples— but it is especially emphasized in
the various retellings of Spartacus, one of the great Western cultural
touch points for the story of rebellious slaves. The legend of Spartacus
is inevitably a story that focuses on the disparate power relationships
between master and slave.
At the same time, the nature of that discourse has changed dra-
matically in this most recent retelling, particularly with regard to the
role of female characters. The most obvious comparison here is with
Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 film Spartacus. In one scene, the Roman
noble matrons, Helena and Claudia, visit the gladiatorial school of
Batiatus (Peter Ustinov) and request a private show of handpicked
gladiators, and Claudia says, “I want only the most beautiful. I’ll take
the big black one . . . I feel so sorry for the poor things in all this
heat. Don’t put them in those suffocating tunics. Let them wear just
(pause) enough for modesty.”
On an immediate surface level, this scene depicts the Roman matrons
objectifying and dehumanizing the gladiators; Draba becomes “the
big black one”; Helena compares the slaves to chickens. The women’s
sexual attraction toward the gladiators is explicit in their desire for
“the most beautiful” and for the gladiators to lose their tunics. Ina
Rae Hark argues that the gladiators here are both turned into animals
and emasculated by their mandated striptease, an act conventionally
reserved for female characters.19 However, the cinematography in
Kubrick’s Spartacus carefully undercuts any sense of the direct power
of matron over gladiator. Thick iron bars physically segregate the
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Objects of Desire 173
slaves from the elite Romans. Batiatus and the male trainer moderate
the entire interaction with the gladiators. Most importantly, Spartacus
defies any attempt to visually subordinate him by openly and aggres-
sively returning the women’s gaze; the scene is shot from Spartacus’s
side of the bars, giving us the view of the gladiators, not the matrons.
Not only Spartacus but the other gladiators as well directly confront
the women’s assessment of them. The only possible interpretation is
that the women are immoral and foolish in their callous dismissal of
these men as mere beasts for their visual entertainment. The Roman
matrons’ sexual desires are seen as inappropriate and as another sign
of the corruption that will doom them.
The most recent Spartacus directly echoes this famous earlier scene
in two separate moments from different episodes. In Episode 8 of the
first season (“Mark of the Brotherhood”), the Roman matron Ilithyia
has been invited by Batiatus, the master of the gladiatorial school, and
his wife Lucretia to become the patroness of one of the new crop of
gladiators at the school.
Ilithyia: How should I choose?
Batiatus: Doctore, our honored guest wishes to assess the recruits’ vir-tus [manliness]
Doctore: Remove your cloths! (The camera pans behind the line of
recruits, focusing on their nude posteriors as they slowly remove
their loincloths. It then pans back up to the perspective of Ilithyia,
as she giggles with pleasure at the sight of Segovax’s extraordi-
narily large genitals, before swooping back down to give the audi-
ence the same view that Ilithyia has.)
Ilithyia: The one on the left: he has truly been blessed by the god
Priapus.
While there is again a physical distance between owners and slaves,
here the masters are placed on an explicit height, elevating them above
the gladiators. The perspective of the camera is either that of the mas-
ters, the veteran gladiators, or shown from behind the new gladiators;
the new recruits are merely a set of objectified male bodies.
While the Kubrick matrons chose on the basis of beauty, Ilithyia
discriminates purely on the grounds of penile size; only the man’s sex-
ual attributes are relevant. Like the conventionally objectified woman
in American mainstream films reduced to scattered shots of breasts
and legs, here the gladiator Segovax has only one valuable body part.
Ironically, the phallus in question is not even the actor’s own; for this
and other scenes involving male nudity a special, extra- long artificial
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Anise K. Strong174
phallus was constructed, nicknamed “the Kirk Douglas.”20 The wom-
en’s bodies shown in Spartacus: Blood and Sand are those of the actual
actresses covered by small merkins. However, apparently certain male
actors were concerned that their own genitalia were not up to the
unusual challenge of serving as the object of the female audience’s
desires.
In the fifth episode, “Shadow Games,” written by Miranda Kwok,
the lead female writer of the first season, Ilithyia asks for a private
nude viewing of Crixus, the Champion of Capua and Batiatus’s prize
gladiator. The other women in the scene, Batiatus’s wife, Lucretia,
and her slave, Naevia, are each carrying on their own secret affair with
Crixus, who loves only Naevia. Unlike Kubrick’s Spartacus, Crixus
keeps his eyes down or turned askance. The gaze, and indeed the
possession, in this scene belong entirely to the women. Ilithyia treats
Crixus neither as human nor as beast, but as a beautiful statue, a motif
echoed in later episodes. This scene is remarkably lacking in the fear
or uncertainty that characterizes the typical cinematic women’s reac-
tions to the male body. Circling slowly around Crixus, Ilithyia echoes
common cinematic representations of aggressive male possessions
of female characters. She defines Crixus’s space and forces him into
the motionless, passive role. Later in the same episode, Ilithyia even
adopts the Foucauldian language of penetration, driving the tip of a
knife into the naked Spartacus’s chest. In every way except her lack
of a “Kirk Douglas” artificial phallus, Ilithyia takes on the normative
male sexual role in cinema. At the same time, this controlling female
Figure 12.1 Ilithyia (Viva Bianca) takes possession of Crixus (Manu Bennett) in
Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010). Starz.
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Objects of Desire 175
gaze is represented not as liberating or triumphant but as oppressive
and malevolent— not because the viewer is female, but because the
object is dehumanized.
In the ninth episode, “Whore,” the rendering of Spartacus as a
pinup poster, an artistic representation of male perfection, becomes
even more explicit. In one particular scene, Batiatus’s slave women
prepare Spartacus for his upcoming sexual service of the Roman
matron. In the first part of the scene, we again see the attractive
male body under the control of female eyes and hands. The camera
swoops around Spartacus and we the audience become the voyeurs,
not particularly of the random nude women, but of the target of their
attention, the gold- encrusted Spartacus, whose raw body becomes a
surface for female artists. Both male and female eyes are hidden dur-
ing the latter part of this scene by masks, but the camera lens explicitly
gives us the perspective of Ilithyia, who takes the active role in striding
toward her artistically framed sex slave.
Even while establishing this repeated defiance of conventional gaze
theory and gender norms, Spartacus is also careful to remind the
viewer that what fundamentally matters in these relationships is not
gender, but power. In a later scene, Lucretia aggressively questions
her slave Mira regarding the girl’s failure to seduce Spartacus, accord-
ing to her orders. Doubtful of Mira’s sexual attractiveness, she orders
her to strip. Mira is here framed, just as Spartacus was, as a statue
between columns, invoking classical Greek nudes of Aphrodite in her
pose. As a mere slave, she is the object of Lucretia’s gaze; Lucretia
treats her as simply another body for her use.
In one of the last episodes of the first season, Ashur, a former glad-
iator turned right- hand man of Batiatus, is granted the status of a
superior slave in return for his clever assistance to his master. He asks
for the right to have sex with Naevia, Lucretia’s most favored slave
woman and the secret mistress of Crixus.
Ashur: I have admired your beauty for many years. Were you aware of
my affections?
Naevia: I have felt your gaze linger of late.
Ashur: A gaze is all I could dare. Your position placing you forever
beyond my grasp. Delicate, ripe, Naevia. Always the forbidden
fruit, until now.
This scene demonstrates how much the fundamental sexual dynamic
within the household of Batiatus focuses on relative hierarchy, even
among slaves. Here Ashur echoes the physical movements of Ilithyia
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Anise K. Strong176
around Crixus; while the scene is far less visually explicit, with his ver-
bal invocation of the gaze he takes possession of both the camera and
Naevia herself. He has moved from looking to owning; the last shot
is of the nude Naevia herself framed as if in a painting, turned into art
for a superior man’s pleasure.
Sex Scenes
The actual sex scenes in Spartacus, especially in the first season, pri-
marily focus on deeply committed couples in romantic, intimate
moments. Early examples include Spartacus and his wife Sura; Bati-
atus and Lucretia, who, despite their mutual use of slaves for pre-
intercourse “fluffing,” repeatedly demonstrate both their love and
desire for each other; the lead gladiator, Crixus, and the slave woman,
Naevia; and the gladiator Barca and his male lover, the slave Pietros.
Each of these couples has multiple sex scenes, often quite explicit in
both their nudity and with regard to the level of simulated sex. These
scenes also all feature extensive dialogue, eye contact between the
members of the couple, an exterior camera view that focuses on both
partners’ bodies rather than taking the perspective of only one, and
clear pleasure in intercourse on both sides, especially perhaps in the
case of women. Postures vary but generally do not leave women in
stereotypically submissive positions.
In other words, these sex scenes are also love scenes, intended to
emphasize the intimacy and equality inherent in these varied relation-
ships. While sometimes more pragmatic and cautious, the women are
neither shy nor prudish about expressing their attraction. Although
Lucretia and Batiatus, especially in the second season “prequel,” engage
in a variety of extramarital liaisons and ménages a trois, their encounters
with their peers continue to be visually depicted as intimate, mutually
pleasurable encounters similar to the format Royalle and Faludi present
as “porn for women.” Their love for each other, like the mutual passion
of Spartacus and Sura, drives the tragic drama of the plot in both seasons.
When Batiatus’s father demands that he divorce Lucretia, a supposedly
unsuitable wife, Batiatus responds pungently: “I would sever cock from
fucking body before take her from my arms” (Episode 5, “Reckoning”).
In other words, Batiatus would rather lose his masculinity— his virtus, so
emphasized as a key component of self- identity in earlier episodes— than
his wife. For Spartacus, explicit sex scenes serve as one means of depict-
ing the love and intimacy in these varied committed relationships.
These scenes contrast sharply with the cinematography and dia-
logue from other sexually explicit historical dramas like HBO’s Rome
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Objects of Desire 177
or Showtime’s The Tudors, which typically fragment women’s bodies,
focus on them to the exclusion of male bodies, and often eroticize vio-
lent sex.21 One possibility for this difference may lie in the gender and
relationship status of the creators of each series. Spartacus has three
male executive producers, one of whom, Robert Tapert, is married
to the lead female star, Lucy Lawless, and a female producer, Chloe
Smith, who has a producer credit on more than half the episodes. Two
major writers for the second season were another husband- wife team,
Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen, who also served as coproduc-
ers; other women such as Kwok wrote multiple episodes. DeKnight’s
previous experience includes writing for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and
Dollhouse, two series featuring strong female heroines. Tapert and Sam
Raimi, the other two executive producers, are perhaps best known for
the television series Xena: Warrior Princess, another show that focuses
on sexually active, confident, competent female protagonists. In other
words, one would expect this particular writing and production team
to create stories that both emphasize female characters and appeal to
a mixed audience, specifically with regard to sex scenes. DeKnight has
spoken directly about his feminist slant in numerous interviews:
Series creator DeKnight said that part of his goal in writing the series
is to not to write weak women, even if they are slaves in the world of
Spartacus. “I love writing women in this show,” he explained, “because
even if it’s a slave who you would think has no power whatsoever, if it’s
Lucretia who really has no rights in this society, the interesting thing
to me is to find ways to give them strength. I mean, no one is a wilting
flower. I think we have some of the best female characters out on TV
right now.”22
Rome, Game of Thrones, and The Tudors all had between zero to two
female writers and a distinct minority of female producers; their cre-
ators do not have notably feminist pedigrees. None of these shows is
consciously sexist, but they tend to reinforce the patriarchy of their
historical settings, to utilize relatively conventional cinematography
during sex scenes, and to feature the frequent sexualized objectifica-
tion of women.
In contrast, Starz’s other current original series, Torchwood: Mir-acle Day (2011) and the short- lived Camelot (2011), both feature
more egalitarian, female- oriented sex scenes. They also employ prom-
inent female writers and producers, such as Jane Espenson, Anne
Thomopolous, and Louise Fox. This common thread in Starz origi-
nal programming suggests that, beyond their general reputation for
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Anise K. Strong178
risqué and explicit television series, this cable network also has a con-
scious commitment to portray sexually egalitarian or dominant female
characters and to film sex scenes appealing to both male and female
audiences. Starz has, perhaps, found a new niche.
Rape
In any discussion of representations of female sexuality in the ancient
world, the subject of rape is almost unavoidable. The question of rape
in Spartacus is fraught with issues of power and its abuse, the domi-
nant themes underlying the tragic drive of both seasons’ plots. In one
sense, any sexual act between a free person and a slave in the Roman
world is rape, since the slave cannot meaningfully consent, and by this
standard rape is constant and ubiquitous in every episode of the series,
whether we consider male gladiators like Crixus required to serve as
fertile studs for matrons like Lucretia, or the anonymous masked slave
girls trotted out at the House of Batiatus orgies.
However, the creators of Spartacus make a significant and mean-
ingful distinction between this sort of implicit rape, which is depicted
nonviolently and often performed silently by extras, and the violent,
explicitly abusive rape of named characters. In the entire first season,
despite the extreme amounts of both sex and violence in the show, no
violent rape is depicted onscreen for the shock or titillation of the view-
ers. Spartacus is told that his wife Sura has been gang- raped by Roman
soldiers, and he catches a glimpse of the clearly abused, suicidal Pietros
after the boy’s rape by another male gladiator, but the only sex shown
is, if not freely consensual, certainly nonviolent. Even in the case of
Ashur’s sexual encounter with Naevia, which is clearly against her
choice, the camera cuts away at the instant that he removes her gown.
In contrast, Gods in the Arena, the “prequel” second season, features
an extended set of onscreen violent rapes of the slave woman Diona,
who ultimately serves as the tragic symbol for the entire season. Her
character arc exemplifies both the evils of slavery and the corruption of
Rome’s elite. Diona is initially actively interested in sexual pleasure and
romance; in the first two episodes she repeatedly stares at the gladiators’
nude bodies and giggles with her fellow slave, Naevia. In the third epi-
sode, however, the Roman senator, Cossutius, demands that the virgin
Diona be violently raped by both the ugliest, dirtiest gladiator in the
barracks and, simultaneously, by Cossutius himself, who forces anal sex
on her while abusing her verbally (Episode 3, “Paterfamilias”). At the
end of this encounter, Diona is visibly bruised and distraught. Lucretia
sympathetically but ruthlessly comments, “It was an unfortunate thing
pal-cyrino-book.indb 178 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Objects of Desire 179
to be so used by men for base entertainment.” Diona’s tragedy is not
the loss of her virginity but her powerlessness within Roman society.
Having lost the extra value of her virginity, Diona becomes a regular
sex slave at Lucretia’s parties, until she is finally so traumatized by her
repeated rapes that she attempts suicide. Naevia subsequently helps her
escape the House of Batiatus, only to see her captured and executed in
the gladiatorial arena. Like the male gladiator Varro in the first season,
who dies at the whim of a Roman elite boy, Diona thus serves as the
symbolic victim of the second season. Her degradation from lively,
innocent young woman to desperate, traumatized runaway is repre-
sented as the result not of individual evil deeds but as the inevitable
consequence of the Roman system of slavery and the gross inequality
between elites and other citizens.
Rape as a means of demonstrating the corruption of the Roman
elite is not restricted solely to interactions between free people and
slaves in Spartacus. The female protagonist’s name, Lucretia, espe-
cially in a Roman setting, inevitably recalls Livy’s famous story of the
Rape of Lucretia, in which the virtuous noblewoman Lucretia com-
mitted suicide after her rape by an Etruscan prince and precipitated
the first Roman revolution.23 As Spartacus’s initially modest Lucretia
gradually turns her house into a part- time brothel, in an effort to gain
the favor of wealthy magistrates for her husband, the possibility of a
rape of this Lucretia remains always on the horizon. It seems particu-
larly imminent in Episode 4, “Beneath the Mask,” when Batiatus’s
enemy physically threatens a vulnerable, temporarily isolated Lucretia.
However, she faces him down, only to discover that he has murdered
her friend Gaia in her place.
Rape, then, is an act that the creators of Spartacus use sparingly
and explicitly to signify the abuse of power; it is never glamorized
or eroticized. In this respect, Spartacus contrasts strongly with other
television series, most recently Game of Thrones, in which the writ-
ers altered a sex scene from the original novel from a scene of sexual
awakening to one of brutal, vividly depicted rape (Episode 1, “Winter
is Coming”): the camera focuses on the anguished face of a young
bride during her violent rape from behind; the character later falls in
love with her rapist husband. Following standard feminist and psycho-
logical theories, rape in Spartacus is always about power, not sex. This
model also echoes, whether deliberately or unconsciously, the ancient
Roman conceptualization of rape. For ancient Romans, the right to
be free of rape was one of the defining characteristics of a citizen, as
demonstrated in numerous stories from Livy and other chroniclers of
Rome’s early history, including in the tale of Lucretia herself.24 Rape,
pal-cyrino-book.indb 179 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Anise K. Strong180
in the Roman context, becomes a signifier of tyranny. Sandra Joshel
notes that rape in the Roman imagination is also inextricably linked to
imperialism and mass slavery.25
Conclusion
Starz’s Spartacus series, like many works of classical reception, is both
new and old, echoing not just antiquity but a century of films and
television series about the Roman world. At the same time, it breaks
new ground in its decisions about how to represent human society
and, in particular, its depiction of female sexuality. From one per-
spective, Spartacus utilizes the same sort of objectifying, dehuman-
izing cinematography and fragmentation of bodies that has long been
condemned by feminist film scholars. However, this objectification is
directed equally or perhaps even more at male slave bodies as well as
female ones. Even more startlingly, the gaze itself often originates in
the eyes of a powerful female figure.
Any analysis of this reappropriation must consider the larger
themes that DeKnight and the other creators of Spartacus have woven
through their episodes. The first season focuses fundamentally on
the tragedy of Batiatus and Lucretia— how two ordinary people are
brought down by their simultaneous ambition to join the ranks of the
elite and their callous disregard for the personhood of their slaves. It
is no coincidence that the character who most frequently and visually
objectifies the men of Spartacus is Ilithyia, the elite Roman matron
who serves as the most unambiguous villain on the show. In other
words, the creators of Spartacus are in fact telling a morality tale, one
which itself requires traditionally immoral “pornography” in order
to emphasize the greater evil of abusive power relations. Similarly,
Spartacus depicts rape not as another type of sex scene but as another,
even more culpable type of violence perpetrated by the powerful
against the powerless.
At the same time, sex scenes between major characters in commit-
ted romantic relationships are depicted as egalitarian, pleasurable, and
loving, suggesting that sex and its cinematic representation are not
inherently abusive to women. In this manner, the creators reject the
radical feminist theory linking all representations of heterosexual sex
with violence and offer a more positive, female- centered alternative.
At the same time, they recognize the inherent potential for objectifi-
cation and discrimination in conventional pornography and use that
traditional tool in order to condemn any dehumanization of individu-
als, whether female or male. Lucretia and Ilithyia’s powerful gazes are
pal-cyrino-book.indb 180 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Objects of Desire 181
not morally justifiable; they are merely another form of oppression
with the normative genders reversed.
Spartacus uses traditionally misogynistic modes of discourse like
pornography and rape to reflect on class inequality and its dangerous
consequences. The Starz series also reclaims the explicit representation
of sex as a feminist and socialist tool for provoking thought and even
activism. Such a radical agenda may be sugarcoated for viewers in the
attractive trappings of orgies and gladiatorial fights. However, just as
in the case of the creators’ previous series Xena and Buffy, the socially
liberal and feminist messages are consistent and clear. The series may
be called Spartacus, but it is no coincidence that the majority of the
promotional posters feature a sultry Lucy Lawless who directly chal-
lenges the gaze of the viewer.
Notes
1. Steuver (2010).
2. Ryan (2010).
3. DeKnight (2010).
4. DeKnight (2011).
5. Clarke (1998) 169– 77.
6. MacKinnon (1984) 321– 22.
7. Meese (1987) 78.
8. Strager (2003) 50– 61; Attwood (2002) 91– 105.
9. Royalle (2000) 549.
10. Faludi (2000) 533– 75.
11. Cyrino (2008) 131.
12. Raucci (2008) 210.
13. Raucci (2008) 211.
14. McNutt (2011).
15. Mulvey (1975) 17.
16. “Oh, Those Randy Romans,” Spartacus: Blood and Sand DVD fea-
turette (2010).
17. Ellis and Symons (1990) 527– 55.
18. Murnaghan and Joshel (1998) 3.
19. Hark (1993) 154.
20. DeKnight (2009).
21. Mulvey (1989) 6.
22. Halterman (2011).
23. Livy, Histories 1.57– 60. The text is from Ogilvy (1974).
24. Livy, Histories 1.57– 60, 3.44– 58, 8.28; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 4.14.
25. Joshel (1992) 123.
pal-cyrino-book.indb 181 1/10/13 10:19 AM
4
C h a p t e r 1 3
Glenn Close Channels
Theda Bara in M A X I E ( 1985)
A Chapter in the Social History
of the Snake Bra
Gregory N. Daugherty
Maxie (1985) is a lightweight comedy that was clearly designed to
exploit the extraordinary range of Glenn Close.1 She had been in films
for ten years and had impressed audiences with The World According
to Garp (1982), The Big Chill (1983), and The Natural (1984), but it
would be her next film, Fatal Attraction (1987), which would make
her a star. Maxie called for her to play a dual role: Jan, a mousy and
repressed church secretary who unintentionally starts channeling the
spirit of a 1920s flapper, and Maxie, the very spirit of a silent film
actress who died on the way to a breakout screen test. Jan’s husband,
Nick (Mandy Patinkin), summons Maxie’s spirit after they rent her
old apartment, discover her lipstick graffiti behind the old wallpaper,
and learn about her from her former song and dance partner. Since
Nick is an ardent lover of silent film, he arranges to watch her only
existing scene.
Once Maxie has been summoned to her old apartment, she takes
over Jan’s body with comically predictable results. The climax of the
film features the fulfillment of her dream of a screen test in the role of
Cleopatra, complete with several verbal and visual allusions to the most
famous films on the Egyptian Queen, including the 1917 Cleopatra
starring Theda Bara and her equally famous snake bra. Since it is such
pal-cyrino-book.indb 183 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Gregory N. Daugherty184
a short scene and since the film drew so little attention, it has attracted
no discussion in any of the several essays devoted to this reception and
is not even included in the otherwise excellent and exhaustive survey
by Diana Wenzel.2 The reception of Cleopatra in American popular
culture came in waves, it seems, which did not include the 1980s.
A brief analysis of the novel on which the film was based does not
explain this isolated allusion.
Possession was a theme dear to writer Jack Finney, whose 1973
novel, Marion’s Wall, inspired this script.3 Best known for his 1955
science fiction novel, The Bodysnatchers, which was made into films
four times,4 Finney was also fascinated with time travel and time bend-
ing— a topic he visited in two other novels.5 Marion’s Wall touched
on both of these themes and also explored Finney’s passion for the
silent era of Hollywood. Nick, the principal character in the novel, is
drawn to Marion’s connection with the era and with his own father
(they had been lovers); Nick himself is possessed by Rudolph Valen-
tino once they get to Hollywood. It is a charming tale, but with a
radically different ending to Marion’s nude audition and a climax that
involves the discovery and destruction of the entire catalog of Film
Threat’s Top Ten Lost Silent Films. There is no mention of or allusion
to Cleopatra.
Including her would not have been remarkable in a 1970s book about
silent film, but Finney was clearly not the source for the decision to have
the film’s Maxie audition for a role as Cleopatra. It was not an obvious
choice. As noted, there was relatively little American popular culture
interest in Cleopatra during the 1980s when compared to the 1920s
and 1930s, or especially the 1960s, fueled by Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s
1963 film, Cleopatra, affectionately known as “Lizpatra” after its
star, Elizabeth Taylor. The current focus on Cleopatra in films, televi-
sion, novels, and comics seems to have been kicked off in the early
1990s, perhaps due to the graphic novel version of Anne Rice’s The Mummy.6 Between 1973 and 1978, the so- called Cleopatra Jones-
Wong- Schwartz trend had made its mark, as Francesca Royster has
cleverly analyzed.7 There was no shortage of pornographic Cleopatras,
including one from the same year as Maxie, often titled The Erotic Dreams of Cleopatra (1985).8 Cleopatra had appeared on several tele-
vision shows based mostly on reactions to Lizpatra— as The Patty Duke Show did in 19639— or brief allusions in M*A*S*H (1972– 86)
or The Love Boat (1977– 86). Some might remember the Dr Pep-
per television ads featuring comedian Judy Tenuta (occasionally as
Cleopatra) as late as 1989.10 Lizpatra had sated or killed most popu-
lar culture demand for receptions of Cleopatra.11 Clearly the version
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Glenn Close Channels Theda Bara in Maxie (1985) 185
presented in Maxie was not part of a general revival in the long recep-
tion of Cleopatra.
As much as I would like to think that Maxie’s screenwriter, Patricia
Resnick, curled up with Plutarch’s Life of Antony one weekend and
thought this all up de novo, Hollywood does not work that way. The
most likely inspiration was from other films. The 1917 Cleopatra star-
ring Bara was lost by this time, but interest in it and its many stills was
piqued in 1963 with the premier of the Taylor film.12 The 1934 Clau-
dette Colbert version was clearly the source for several images in Maxie. Likewise, the impact of the images from the 1963 version and the bal-
lyhoo surrounding the search for a star are clearly reflected in Maxie. While none of these three films were on the popular culture radar in
1985, the screenwriter would have known of them and had access to
copies and/or still images, as both Taylor and Colbert are mentioned
by name in the press scene immediately following the audition.
Since the Cleopatra scene does not appear to have been included
due to obvious external influences, an analysis of the themes and tropes
of the film is in order. Glenn Close was not the only well- known player
in this film. Writer Resnick wrote the hit feature film Nine to Five (1980) while still in her 20s. Patinkin, who plays the husband Nick,
was fresh off his romantic role as Avigdor in Yentl (1983). This was to
be Ruth Gordon’s last film in a role (as landlady Mrs. Lavin) consid-
erably expanded from the book. Harry Hamlin, playing himself, had
recently done Clash of the Titans (1981), but was not credited as the
actor playing Marc Antony. Neither was Carol Lombard, whose image
from The Campus Vamp (1928) is used as that of Maxie in her only
surviving clip. Close was nominated for a Golden Globe, the film did
not do badly at the box office, and it even won an award, the Silver
Raven, at the Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film in 1986.13
Critics were not kind. According to Roger Ebert, “This is the sort
of movie where, if Maxie had any brains, she’d appear in Jan’s body,
take one look at the script, and decide she was better off dead.”14
I have to agree that the script is contrived, especially in diluting Nick’s
role and adding a particularly awkward subplot involving the Catho-
lic bishop and exorcism. Richard Scheib notes, “This is an incredibly
dreary variation on the subgenre of eschatological comedies rep-
resented by the likes of Topper (1937) and Here Comes Mr. Jordan
(1941).”15 He is quite correct to point out the lame retelling of famil-
iar fantasy elements. The book was much more original and dark, but
that is Hollywood.
An obvious change from the book involves the character’s name. It
appears Marion did not evoke the Vamp or Flapper image the director,
pal-cyrino-book.indb 185 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Gregory N. Daugherty186
Paul Aaron, wanted. Making Jan a church secretary was just a way
to work in the possession angle, some cheap anticlerical jokes, and a
heavy- handed homage to The Exorcist (1973). Some of Nick’s obses-
sion with the 1920s and silent film remains, but his character and
some essential motivation (Marion had been his father’s lover and she
thought she recognized Nick) and plot items (he too was possessed by
a silent star) have been gutted. His insistence that Jan live out Maxie’s
dreams of acting, therefore, comes off as less than noble, as does his
“technical” lack of marital fidelity, which is the setup for the audition
scene. Maxie had wanted another sexual romp while possessing Jan,
but Nick had promised not to do it. Peeved, Maxie does not show
up in time for the audition and Jan has to try it on her own— another
departure from the book. In the novel, Marion has to do her scene in
the nude. In the film, Maxie has to do it as Cleopatra. In the hands of
Close, however, the scene is in some ways even more sexually charged.
At this point I would beseech the reader to watch the scene on DVD.
Please note the change when Maxie does finally appear, and admire
how Close portrays these two characters using the same body, cos-
tume, and lines.
After several comical attempts, Maxie finally lands a screen test
in Hollywood. Since Maxie is angry with Nick, Jan is forced to go
through with the test. She hobbles onto the sound stage in platform
shoes and full Cleopatra regalia including a cloak, vulture headdress
complete with the uraeus (upright cobra emblem), large pectoral- style
necklace and wrist bracelets, and a bikini top with an elaborate jew-
eled snake embroidered on it. There is a good deal of glitter on her
chest and arms, but it is clear from her posture and demeanor that it
is Jan and not Maxie. She is greeted by the director who attempts to
introduce her to Harry Hamlin, playing himself in the part of Antony,
and to prep her for the scene, but she goes to Nick and pleads to
leave because she does not want to “throw up on Harry Hamlin.” He
forces her to carry on, with disastrous results. Jan is petrified and has
to read the lines off cribbed notes taped on her bracelet. The angry
director stops the action, but Nick literally pushes her back on the set.
This time she makes it to the bottom of the pillow- strewn bed, but
swoons dead away when Harry kisses her. Everyone is ready to throw
in the towel as Nick revives her, when she says, “Who’s the good look-
ing guy in the skirt?” and we know that Maxie is back in Jan’s body.
The transformation is rapid and complete. Maxie rips off the brace-
lets and necklace and asks for another take. No one seems interested.
She fastens the cloak at her shoulder, concealing the snake bra and
starts the scene again, with a deeper, sexier voice and so much feeling
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Glenn Close Channels Theda Bara in Maxie (1985) 187
that everyone on the set leaps back to action, including an obviously
smitten leading man. Jan has disappeared, along with all the body glit-
ter and the pile of pillows. This time there is real emotion and obvious
sexual chemistry as she does the same lines and more. The props and
gimmicks that were meant to recall earlier sexualized Cleopatras—
the bra, the bed, the glitter— weren’t even necessary: this Cleopatra
exudes all those things on her own. Those earlier film Cleopatras were
evoked only to show that a True Vamp does not need them.
As is clear from the brief dialogue, the writer did not bother to read
Plutarch or anyone else familiar with the actual story of Antony and
Cleopatra. Perhaps the writer intended to portray a very twentieth-
century American reception of the Egyptian Queen rather than attempt
an accurate representation of the historical figure, the very sort of story
that might have been made into a film in 1980s Hollywood. In fact, it
vaguely follows a scene from Cleopatra 1963 (near the end of the first
half of the film) when her political ambitions for an equal partner ignite
the sexual chemistry with Antony. In order to focus on the thematic
function of this scene for the film, however, I prefer to concentrate on
the sources of some of the images, costumes, and characterizations.
First of all, Close is wearing a bra with a snake motif. This is clearly
an homage to the famous snake bra worn by Bara in the 1917 Cleopa-tra film. There is a marked disconnect between the overt sexuality
and sensuality of the costume— with all the glitter on her skin— and
Jan’s timid awkwardness. She is outfitted with the one of the most
enduring icons of Cleopatra’s sensuality, but she is still just Jan, the
church secretary. As we shall see, it is an icon with a history that does
not stop here.
Most of the Cleopatra movies employ a costume that includes the
vulture headdress and uraeus, but this one seems very close to the one
worn by Claudette Colbert in Cleopatra (1934). Colbert’s costumes
were quite daring for her day. When the spirit of Maxie reappears
and suddenly becomes so self- confident and comfortable with her
sexuality and her authority, I suggest she is clearly reflecting Colbert’s
Cleopatra. She is so confident in her sensuality and desirability that
she sheds the ostentatious jewelry and covers the iconic snake bra
with her cape. The reaction of the costar and the crew in the film
mirrors Finney’s description of the impact of Marion’s nude scene in
the novel. “I don’t know that anyone has ever actually explained it
but there are an occasional few people born into the world who are
different from the rest of us. They are able to turn on something that
is real, invisible, and as actual in effect as electricity. And Marion was
doing it. Standing in the center of the party, she held it in her hand.”16
pal-cyrino-book.indb 187 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Gregory N. Daugherty188
The added element of political power, which emerges as a covered-
up Maxie repeats Jan’s lines, seems to me also to evoke the 1963
Lizpatra. I believe that Taylor was most effective as an actress in this
much- maligned film when she was wearing the simpler costumes and
not posing in fantasy tableaux. I am convinced that the Maxie scene
evokes this comparison by the position of Cleopatra and Antony on
the bed, inspired by the billboard ad from Lizpatra— the one that was
done before Rex Harrison’s lawyers had him inserted! In 1985 it was
still fashionable to make fun of these cinematic images. That comic
element could have been largely derived from the British spoof Carry on Cleo (1964), starring Amanda Barrie. The prominence of the bed
in both versions points to a deliberate choice. The striking shift from
the humiliation humor at Jan’s expense to the sexual tension and
manipulation in the second take is the best aspect of this entire film.
The story requires a demonstration of Maxie’s sensuality, and the
image of Cleopatra in a snake bra filled the bill. As I noted, Cleopa-
tra does not appear in the novel. There the audition scene required
Marion to be nude. She did it, but then she denounced the entire film
industry. Clearly that scene had to change: the film needed a happy
ending with no nudity. Central to the novel and alluded to in the film,
however, was the intense search for an actress to pull off the scene in
question. That was perhaps enough to remind the screenwriters of the
well- hyped search for a cinematic Cleopatra in the 1960s, and it would
perhaps have led them to the Taylor and Barrie camp Cleopatras and
the superbly sensual Colbert version. Since the Bara film had been lost
for about thirty years and silent films were not back in vogue, it might
Figure 13.1 “Maxie” (Glenn Close) wears Cleopatra’s snake bra in Maxie (1985),
as an uncredited Harry Hamlin watches. Orion Pictures.
pal-cyrino-book.indb 188 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Glenn Close Channels Theda Bara in Maxie (1985) 189
have come to the attention of the costume designers through the plot
points and through the uncredited use of Carol Lombard’s image from
The Campus Vamp (1928) to represent Maxie’s only screen time. Bara
was after all the quintessential Vamp, earning that title in A Fool There Was (1914). And as “Ukulele Ike” (Cliff Edwards) sang just a few
years later, “I know that . . . Cleopatra was a Vamp.”17 Having a mousy
character put on Cleopatra’s snake bra was a clever way to bridge the
comic and the sexual in a single episode.
While only a part of the costume, the bra has an intriguing history
of its own. When Bara donned her daring and precariously attached
snake bra for the 1917 silent Cleopatra, she was adding a new dimen-
sion to the reception of the Ptolemaic Queen as an alarming evocation
of the power and sexuality of the “New Woman.” Palmolive ads from
around the same year added a solid metal dimension to the depiction
of Cleopatra, and the image would soon be transferred to other feisty
women, including the character of Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi (1983), the singer- songwriter- performer Madonna, and more.
The history of this image parallels the evolution of feminine under-
garments themselves. The term brassiere originally meant an arm
protector and then a breastplate, which the Victorian corset closely
resembled. Sadly, the saga of Otto Titzling as sung by Bette Midler
is a modern fiction,18 but the actual accidental invention of the bras-
siere by Mary Phelps Jacob from two silk handkerchiefs in 1910 seems
almost as unlikely. By that time, the corset had been under attack from
the Rational Dress Society; so this timely invention, as well as the
need to conserve metal in World War I (corsets apparently consumed
enough to build two battleships), paved the way for the more reveal-
ing fashions of the Flapper Era.19
While there were no such representations in antiquity, Cleopatra
had been portrayed with bare breasts and snakes since at least the late-
fifteenth century. In Michelangelo’s famous sketch of Cleopatra (1534),
the snake is actually entwined around her breast. Other examples of
this representation, such as Guido Cagnacci’s powerful painting Death
of Cleopatra (1660), or Jean André Rixens’s languid depiction of La
Mort de Cléopâtre (1874), and even Gyula Benczur’s disturbing but
age- appropriate death scene in Cleopatra (1911), give a sense of the
range of sensual exploitations of this final chapter of her story. On the
other hand, as the contrasting modesty of Helen Gardner’s costume in
the 1912 silent Cleopatra attests, film had to be more circumspect.20
In pre- Code Hollywood, filmmakers were accustomed to pushing
the envelope, and the 1917 Cleopatra starring Bara was no exception.21
I have found no direct model in Western art for Bara’s costume in this
pal-cyrino-book.indb 189 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Gregory N. Daugherty190
film, but the Michelangelo drawing could well have been the inspira-
tion for the uncredited costume designer who worked on the film. The
surviving publicity stills and tableaux suggest a fervent imagination as
well as familiarity with classical art and the adhesive properties of spirit
gum. Maeder thinks the actress designed her own costume,22 but her
comment that in watching the rushes, she saw herself getting “Bara
and Bara,” would seem to indicate otherwise.23 The costumers went as
far as they could to underscore both her oriental “Otherness” and her
predatory sexuality, and it certainly worked: Cleopatra was now a Vamp.
Starting in 1911, Albert Lasker and Claude Hopkins were applying
their revolutionary theories of advertising to the daunting task of sell-
ing green, funny- smelling soap for the B. P. Johnson Co. They hit on
the idea of marketing this cleanser as a beauty product, and, since it
was a blend of palm and olive oils, basing their pitch on a fictive con-
nection to Egypt and Cleopatra. Since the ads appeared in women’s
magazines, nudity was out, but a subtle connection to the contempo-
rary hit movie was. Instead of a snake bra, we see metallic brassieres of
different shapes in the earliest ads, but most emphatically in the 1917
versions. They reinforce the Flapper connection with an oriental icon
of beauty, sexuality, and authority aimed directly at the same New
Woman who would flock to see the Bara film. The campaign con-
tinued in 1918 and for several years beyond. After that, an armored
Cleopatra branched out in advertising to drive Packards, drink Coke,
Schweppes, and Cleo Cola, and smoke Players, but usually with her
now trademark metallic cup bra, quite appropriate for the flat- chested
Flapper look. Betty Boop even appeared as Cleopatra with a coiled
metal bra. Even with the advent of the “bullet bra,” Cleopatra was still
invoked by Maidenform and others. By the 1960s, a metallic bikini
top, with or without snakes, had become associated with popular cul-
ture representation of Cleopatra, in spite of the complete absence of
any such ancient depiction and the serious doubts raised about the
role of snakes in her death.24
When Marilyn Monroe was vying, along with many others, for
the starring role in the Cleopatra movie in development in the early
1960s, she posed for Richard Avedon in a roomier version of the
Bara snakes. When the 1963 Lizpatra failed to live up to expectations
both box- office and critical (undoubtedly due to her failure to sport a
snake bra), Cleopatra and her metallic bras quickly became an object
of satirical treatment from Amanda Barrie in the 1960s to Jamie Farr
on the television show M*A*S*H in the 1980s.
There was very little interest in Cleopatra in the 1970s and early
1980s either in American popular culture or in scholarship. But the
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Glenn Close Channels Theda Bara in Maxie (1985) 191
period did see three manifestations of Bara’s influence: Princess Leia’s
slave costume in Return of the Jedi, Maxie’s audition clothes, and
Madonna’s torpedo bra worn during her Blond Ambition World Tour
(1990). With a Hellenistic snake armlet, the minimalist snakes slither-
ing over her top, and the slave chain resting on her skin, Carrie Fisher’s
daring bikini in the Return of the Jedi appears to have been modeled
on the Bara snake bra in order to mark rather emphatically the shift in
Carrie Fisher’s character from white- clad, virginal princess to an Ama-
zon warrior who can attract the male gazes of more than a Hut and
then kick butt with the best of them. Quite memorable were the ado-
lescent gasps at Leia’s first appearance, from both the cinema audience
and her costars. This image directly influenced the design of Close’s
costume for the audition scene in Maxie, which came out two years
later. As noted above, Maxie is the ghost of a 1926 flapper/actress
who possesses the character of Jan until she will agree to fulfill her
silver screen dreams. In the ensuing audition for a Cleopatra epic, Jan
is initially left to fend for herself wearing a snake- motif bra, until Maxie
finally appears with no need of a mere bra to exude her own power and
sexuality. It seems that Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi may have sent
the costumers of Maxie back to Theda Bara for the right “sign.”
The saga of the snake/metallic bra does not end with Maxie. While
there is no overt allusion to Cleopatra in Madonna’s Blond Ambi-
tion tour, she (and designer Jean Paul Gaultier) resurrected the bullet
bra as a metallic breastplate/assault weapon. This belongs to the tra-
dition of all those metallic bras strapped on generations of sexually
confident and politically powerful Cleopatras. The contemporary out-
rageous bra costumes of performers Katie Perry and Lady Gaga are
all logical extensions of Bara’s snakes. This trend appears also with
Cleopatras featured in several Xena: Warrior Princess television epi-
sodes and comics. Aaliyah’s bra from Queen of the Damned (2002)
deserves mention as the film was based on an Anne Rice novel. And
in that same year, actress Rie Rasmussen also wears a daring snake bra
in Brian De Palma’s Femme Fatale (2002): as a femme fatale herself,
Bara would have appreciated the homage. Artist Jim Silke spares us
from such subtlety when he turned a pin- up model, Bettie Page (who
as far as I can determine never posed as Cleopatra), into a comic book
action heroine in Bettie Page: Queen of the Nile.25 Bettie, who always
has trouble keeping her regular bra on, turns out to be a double for
one of the newly dark and deadly Cleopatras who manifests her dan-
gerous sexuality with a close replica of a Bara snake bra, without the
chain counterbalances. Cleopatras equipped with metallic bras con-
tinue to appear in comics, such as in the initial issues of Cursed where
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Gregory N. Daugherty192
Cleopatra lives on as Klara Peterson.26 Not surprisingly, the snake bra
appears in a few items of erotica. A rendering of Brittany Murphy by
Jeff Pitarelli (2007) is an adaptation, with even more attitude, of an
iconic Bara poster and her snake bra publicity shots.
Cleopatra has appeared in numerous recent films and television
series, most of which have few qualms about scenic nudity. There is
a gratifying homage to the tradition in the second season of HBO-
BBC’s Rome, when the talented Lyndsey Marshall portrays Cleopatra
in a Palmolive- worthy metallic bra.27 Among other Cleopatras, only
Sofia Essaidi from the 2010 French Spectacle Musical, Cleopatre: La derniere reine d’Egypt, appears armored, in more of a breastplate than
a bra. Note, however, that Anna Valle did sport a snake belt- buckle in
the miniseries Imperium: Augustus (2003). What the announced stars
of forthcoming Cleopatras (Catherine Zeta- Jones in a rock musical,
and Angelina Jolie in the Scott Rudin/Stacy Schiff vehicle) will wear
is beyond my kin, but in my prayers.
Many more metallic bras, breastplates, and images of snakes or
snake- like swirls adorn the torsos of dancers, actors, and models. Yet
I would maintain that before this motif took on a life of its own sepa-
rate from the Cleopatra narrative, it had its origin at a single point in
time when a sixteenth- century Michelangelo sketch inspired a silent
era film costume designer to create a bra for a daring actress playing a
powerful queen with a romantic story line, and in the process created
a “sign” for the New American Woman. That sign so resonated within
American popular culture that it could evolve into the metallic flapper
bra and be resurrected whenever a girl need a little Cleopatra to see
her through a tough stretch.
That is what makes the appearance of the metallic bra in Maxie so original in the long history of film Cleopatras. The premise of the
costuming and the opening of the scene is that to embody a power-
ful queen who can also attract an alpha male with her sensuality, one
needs all the headdresses, armlets, necklaces, glitter, and, most of all,
the snake- emblazoned bra associated with a stage or movie Cleopatra.
But a true Vamp or femme fatale can shed most of that and even cover
up completely, but still demonstrate to everyone in the room that
she is the one who deserves their complete attention. In the end, the
director, producer, lead actor Harry Hamlin, and even a young Leeza
Gibbons and Entertainment Tonight are convinced they have found an
authentic Cleopatra for their rather peculiar reception of the Egyptian
Queen. Maybe that is why the creators of Maxie revived her reception
in this period of criminal Cleopatra neglect as a statement that only the
spirit of an uninhibited flapper untainted by Hollywood’s decline from
pal-cyrino-book.indb 192 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Glenn Close Channels Theda Bara in Maxie (1985) 193
its silent purity could possibly capture the essence of a strong, politi-
cally astute, and sexually self- confident figment of their imagination.
Notes
1. Earlier versions of this chapter were presented as “Channeling a Vamp:
Glenn Close as Cleopatra in Maxie (1985)” at the Classical Associa-
tion of the Middle West and South/Southern Section meeting (Octo-
ber 29, 2010), and as “A Social History of the Snake Bra” at the Film
and History conference (November 13, 2010).
2. Wenzel (2005).
3. Finney (1973).
4. Films include Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), Body Snatchers (1993), and The Invasion (2007).
5. Time and Again (1970) and From Time to Time (1995).
6. See Daugherty (2009).
7. Royster (2003) 145– 69.
8. Original title: Sogni erotici di Cleopatra (1985); see IMDb.
9. In an episode entitled “The Actress” (1963), Patty auditions for a role
as Cleopatra in the school play.
10. See http:// www .judytenuta .com.
11. Wyke (2002) 279– 320 offers an excellent overview of Cleopatra in
film.
12. The surviving few seconds can be found on http:// www .youtube .com.
13. IMDb’s article on Maxie is the source for most of the information in
this paragraph.
14. Ebert (1985).
15. Scheib (1999– 2012).
16. Finney (1973) 151.
17. Quoted from the song, “Who Takes Care of the Caretaker’s Daughter
(While the Caretaker’s Busy Taking Care),” music and lyrics by Chick
Endor (1924).
18. Reyburn (1972).
19. The history of ladies’ undergarments contains much contradiction
and urban legend, but an entertaining overview is available at Walsh
(2007).
20. For some lovely drawings of this and other Cleopatra costumes, see
Claudon (1999).
21. See Wyke (2002) 266– 78; Royster (2003) 71– 82; and Wenzel (2005)
177– 95.
22. Maeder (1987) 46 and Wenzel (2005) 312, citing Zierold (1973) 51.
23. Golden (1996) 139.
24. See Roller (2010) 148– 49 for an authoritative discussion of this
episode.
pal-cyrino-book.indb 193 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Gregory N. Daugherty194
25. Jim Silke, Bettie Page: Queen of the Nile: “Episode 1: Buried Alive”
(1999), “Episode 2: Mad Love” (2000), and “Episode 3: She Devil”
(2000), Dark Horse Comics.
26. Fiona Kai Avery and Tippi Blevins, Cursed vol. 1.1– 4 (2003– 4), Image
Comics: Top Cow Productions.
27. Daugherty (2008).
pal-cyrino-book.indb 194 1/10/13 10:19 AM
4
C h a p t e r 1 4
Virility and Licentiousness in
R O M E ’s Mark Antony (2005– 7)
Rachael Kelly
From the moment of his suicide in Alexandria in August of 30 B.C.,
the culturally reimagined body of Marcus Antonius has been avail-
able, essentially without challenge, as a site for the interrogation and
negotiation of issues of masculinity and gender performativity. This
is a cultural function afforded to it first by virtue of the semantics of
Roman political propaganda and second because the ideological bent
of historiography is dictated by the outcome of struggle, and Anto-
nius lost.
On September 2, 31 B.C., the combined forces of Antonius and
Cleopatra were forced into a strategic naval retreat from the promon-
tory of Actium on the northwest coast of Greece. It was, essentially,
the culmination of a propaganda war that had raged for almost a
decade between Antonius and the future Augustus Caesar, as each
man attempted to consolidate his power base in a struggle for control
over the Roman world. Although events at Actium did not necessar-
ily spell defeat for the Antonian campaign, a series of defections over
the following months led inexorably toward a confrontation outside
Alexandria that Antonius’s forces could not hope to win, and Actium
is thus generally regarded by modern historians of the period as the
event that marks the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of
the Imperial era. It is certainly a key reference point in a pervasive and
persistent cultural narrative that reconfigures the defeat as the inevi-
table outcome of Antonius’s transgressive performance of masculinity.
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Rachael Kelly196
This chapter will seek to position Mark Antony, as he exists in
screen culture, as the product of centuries of sociocultural anxiety
about performing the male and to read his sexual availability in the
recent HBO- BBC television series Rome (2005– 7) in line with his
function as the embodiment of deficient masculinity that may be
negotiated, contained, and exorcised. Drawing on a range of theo-
retical perspectives, including recent work in masculinity studies and
feminist film theory, it attempts to situate the Antony- icon, as he is
recycled in twenty- first century texts, on a continuum of patriarchal
anxiety that is informed by shifting notions of idealized masculinity,
interrogating the screen text as a sociocultural artefact that reflects
prevailing hegemonic concerns about gender roles and performance,
whether consciously or unconsciously articulated. Finally, it will con-
sider the differential semantics of licentiousness and virility themselves,
and position both alongside the semantic meaning of fatherhood as a
signifier of masculine performance. First, however, I want to prob-
lematize the quasihistorical model of the deficient Antony on which
the screen narratives heavily rely.
Roman Political Invective
It would be inaccurate to situate the transformation of Marcus Anto-
nius (the historical figure) into Mark Antony (the popular- cultural
icon) as a direct result of the triumph of Augustus, although politi-
cal necessities in the early Principate undoubtedly contributed to the
revision process. While it is true that it was expedient for Augustus
to frame Antonius as deficient, it remains the case that Antonius/
Antony was an already available avatar onto which anxieties about
the nascent Principate and the termination of the Republic could be
readily transferred, negotiated, and exorcised, and this reading of the
body of Antonius as transgressive predates the Antonian/Augustan
propaganda war by around a decade through Cicero’s Philippics. To
understand the Antony- icon as a politico- cultural construct, there-
fore, it is necessary to understand the mechanics of Roman political
invective.
That the charges against Antonius remain relatively stable across
his political career may well indicate a proclivity toward bodily and
fiscal excess, but it is important to understand the centrality of gen-
dered mores of behaviour on Roman sociopolitical discourse before
accepting the Ciceronian or Augustan model unproblematically. The
conflation of the masculine with the public sphere— and its inverse,
the feminine with the private sphere— is critical in unpacking the key
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Virility and Licentiousness in Rome’s Mark Antony (2005– 7) 197
characteristics that have been used to define the Antony- icon in popu-
lar cultural representations. These are as follows:
• alcohol abuse
• licentiousness
• tearful despair
• consuming love
• feminized dress
• political inability
• the abandonment of Roman duty
• quasisociopathic behaviour
• the absence of his children from the narrative
• the infantilization of his character
• a narrative structure that allots equal run- time to both Caesar’s
and Antony’s affairs with Cleopatra
• Antony presented as a gift to Cleopatra
• the positioning of other male characters, often rivals to
Cleopatra’s affections, as the embodiment of appropriate
masculinity that is above reproach1
While the final six items may be considered modern revisions to the
Antony- icon, correlative to the standard tropology and expanding on
established mythology in a manner that contemporizes the figure for
the screen age, the first seven represent direct projections of Roman
gendered invective into twentieth and twenty- first narratives.2 These
reflect the rhetorical devices of incontinentia (lack of self- control) and
mollitia (feminized behaviour), widely employed within Roman ora-
tory but problematically mapped onto modern Western discourse. In
much the same way as contemporary pejoratives make heavy use of
metaphor that relies on cultural familiarity with the trope for it to
be comprehensible (the literal meaning of invective such as “limp-
wristed” or “brown nosing” bears no direct referent to its subject
matter or the implied accusation), so accusations of alcoholic or sex-
ual excess, decadence, and emotionality are marked within Roman
discourse as belonging to a defined and readily interpolated system
of allegory, but one that has not survived antiquity along with the
narratives it presents. In other words, when Cicero accuses Antonius
of being “a drink- sodden, sex- ridden wreck” (Philippic 2.3),3 it may
be that he refers to behaviour that is commonly known in Rome;
however, it may equally refer to a complex system of metaphor and
allegory, designed to position Antonius as unfit to rule, and under-
stood as such to his intended audience.
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Rachael Kelly198
Since Roman political invective operates in the gendered, public/
masculine, private/feminine dichotomy, it is unsurprising that ideo-
logically motivated attacks on Antonius as politician have sought to
conflate his persona with a deficient performance of masculinity—
such a charge is a tacit accusation that he is unfit to operate in the
public sphere. Mollitia and incontinentia operate by othering the
male, and they do so in a manner that is at the same time familiar
enough to modern discourse to allow us to believe that we under-
stand the mechanisms at work but operating within a rhetorical
framework that translates poorly from antiquity despite— or, rather,
more precisely because— it superficially accords with known behav-
iours. When Cicero accuses Caesar of scratching his head with one
finger and suggests that this is enough to ameliorate his threat to the
Roman Republic,4 the reference is sufficiently obscure that a modern
reader requires some form of explanation to render it comprehensible
as an expression of incontinentia, and thus we are able to align it
with rhetoric and treat it with caution in terms of historiographical
fact. Yet when Cicero accuses Antony of hosting regular orgies in his
home (Philippic 2.3) or being “always drunk” (Philippic 5.9), it is
possible to map these behaviours onto the modern body and there-
fore understand the accusations as literal. This does not discount the
possibility that they have some basis in historical fact, but it problema-
tizes this assumption. However, this semantic disconnect has been the
foundation of Antony’s mythology, and it has allowed the excessive
behaviour of Ciceronian invective to become possibly the defining
characteristic of the Antony- icon.
Virility vs. Licentiousness
There is clearly a difficulty inherent in positioning sexual excess as
a marker of deficient masculinity, given the considerable overlap
between virility (a word that shares an etymological root with virtue and which is derived from the Latin word vir, meaning “manliness”)
and licentiousness, which is negatively coded in terms of signifying
appropriate masculine performance. Moreover, the trope only gradu-
ally becomes prominent in Antony’s screen narratives, certainly as a
result of the constraints imposed on earlier texts in terms of the degree
of sexualized behaviour that could be portrayed onscreen under the
Hays Code. While reference is occasionally made to Antony’s sexual
appetites, this is generally oblique and his excess is much more fre-
quently depicted as manifesting itself through alcohol consumption
and/or extravagance.
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Virility and Licentiousness in Rome’s Mark Antony (2005– 7) 199
Twenty- first century texts, however, not only foreground licen-
tious behaviour but also mark a discursive break in their positioning of
Antony’s deficiencies. The film Cleopatra (1999) follows the tropology
of the feminized Antony, yet by Augustus (2002), Antony’s subhege-
monic performance is conceived of as stemming from a pathologized,
overdetermined hypermasculinity, suggesting a paradigm shift in the
boundaries of the hegemonic male. I have elsewhere attributed this shift
to the increasingly interrogative nature of masculinity studies over the
past several decades and its problematization of traditional ideals of mas-
culinity.5 What might once have been coded feminine/nonmasculine
(e.g., emotional expressivity) is lately afforded a degree of ambiguity:
in moderation, indeed, “manly emotion”6 is used to signify appropriate
masculinity, where emotional inexpressivity is used to define masculine
deficiency. This clearly further confuses the semantic division between
positive and nonpositive sexual behaviour— virility, an ephemeral con-
struct to begin with, is now subject to the same interrogative scrutiny
as any other conventional trope of idealized masculinity.
How, then, do we distinguish between positively and negatively
coded sexual behaviour? For the purposes of this study, I have defined
licentiousness as excessive sexual desire that is not reciprocated by its
object, to include both nonconsensual sexual intercourse and com-
mercial transactions with prostitutes. The desire is coded as excessive
under a similar discursive structure to that which informs incontinen-tia: it is entirely of the body, and it is of a body that is not subject to
self- governance. In Freudian terms, it is id- driven, without the con-
straints of the ego or super- ego. The virile body, on the other hand,
according to Kelly Oliver, “becomes a representative of control and
power. It is an antibody insofar as its virility defies the uncontrollable
passions and flows of the body. It is the body that represents the over-
coming of boy. The virile body is the symbol of manliness; manliness
is associated with culture; culture is associated with overcoming the
body.”7 As I will show, the chaotic exhibition of sexual desire exhib-
ited by Rome’s Mark Antony very neatly bounds this definition of the
nonvirile.
Bounding the Hegemonic Male
While the boundaries of hegemonic masculinity may be fluid and sub-
ject to sociohistorical pressures, its central tropology remains remark-
ably stable. Regardless of the varying weight given to distinct signifiers
according to the historical and cultural moment, the components of
the masculine ideal continue to conform, broadly, to the warrior- hero
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Rachael Kelly200
archetype. Brett Carroll describes it as follows: “The hero projects
strength, virility, control, power and dominance . . . It has historically
been used to create social and cultural norms of manhood, defined
by characteristics of race (white), class (wealthy), and physical stature
(grand). All of these traits exist in art as ideals of the form to which
men of all backgrounds should aspire.”8 The key word is “aspire”: this
is a model of masculinity that is generally not achievable in any prac-
ticable sense. Furthermore, it is not necessarily an ideal of masculinity
to which all men will aspire: poststructuralist work on the nature of
masculinity has exploded the myth of masculinity as a single, coherent,
stable entity in favor of a spectrum of available subject positions that
allow for race, sexual orientation, or differential readings of the ideal.
It is, however, the very nature of hegemony to elide the plural and
assume the singular; to appear, as Mike Donaldson says, “ ‘natural,’
‘ordinary,’ ‘normal’.”9 The permanence of the warrior- hero archetype
is partly due to its ability, through its ubiquity, to appear invisible.
It should be noted that Carroll’s “social and cultural norms of
manhood” include physical and social characteristics that Antony
shares with the hegemonic male: “race (white), class (wealthy), and
physical stature (grand).” This does not serve to negate his deficien-
cies, however, but instead underlines them. The Antony- icon is not
designed to be explicitly rejected, but rather to be a source of unset-
tling identification: were he completely Other, his body could not
be appropriated for the negotiation of anxieties that trouble Us. The
nature of the hegemonic is that it is denied to Them; therefore, in
order for Antony to embody the deficient, it must be at least within
the boundaries of possibility that the hegemonic is available to him
yet precluded by his failure to perform masculinity to the required
standard. If we take Bruce R. Smith’s continuum of identification
as our guide, we are required to see the process of identification/
disidentification as a question of perspective: “To understand mascu-
linity in terms of others, we need to consider two distinct situations:
one in which masculinity is defined vis- à- vis various opposites and one
in which masculinity is experienced as a kind of merging or fusion of
self with others. We need to understand, not just the ‘not me,’ but
the ‘partly me’ and the ‘other mine.’ ”10 Antony may best be described
as a kind of troubling ‘partly me’— attractive, enjoyable (as demon-
strated, at least in part, by his central role in most narratives in which
he features, and the fact that he is almost without exception played by
the male box- office star of the text)— but critically, seriously flawed.
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Virility and Licentiousness in Rome’s Mark Antony (2005– 7) 201
Licentiousness and Fatherhood
Screen fatherhood is a contested, contentious site for the negotiation
of masculine performance and, as such, is available to a wide range of
semantic interpretation. There are, therefore, multiple available read-
ings of the performance of fatherhood within Rome. It is possible, for
example, to align it with the performance of political power, so that
failed fatherhood becomes symbolic of corruption within the public
sphere, and this is unquestionably a reading that applies to Antony
within the second season of the series. However, my primary con-
cern here is the implication of a discourse of fatherhood on reading
Antony’s excessive sexual behaviour within the text and using this to
trace, interrogate, and analyze a paradigm shift in the rhetoric of viril-
ity versus licentiousness.
“Possibly the quintessential virile subject is the figure of the patriar-
chal father,” according to Oliver. “He has proven his virility through
his paternity and he takes on the control of himself and his family.”11
She continues, “It is the power associated with traditional paternal
authority that makes the father’s body and his phallus/penis repre-
sent power and authority . . . Paradoxically, the ultimate virility of
this masculine power is the sublimation of aggressive sex drives into
productive and reproductive social economy. Aggressive instincts turn
inward to aggress the self; this becomes self- control.”12
The man who does not sublimate his sexuality into the virility of
the father, therefore, is a man who has not learned to contain the
urges of the body; he is, by definition, not a man in the adult, socio-
cultural sense.
Historically, Marcus Antonius had at least eight children— one by
his first wife Antonia, three by Cleopatra, two by Octavia, and another
two by Fulvia. However, before the production of Augustus (2002),
they were conspicuous by their screen absence. Antony is childless
in De Mille’s Cleopatra (1934), Serpent of the Nile (1953), Mankie-
wicz’s Cleopatra (1963), and Roddam’s Cleopatra (1999). Augustus (2002) is confused in its rendering, apparently suggesting that Iullus
Antonius, the only child of Antony depicted onscreen, is the son of
Antony and Cleopatra (he was in fact his second son by Fulvia); how-
ever, after this inauspicious start, the HBO- BBC series Rome finds
him three times a father, with two of his children by Cleopatra and
one by Octavia shown onscreen (although the narrative suggests that
it is equally likely that paternity of Octavia’s child belongs to Marcus
Agrippa). Given the close semantic connections between concepts of
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Rachael Kelly202
fatherhood and virility, the significance of Antony’s children— or their
absence— to his narrative cannot be ignored.
The omission of Antony’s children from the earlier narratives is
somewhat easier to unpack: it poses a clear challenge to his masculin-
ity, by challenging his sexual potency— not least in those narratives
that oppose his apparent childlessness with the regular (although
not ubiquitous) appearance of Caesarion, Cleopatra’s son by Caesar.
Consider, for example, Cleopatra (1963): discussing Brutus, Cleopa-
tra muses, “You’ve spared his life more than once. People say it is
because Brutus is your son.” Caesar replies, “I have no son,” but the
scene unequivocally situates responsibility for his lack of heirs with
his wife, Calpurnia. Cleopatra then discusses her own fertility: “I am
the Nile. I will bear many sons . . . My breasts are filled with love and
life. My hips are rounded and well apart. Such women, they say, have
sons,” and, true to her word, two scenes later she is carrying Caesar’s
child. Not only has Caesar demonstrated his own potency, by displac-
ing his childlessness onto his wife and by impregnating his fecund
mistress, but, by implication, Cleopatra’s own fertility is evidenced in
the production of a son— provided her partner is similarly fertile. Yet
Antony’s potency is simply never discussed. There is no equivalent
discussion of his own progeny (which are omitted from the film), and
Cleopatra, who was destined to “bear many sons,” conceives no fur-
ther children with Antony. Fertility has been mobilized as a signifier
of equivalent performances of masculinity.
Oliver’s concept of the virile antibody notwithstanding for the
moment, virility, in overly simplistic terms, implies healthy reproduc-
tion, while licentiousness implies pathological behaviour. Sexual excess
that does not lead to reproduction, by this token, is wasted energy,
and a man that indulges in sexual behaviour to excess and does not
father a single child is emasculated in principle.
However, while this is certainly a major factor in accounting for
Antony’s childlessness, it does not address the question of why his
sexual excess is allowed to recuperate the progenerative discourse
in the twenty- first century, particularly given the fact that his sexual
excess is more foregrounded in these texts. To understand the shift
from nonprogenerative to progenerative licentiousness, it is necessary
to look more closely at the semiological positioning of screen father-
hood in general.
There are a number of angles from which we can approach an expla-
nation, both for the absence and the presence of Antony’s children,
which are, paradoxical as it may seem, both aspects of the same marker
of deficiency. At the simplest level, the omission of Antony’s children
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Virility and Licentiousness in Rome’s Mark Antony (2005– 7) 203
from the narrative is in part a dictate of the expediency demanded by the
standard two- act structure adopted by most of these texts, which appor-
tions equal or greater run- time to the Caesar/Cleopatra affair (which
lasted 4 years) and the Antony/Cleopatra affair (which lasted 11).
No great mathematical skill is required to determine that an equal
division of narrative space to two grossly unequal periods of time will
necessarily privilege Caesar’s position and prejudice Antony’s. Even
Rome, which foregrounds neither affair and focuses instead on the
major Roman players, can be roughly divided into Caesar (Season 1)
and Antony (Season 2), although admittedly this employs a differ-
ent logic in the subdivision. In fact, Season 2 of Rome, which covers
the years 44 to 30 B.C., expands the years 44 to 41 B.C. over eight
episodes, which leaves Antony and Cleopatra’s 11- year affair only the
final two episodes to play out.13
The meaning and connotative implication of the word father has
been subject to significant interrogation and negotiation as masculine
sociology has sought to reposition the male within a contested gen-
der framework. Antony’s changing status as father (or not- father),
therefore, comes invested with a huge semiological significance.
Furthermore, since the ability to draw connotative meaning from
Antony’s childlessness is entirely dependent on audience familiar-
ity with his historical status as father— and particularly his superior
progenerative capacity vis- à- vis Caesar— this discourse of Antony as
not- father remains, for the most part, entirely covert.
I have argued that excessive desire is bound up with a discourse of
loss- of- masculinity, through the projection of the Roman concept of
incontinentia. By examining Aristotelian theories of reason and posi-
tioning them alongside the associated “paradox of love,” Oliver shows
that society— culture, the mark of the masculine body— is essentially
divorced from the biological sexual urge. “The identification of sex
and nature leads to the philosophical notion of Eros as disembodied
reason rather than embodied passion,” she says. “Eros is opposed to
sex just as mind is opposed to body.”14 It is this idea of the separa-
tion of reason and passion, the disembodied Eros, that informs the
construct of the patriarchal father: “Even when he is present in the
lives of his children, the father is present as an abstraction; his body is
merely the representative of abstract authority or law. The association
between father and culture, and the opposition between nature and
culture or body and mind, disembodies the father. His body must be
evacuated to maintain images of his association with culture against
nature. From Plato to Arnold Schwarzenegger, paternal Eros has been
figured as virility.”15
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Rachael Kelly204
Oliver specifically situates the construct of the father as an abstraction
outside of the body and, by extension, outside of sexual desire. Sexual
desire is necessary, of course, for procreation; however, that desire, in
configuring the father, is situated outside of virility, which exists con-
current with, but evacuated of, bodily urges. By associating virility and
fatherhood in this way, I would argue that Antony’s status as nonfather
is made nonmasculine through both his implied lack of sexual potency
and by the fact that the sexual behaviour that flags his lack of potency
is excessive. Both markers serve to reinforce and legitimate each other,
and thus the omission of Antony’s children from the narrative funda-
mentally underscores his deficient performance of masculinity.
Counterintuitive as it may seem, however, this dynamic also feeds
into the mechanism by which Antony- as- father is positioned as defi-
cient. I have already argued that licentiousness is differentiated from
virility through a discourse of containability— where the expression of
sexual desire is entirely of the body, it is broadly pathologized; where
it is subject to rational, cultural control, it may be termed virile. Rome, being deliberately provocative and boundary- pushing, abounds with
instances of sexuality as marker of gender performance: Octavian’s
sadomasochism, Pullo’s habitual use of prostitutes, Vorenus’s awkward
attempts at lovemaking with his wife Niobe before his recuperative arc
begins. However— and this is critical— very little of the copious sexual
congress within either season is reproductive: in total, four children
are born within the 22 year period covered by the two series (52 to
30 B.C.), and three of these children are either explicitly or potentially
Antony’s. The other child is Caesarion. The use of sex- as- spectacle in
the series is complex and fascinating, interrogating modern notions of
sexuality and nudity by mapping them onto the bodies of the Roman
players in order to illustrate the disconnect between Then and Now
in a manner that evokes Catharine Edwards assertion, “To examine
sexual attitudes in the ancient world with the intention of determin-
ing whether ‘they’ were more liberated than ‘us,’ is to neglect the fact
that ‘their’ preoccupations were quite different from ‘ours.’ ”16 This is,
however, outside the scope of this study. For the purposes of the present
discussion it should be noted that where frequent sexual congress leads
only infrequently to reproduction, we must acknowledge that the pro-
duction of children, where it occurs, fulfils a specific narrative function.
Stephanie Shields points to an emerging discourse of fatherhood
that may suggest a rationale behind the sudden emergence of Anto-
ny’s children into his screen narrative. She defines the model of the
“New Father” as an idealized paradigm of paternal performativity:
“The new nurturant father, today a fixture of the lifestyle section of
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Virility and Licentiousness in Rome’s Mark Antony (2005– 7) 205
the newspaper and films and TV, is portrayed as offering emotional
support to mom so that she can be a happier and more effective care-
giver, but also and more importantly, he interacts directly with the
children in caregiving and in play and emotional support.”17
With this in mind, it is useful to contrast two possible models of
fatherhood on display in Rome: Antony’s, carrying with it a discourse
of masculine deficiency, and Vorenus’s, with its discourse of hege-
monic masculinity, albeit qualified. Vorenus is identified in large part
by his construction as father and his desire to perform the idealized
family man; indeed, considerable screen time in the first season is
devoted to his efforts to rise above his limitations and to learn how
to meet not only the fiscal but specifically the emotional needs of
his wife and children. His primary motivational concern is repeatedly
articulated as the welfare of his family. After Niobe’s death, this con-
cern is transmuted to a purely paternal anxiety, initially configured as
his retributive murder of Erastes Fulmen, and later his rescue of his
children from slavery and his efforts to rehabilitate them into norma-
tive family life.
It should be noted that, under the model of the New Father, father-hood, as a signifier of virility, is held in higher esteem than physical fact
of fathering a child. It is notable, therefore, that Vorenus, once his
character arc has situated him more reliably along the paradigm, is
driven to defend not only his own children but the illegitimate son of
his dead wife, and also the child Caesarion, whose defense costs Vore-
nus his life. Moreover, this is the theme that unites the progenerative
and nonprogenerative Antonies: for it is through his performance of
fatherhood that the progenerative Antony manifests his lack of virility.
Consider the construction of Antony’s paternity: his fertility is
well attested within the second series, fathering Cleopatra’s twins and
(potentially) Octavia’s daughter and acting as a presumptive stepfa-
ther to Octavian and Octavia throughout the first and for part of the
second season. However, each paternal or quasipaternal relationship is
intensely problematic. In terms of Atia’s children, Antony’s ahistorical
status as her lover introduces a quasi- Oedipal structure to his political
dispute with Octavian in the second season, which culminates in a bru-
tal fight between the adult Antony and the young Octavian (still played
at this point by a teenage Max Pirkis). What begins as an argument
between Antony and Octavian very quickly descends into a vicious
assault by Antony, which, but for the intervention of Atia and Octavia,
would certainly have resulted in Octavian’s death. As Octavian lies,
wounded and barely able to move, Atia drags Antony out of the room
while he screams, “You’re lucky you’re breathing!” (Episode 2.2).
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Rachael Kelly206
Likewise, although it is manifest that Octavia does not consider Ant-
ony a father figure (nor does Antony exhibit any paternal affection
for Octavia), their wedding night scene cannot help but encourage a
discourse of inappropriate sexual desire, as Antony apparently cannot
resist the urge to have sex with his lover’s daughter (Episode 2.7).
However, it is with regards to his biological children that the
discourse of Antony as Inappropriate Father is most apparent. His
abandonment of Octavia’s daughter recalls the rhetoric of the “dead-
beat dad” who assumes neither financial nor emotional investment in
his child’s life. Octavia is pregnant when Antony leaves Rome, and
the implication in the text is that he never meets his daughter, who
is shown onscreen in the final episode as a child of four or five years
at the time of her father’s death. Likewise, his twins by Cleopatra are
shown onscreen as small children, barely more than toddlers. They
enter Antony and Cleopatra’s private quarters shortly after Antony
has thrown himself face first onto a day bed in the middle of the room,
complaining of tiredness. While Cleopatra fusses indulgently over the
children, Antony acknowledges their presence with an irritable sigh
and does not lift his head to look at them.
The appearance of the twins serves no narrative purpose besides
establishing their existence, and they are not seen again onscreen
until Antony is dead and Cleopatra has decided to send them out of
Alexandria for their safety. As such, we must conclude that they are
introduced to the scene purely to allow Cleopatra to identify Antony
as their father and for him to exhibit no interest in them. He is the
Figure 14.1 Antony (James Purefoy) ignores his twin children by Cleopatra
(Lyndsey Marshal) in Rome (2007). HBO- BBC.
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Virility and Licentiousness in Rome’s Mark Antony (2005– 7) 207
manifestation of what Ralph LaRossa calls “the functionally absent
father”:18 one who is physically present in the family home, but openly
disengaged from his children.
Recall that Oliver argues “the quintessential virile subject is the fig-
ure of the patriarchal father,” who “has proven his virility through his
paternity and . . . takes on the control of himself and his family.”19 It is
no longer enough to signify virility simply as the fathering of children
in the abstract sense; virility, under the new paradigm, is configured as
responsible fatherhood. It is therefore entirely unsurprising that Ant-
ony’s excess should now manifest itself in the production of children
in whom he has no interest. It is, as I argue above, complementary to
the original paradigm in which Antony’s sexual drive was excessive but
nonprocreational; where his lack of virility was previously signified by
the failure of his sexual excess to produce the hegemonic nuclear fam-
ily,20 it is now signified by his failure to assume his position as father
to the family he produces. Indicative of changing norms of behaviour
and the decreased emphasis on male fertility as signifier of masculinity,
it is the logical consequence of Shields’s paradigm of the New Father
as “a public symbol of caregiving as reflecting a progressive set of
values” that Antony’s licentious behaviour must now be configured
as progenerative in order to perpetuate his deficient performance of
masculinity through his deficient performance of virility.
Conclusion: The Male Body
and the Male Gaze
I have attempted to position the discourse of licentiousness as signi-
fier of deficient masculinity along a continuum of anxiety surround-
ing masculine performance and to suggest that Antony’s exhibition
of sexual desire in his screen narratives marks him as nonhegemonic,
thereby continuing a tradition of embodying him with containable
and exorcisable patriarchal anxiety. I want to conclude by discussing
the configuration of his sexual availability in terms of Mulvey’s notion
of the male gaze.
Part of the genre tropology of the historical epic is the display of
the male body, and much scholarly work has focused on interrogat-
ing the methods by which the implied homoeroticism of masculine
display is negotiated and elided for a presumed male audience. Wil-
liam Fitzgerald, for example, discusses the “unquiet pleasure” of the
male gaze and argues, “the male look at the male body must be moti-
vated in such a way that its erotic component is repressed, hence the
sadism and violence connected with many of the scenes in which the
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Rachael Kelly208
male body is displayed.”21 It is notable that neither of Fitzgerald’s
suggested mechanisms for diffusing the homoerotic in the historical
epic— displaying the male body engaged in action, most usually vio-
lent action, or causing it to suffer— is applied to the regular display of
Antony’s body. Indeed, Rome presents him explicitly and unreserv-
edly to the gaze: in addition to repeatedly depicting Antony naked
and engaged in coitus, a sequence early in Season 1 (Episode 1.4) has
Antony stand, fully naked, for consumption both by the nondiegetic
audience and by Vorenus, who is obliged to witness his naked body
with evident discomfort.
Recent discussions around female awareness of sexual objectifica-
tion and a presumed mitigation of the power of the gaze may seem
to bear little relevance to a specifically male display. However, this is
a discursive theme that is repeatedly evidenced within Rome, which
makes heavy use of the body as spectacle. Most frequently, it is the
female body on display, and female full- frontal nudity abounds, gener-
ally accompanied by a putative discourse of sexual- availability- as- power
that the narrative nevertheless covertly undermines: for example,
Cleopatra’s sexualized political maneuvering in Episode 1.8, which is
invested with a rhetoric of betrayal/duplicity through the audience’s
privileged knowledge of her prior liaison with Pullo and the probable
paternity of any child she attributes to Caesar. When male full- frontal
nudity is featured, then, it cannot help but reference this long- standing
notion of the gaze, and, indeed, it is generally accompanied by notions
of powerlessness and objectification; note, for example, the naked slave
that Atia sends as a gift to Servilia (Episode 1.6).
Where Antony clearly believes that the power rests with him in
his full- frontal nudity, he is referencing a recent debate within femi-
nist media theory that examines the widespread cultural awareness of
notions of female objectivity and reasons that by knowingly manipu-
lating their own objectification, the female object of the gaze inverts
the power dynamic and controls the gaze herself. Scholars such as
Rosalind Gill and Angela McRobbie have disputed this notion, argu-
ing that this is in fact a covert way of forcing the object of the gaze
to actively collude with their objectification.22 It is possible to extend
this analysis to Antony’s full- frontal display in Rome: by giving him no
mechanism by which to disavow the homoeroticism manifest in his
nakedness, he is given no opportunity to reclaim the gaze. This is, of
course, only one way of reading this sequence; however, I would argue
that by investing him in the implicitly female position as object, his
masculinity is fundamentally elided, and, as not- masculine, his bodily
display cannot be read as virile. It is simply another manifestation of
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Virility and Licentiousness in Rome’s Mark Antony (2005– 7) 209
bodily excess as licentiousness, and licentiousness as deficient mas-
culine performativity. In the twenty- first- century screen text, Antony
as never before validates Cicero’s description of him as a “sex- ridden
wreck” (Philippic 2.3).
Notes
1. Kelly (2009) 4.
2. Kelly (2009) 4.
3. Translations of Cicero are from Grant (1971).
4. Cited in Edwards (1993) 81.
5. Kelly (2009).
6. Shields (2002) 126.
7. Oliver (1997) 128.
8. Carroll (2003) 33.
9. Donaldson (1993) 645.
10. Smith (2000) 104.
11. Oliver (1997) 162.
12. Oliver (1997) 168.
13. This was less an active narrative decision, however, than the result of
the decision by HBO to cancel the series while Bruno Heller, one of
the show’s creators, was “halfway through writing the second season.”
Heller states that his original intent was to end Season 2 with the death
of Brutus and set Seasons 3 and 4 in Egypt, which, assuming Season 4
was to end with Antony’s death, would have made it the first of these
texts to actively correct the two- act structural paradigm: see Hibberd
(2008).
14. Oliver (1997) 4.
15. Oliver (1997) 5.
16. Edwards (1993) 66
17. Shields (2002) 131.
18. LaRossa (1997) 133.
19. Oliver (1997) 162.
20. For a discussion of the critical importance of paternity in signifying
hegemonic adult masculinity in the postwar period (which informs
Cleopatra, 1963), see Tyler May (1997).
21. Fitzgerald (2001) 37.
22. See Gill (2007) and McRobbie (2009).
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4
C h a p t e r 1 5
Love, Rebellion, and Cleavage
Boadicea’s Hammered Breastpl ate
in The Viking Queen (1967)
Alison Futrell
Hammer Studios, perhaps best known for its wildly successful, low-
budget horror movies of the 1950s and 1960s, released a number of
revisionist presentations of the past, including She (1965), One Mil-lion Years B.C. (1967), and Prehistoric Women (1967). These alter-
native histories were visions of female domination: titillating, but
not directly threatening, located as they were in a distant past or a
“forgotten” corner of the earth. The female leadership featured in
these productions was also flawed in certain key ways, be it by fatal
misunderstanding of authority, transgression of human limitations, or
the pursuit of “forbidden” pleasures, “forbidden” power. The Viking
Queen (1967) follows in this tradition, drawing on the Romano-
British past to reshape events of the Boudiccan Revolt of A.D. 61.
In this retelling, however, male structures of power are problema-
tized; the rebel queen is a model of duty and moral insight, guided
by selfless love for her people and her family and deferring romantic
happiness. Even so, the strength of her family ties and her sense of
community responsibility, features traditionally gendered as female,
inevitably doom the queen to death and (cinematic) historical failure.
The Viking Queen fits into the pattern of representation frequently
followed by the “barbarian queen” archetype, in which prominent
female opponents of empire, familiar from the Roman historical tradi-
tion, are reworked in subsequent cultural practices to accommodate
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Alison Futrell212
contemporary normatives of gender and power. Characterized as
“Vamps” by the twentieth century, these evil exotic queens routinely
deployed their feminine wiles to sinister purpose, seducing agents
of civilization into lives of dissipation but ultimately meeting a well-
deserved doom. Boudicca, however, represents something of a special
case within the “barbarian queen” group because of her centrality
in British discourses of nation and empire. The more typical hos-
tile depiction that downplays political competence and emphasizes
gendered flaws is complicated by the effort to reconcile Boudicca’s
authority as an essential Briton with her likewise essential cultural and
gendered differences.
Boudicca’s Revolt
In A.D. 61, a major rebellion rocked one of Rome’s more distant
provinces.1 In the generation following formal conquest, Britannia
had experienced the changes that typically accompanied absorption by
Rome.2 Tribute demands had been an unwelcome fact of imperial life,
and financial stress was ratcheted up further by loans from imperial
lenders to pay for lifestyle adjustments to conform to Roman expecta-
tions. Local disarmament and a permanent Roman military presence
likewise jolted the warrior elites of British society, even among the
peripheral client kingdoms that retained their nominal autonomy. A
financial panic in Rome in A.D. 59 sent shock waves through the Brit-
ish economy, as lenders started to call in provincial loans. In A.D. 60,
Britannia’s governor launched an attack on the island of Mona, a
center for druidic priests active through much of the imperial West.
In the wake of these tensions, the death of Prasutagus, king of the
Iceni tribe, opened new uncertainty: Prasutagus was survived only by
his widow, Boudicca, and two daughters, lacking an adult son with
whom the Roman administration could comfortably negotiate. The
king’s will designated that his property should be shared between
the emperor, Nero, and the royal daughters. The imperial procura-
tor, however, took this opportunity to absorb Iceni territory into the
Roman province, a viable option by Roman terms; indeed, he took
it a step further: all property was to be assessed by Rome.3 Meeting
with resistance, Roman administrators secured their objectives bru-
tally, beating the royal widow and raping Prasutagus’s daughters as
they looted the possessions of Iceni nobles.
The revolt thus catalyzed is in line with other native revolts
described by Tacitus, in which the root problem is corruption in the
Roman center, undermining basic social and political structures and
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Love, Rebellion, and Cleavage 213
warping moral standards. The narratives typically feature a charis-
matic leader rising to the fore, here Boudicca, queen of the Iceni,
who like her Tacitean parallels gives stirring speeches that highlight
British adherence to essential virtues, to freedom, in stark contrast to
Roman imperial corruption.4 Tacitus crafts these set pieces as lessons
about morality and power for a Roman readership, lessons coming
from the “barbarian” periphery but meant “to reach all the nations.”5
Boudicca’s message likewise reaches beyond the Iceni, as the revolt
spreads to sweep up tens of thousands of resentful Britons, outraged
at Roman greed and abuse.
Initially the rebels enjoy some alarming success: three Roman cen-
ters are looted and as many as seventy thousand Roman settlers and
colonists are killed. In the Tacitean narrative the “noble” barbarians
soon revert to type; skittering wildly over the countryside, they take
savage vengeance on Roman victims. This is in contrast to the imperial
legions, who return from Mona with newfound self- control. The gov-
ernor recovers his Roman voice, stirring the legions with reminders
of manly Roman discipline, and then leads them to victory over the
British rebels. Boudicca, the voice of ancient virtue, dies.
Building Boadicea
The memory of Boudicca, or (as she was later known) Boadicea,6 was
resurrected on the British archipelago in the early modern period, in
the wake of Renaissance recoveries of classical tradition. This coin-
cided with efforts to create a specifically “British” political identity that
reflected the unification and ambition of the island empire.7 Building
on a perceived shared past, writers and artists crafted new narratives of
the pre- and post- Roman period, inhabited by core ancestors whose
innate love of freedom burned in their ancient patriot hearts, firing
their resistance to foreign overlords. At the same time, there were
tensions inherent in this creation of nation: Boadicea and her cohort
of freedom fighters were not resisting ordinary invaders but Romans,
primary carriers of civilization in Europe and quintessential Imperi-
alists, a troubling stance to memorialize at a time of British impe-
rial aspiration. Boadicea is thus problematic: a hero of the imagined
nation, but also an ignorant savage and a bloody- minded, ruthless
woman. Nevertheless, she becomes part of the canon of founding
heroes that includes Caratacus, Calgacus, and Julius Caesar.
Literary and theatrical reworkings of the rebellion focus on gender
as a crucial dynamic. British treatments of Boadicea as early as Raphael
Holinshed (Chronicles of England, 1577) downplay her political
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Alison Futrell214
authority and present the rebellion as a solely female “domestic”
affair, its aftermath allowing the alliance of Roman and British states-
men. In the Jacobean period, her sex undermines her military control;
in John Fletcher’s play Bonduca (1609), she is shortsighted and reck-
less, unable to restrain her savage subordinates, unable to compete
against Roman legionary discipline. Caratach, Bonduca’s cousin and
general, links femininity and failure when he articulates his regret that
the “divell”- driven woman ever left her home and spinning wheel.8
Male Britons, like Caratach (an invented character), assume the char-
ismatic leadership highlighted in Tacitus, leaving to the queen the
wildness that resists the Roman yoke, along with the femininity that
requires domestication. Fletcher’s play enjoyed generations of revival
and other artists adopted his habits of segmentation to deal with the
tensions inherent in this founding mother.
A patterned iconography develops around these national origins.9
Specific attributes of Boadicea become signifiers, including scythed
chariot wheels added to her conveyance; in Francis Heyman’s illustra-
tion for a 1757 Complete History of England, Boadicea has a driver for
her scythed chariot, leaving her free for rhetorical gesticulation toward
the mistletoe- bearing druids that accompany her. As a 1908 mascot
for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, Boadicea is
purely emblematic, depicted on a parade banner as a disembodied
scythed chariot wheel framed by swords and sprigs of mistletoe.10
Boadicea’s breastplate originated seemingly in Romantic- era bare-
breasted depictions of the barbarian queen, as she appears in Henry
Courtney Selous’s winning entry for the 1843 design competition
for the new House of Parliament.11 By the early twentieth century,
Boadicea’s association with national origins had created a leakage
with “Britannia” and similar warrior maiden personifications, whose
breastplates molded on the female form likewise drew on operatic
costuming traditions. Village pageants regularly featured Boadicea,
sporting decorative, bejeweled, feminized cuirasses. By the late-
twentieth century, the breastplate was iconic for Boadicea, a favored
mascot of special beer production runs as well as the frenemy of Xena: Warrior Princess.12
Hammer History
In the mid- 1960s, Hammer Studios, the “studio built on blood,”
was looking for new directions to secure continued success for the
Hammer brand. Since the mid- 1950s, Hammer had enjoyed astonish-
ing returns at the box office, due to their resuscitation of the gothic
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Love, Rebellion, and Cleavage 215
horror film with The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula
(1958). Hammer also strained the sensibilities of the British Board
of Film Censorship (BBFC) with their “graphic” (for contempo-
rary standards) depiction of blood and sexuality.13 The productions
were scorned by critics as “degrading,” “repulsive,” a “nauseating”
trend that would “debase” the medium itself, but a primarily youth-
ful demographic adored them.14 Hammer movies, like other B- grade
films, played into the “camp” sensibility of its teenage audience, which
could find pleasure in the chills- ’n- thrills and the high breast quotient
but at the same time recognize high hilarity value in the exaggeration
of these especially visual features.15 The Hammer corpus was treasured
by fans because of the notoriously fake gore, because of the bosomy
actresses draped around Christopher Lee, and because of all those
penetrating wooden stakes. The films were also, to a certain extent,
subversive, reflecting the growing societal fracture of the times: Ham-
mer horror films did not feature happy endings with hero and damsel
vanquishing the monster.16
Building on this success, Hammer expanded beyond the realm of
horror to give a distinctive touch to the cinematic past. The British
Empire became luridly gothicized, focusing on India’s Thuggee cult
in The Stranglers of Bombay (1960) and nineteenth- century Hong
Kong in Terror of the Tongs (1961). So too a more distant imagined
past: the studio produced a number of films featuring female- centered
narratives built around the “Vamp” paradigm of ancient female lead-
ership, well established by earlier patterns of cultural production.17
She, based on the H. Rider Haggard novel, both seduced and horri-
fied the audience with the regime of She Who Must Be Obeyed. The
beautiful blonde Queen Ayesha, played by Ursula Andress, transcends
mortality, ruling through the centuries in African isolation by depend-
ing on an endless stream of male subjects/slaves whose sacrificial
deaths enable the queen’s evasion of natural law. A startling success
for Hammer studios was their remake of One Million Years B.C., with
its breakout bestselling poster featuring Raquel Welch. The film tells
of tension- filled efforts by inarticulate early humans to reach a sort of
détente, against a backdrop of battling dinosaurs. Brought together
by Luana, the ambassador of love for the blond and more “civilized”
beach tribe, the dark- haired inland Cro- Magnons learn to establish
positive “race” relations. Prehistoric Women, like She, presents a land
that time forgot, subject to female rule. Again using the hair- color- as-
coded- race dichotomy, here one finds a more overtly ruthless queen
deploying sexualized violence to enslave the hapless local blondes,
who thirst for freedom in their relatively ineffectual way. In both She
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Alison Futrell216
and Prehistoric Women, the sinister queen attempts to lure the male
protagonist (a “modern” man trapped out of time) into embracing
her regime, literally and ideologically, and becoming a subordinated
consort. In each, the male protagonist realizes that personal physical
pleasure cannot outweigh the moral corruption entailed in yielding to
a politically freighted passion. Female rule is demonstrably flawed and
must be destroyed.
Hammer’s creative methodology, however, presented real obstacles
for creative expansion of the brand.18 Since the 1950s, the British film
industry had been reliant on American film companies for as much
as 95 percent of the production funding. Hammer had consistently
depended on this kind of support— Warner, Columbia, and Seven
Arts all contracted with Hammer— and secured approval by being
risk- averse and working on a very abbreviated schedule. Hammer
would pitch an idea, some possible story points, and an eye- catching
poster, foregrounding the marketing and projecting possible returns,
calculated internationally. Approval was therefore based on a limited
series of images meant to appeal to a certain set of expectations; the
full script only came afterward and was constrained by the selling
points that had secured the financing.
In the case of The Viking Queen, the completed production displays
evidence of high aspirations: the relatively high budget, the lofty polit-
ical ideals of the protagonists.19 This is, however, in tension with how
the movie was sold, both to initial financiers and eventually to film-
goers in the publicity campaign. Posters featured a sword- swinging
woman in a familiar leather bikini, strikingly similar to that worn by
Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C.20 Above her is the Viking
Queen herself in her scythed chariot, likewise posed to enhance her
physical assets, likewise endowed with pointy sword at the upthrust.
Tiny Romans are barely visible underneath the rearing horses, sil-
houetted against a flame- covered backdrop. Text frames the action,
tempting audiences with “sights of savagery and splendor,” including
the “savage rites of the Iceni” and “men roasted alive in the cage of
Hell.” Gendered tensions are sexualized in poster and trailer, as copy
conflates erotic and military conquest. A “temptress turns warrior to
conquer a world of men” even as “an army of men brought her to
her knees, but no one could conquer The Viking Queen.” Indeed, the
very title of the film was doubtless created for international consump-
tion; an audience outside Britain would not necessarily be drawn to
Boadicea, Queen of the Druids (for example), but Vikings were more
of a known commodity.21
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Love, Rebellion, and Cleavage 217
Love, Rebellion, and the Breastpl ate
In crafting the Hammer version of the Boudicca narrative, the deci-
sion was made to rework the plot and protagonists considerably to
focus on a love relationship as the main source of dramatic tension.
Further, this would be a romance between young lovers, prior to mar-
riage, instead of the autumnal union between long- married spouses
that sparked events in the historical tradition. This choice falls in line
with standard cinematic presentations of the past: one famous estimate
suggests that some 85 percent of classical Hollywood films present a
heterosexual romantic relationship as the chief plot line.22 How the
love story functions to “cause” cinematic history varies. Sometimes
the private life is in conflict with the historically “real” and mostly
political drives of the character. Sometimes the love story creates
history.23 Having eliminated Boudicca’s status as wife and mother,
Hammer borrowed a King Lear element from elsewhere in British
tradition, making “Priam,” the dying king of the Iceni, the father to
three daughters, one of whom, Salina, he chooses to succeed him as
(Viking) Queen.24
Queenly power is problematized throughout the film, from Sali-
na’s reluctant assumption of authority at her father’s deathbed. Salina
turns to ask the chief royal advisor, “How can I be a queen?” He
responds, “There’s a time to be a queen and a time to be a woman.”
But when? And what differentiates between the two? The dilemma
of separate roles and separate spheres lingers over the cineplay. Sali-
na’s initial response to this advice is presented visually, when she
first emerges from her father’s privy chamber. She has been trans-
formed into a Hammer queen, now wearing the trademark Hammer
nightgown with its familiar plunging décolletage and well- bolstered
cleavage.25 The camera lingers on a series of approving male faces in
the new queen’s court, including that of Justinian, the handsome
young Roman governor.
Salina’s royal bust and Justinian’s approval thereof trigger more
intense cooperation with Rome, but this is a particular relationship
between a masculine Roman governor and a feminine client queen;
Salina assumes a feminized role as subordinate, domesticated chan-
nel for power, reliant on Roman guidance and decision making. The
queen is first and foremost a woman, and her initial political coopera-
tion with Justinian is soon reciprocated in a more personal fashion.
Salina, clad in a furry mini skirt, drives her pretty pastel blue chariot
to the camp of the Romans, ready for perky scenes of flirtatious boar
hunting and chariot racing, sexually charged, like that in Ben- Hur
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Alison Futrell218
(1959). A chariot accident lands the pair in a convenient stream.
Romance ensues.
Legitimate authority in The Viking Queen is not, however, entirely
displaced to the male sphere; indeed, many male authority figures
in the film are demonstrably and profoundly flawed. The Romans,
for example, are riven by conflict that stems from competing impe-
rial stances. The opening of the film establishes a particular line of
the problematic. The Ubiquitous Map, a staple of the historical
film, visually places the audience within an imperial context, while
an Authoritative Voice- over emphasizes Roman conquest, asserting
that Imperial administrators are “trained only in the art of Roman
warfare,” that Roman peace relies on constant militarized vigilance,
and that the Britons are a conquered people who must pay tribute to
the Empire. Having established this “historical truth” from the out-
set, any compromise of this stance represents weakness, as is explicitly
articulated by Octavian, subcommander of Roman interests in Britan-
nia, who in the first scene expresses concern about what he regards as
Justinian’s “soft” leadership, his failure to remember that the Roman
sword (one of which he brandishes in emphasis) is what keeps the
peace in Britannia. While Octavian is suspicious of Justinian’s nods to
compromise over provincial self- rule, he is also scornful of the cultural
degradation that he reads in Justinian’s “soft” approach to leadership.
When Justinian disrupts Octavian’s heavy- handedness at a druid ritual
and when he chooses abbreviated civilian togs for a date with Salina,
Justinian does not act “like a Roman soldier.” Justinian has violated
the essential rules of empire as established by the opening voice- over.
It is on this basis that Octavian legitimizes his plotting of a coup with
the overtly disreputable Osiris, an oily and corrupt merchant and
dealer in sexual slaves; Octavian claims to take these sinister measures
in order to reinstate Roman law.
Justinian’s authority, although seemingly balanced and fair, is like-
wise problematic. He asserts that the continued prosperity of the
empire depends on the long- term value of provincial civilians as a
resource. He secures this resource, however, in a fairly calculated
fashion, through demagogic efforts to manipulate the popular will
and contrive the compliance of the Britons; the populist imagery in
his approach overlies a core hostility to the “British savages,” as he
repeatedly labels them. His motivations are also divided. Throughout
the film, his cooperation with British power structures is increasingly
subordinated to his romantic intentions: his plan to marry Salina. To
contemporary viewers of the film, this matrimonial goal validates the
relationship as “honorable” and his feelings as “real”: Salina is not
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Love, Rebellion, and Cleavage 219
Justinian’s native concubine. A scene of romantic togetherness in the
British countryside allows Justinian to expand on his plans as the two
cuddle near a picturesque waterfall. His vision of their life together,
however, involves their displacement to a sunny Mediterranean villa by
the sea, where the two of them lie at ease enjoying the wine brought
them by slaves. He thus remodels Salina in their fantasy future, strip-
ping away both her cultural heritage and her political identity, in
order to relocate her in a luxurious nest enabled by the economic
force of Rome.
The British stakeholders of The Viking Queen are likewise flawed, as
is driven home by the representation of native institutions. The druids
are sinister indeed; the introductory voice- over notes that they “held
sway over people’s minds.” In the first scene, Octavian asserts that the
religion is banned in the Empire, that druids preach treason, speak-
ing “against the rule of Nero”; furthermore their rituals are “Filthy!
Disgusting!” In this case, the cineplay tends to support Octavian’s
extremist stance, presenting a range of deliberately chilling druidic
rituals throughout the film. Interestingly, however, it is Maelgan, the
chief druid, who has been remade as the freedom- loving passionate
orator found in Tacitus. Just as clearly that oratory is revealed as dan-
gerous and insincere.26
As represented by Maelgan, druids are doubly treasonous, both
in their vehement invective against Roman oppression and in their
repeated assertions that druids are the rightful rulers of the people,
a claim that seriously undercuts the secular authority of Salina. The
emotive power of Maelgan’s rhetoric is clear even from his first scene,
at the deathbed of King Priam, in which he squeezes every possible
effect from his lines, from overwrought pauses and straining vocal
pitches to the use of frenzied gesture and pounding paralleled phras-
ing. Signs of popular druidism verify the “authentic” Britishness of
this leader, who points to “the sacred mistletoe and the golden sickle”
as guarantors of righteous action. Druidic divination punctuates
the scene, as Maelgan repeatedly references an “ancient” prophecy,
citation of which is scattered throughout the film, beginning with
the summary statement of the opening voice- over. “It is written in
the clouds,” Maelgan tells the dying king and his family, “that you
[Salina] will wear armor! And carry a sword in your right hand!” The
immediate cut to dark clouds above and the clash of thunder, right on
cue, seems to validate the accuracy of druidic divine connection, here
and elsewhere. In the film narrative, therefore, there is visual confir-
mation of genuine connection between druids and the forces in the
universe. It should, however, be noted that, from the preproduction
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Alison Futrell220
period, Hammer had played up the presence of “savage rituals” in
The Viking Queen as part of the push- pull draw for the film. In the
realized production, these rituals contain features typical of cinematic
paganism as well as signs from the Boudiccan tradition. The former
plays against the potential appeal of the latter, as Maelgan stage-
manages sinister and threatening ceremonies, representing a real and
immediate danger to the Britons. In true Hammer form, the threat is
explicitly sexualized: Maelgan orders his followers to “make a virgin
sacrifice . . . so that our words shall not go unanswered!” A line of
exotically eye- linered maidens, clad in symbolic white, visibly quails at
this, beginning to perceive that Maelgan may be more perilous than
the Roman overlords, at least to British virgins.
Worse even than druids, however, are the British merchants, like the
oily Osiris. They have been co- opted by empire and have opportunis-
tically compromised their own heritage to take advantage of Roman
benefits. They are parasites on British prosperity, Justinian notes, pri-
marily interested in acquisition of wealth, to be used primarily for the
pleasures of the flesh. Osiris’s corruption is symbolized by his con-
stant accompaniment by a “Nubian slave,” a signifier of dehumanizing
decadence familiar in films about Mediterranean antiquity, here given a
Hammer patina in the body paint, heavy eyeliner, and nudity shielded
just sufficiently for BBFC standards. The exoticism of the emblematic
slave likewise marks Osiris as culturally corrupt, as a Briton who has
abandoned his own heritage for imperial luxuries. The cultural treason
is followed by a political one, as Osiris plays on Octavian’s ambition
and political extremism to launch their conspiracy. Osiris is overtly
motivated by new taxes imposed by Justinian, who notes that the pro-
vincial mercantile class does not pay its fair share. The end goal of
the plot, however, manipulates both Roman and British populations,
imagining a return to militarized imperial domination and the destruc-
tion of British autonomy, to benefit only a menacing few. The final
confirmation of the villainous conspiracy plays out against a backdrop
of fleshly corruption, as Osiris and Octavian, reclining on lush textiles,
are massaged by a crew of naked female slaves. Given the context of
the production, following a wave of disassembly of the British Empire
during the 1960s, the plotline presents a politically interesting rework-
ing of the rebellion of A.D. 61. Here outposts of empire are torn apart
by a conspiracy masterminded by “natives” who have “gone Roman.”
In this scenario, original British freedoms have been destroyed not so
much by the Roman extremists as by the co- opted British nationals.
Where is female authority in this? Salina is represented as by far the
most insightful and moderate ruler on ancient British soil. The dying
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Love, Rebellion, and Cleavage 221
Iceni king points to her decisive qualities of tolerance and understanding,
characteristics she uniquely holds that validate his choice of successor.27
Indeed, Salina’s initial uses of royal authority are measured. She ensures
a proper burial for her father, fulfilling her filial duty in accordance with
British tradition, but she takes care that this be done discreetly, privately,
so as not to flout Roman restrictions. Mayhem, however, interrupts
the ceremony, initially created by the lechery and bloodthirstiness of
Maelgan, who insists not just on human sacrifice but the immolation of
near- naked virgins. Salina’s negative reaction is meant to redirect druid
ritual away from these transgressive behaviors, but her efforts to exert
her authority are undermined by an unauthorized Roman raid on the
ceremony, organized on his own initiative by Octavian, who, like Mael-
gan for the British, is resisting the “official” chain of command. In a
rapidly deteriorating hostile situation, Salina’s is the voice of power that
calms the crisis and preempts massacre, initially of the virgins, then of the
entire group of threatened Britons at hand.
Salina prioritizes the obligations of rule to emphasize her responsi-
bility for the needs of her people. Even in the afterglow of a romantic
interlude, Salina urges on an eager Justinian the need for caution and
deliberation. Recognizing that people’s hearts are slow to change, she
counsels discretion; for now, she can be satisfied with only “a little
happiness” rather than risk “dissension” and divisiveness that puts
everyone and everything at risk. Here and elsewhere, Salina tempers
her policy with due respect for the will of the gods, her piety flavored
by prayer and quiet supplication, in stark contrast to fanatical druid
religiosity or the cynicism of the Romans: Justinian complains that
the British gods are “politicians” when Maelgan’s sanction for their
marriage is refused. Salina’s faith, however, is not without politic cir-
cumspection. As the plot starts to unfold, she is the only person to
be suspicious of the confluence of events, intuiting, unlike Justinian,
the presence of “some evil plan” that warrants prudence. Justinian
dismisses her doubts and proceeds blithely ignorant of the conspiracy.
It is notable, however, that Salina’s success as ruler is tightly bound
to her connection with Roman authority. Indeed, throughout the
cineplay, the queen’s “wisdom” is presented as yielding to the will
of others to whom she is obligated, rather than the dynamic action
of her own agency. As the queen’s court listens to petitions of her
subjects, it is Justinian who renders judgments; nominally he confirms
the decisions with Salina, but it is his voice that prevails. As the con-
spiracy plays out and Octavian ratchets up his abuse of the Britons,
Salina, though empathetic to their suffering, remains inert, deferring
action until Justinian’s return, citing not only the Roman alliance but
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Alison Futrell222
her father’s policy of peace. Octavian uses the Britons’ dissatisfaction
to legitimize his violent seizure of power. Salina’s just protestations
against this action inspire his literalized abuse of authority, as he rapes
princess Talia and flogs the seminude queen, the latter event presented
onscreen as a public spectacle, the Hammer camera lingering in brutal
eroticism over every lash of the whip.
The first initiative that is purely Salina’s follows in the wake of this
(sexualized) physical violation. As she and her sisters watch the fiery
destruction of the royal home, Salina at last yields to the forces of
destiny, as outlined through druidic (and voice- over) prophecy. “This
land shall run with blood!” she vows, as she takes on at last the iconic
markers of Boadicea.
Gone is the pastel blue pleasure chariot of her romantic idylls. Here
is sword, scythe, and breastplate. More focus shifts to British actions
in the countryside, where fur- covered and woad- blue barbarians enjoy
savage success against the Romans, despite the fact that they’re using
stone weapons and clubs and despite the fact that, as a losing Octa-
vian complains, “They’re only women.” Strength and conviction
of the queen are, however, flavored with a fatalism that eventually
overcomes the catalyzing rage that drove her initial rebellion. Salina
knows that the Britons cannot succeed, but at her final meeting with
Justinian, she refuses to trade her own life, her potential happiness
with Justinian, for the freedom of her people. She cannot ask them to
return to “slave” status under Roman rule. Life cannot be purchased
with liberty.
Figure 15.1 Salina (Carita) takes on the breastplate of Boadicean destiny in The Viking Queen (1967). Twentieth Century Fox.
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Love, Rebellion, and Cleavage 223
So Salina deploys the “chariots of death” in a final battle, the
scythe- cam offering moviegoers brief glimpses of dismayed Romans
being mown down by the fearsome blades. The tactical flexibility
of Justinian’s legions, however, soon dooms the rebel efforts and
the British protagonists start to fall. When the queen is captured on
the battlefield, Justinian’s hand stays a fatal blow. Salina faces a final
choice, one that has shaped the presentation of female leadership
throughout the film: will she yield to her love or remain true to her
people? Will she choose life or death? Is she a woman or a queen?
Salina passionately refuses to be “taken to Rome as a slave!”—
a rejection that carries with it a denial of love, life, and, ultimately,
her female gender, as it is framed by the cineplay. Even so, Salina’s
final choice is visualized as an embrace, as she thrusts a Roman sword
between her breasts in a parody of passion. Hammer’s queen then
turns to the cinematic model of Cleopatra (1963); like that great
queen, her final words contrast life’s outcome with her personal,
romantic dream, hinting at the incompatibility of political success
and happiness for female rulers. As in Cleopatra, the camera centers
on the body of the dead queen, and then the still image is converted
to a painted frieze, securing as historically inevitable the sublime ruin
of the Viking Queen.
Notes
1. Ancient accounts can be found in Tacitus’s Agricola 16, 31 and Annals 14.29– 39, and Dio Cassius 62.1– 12.
2. See Hingley and Unwin (2005); Aldhouse- Green (2006); Braund
(1996).
3. This is treated in the ancient narratives as Roman seizure of all Iceni
property, which differs from the census assessment of taxable property
that was standard for new provinces.
4. See Civilis’s leadership of Batavian rebels in Histories 4.12– 37 and
especially Calgacus’s famous speech to the Caledonians in Agricola 31,
with his diatribe against the Roman habit of creating a wasteland and
calling it peace.
5. Annals 14.35.
6. This spelling of the name in modern British contexts is based on a
scribal misreading of Tacitus’s text.
7. By this time, England had incorporated Wales, parts of Ireland, and
Scotland; 1707 saw the formal Treaty of Union.
8. See Hingley and Unwin (2005) 129– 32 and Williams (2009).
9. See Smiles (1994) and Williams (2009).
pal-cyrino-book.indb 223 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Alison Futrell224
10. Designed by Mary Lowndes, head of the Artists’ Suffrage League. See
Lowndes’s album housed in the Fawcett Collection at the Women’s
Library in London: 2ASL/11, box 0534. The banner itself is in the
suffrage collection at the Museum of London, acquisition number
81.113/24. See Tickner (1988) 81– 90.
11. See Clarke (1843) 19.
12. See, for example, the postcards for Colchester and for St. Albans 1907
pageant. “Boadicea Ale” is made by the Iceni and the Rother Valley
breweries. Boadicea appeared in Xena: Warrior Princess, Episode 304.
13. Pirie (2008) xv and 67 describes the BBFC’s special rage at Hammer
horrors, demanding script revisions and film edits even to merit the X
certificate, i.e. suitable only for adults over 16. Springhall (2009) notes
that this eventually led to a reconsideration of the BBFC rating system.
14. Critical response from the Tribune, the Observer, and the Sunday Times, quoted in McKay (2007) 17– 18.
15. See Sontag (1964), especially section 29.
16. See McKay (2007) 17– 25, who also makes connections to British cul-
tural traditions in Victorian melodrama and Jacobean staged excess.
See also Coe (1996); Wilson (2007); and Springhall (2009).
17. McKay (2007) 105– 11 points to female- centered plots in Hammer
horror as well, including Frankenstein Created Woman (1967). Con-
temporary US filmmakers, similarly, did not craft ultimately reassuring
tales of female agency; see Hatch (2004).
18. See McKay (2007).
19. Noted by Simpson (2007), who points out that The Viking Queen’s
budget of £350,000 was twice what the studio habitually laid out for
its horror films.
20. Tom Chantrell, Hammer’s mainstay poster artist, worked on the post-
ers for One Million Years B.C., She, and The Viking Queen. See Hearn
(2010).
21. Vikings had appeared recently in Viking Women and the Sea Serpent (1957), The Vikings (1958), Erik the Conqueror (1961), and Last of the Vikings (1961).
22. See Wexman (1993) 3– 16 and Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson
(1985) 5, 16– 17.
23. As seen in both Spartacus (1960) and Spartacus: Blood and Sand
(2010). On how the (invented) domesticity of Spartacus works in stage
and film renditions of the narrative, see Futrell (2001).
24. Shakespeare’s play drew on legendary narratives of pre- Roman Leir,
like those in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. As
elsewhere in the Boadicea tradition, invented characters with histori-
cally resonant names populate the cineplay: Priam, Octavian, Tiberian,
Tristram, Osiris, and Justinian.
25. See Hearn (2009).
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Love, Rebellion, and Cleavage 225
26. A faint trace of the Tacitean Boudicca’s oratory lingers in the public-
ity posters and trailers, where this “warrior woman . . . challenged
men with her courage and taunted them with her flesh”; this may
be a reflection of the prebattle rhetoric in Tacitus Annals 14.35, in
which Boudicca contrasts the resolution of a woman to the servility
of British men.
27. Priam notes that in this she is “like your mother . . . a Viking queen,”
the sole reference in the dialogue to the titular ethnicity.
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4
C h a p t e r 1 6
Subverting Sex and Love in
Alejandro Amenábar’s A G O R A (2009)
Joanna Paul
The Hollywood film epic has typically, and usually unapologetically,
been a male genre. Particularly in the 1950s, cinematic narratives of
Greece and Rome concerned themselves above all with the heroic
exploits of soldiers, gladiators, and slaves, with female costars gener-
ally consigned to supporting, stereotypical roles as winsome Christian
maidens or dangerous femmes fatales. With its twenty- first- century
rebirth, it might have seemed that the ancient world epic had finally
caught up with the feminist movement: 300 (2007), for example,
attempted to depict Gorgo, Queen of Sparta, as a “political and sexual
equal” to her husband, Leonidas.1 But in most recent films (and argu-
ably in 300, too, with its glorification of the warrior), the presentation
of gender remains unbalanced. Centurion (2010) may include women
among its band of Picts, but, as barbarians, they remain dangerous
“others,” suspected of witchcraft (Arianne) or even denied the right
of speech (the mute Etain). The Eagle (2011) does not include even
one female character in its principal cast. Of course, the ancient world,
in very general terms, was hardly renowned for “equal opportunities,”
but it would be misleading to argue that these films simply offer a pic-
ture of antiquity “as it really was” and must therefore be acquitted of
charges of gender bias. Hollywood rarely feels honor- bound to adhere
to an authentic and verifiable vision of the past; instead, its version
of Greece and Rome is more profoundly shaped by societal contexts
and by its own self- perpetuating, often conservative take on what the
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Joanna Paul228
ancient world looked like and what it meant— and for many filmmak-
ers and viewers, antiquity looks very male.
Yet amid the testosterone- driven surge of swords and monsters that
characterized these recent ancient world epics, one film stood out.2
Agora (2009), directed by Alejandro Amenábar, tells the story of the
female scholar Hypatia (Rachel Weisz), who lived in Alexandria in
the late fourth and early fifth century A.D. Although it follows the
conventions of the Hollywood epic in certain ways (particularly in its
spectacular sets, costumes, and action sequences), it bucks the trend
in others. Its central protagonist is a woman who— unlike the Cleopa-
tra beloved of twentieth- century Hollywood— cannot be defined
primarily through her relationships with men, and her story depicts
religion, and intellectual culture, very differently than earlier films.
Agora is also notable for its late antique setting, which allows it to
confront directly the demise of the classical world.3 Such ambition
and innovation, however, did not translate into widespread box- office
success. After becoming Spain’s top- grossing film in 2009, Agora
struggled to find a global theatrical audience. Although it premiered
at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2009, it did not arrive in UK cin-
emas until April 2010, followed by its US opening in late May/early
June.4 Its widest release in the United States was a mere 17 screens
nationwide (compared to nearly 4,000 for Clash of the Titans, which
opened in early April 2010), and in the United Kingdom it screened
in most cinemas for little more than a week.5
The reasons for this limited impact are not straightforward. Since,
as we will see, Agora appears to judge early Christians very harshly,
we might assume that it was simply too controversial; but this over-
looks the fact that it played remarkably well in Spain and, to a lesser
degree, other Catholic countries.6 Nor can it be explained by poor
critical notices, since Agora was greeted more warmly than other
ancient world films released in 2010/11. The Guardian declared
that it was “cleverly done” (May 18, 2009), and elsewhere review-
ers commended this “ambitious, cerebral and complex movie” (The Guardian, April 22, 2010), describing it as “an historical epic that
is mercifully different from most Hollywood biblical movies” (The Observer, April 25, 2010) and “a thoughtful, adult film” that offers
“an interesting and engaging peep into the past” (The Times, April 22,
2010). Whatever the reasons for the mismatch between this critical
appraisal and the film’s financial failure (which may yet be mitigated
by a stronger showing in the DVD sales and rental market), it is clear
that Agora needs to be judged on criteria other than its box- office
takings. This chapter argues that its distinctive approach to screening
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Subverting Sex and Love 229
the ancient world can best be appreciated by exploring its depiction
of Hypatia: a central female character who marks Agora’s originality
by subverting epic’s conventions surrounding love and sex and offers
a mouthpiece for a series of powerful messages relating to religion,
historical change, and intellectual thought.
Although Weisz’s Hypatia is the first cinematic portrayal of this
ancient character, imaginative retellings of her story are nothing new;
in literature, art, theater, and philosophy, she has been appropriated
to symbolize a range of concerns, to the extent that the “historical”
Hypatia is difficult to reconstruct, certainly within the confines of this
chapter.7 As Maurice Sartre notes, “Hypatia’s story was removed from
the historian’s purview before it even came into focus, and the ideo-
logical stakes that have been attached to her name for nearly three
centuries have somewhat obscured the realities.”8 It is these ideologi-
cal stakes, and the ways in which Agora utilizes and builds on Hypatia’s
earlier reception history, that are the concern of this chapter;9 the
historical “realities” will only be addressed when they have some bear-
ing on the argument. But before examining this cinematic version,
let us begin with a brief synopsis of the film. It begins in Alexandria,
in 391. Hypatia lives with her father, the scholar Theon, and lectures
to the city’s youths, who include Synesius, future bishop of Cyrene,
and Orestes, future prefect of Alexandria. The latter courts her affec-
tions, but to no avail; her household slave, Davus, is also in love with
her. Hypatia’s intellectual pursuits, which center on her study of plan-
etary orbits, are threatened by the increasingly powerful, and violent,
Christian community in Alexandria. The film’s first half culminates in
riots between the Christians and the pagans, the siege of the Serapeum
(a large temple complex), and the destruction of its library. As the nar-
rative resumes in 415, Hypatia has maintained her influential position
in the city, and Synesius and Orestes, now powerful men, remain fond
of her, but religious conflict, particularly between Jews and Christians,
continues to threaten the peace. Cyril has succeeded Theophilus as
patriarch of Alexandria, and the parabalani, led by the charismatic
Ammonius, and including Davus among them, act as moral enforcers,
dispensing charity and violence in equal measure. As tensions build,
and Cyril attempts to impose his authority over the Roman rulers
of the city, Hypatia becomes caught up in the conflict; finally, she is
seized by the parabalani and killed. Agora frames her death as the
culmination of these ideological battles and the direct consequence of
Cyril’s brutal and misogynistic stranglehold on Alexandria.
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Joanna Paul230
Hypatia and Gender
This outline shows that romantic love and erotic desire are certainly
not absent from Agora. Both Orestes and Davus desire her and, in dif-
ferent ways, attempt to possess her. Orestes is a chivalrous and persis-
tent suitor, flattering and courting her publicly by performing a piece
of music for her in the theater. Hypatia never reciprocates his feel-
ings, and though she treats him kindly at first, his adulation is entirely
incomprehensible to her: “Can you believe he was courting me as if I
was one of his conquests?” she asks her father. Hypatia’s only passion is
for her scholarly endeavours, as her father confirms when asked about
her marriage plans. “Hypatia, subject to a man, with no freedom to
teach or even speak her mind?” replies Theon. “The most brilliant
philosopher I know, having to give up her science? That would be
death to her!” That she is not merely indifferent to love, but actively
hostile or inimical to the possibility of a relationship, is underlined
by her response to Orestes’s musical declaration of love. In class, she
presents him with her bloodied menstrual rag, telling him that there
is little harmony or beauty in the blood of her cycle. This revealing act
(likely seen as taboo even by some modern audiences) splinters our
comfortable preconceptions of female behavior and sets Hypatia apart
from usual societal expectations; it certainly ends Orestes’s pursuit of
her, and their relationship in the rest of the film is realigned, as they
become close confidantes rather than romantic partners.
While Hypatia and Orestes are presented as equals, Davus’s feel-
ings toward Hypatia are shaped by his position as slave, even as he
demonstrates his intellectual prowess and is invited to address her
class. Thus his desire for her is conveyed in his attempts to possess
her bodily, implicitly overturning her family’s ownership of him. This
proprietorial relationship is underlined by Theon’s beating of Davus,
followed by Hypatia’s tender, yet chaste, bathing of his wounds.
Later, after desperately and repeatedly praying to God, “don’t let
anyone else have her, don’t let anyone else have her,” and tenderly
grasping her foot as she sleeps, Davus’s illicit desire eventually spills
over in an attempt to rape her. Yet he cannot go through with it,
breaking down with emotion: just as Hypatia thwarted Orestes’s
romantic longings, so here a sexual encounter is deflected. Though
she is clearly vulnerable to Davus’s advances— we know that he could
have raped her, if he wished— it is as if the force of her character,
combined with her evident fear, destroys his resolve and reinforces
Hypatia’s agency and potency as a woman impervious to romantic
and erotic desire.
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Subverting Sex and Love 231
Extracting Hypatia from love and sex in this way is atypical for
mainstream cinema; however, there is nothing unconventional in
casting an actress such as Weisz in a leading part. Though her act-
ing is widely acclaimed, and she is given minimal makeup and plain
costumes in Agora, it would be an unusual filmgoer who did not
appreciate her beauty or acknowledge that a star’s bankability rests
on their appearance as well as their ability. Furthermore, the film still
includes these romantic subplots; even if their purpose is ultimately
to demonstrate Hypatia’s resistance to male desire, the time- honored
narrative of unrequited love still plays out, offering the necessary emo-
tional engagement that Agora might otherwise have lacked for some
audiences. We cannot claim, then, that this Hypatia is asexualized or
that her gender is entirely immaterial to the film’s narrative; yet her
interactions with the male characters subvert the typical offerings of
ancient world films, and for most of Agora, at least, she maintains her
agency and self- determination.10
Hypatia’s relationship with Agora’s male protagonists is best encap-
sulated by Synesius’s description of her as “lady, sister, and mother,”
as he blesses her one night during the siege of the Serapeum. This
familial association underlines her chastity (making any sexual entan-
glements with her students tantamount to incest), a central feature of
Hypatia’s characterization from antiquity onwards. In fact, Synesius’s
words in the film are drawn from an extant letter, one of a number
the historical Synesius wrote to Hypatia: Letter 16 addresses her as
“mother, sister, teacher,” while Letter 81 describes her as “inviolate.”
Hypatia’s purity becomes a recurrent motif in later receptions. Stand-
ing for virtue and virginity as high intellectual ideals, she can easily
appear aloof, even cold, a charge laid against Charles Kingsley’s depic-
tion of her in his novel Hypatia, or Old Foes with a New Face (1853).11
But with her death, her inviolability is violently overturned. To under-
stand how the film tackles this shocking end, we must turn to the issue
of Hypatia’s religious stance.
Hypatia and Religion
In Kingsley’s novel, written amid the fervent religious debates of the
mid- nineteenth century, the early Catholic Church stands for dogma
and superstition over humanity and virtue, with Cyril as the self-
serving, power- hungry figurehead responsible for the terrible crime of
Hypatia’s death. Yet a pure, originary Christian faith (which for King-
sley means Protestant) remains important, and this Hypatia is slowly
drawn toward it: as she falls on the altar in the church in which she is
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Joanna Paul232
killed, she appeals to God. Such a conversion is never on the cards in
Agora. Here, Hypatia consciously separates herself from the religious
conflict that besets the city. Whatever their beliefs, she twice tells her
students, “We are all brothers” (again emphasizing the familial nature
of their relationship). Furthermore, the cinematic narrative adopts a
far more challenging view of Christianity in general, taking us far from
the conventional narratives of earlier ancient world epics in which a
virtuous Christianity is oppressed by decadent pagans. Certainly,
Amenábar argued that he did not intend to attack the Christian faith,
and we do see examples of Christianity as a force for good: the para-balani minister to the poor, and Synesius is a benevolent figure who
attempts to keep the peace. But what lingers is the image of a hard-
line, authoritarian Cyril, controlling a violent mob whose punishments
by stoning recall the brutalities now more readily associated, in some
Western eyes, with the harshest penalties of Islamic Sharia law. Indeed,
some reviewers pointed out that the most fanatical Christians— Cyril
and Ammonius— are played by Middle Eastern actors, as opposed to
the white European Synesius, underscoring the discomfiting elements
of Agora’s apparent critique of religious fundamentalism.
Consequently, Agora cuts closer to the bone than comparable
films like Life of Brian (1979). Whereas Monty Python targeted
institutional structures and dogmatism, stopping short of question-
ing core beliefs, Agora does not shrink from putting scripture in
the dock. A key scene, which returns us to the issue of Hypatia’s
gender, depicts Cyril reading from the Bible in front of a gather-
ing of Alexandrian dignitaries, led by Orestes; the reading is the
First Epistle of Paul to Timothy, a well- known scripture relating to
women and their behavior, which in the film ends with Cyril’s dec-
laration: “I do not permit a woman to teach, or to have authority
over a man; but to be in silence.”12 By now, with Orestes steadfastly
resisting ceding power to Cyril, the archbishop can no longer toler-
ate Hypatia’s influence in Alexandria, and so he attempts to foment
outrage against this woman whom he calls “a witch.” In narrative
terms, the reading triggers the events that lead to her death, but
for the film’s audience, it also directly challenges our identification
with or sympathy for the Christians by revealing such a brazenly
misogynistic worldview.
As such, Hypatia’s death is framed by the religious contexts of
Agora’s story: the free- thinking female scholar the victim of a fanati-
cal, bigoted religion. Although historians argue that Hypatia’s death
was not religiously motivated and that she was a victim of the politi-
cal struggles between Orestes and Cyril,13 and while Agora certainly
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Subverting Sex and Love 233
interweaves the political with the religious, still the film takes its cue
from the conventional view of Hypatia as a martyr to pagan classical
culture, destroyed by Christianity. This characterization prevailed in
the eighteenth century, when Enlightenment thinkers adopted her as
a heroine of rational thought in opposition to narrow- minded Church
oppression. John Toland’s 1720 pamphlet memorialized Hypatia
as the “Most Beautiful, Most Virtuous, Most Learned and in Every
Way Accomplished Lady; Who was Torn to Pieces by the Clergy of
Alexandria, to Gratify the Pride, Emulation and Cruelty of the Arch-
bishop, Commonly but Undeservedly Titled St. Cyril”; Voltaire and
Gibbon would offer similar encomia.14 Although these accounts praise
Hypatia’s virtue and scholarship, they also privilege her “celebrated”
beauty.15 Moreover, descriptions of her gruesome death— she was
flayed by ostraka (broken tiles, or possibly oyster shells), according to
the fifth-century Socrates Scholasticus16— can assume a distinctly erotic
flavor, as in Gibbon’s description of how, stripped naked, “her flesh
was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster shells, and her quivering
limbs were delivered to the flames.”17 This tendency only increased
in the nineteenth century: Kingsley’s description of her “snow- white”
naked form, her “golden locks,” and her dying shrieks verges on the
sadomasochistic, and a painting by Charles William Mitchell, Hypatia
(1885), depicts a Botticelliesque nude Hypatia at the altar, just before
her death.18
By contrast, notwithstanding the casting of Weisz discussed above,
the cinematic Hypatia is more emphatically desexualized (although
we do see her stepping nude from her bath early in the film, a quite
conventional set- piece for ancient world films),19 and the moment of
her death is quite different from the fetishistic martyrdom of some
earlier receptions. The parabalani strip her naked and announce that
they will skin her alive, as expected; but Davus intervenes, telling
them that they should not stain their hands with impure blood. As
the other parabalani leave to find stones with which to kill her, Davus
approaches. The sense of threat quickly fades; in contrast to his earlier
assault, his desire to possess and violate Hypatia is replaced by an act
of loving mercy, as he holds her tight in an embrace strong enough
to smother her to death, yet heartbreakingly tender as the film shows
flashbacks to earlier, happier times. Fear and pain still play in Hypa-
tia’s eyes, but as she dies and sinks to the floor just as the parabalani return, Davus has ensured that she cannot be brutalized by them. In
a personal sense, her purity and chastity are preserved, though politi-
cally and culturally, her murder violates, destroys even, something far
more profound.
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Joanna Paul234
Hypatia and the End of the
Cl assical World
Although Hypatia’s gender is an important factor in her death, it is
this combined with her role as scholar, philosopher, and teacher that is
ultimately more significant for Agora’s message and for the ideologies
underpinning Hypatia’s reception history. As a symbol of female intel-
lectualism, she has been frequently adduced to the cause of feminism,
or protofeminism, even as other (male) writers and artists fixated on
her looks. To take one example, when Kingsley’s novel was adapted
for the London stage in 1893, many newspaper and periodical reviews
praised the actor playing Hypatia, Julia Neilson, in purely aesthetic
terms, focusing on her costume or her appearance as “a lovely Greek
picture” or “like a painting on a Greek vase.”20 But The Lady’s Picto-rial took a more political view, commenting that “we do not mob,
outrage, and assassinate our feminine philosophers nowadays, but we
have methods of torture not much less brutal . . . [I]n the case of
our modern wise- women, their enemies rend them limb from limb
in metaphor only, in the columns of scurrilous newspapers, and strip
them of every rag of noble quality— in the name of orthodoxy.”21
Hypatia becomes a charged symbol for feminist ideologies, whether
in the 1890s, as the suffrage movement was gathering pace, or in the
1970s, when the American artist Judy Chicago included her in her
work The Dinner Party (first exhibited in 1979).22 This installation
comprises three long tables, each bearing 13 place settings for iconic
women from mythology and history who symbolize female power and
the many ways in which it has been suppressed and silenced (and with
a further 999 women commemorated on ceramic floor tiles). The
first table deals with “prehistory to Rome,” with place settings for
women from the Hindu goddess Kali, to the Greek poet Sappho, to
the warrior- queen Boadicea; Hypatia is at the end of the table where,
in Chicago’s words, she “symbolises the destruction of female genius
in the Classical world.”23 On the embroidered table runner, a female
face is shown gagged, making Hypatia an emblem of the perception
that patriarchal Christianity silenced female voices in antiquity and for
many centuries to come.
While such accounts focus on Hypatia’s silencing from a gendered
perspective, others emphasize her death as a different kind of silenc-
ing: a symbol of the historical transition from a pagan, classical world
to a new Christian world order. This transition is usually characterized,
in this context, as destructive and regressive, partly because of Chris-
tianity’s perceived misogyny, as enshrined in Agora’s Cyril, but mainly
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Subverting Sex and Love 235
because of the perception that the end of the classical world means a
loss of intellectual achievement, high culture, and rational thought—
the ideals that Hypatia the scholar easily represents. In this transition/
destruction, the Library of Alexandria plays an important parallel role
in the film and in the broader cultural tradition. Already powerful in
antiquity as a symbol of status and identity, it continues to reverberate
throughout the modern world as an image of “universal knowledge.”
Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004), for example, stages Ptolemy’s dicta-
tion of his history of Alexander the Great in the Library, presenting it
as a “theatre of documents [which] exemplifies and puns on Alexan-
der’s global and stereoscopic vision, a vision that vastly expanded his
monocular father’s reach.”24 The Library’s imaginative power is com-
pounded by the uncertainties surrounding its eventual fate. Whether
its demise is primarily attributed to a fire started by Julius Caesar
during his Alexandrian conflict in 48 or 47 B.C., or to a much later
deliberate destruction by Christians in the fourth century, or Muslims
in the seventh century, the destruction of the Library is couched in
ideological terms. In Susan Stephens’s words, “the idea of the ‘uni-
versal’ library is aligned with freedom from censorship and open or
scientific enquiry incompatible with deeply held religious beliefs”;25
when those religious beliefs prevail, the Library can no longer exist.
Figure 16.1 Hypatia (Rachel Weisz) attempts to save the Library’s scrolls in Agora
(2009). Focus Features/Newmarket Films.
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Joanna Paul236
Although the Library’s real fate is likely to have been a combination
of deliberate attacks and prolonged neglect,26 Agora nails its colors to
the mast by making the Christians responsible. Its story is broadly
in keeping with Gibbon’s account (Decline and Fall, chapter 28),
in which Caesar destroys the original Library, and a Christian mob
then destroys the reconstituted version in the Serapeum in 391. The
film’s Library is clearly part of the Serapeum complex, nor is it the
original collection: while discussing cosmological theories, one char-
acter mentions Aristarchus, adding that “his work was lost in the fire
that destroyed the mother library. This is why we have to take great
care of this place. Our library is all that remains of the wisdom of
man.” However, the fact that the Serapeum Library was likely severely
depleted, in comparison to the original Ptolemaic collection, is not
forced in Agora; it is more important that the cinematic Library
functions as a significant emblem of universal knowledge, with the
mention of the earlier destruction highlighting its vulnerability rather
than its degradation. It symbolizes the collective endeavors of classical
learning and creativity against the narrow- minded will and dogmatic
outlook of the Christian sect, with Hypatia as its figurehead, as Cyril
is for the Church.
Crucially, the parallelism of Hypatia and the Library also emphasizes
that, while Agora’s conflict is partly a religious one, between Chris-
tianity and paganism (and Judaism), and while the Library is clearly
linked to the worship of Serapis, it is also a profoundly intellectual—
that is to say, secular— struggle. Hypatia, as we have seen, separates
herself from the spiritual and theological debates, stressing to her
students that their religious differences are irrelevant. Instead, she is
devoted to the intellectual realm, of which the Library is the physical
manifestation (making it significant that the Library can be gendered
female, both in the film’s description of the “mother library” and in
modern scholarship.)27 Consequently, when the Serapeum is sacked
and the Library destroyed, Hypatia’s anguish is palpable. She and her
pupils struggle to save what they can, frantically gathering up scrolls
and dramatizing the seemingly random processes that decide what
survives in a manuscript tradition and what doesn’t. After being told
to “Leave the lesser works!” a student asks, “Which are the lesser
works?” Hypatia urges, “Just take the important ones!” though with-
out indicating which those might be. While Gibbon expresses pleasant
surprise about the number of classical works that survived what he
calls the “suffrage of antiquity” (chapter 51), Agora draws attention
to what was lost. As we see the Christian mob scattering and destroy-
ing the scrolls, the camera begins a dramatic, vertiginous revolution,
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Subverting Sex and Love 237
slowly turning until the floor appears at the top of the frame— a literal
rendering of the world being turned upside down. If the Library and
Hypatia are parallel symbols of the classical world’s undoing, then we
are witnessing her mind and intellect being violated and pillaged in a
way that her body could not be.
With this scene, Agora presents a pivotal moment in what its trailer
describes as “the last days of the Roman Empire . . . the fall of civiliza-
tion.” Arguably, most Roman Hollywood epics address this theme of
cultural transition in some way, exemplified by the prologue to Sparta-cus (1960), which refers to “the new faith called Christianity, which
was destined to overthrow the pagan tyranny of Rome and bring about
a new society,” but this directs the audience to look beyond the cin-
ematic narrative and into the future (or the audience’s past). Likewise,
The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) hardly addresses Rome’s actual
fall but rather outlines what is to come. It is Agora that comes closest
to actually dramatizing this as both theme and historical event. As it
shows us the aftermath of the Serapeum’s destruction, with pigeons
and cattle the new inhabitants of the Library, the implications of the
new world order— a culturally, intellectually impoverished one— are
made clear. Imperial Roman power clings on, in the rather desperately
oversized lions on Orestes’s throne, but when Synesius meets Orestes
at the prefect’s palace, we see in the background shelf upon shelf of
broken imperial portrait heads, deftly visualizing what has happened to
this great empire. Just before this, at the end of his reading from scrip-
ture, Cyril has commanded the Roman elite to kneel before the Bible:
the scrolls of the Alexandrian library are now replaced by the codex
Word of God, a text for which no alternate reading, no Alexandrian-
style literary criticism, can be offered. Only Orestes refuses to kneel,
and he tries to tell Synesius that Cyril’s misogynistic pronouncements
are twisting God’s words, but Synesius replies that Cyril was sim-
ply reading what is written. “The scripture is correct,” he says, and
Orestes’s failure to submit to it will precipitate Hypatia’s death.
The film’s Hypatia, then, is completely unacceptable to the new
order of Christianity because of the interlinking identities that she
bears: she is a woman, a woman who thinks and teaches and presumes
that she can teach men, and worst of all, her way of thinking is insepa-
rable from the classical world, over which Christianity must triumph.
As such, her death is aligned with the death of an old world order. It
does not matter that, in reality, “pagan religiosity did not expire with
Hypatia, and neither did mathematics and Greek philosophy”;28 it
is Hypatia as “the symbol of a certain end of antiquity, the end of cul-
ture and freedom of thought, the end of the philosophical tradition
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Joanna Paul238
and the taste for beauty” that counts.29 Nor is her gender inconse-
quential in this alignment. Although the death of a male scholar or
philosopher can symbolize the end of the classical past— or at least
the “crossroads of the Classical and Medieval worlds,” as in the case
of Boethius, executed a century after Hypatia30— Hypatia’s femininity
lends the laments a particular and varying quality. For those for whom
Hypatia’s imagined beauty was as important as her intellect (if not
more so), her death represents the specific loss of the idealized, Hel-
lenic classical past, a past idolized primarily for its aesthetic purity. Such
feelings are perfectly exemplified by the poetry of Leconte de Lisle
(1818– 94), figurehead of the French Parnassian poets, who addressed
Hypatia as “la vierge de l’hellenisme” (“the virgin of Hellenism”) and
praised her as an immaculate, luminous, marble- like personification
of a beauty that the contemporary world, ruled by “l’impure laideur”
(“impure ugliness”), struggles to find.31
A more modern, feminist view might see things differently. Rather
than representing an aesthetic loss, Hypatia’s death— as presented in
the film— could exemplify the trope that connects the female body
to a wider sociopolitical context and frames the body as a territory to
be fought over, conquered, and transgressed in the name of (male)
hegemony and associated ideologies such as imperialism. Feminist
scholarship of classical literature has detected this trope in a variety of
texts— for example, Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, his account of Rome’s his-
tory, where the rapes of the Sabine women, Lucretia, and Verginia are
closely connected to the formation of the Roman state;32 and I would
argue that a similar reading applies to Agora. Destroying the Library
was not enough, and the struggle for supremacy must ultimately be
brought to bear on Hypatia’s very flesh, her actual body destroyed as
the Christians seek to impose their worldview; yet, in the terms of the
film, although Hypatia is defeated, her body remains intact and invio-
late (we do not see the after- effects of the stoning, only learning that
she was mutilated and burned on a pyre in the closing credits), perhaps
indicating that for Amenábar, the classical world embodied by Hypatia
remains meaningful, precious, and worthy of salvaging.
Conclusion
It is this celebration of classical culture— or, to be more precise, Alex-
andrian scholarship’s achievements in science and philosophy— that
drives Agora. Bravely for an epic film, a considerable amount of narra-
tive time is devoted to Hypatia’s musings and expositions of her cos-
mological theories, but it is not all dry academic discourse, for this
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Subverting Sex and Love 239
theme shapes another layer of Agora’s ideology, concerning the lasting
significance of religious conflict and political strife. The image of the
circle, as symbol of the planetary orbit, recurs throughout the film,
most strikingly when the camera looks through the oculus, or circu-
lar hole, that crowns the dome of the Serapeum. At the film’s end,
when Davus walks away from this building after Hypatia’s death, the
camera looks down on the oculus one final time, before pulling away
and creating an oblique angle that flattens the circle into an ellipse,
thereby representing Hypatia’s discovery, just before her death, of the
true nature of planetary orbits. This is a fiction, but a necessary one for
the film, since it underlines the magnitude of what was lost as Chris-
tianity replaces the classical. Had Hypatia been allowed to live, Agora
suggests, then we wouldn’t have had to wait out the endless Dark Ages
before Renaissance scholars such as Johannes Kepler “discovered” the
truth all over again. The camera pulls back further still, showing us the
city, the Nile delta, and then, with the longest of all long- shots, a view
of the Earth from space. Through this visual device, which appears at
other key moments in the film, the squabbles of men and women in
Alexandria are shown from their rightful perspective and presented as
ultimately futile and meaningless in the context of the universe.33 Man
should look to the heavens, it implies, but not in search of God.
This long- view also reminds us to consider how Agora uses an
ancient story to speak to twenty- first- century concerns, making a
powerful statement in favor of religious and intellectual tolerance and
gender equality. Events since the film’s release only serve to underline
its currency. As the Egyptian revolution took hold in early 2011, news
reports told of how Alexandrian youths banded together to protect
the Bibliotheca Alexandrina— the new incarnation of the Library of
Alexandria, opened in 200234— from the “lawless bands of thugs”
who sought to loot and vandalize it, making us think, inevitably, of
the desperate efforts of Hypatia and her fellow scholars to preserve
the library in Agora.35 In the film, of course, they did not succeed,
and Agora could be said to be quite pessimistic in its view of what
happened after Hypatia’s death. But as A. O. Scott of The New York
Times commented, “The warning bell that Agora sounds may be loud
and at times a little grating, but what’s wrong with that? The skepti-
cal and the secular also need stories of martyrdom and rousing acts
of cinematic preaching.”36 With this comment, we see how Agora
appropriates stories of martyrdom, and the cinematic idiom in which
they are usually presented, in order to preach a very different kind of
message. It is refreshing to see the language of mainstream Holly-
wood epic used to tackle such different issues, not only regarding the
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Joanna Paul240
dangers of fundamentalism and narrow- minded, dogmatic thought,
but also, and especially, about where they intersect with feminism and
the female voice.
Notes
1. Cyrino (2011) 23.
2. 2010 also saw the release of Clash of the Titans; another mythological
blockbuster, Immortals, followed in 2011.
3. Two recent films, King Arthur (2004) and The Last Legion (2007),
also deal with this historical period history, though with less intellec-
tual ambition and critical success.
4. See the Agora article in IMDb for worldwide release dates.
5. Box- office receipts indicate the disparity between the film’s success in
Spain and elsewhere: Spain’s total is $29,609,470, with the second-
highest takings in Italy a far lower $2,819,873. The advertised produc-
tion budget totaled $70 million, but worldwide takings currently stand
at only around $39 million (http:// www .boxofficemojo .com).
6. This is not to say that there were no protests against the film: on Octo-
ber 7, 2009, the Catholic News Agency reported that the Religious
Anti- Defamation Observatory had written to Amenábar to com-
plain that Agora promoted hatred of Christians. That same month,
the newspaper La Stampa described Agora as “Il film che l’Italia non
vedrà” (“the film that Italy will not see”), speculating that religious
discomfort was responsible for its failure to find an Italian distributor.
However, Amenábar claims the Italian distributors arranged a prere-
lease screening at the Vatican, and that no particular controversy was
caused: see Holleran (2012).
7. Dzielska (1995) is particularly accessible.
8. Sartre (2009) 370.
9. Dzielska (1995) 1– 26 and Jaccottet (2010) survey Hypatian receptions.
10. See Dashú (2010).
11. See Rhodes (1995) 86– 98.
12. Cyril’s passage is an abridged version of 1 Timothy 2. Amenábar appar-
ently claimed that the script uses the King James version, and that the
“softest version” was sought for the Italian subtitles, to avoid contro-
versy at the Vatican screening: see Holleran (2012). In fact, only the
injunction “to be in silence” uses the King James wording; the rest of
the passage mainly follows the New International Version.
13. Jaccottet (2010) 142; Sartre (2009) 373– 76.
14. Dzielska (1995) 2– 4; Jaccottet (2010) 144– 45; Stephens (2010) 272.
15. Voltaire, L’examen important de Milord Bolingbroke (1736) chap-
ter 36.
16. Historia Ecclesiastica 7.15, in Hussey (1992).
17. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1781– 89) chapter 47.5.
pal-cyrino-book.indb 240 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Subverting Sex and Love 241
18. Prettejohn (1996) 154– 55; Jaccottet (2010) 149.
19. As Hypatia steps from the bath, she is framed by two well- known
ancient nudes: on her right, a Capua- type Venus, and on her left, the
mosaic of Neptune and Amphitrite from Pompeii (rendered in the film
as a low relief.)
20. Morning Post, January 3, 1893; Woman, January 7, 1893.
21. The Lady’s Pictorial, January 7, 1893.
22. Hypatia has also lent her name to Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Phi-losophy (founded 1986).
23. Chicago (2007) 85.
24. Thompson (2011) 40.
25. Stephens (2010) 272.
26. Canfora (1987) 139– 44.
27. Canfora (1987) also describes the Serapeum as the “ ‘daughter’
library” (63).
28. Dzielska (1995) 105.
29. Sartre (2009) 370, emphasis added. See also Avezzù (2010) 342.
30. Watts (1969) 7.
31. Leconte de Lisle’s “Hypatie,” written in 1847, was published in 1852
in Poèmes Antiques; a revised version, “Hypatie et Cyrille,” was pub-
lished in 1874.
32. See, for example, Joshel (1992) and Arieti (1997).
33. Cf. Avezzù (2010) 338.
34. The library houses a metal statue of Hypatia by the artist Tarek El
Koumy.
35. The Guardian, February 1, 2011.
36. Scott (2010).
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Filmography
Feature Films and Shorts
300 (2007). Directed by Zack Snyder. Legendary Pictures/Warner Bros.
The 300 Spartans (1962). Directed by Rudolph Maté. Twentieth Century Fox.
Agora (2009). Directed by Alejandro Amenábar. Focus Features/Newmarket
Films.
Alexander (2004). Directed by Oliver Stone. Intermedia Films/Warner Bros.
All About My Mother (1999). Directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Sony Pictures
Classics.
Angels & Insects (1996). Directed by Philip Haas. Playhouse International
Pictures/Samuel Goldwyn Company.
Animal House (1978). Directed by John Landis. Universal Pictures.
Ben- Hur (1959). Directed by William Wyler. Metro- Goldwyn- Mayer.
Broken Embraces (2009). Directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Sony Pictures
Classics.
Caligula (1979). Directed by Tinto Brass, Bob Guccione, and Giancarlo Lui.
Penthouse Films International.
The Campus Vamp (1928). Directed by Harry Edwards. Mack Sennett
Comedies.
Carrie (1976). Directed by Brian De Palma. United Artists.
Carry On Cleo (1964). Directed by Gerald Thomas. Peter Rogers
Productions/Anglo- Amalgamated.
Centurion (2010). Directed by Neil Marshall. Celador Films/Pathé.
Clash of the Titans (2010). Directed by Louis Leterrier. Legendary Pictures/
Warner Bros.
Cleopatra (1917). Directed by J. Gordon Edwards. Fox Film Corporation.
Cleopatra (1934). Directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Paramount Pictures.
Cleopatra (1963). Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Twentieth Century
Fox.
Die Büchse der Pandora (1929). Directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. Süd- Film.
The Eagle (2011). Directed by Kevin Macdonald. Focus Features.
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005). Directed by Scott Derrickson. Lakeshore
Entertainment/Screen Gems.
The Exorcist (1973). Directed by William Friedkin. Warner Bros.
The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964). Directed by Anthony Mann. Samuel
Bronston Productions/Paramount Pictures.
pal-cyrino-book.indb 243 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Filmography244
Femme Fatale (2002). Directed by Brian De Palma. Epsilon Motion Pic-
tures/Warner Bros.
The Flower of My Secret (1995). Directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Sony Pictures
Classics.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966). Directed by Rich-
ard Lester. United Artists.
Gladiator (2000). Directed by Ridley Scott. Scott Free Productions/Dream-
Works Pictures/Universal Pictures.
Immortals (2011). Directed by Tarsem Singh. Relativity Media/Universal
Pictures.
King Arthur (2004). Directed by Antoine Fuqua. Touchstone Pictures/
Buena Vista.
Kiss Me Deadly (1955). Directed by Robert Aldrich. Parklane Pictures
Inc./United Artists.
The Last Exorcism (2010). Directed by Daniel Stamm. Strike Entertainment/
Lionsgate.
The Last Legion (2007). Directed by Doug Lefler. Dino De Laurentiis Com-
pany/The Weinstein Company.
Manslaughter (1922). Directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Paramount Pictures.
Mariette in Ecstasy (1996). Directed by John Bailey. Price Entertainment/
Savoy Pictures.
M*A*S*H (1970). Directed by Robert Altman. Aspen Productions/
Twentieth Century Fox.
Maxie (1985). Directed by Paul Aaron. Orion Pictures.
Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979). Directed by Terry Jones. Handmade
Films/Orion Pictures/Warner Bros.
The New World (2005). Directed by Terrence Malick. New Line Cinema.
The Omen (1976). Directed by Richard Donner. Twentieth Century Fox.
The Omen (2006). Directed by John Moore. Twentieth Century Fox.
One Million Years B.C. (1967). Directed by Don Chaffey. Hammer Film Pro-
ductions/Twentieth Century Fox.
L’Orgie romaine (1911). Directed by Louis Feuillade. Gaumont.
Paranormal Activity (2009). Directed by Oren Peli. Blumhouse Produc-
tions/Paramount Pictures.
Paranormal Activity 2 (2010). Directed by Tod Williams. Paramount Pictures.
Paranormal Activity 3 (2011). Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman.
Paramount Pictures.
Prehistoric Women (1967). Directed by Michael Carreras. Hammer Film Pro-
ductions/Twentieth Century Fox.
Poltergeist (1982). Directed by Tobe Hooper. Metro- Goldwyn- Mayer.
Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986). Directed by Brian Gibson. Metro-
Goldwyn- Mayer.
Poltergeist III (1988). Directed by Gary Sherman. Metro- Goldwyn- Mayer.
Private Gladiator (2002). Directed by Antonio Adams. Private Media Ltd.
pal-cyrino-book.indb 244 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Filmography 245
Psycho (1960). Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Shamley Productions/
Paramount Pictures.
Psycho (1998). Directed by Gus Van Sant. Imagine Entertainment/Universal
Pictures.
Quo Vadis (1951). Directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Metro- Goldwyn- Mayer.
Return of the Jedi (1983). Directed by Richard Marquand. Lucasfilm/
Twentieth Century Fox.
Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Directed by Roman Polanski. Paramount Pictures.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). Directed by Stanley Donen. Metro-
Goldwyn- Mayer.
She (1965). Directed by Robert Day. Hammer Film Productions/Metro-
Goldwyn- Mayer.
The Sign of the Cross (1932). Directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Paramount
Pictures.
The Shining (1980). Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Peregrine Productions/
Warner Bros.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937). Directed by David Hand. Walt
Disney Productions/RKO Radio Pictures.
Spartacus (1960). Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Bryna Productions/Universal
Pictures.
Stigmata (1999). Directed by Rupert Wainwright. FGM Entertainment/
Metro- Goldwyn- Mayer.
Sucker Punch (2011). Directed by Zack Snyder. Legendary Pictures/Warner
Bros.
Talk to Her (2002). Directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Sony Pictures Classics.
Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal’s Caligula (2005). Directed by Francesco
Vezzoli. Crossroads.
Troy (2004). Directed by Wolfgang Petersen. Plan B Entertainment/Warner
Bros.
The Viking Queen (1967). Directed by Don Chaffey. Hammer Film Produc-
tions/Twentieth Century Fox.
Volver (2006). Directed by Pedro Almodóvar. Sony Pictures Classics.
Witchboard (1987). Directed by Kevin Tenney. Paragon Arts International.
Witchboard II: The Devil’s Doorway (1993). Directed by Kevin Tenney. Blue
Rider Pictures.
The Wolfman (1941). Directed by George Waggner. Universal Pictures.
The Wolfman (2010). Directed by Joe Johnston. Relativity Media/Universal
Pictures.
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988). Directed by Pedro
Almodóvar. Orion Classics.
Television Series and Films
Cleopatra (1999). Directed by Franc Roddam. Hallmark Entertainment.
Empire (2005). Created by Chip Johannessen. ABC.
pal-cyrino-book.indb 245 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Filmography246
Game of Thrones (2011). Created by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. HBO.
Hercules and the Amazon Women (1994). Directed by Bill L. Norton. Renais-
sance Pictures.
I, Claudius (1976). Produced by Martin Lisemore. BBC Television.
Imperium: Augustus (2003). Directed by Roger Young. EOS Entertainment.
Julius Caesar (2002). Directed by Uli Edel. De Angelis Group/TNT.
Rome (2005– 7). Created by Bruno Heller, William J. MacDonald, and John
Milius. HBO- BBC.
Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010). Created by Steven S. DeKnight. Starz.
Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (2011). Created by Steven S. DeKnight. Starz.
Spartacus: Vengeance (2012). Created by Steven S. DeKnight. Starz.
True Blood (2008– 12). Created by Alan Ball. HBO.
Xena: Warrior Princess (1995– 2001). Created by John Schulian and Robert
Tapert. Renaissance Pictures.
pal-cyrino-book.indb 246 1/10/13 10:19 AM
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Contributors
Monica S. Cyrino is Professor of Classics at the University of New
Mexico. Her academic research centers on the erotic in ancient
Greek poetry and the reception of the ancient world on screen. She
is the author of Aphrodite (2010), A Journey through Greek Mythol-ogy (2008), Big Screen Rome (2005), In Pandora’s Jar: Lovesickness in Early Greek Poetry (1995), and the editor of Rome, Season One: History Makes Television (2008). She has published numerous articles
and book chapters and often gives lectures around the world on the
representation of classical antiquity on film and television. She has
served as an academic consultant on several recent film and television
productions.
Antony Augoustakis is Associate Professor of Classics at the Univer-
sity of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. His research interests include
Roman comedy and historiography, Latin imperial epic, women in
antiquity, and gender theory. He is the author of Ritual and Reli-gion in Flavian Epic (2013), Motherhood and the Other: Fashioning Female Power in Flavian Epic (2010), and Plautus’ Mercator (2009).
He is the editor of the Brill Companion to Silius Italicus (2010), and
coeditor of the special journal issue Statius’ Silvae and the Poetics of Intimacy (Arethusa 2007).
Gregory N. Daugherty is Professor of Classics and Chair of the
Department of Classics at Randolph- Macon College in Ashland, Vir-
ginia. His research focuses on the reception of classics in American
popular culture, including the depiction of ancient battles, adapta-
tions of Homeric epic, and the representation of Cleopatra. He is the
coauthor of To Be a Roman: Topics in Roman Culture (2007). He has
been president of the Classical Association of the Middle West and
South as well as the Classical Association of Virginia.
Kirsten Day is Assistant Professor of Classics at Augustana College in
Rock Island, Illinois. Her research interests include women in antiquity
pal-cyrino-book.indb 263 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Contributors264
and representations of the classical world in popular culture. She is the
editor of the special journal issue Celluloid Classics: New Perspectives on Classical Antiquity in Modern Cinema (Arethusa 2008) and has chaired
the Classical Representations in Popular Culture area for the Southwest
Texas Popular/American Culture Association conferences since 2002.
Seán Easton is Assistant Professor in the Classics department and the
Peace Studies program at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter,
Minnesota. His research interests include Latin epic, the cinematic
and literary reception of the Greco- Roman world, and the representa-
tion of peace in ancient and modern cultures. He has published on
Lucan’s Pharsalia and presented papers on Latin epic and the films
of Terrence Malick. His current work is on Ovid’s Metamorphoses and
John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film Seconds.
Alison Futrell is Associate Professor of Roman History at the Univer-
sity of Arizona. Her research focuses on the texts, performance, and
imagery of power in imperial Rome. She is the author of Blood in the Arena (1997) and Roman Games (2006) and coeditor of the forth-
coming Oxford Handbook of Sport and Spectacle in the Ancient World.
She has also published essays on Spartacus, HBO’s Rome, and Xena: Warrior Princess. Her current book project is Barbarian Queens: Par-adoxes of Gender, Power and Identity.
Lorenzo F. Garcia Jr. is Assistant Professor of Classics at the Uni-
versity of New Mexico, where he teaches a course called “Homeric
Cinematography.” His research focuses on Homeric epic, early Greek
poetics and mythology, narratology, and cinema theory and technique,
which he uses to analyze the filmic aspects of ancient poetry. He is the
author of Homeric Durability: Telling Time in the Iliad (2013) and
has published articles on Greek and Roman literature and the recep-
tion of antiquity in film.
Paula James is Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies at The Open Uni-
versity in the United Kingdom. She is the author of Ovid’s Myth of Pygmalion on Screen (2011) and is coeditor of The Role of the Parrot in Selected Texts from Ovid to Jean Rhys (2006). She has published on
a variety of Latin literary texts, including Apuleius, Ovid, Claudian,
and Prudentius, and she has written book chapters and articles on the
reception of Greco- Roman motifs and myths in literature, art, film,
television, and mass culture.
pal-cyrino-book.indb 264 1/10/13 10:19 AM
Contributors 265
Rachael Kelly is a recent graduate of the University of Ulster in
Northern Ireland, where she was awarded a PhD in Film and Gen-
der Studies. Her academic research explores the cultural function of
Marcus Antonius in screen texts. She has presented several scholarly
papers and published a number of articles on Mark Antony in film
and television, as well as on screen portrayals of Cleopatra in light of
recent debates in feminist film theory. She is presently revising her
doctoral thesis for publication.
Christopher M. McDonough is Professor and Chair of Classical
Languages and former director of the Interdisciplinary Humanities
Program at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. His
scholarly research centers on Roman literature and religion, as well as
the classical tradition in American literature, film, and culture. He is
the coauthor of Servius’ Commentary on Book Four of Virgil’s Aeneid: An Annotated Translation (2004), and he is a frequent contributor
to The Sewanee Review.
Corinne Pache is Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Trin-
ity University in San Antonio, Texas. Her academic research focuses
on Greek archaic poetry, Greek religion and myth, and the modern
reception of ancient poetry. She is the author of “A Moment’s Orna-ment”: The Poetics of Nympholepsy in Ancient Greece (2010), and she is
currently working on a new book project, Remembering Penelope, on
the reception of the Homeric heroine in modern literature and film.
Joanna Paul is Lecturer in Classical Studies at The Open University
in the United Kingdom. She is the author of Film and the Classi-cal Epic Tradition (2013) and the coeditor of Pompeii in the Public Imagination from its Rediscovery to Today (2011). She has published
numerous articles and book chapters on classical receptions of antiq-
uity in cinema and popular culture. Her current project is a mono-
graph on Pompeian receptions that explores how Pompeii has been
used as a reference point for modern disasters.
Jerry B. Pierce is Assistant Professor of History at Penn State Hazle-
ton University. His research is divided between portrayals of masculin-
ity in ancient film and violence in medieval heresy. He is the author
of Poverty, Heresy and the Apocalypse: The Order of Apostles and Social Change in Medieval Italy 1260– 1307 (2012). He has published a
book chapter on heteronormativity in the epic films Gladiator, Troy,
pal-cyrino-book.indb 265 1/10/13 10:20 AM
Contributors266
and 300, and he is currently researching masculinity and sexuality in
films about the ancient world.
Stacie Raucci is Associate Professor of Classics at Union College in
Schenectady, New York, where she teaches an undergraduate course
on the ancient world in the cinema. Her academic research focuses
primarily on Roman love elegy and the reception of the ancient world
in popular culture. She is the author of Elegiac Eyes: Vision in Roman Love Elegy (2011). She has published articles and delivered papers on
the popularization of antiquity, Medusa Barbie, and the Roman poet
Propertius.
Meredith Safran is Assistant Professor of Classics at Trinity College in
Hartford, Connecticut. Her research interests include late Republican
Roman society, Greek and Roman political thought, mythology, and
historiography. Her current project analyzes prominent female char-
acters in Roman historiography and the positions women assume in
relation to Rome as a political community. She has delivered numer-
ous lectures on the “Sabine women” myth in ancient literature and its
modern adaptations from the Renaissance to the twentieth century.
Anise K. Strong is Assistant Professor of History at Western Michi-
gan University. Her research centers on Roman social history, gender
and sexuality in the ancient world, and the reception of classical cul-
ture in modern mass media. She is finishing a book entitled Roman
Women and the Construction of Virtue: Wicked Wives and Good Whores. Recent articles include Roman toleration of ancient incest, sexuality
in the HBO series Rome, and the treatment of ethnic intermarriage in
Herodotus’s Histories.
Vincent Tomasso is Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at Ripon
College in Wisconsin. His research focuses on archaic and imperial
Greek literature and reception. He has published on the reception of
the battle of Thermopylae in Frank Miller’s graphic novel Sin City: The Big Fat Kill in Classics and Comics (2011) and Triphiodorus’s
reception of Homer in Brill’s Companion to the Greek and Latin Epyl-lion and Its Reception (2012). His current project is a monograph on
the reception of Homer by imperial Greek poets.
pal-cyrino-book.indb 266 1/10/13 10:20 AM
Index
Aaron, Paul, 185– 86
Ab Urbe Condita (Livy), 238
“Ac- Cent- Tchu- Ate the Positive” (song),
100
Achilles, 40, 52n19, 128– 29, 131– 32,
134, 139, 140n8, 140n11, 161
Adam, 17
Addey, Wesley, 31
Aeneid (Vergil), 78– 80, 86, 89
Aeschylus, 26, 30, 38n31, 89, 119
Agamemnon, 49, 62, 89, 97n19,
131– 32
Agamemnon (Aeschylus), 89, 97n19
Agave (character; Bacchae), 89, 97n20
Agora (2009), 8, 227– 40, 240nn5– 6
and the end of the classical world,
234– 38
and gender, 230– 31
and religion, 231– 33
Agora characters
Cyril, 229, 231– 33, 235– 37, 240n12
Davus, 229– 30, 233, 239
Hypatia (see Hypatia)
Orestes, 229– 30, 232– 33, 237
parabalani, 229, 232– 33
Synesius, 229, 231– 32, 237
Theon, 229– 30
Theophilus, 229
Alberich (character; Rheingold), 71
Alcaeus, 70
Alcanfor de las Infantas, 56– 57, 60– 61,
67
Alcinous (character; Odyssey), 39, 42
Aldrich, Robert, 4– 5, 25, 28– 31, 33– 35,
36n1, 38n28, 38n31
Alexander (2004), 6, 123, 127– 40, 235
Alexander the Great, 6, 127– 40
Alexandria, 8, 150, 195, 206, 228– 29,
232– 33, 235, 237– 39
All About My Mother (1999), 57– 58
Almagro, 58, 60
Almodóvar, Pedro, 5, 55– 61, 63, 66
Altman, Robert, 107– 8
Amandry, Pierre, 88– 89
Amata (character; Aeneid), 89
Amazon, 39, 42, 47, 51– 52, 122, 191
Amenábar, Alejandro, 8, 228
Anchises (character; Aeneid), 79
Andress, Ursula, 215
Angels & Insects (1996), 5, 39– 52
and courtship, 41– 43
and cuckoldry, 49– 50
and fidelity and license, 51– 52
and marriage as misalliance, 43– 45
and nature vs. culture, 45– 48
Angels & Insects characters
Bredely Hall, 39– 45, 48– 51, 52n3
Edgar, 43– 44, 46– 50
Eugenia Alabaster Adamson, 39– 40,
43– 46, 49– 51
Lady Alabaster, 39– 40, 42– 43
Matilda Crompton, 51
William Adamson, 5, 39– 51, 52n3
Animal House (1978), 153– 54
Anne Catherick (character; The Woman in White), 29
Anthony, Albert, 37n19
anthropopoieisis, 36n8
Aphorisms (Hippocrates), 18
Aphrodite, 26, 34, 44– 45, 49– 50,
53n28, 78, 175
Apollo, 86– 89, 93, 97n19
Appius Claudius Pulcher, 87
Ares, 49– 50, 53n28
pal-cyrino-book.indb 267 1/10/13 10:20 AM
Index268
Arete (character; Odyssey), 39, 41– 43,
46, 50
Aristotle, 133– 34
Ars Amatoria (“The Art of Love”; Ovid),
106– 7
“Arthur Freed Unit” (MGM), 105
Assemblywomen (Aristophanes), 120
Athena, 17, 26, 41, 44, 51, 53n32
Athens, 26, 50, 95, 113, 118, 120, 130
Augoustakis, Antony, 7
Augustus (2002), 199, 201
Avatar (2009), 2
Avedon, Richard, 190
Aymé, Jean, 145
Bacchae (Euripides), 89, 97n20
Bacchanalia, 153
Bacchus, 146
Bagoas, 134– 35, 137
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 172
Bara, Theda, 7, 183– 85, 187– 92
“barbarian queen,” 8, 211– 14
barbarism, 3, 8, 42, 63, 117, 128– 29,
211– 14, 222, 227
Barrie, Amanda, 188– 90
BBC, 8, 147, 149, 151, 157, 192, 196,
201, 206
BBFC. See British Board of Film
Censorship
Bell Jar, The (Plath), 104
Benét, Stephen Vincent, 109n1
Ben- Hur (1959), 99, 172, 218– 19
Bettie Page: Queen of the Nile, 191
Bezzerides, A. I., 25, 28, 33, 36n1,
37n17, 38n30
Bianca, Viva, 170
Bianco, Robert, 155n20
Big Chill, The (1983), 183
Blanshard, Alastair, 153
Blatty, William Peter, 90, 97n24, 98n33
Blondell, Ruby, 124n1
Blunt, Emily, 149
Boa, Elizabeth, 20
Boadicea, 213– 16, 234
Bodysnatchers, The (1955), 184
Bonduca (1609; Fletcher), 214
Boudicca, 3, 8, 211– 13, 217, 220,
225n26
Boudiccan Revolt (A.D. 61), 8, 211
Bowra, C. M., 77
B. P. Johnson Co., 190
Brandt, Lesley- Ann, 158
brassiere, 189– 92
See also snake bra
breastplates, 189, 191– 92, 214, 217– 23
Briseis, 129
British Board of Film Censorship
(BBFC), 215, 220
British Empire, 211– 23, 224n16,
225n26
Broken Embraces (2009), 58
Brooks, Louise, 11– 12, 14, 19– 22
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 177, 181
Butler, Gerard, 117– 19
Byatt, A. S., 5, 39– 40, 52, 52nn3– 4,
53n30
Cabrera, Santiago, 149
Calame, Claude C., 36n8
Calchas, 86, 89
Calgacus, 165, 213, 223n4
Caligula, 147– 49, 154n8, 170
Caligula (1979), 148
Caligula (2007 “Imperial Edition”), 148
Caligula “remake” trailer, 148– 49
Calypso, 40, 42, 44, 52n18
Camelot (2011), 177
Cameron, James, 2
Campus Vamp, The (1928), 185, 189
Caratacus, 213– 14
Carr, Marion, 34
Carrie (1976), 91
Carroll, Brett, 200
Carry on Cleo (1964), 188
Carson, Anne, 89
Cartledge, Paul, 124
Casanova, 106
Cassandra (character; Agamemnon), 89,
97n19
castration anxiety, 93
Catholic Church, 185, 228, 231, 240n6
Catullus, 74, 161
Centurion (2010), 227
Cerberus, 28
Chafe, William, 104
Chicago, Judy, 234
Christianity, 27, 94, 99, 146– 47, 227–
29, 231– 39, 240n6
pal-cyrino-book.indb 268 1/10/13 10:20 AM
Index 269
Chronicles of England (1577), 213– 14
Cicero, 196– 98, 209
Circe, 40
“civilization,” 3, 42, 63, 145– 46, 212–
13, 237
Clash of the Titans (1981), 185
Clash of the Titans (2010), 228, 240n2
Cleopatra, 2, 7, 150, 183– 92, 193n1,
193n9, 193n11, 193n20, 195, 197,
200– 203, 205– 6, 208, 209n20,
223, 228
Cleopatra (1534 sketch; Michelangelo),
189– 90, 192
Cleopatra (1911), 189
Cleopatra (1912), 189
Cleopatra (1917), 183– 85, 187, 189
Cleopatra (1934; DeMille), 2, 187, 201
Cleopatra (1963; Mankiewicz), 2, 184–
85, 187– 88, 190, 201– 2, 223
Cleopatra (1999), 199, 201
Cleopatra Jones- Wong- Schwartz trend,
184
Cleopatre: La derniere reine d’Egypt (2010), 192
Close, Glenn, 7, 183– 93
Clover, Carol, 93, 96n3, 97n24, 98n33
Clum, John M., 129
Clytemnestra, 49, 62, 97n19, 119
Cobo, Yohana, 56
Coen brothers, 3
Colbert, Claudette, 185, 187– 88
Cold Mountain (2003), 3
Cold Storage Room, The, 57– 58
Cold War, 35, 36n1
Collins, Wilkie, 29
Commodus, 130– 32, 135
Complete History of England (1757), 214
Condon, Kerry, 150
Cooper, Maxine, 27
corsets, 189
Courtney, Jai, 152
“crisis of American masculinity,” 102
Cruz, Penélope, 56– 57, 65
cuckoldry, 49– 50
Cummings, Erin, 170– 71
Curse of Frankenstein, The (1957),
214– 15
Cyrino, Monica, 22n1, 52n1, 81n1,
82n16, 83n32, 96n1, 118, 124n1,
126n46, 141n20, 154n7, 154n10,
158, 165n1, 169
Darius, 132
Darville, Eka, 161
Darwinism, 40, 46, 49– 50, 53n30
Daryaee, Touraj, 125n27
Daugherty, Gregory N., 7
Davis, John, 79– 80
Day, Doris, 107
Day, Kirsten, 5– 6
Death of Cleopatra (1660), 189
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Gibbon), 236
Dekker, Albert, 27– 28
DeKnight, Steven S., 168, 171, 177, 180
Delphi, 86– 87, 89
del Toro, Benicio, 149– 50
Demaratus, 115– 16, 118, 121
Demeter, 63– 64
DeMille, Cecil B., 2, 145– 46, 201
Demodocus, 49, 66
Dennis, Nick, 37n16
De Paul, Gene, 100
Diary of a Lost Girl, 22
Dido, 37n13, 79– 80
Die Büchse der Pandora (1929; Pabst), 2,
4, 11– 22, 23n10, 19
and Alwa, 12– 16, 19, 22
and Countess Geschwitz, 12– 14, 22,
23n10
and Dr. Goll, 12
and Dr. Hilti, 20
and Dr. Schön, 12– 15, 19– 20, 22
and Lulu, 4, 11– 15, 19– 22, 22n7,
23n10, 23n19
and Marquis Casti- Piani, 13– 14, 22
and Schigolch, 13– 14
and Schwartz, 12, 19
Diessl, Gustav, 13
Dinner Party, The (installation;
Chicago), 234
Dionysus, 154
Dixon, Wheeler Winston, 128
Doane, Mary Ann, 20
Dodds, E. R., 38n31, 97n20
Donaldson, Mike, 200
Donen, Stanley, 6, 105
Don Quixote, 60
pal-cyrino-book.indb 269 1/10/13 10:20 AM
Index270
D’Ora, Daisy, 12
Dracula (1958), 214– 15
Dr Pepper television ads, 184
Dueña, Lola, 56
Durgnat, Raymond, 33– 34
Eagle, The (2011), 227
Easton, Seán, 5
Ebert, Roger, 185
ecstasy, 86– 90, 94– 95, 96n2, 9, 97n12,
98n34, 149
Edwards, Catharine, 204
Edwards, Cliff, 189
Egyptians, 150– 51
Elsaesser, Thomas, 20– 21, 22n7, 23n10
Empire (2005), 149
Enlightenment, 233
epikleros, 53n29
Epimetheus, 17– 18, 26, 30, 32– 35,
36n12
epithalamium, 70, 73, 76– 77
Erdgeist (“Earth Spirit”; 1895), 12
Eros, 82n3, 203
Erotic Dreams of Cleopatra, The (1985),
184
Euripides, 89, 119
Euryalus, 46– 48
Evans- Grubbs, Judith, 103
Eve, 17, 19, 27, 37n19
Exorcist, The (1973), 5, 90– 92, 186
and Father Karras, 92, 98n33
and Father Merrin, 98n33
and Regan, 90– 91, 98n33
Fall of the Roman Empire, The (1964;
Mann), 127, 143, 154n5, 237
Faludi, Susan, 169, 176
Farnell, Lewis Richard, 88– 89, 97n22
Farr, Jamie, 190
Farrell, Colin, 71, 134
Fatal Attraction (1987), 183
father/fatherhood, 8, 13, 19, 21, 29,
37n13, 39, 41, 45– 50, 57– 58, 62–
67, 79– 81, 92, 106, 115, 129– 30,
133, 135– 38, 176, 184, 186, 196,
201– 7, 217, 221– 22, 229– 30, 235
Federal Meese Commission (1986), 168
“female gaze,” 7, 167– 81
“feminine mystique,” 103– 4
Feminine Mystique, The (Friedan), 103–
4, 108– 9
feminism, 7– 8, 27, 55, 86, 95, 113, 118,
121, 125n28, 168, 177, 179– 81,
196, 208, 227, 234, 238– 40
feminist theory, 7, 27, 55, 86, 95, 113,
118, 121, 168, 177, 179, 180– 81,
196, 208, 227, 234, 238– 40
“feminization,” 5– 6, 34, 64– 66, 98n41,
127, 130– 32, 134, 138– 40, 197,
199, 214, 217
feminized male, 5– 6, 98n41, 127– 40,
197, 199, 214
Femme Fatale (2002), 191
femmes fatales, 2, 4, 11, 21, 27, 37n17,
191– 92, 227
fetish, 14, 19, 87– 88, 93– 94, 118– 19,
171, 233
Feuillade, Louis, 145
film noir, 4, 34, 38
Film Threat’s Top Ten Lost Silent Films, 184
Finney, Jack, 184
First Epistle of Paul to Timothy, 232
Fitzgerald, Robert, 79
flappers, 146, 183, 185– 86, 189– 92
Fletcher, John, 214
Fletcher, Judith, 40
Flinn, Carol, 34, 37n23
Flower of My Secret, The (1995), 57– 58,
61, 67n6
and Alicia, 57– 58
and Leo Macías, 57– 58, 67n6
Fool There Was, A (1914), 189
Forbes, Michelle, 153
Foucault, Michel, 174
French New Wave cinema, 38n27
frenzy, 86– 90, 96n2, 97n12, 138
Freud, Sigmund, 93, 199
Friedan, Betty, 103– 4, 108
frontier mores, 103, 109
Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A (1966), 143
Futrell, Alison, 8
Game of Thrones (2011), 169– 70, 177,
179
Garcia, Lorenzo F., Jr., 4
Gaugamela, battle of, 132
pal-cyrino-book.indb 270 1/10/13 10:20 AM
Index 271
Gaultier, Jean Paul, 191
Genesis, 17
Gibbon, Edward, 233, 236
Gielgud, John, 170
Gill, Rosalind, 208
Gladiator (2000), 127– 30, 139, 140n2,
143, 157, 172
Glaucon, 60
Gloriosus, Miles, 143
Gods of the Arena (2011), 152, 155n20,
165n7, 178– 79
Goetz, Carl, 13
Gordon, Ruth, 185
Graces, 26
Group of Polygnotos, 30
Guccione, Bob, 170
Guggenheim Museum, 149
Haas, Belinda, 39
Haas, Philip, 5, 39
Hades, 35, 50, 64
Haggard, H. Rider, 215
Hamlet, 37n13
Hamlin, Harry, 185– 86, 188, 192
Hammer Studios, 8, 211, 214– 17, 220,
222– 23, 244n13, 244n17, 244n20
Hannah, John, 152
Hanson, Victor Davis, 120
Hark, Ina Rae, 130, 172
Harris, Charlene, 153
Harrison, Rex, 188
Harrison, Tony, 26
Hassler- Forest, Dan, 117– 18
Hays Code, 198
HBO, 153, 169, 176– 77, 209
HBO- BBC, 7– 8, 149– 51, 157, 196,
201, 206
Headey, Lena, 117– 20
Hector, 128– 29, 131– 32, 135, 138– 39
Helen, 70, 80– 81, 82n8, 131
Heliogabalus (A.D. 218– 22), 145
Heller, Bruno, 209
Henley, Alice, 150
Hephaestion, 128, 133– 39, 140n11
Hephaestus, 15– 17, 26, 31, 35, 38n30,
49– 50, 53n28
Hera, 53n28
Hercules and the Amazon Women (1994),
122
Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), 185
Hermes, 17, 26, 48
Herodotus, 88– 89, 114– 16, 118, 121,
124n12, 125n15, 125n21
Hesiod, 4, 11– 22
heterosexuality, 127, 129– 30, 132– 36,
140n8
Heyman, Francis, 214
Hippocrates, 18
Histories (Herodotus), 114– 16, 118,
124n12, 125n15
Hitchcock, Alfred, 34, 37
Holinshed, Raphael, 213– 14
Hollywood film epics, 227– 40
Hollywood musicals (1950s), 6, 99– 109
Homecoming (1948), 3
Homer, 2, 5, 39– 43, 47– 48, 50– 52,
52n3, 53n28, 55– 64, 66, 69– 70,
77, 80, 82n3, 89
Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 5, 63– 64
homosexuality, 127– 40, 140n8,
140n12, 140n14, 158, 160– 62,
165n6, 170
Hopkins, Claude, 190
horror films, 85– 95, 215
Hours, the, 26
Hudson, Rock, 107
Hughes, Bettany, 116– 17, 119
Hypatia, 8, 228– 39, 240n9, 241n19,
241n22, 241n34
and the end of the classical world,
234– 38
and gender, 230– 31
and religion, 231– 33
Hypatia (1885 painting), 233
Hypatia, or Old Foes with a New Face (1853; Kingsley), 231
I, Claudius (1976), 147– 48
Ibycus, 70
Iceni tribe, 212– 13, 216– 17, 220– 21,
223n3, 224n12
Imperium: Augustus (2003), 192
incest, 39– 52
incest taboo, 53n30
incontinentia (lack of self- control), 197–
99, 203
Io (character; Prometheus Bound), 30
pal-cyrino-book.indb 271 1/10/13 10:20 AM
Index272
Jack the Ripper, 12– 15, 23n24
Jacob, Mary Phelps, 189
James, Paula, 4– 5
James, Richard, 155n20
Jamestown colony, 5
Jayamanne, Laleen, 37n17
“Jeepers Creepers!” (song), 100
Jordaan, L. J., 36n8
Joshel, Sandra, 144, 154, 154n6,
154n10, 180
Jovovich, Milla, 148– 49
Joy, Leatrice, 145– 46
Joyner, Joyzelle, 146
Julius Caesar, 213, 235
katabasis theme, 38n28
Keel, Howard, 101– 2
Kelly, Rachael, 7
Kensit, Patsy, 45
Kepler, Johannes, 239
Kerr, Deborah, 147
Kilcher, Q’Orianka, 72, 74
kinaidos, 140n13
Kinder, Küche, und Kirche, 103
King Arthur (2004), 240n3
King Lear, 217
Kingsley, Charles, 231, 233– 34
“Kirk Douglas,” 173– 75
Kiss Me Deadly (1955), 25– 36
and the modern Prometheus, 28– 33
and the movie, 27– 28
and the myth, 26– 27
and readings of the film, 33– 36
and seizing the fire, 33
Kiss Me Deadly characters
Berga, 28– 31
Christina, 27– 32, 34– 35, 36n11
Dr. Soberin, 27– 28, 31– 33
Friday, 34
Gabrielle, 25, 27– 28, 31– 35
Lily, 25, 27– 28, 31– 35
Mike Hammer, 25, 27– 35, 36n12
Pat Murphy, 31
Velda, 27– 28, 32, 35, 36n1
Kortner, Fritz, 12
Kristeva, Julia, 37n24
Kubrick, Stanley, 157, 172– 74
Kungu Poti, 20
Kwok, Miranda, 174
Lady’s Pictorial, The, 234
Laertes, 67
La Mancha, 59
La Mort de Cléopâtre (1874), 189
Lampreave, Chus, 56
Landi, Alissa, 146
Laodamas, 46– 47
La Rosa del Azafrán (1930), 59, 67n10
“Las Espigadoras” (“the Gleaners”),
59– 60
Lasker, Albert, 190
Last Exorcism, The (2010), 92
and Nell, 92
and Reverend Cotton Marcus, 92
Last Legion, The (2007), 240n3
Lauretis, Teresa de, 94
Lawless, Lucy, 152– 53, 177, 181
Leachman, Cloris, 27– 28
Lederer, Franz, 12
Lee, Christopher, 215
Leech, Allen, 150
Leonidas, 89– 90, 116– 21, 128– 30, 132,
135, 138– 39, 227
LeRoy, Mervyn, 3
Leto, Jared, 134
Lev Kenaan, Vered, 27, 33
Life of Antony (Plutarch), 185
Life of Brian (1979), 232
Lilith, 19
Littau, Karin, 11
Livy, 238
Lizpatra. See Cleopatra (1963)
Lombard, Carol, 185, 189
Lonely Planet, 89
Lord, Mary- Louise, 64
L’Orgie romaine (The Roman Orgy; 1911), 145
Lot, 28
Love, Courtney, 148– 49
Love Boat, The (1977– 86), 184
Lucan, 87– 88, 95
Lucretia, 152, 158, 162– 63, 165n7,
173– 80
Lydia, 145– 46
Lysistrata (Aristophanes), 120
Macmillan, Maree, 11
Madonna, 189, 191
Maenad, 153
pal-cyrino-book.indb 272 1/10/13 10:20 AM
Index 273
Malamud, Margaret, 144, 154, 154n6,
154n10, 154n14
male anxiety, 93– 95, 109
male gaze, 71, 87– 95, 96n8, 169, 170–
71, 191, 207– 9
Malick, Terrence, 5, 69– 81
Mankiewicz, Joseph L., 2, 184, 201
Mann, Anthony, 127, 143, 154n5
Manslaughter (1922), 145
Marc Antony, 7, 150– 51, 169, 185– 88,
195– 209, 209n13
characteristics of, 197
and fatherhood, 196, 201– 7
and licentiousness, 196, 198– 201
and Roman political invective,
196– 98
in Rome, 195– 209
and virility, 196, 198– 200
March, Fredric, 146
Marcus Antonius (historical figure),
195– 98, 201
Mariette in Ecstasy (1996), 94
Marion’s Wall (Finney), 184– 89
and Marion, 184– 88
and Nick, 184
Mark Antony. See Marc Antony
Marshal, Lyndsey, 150
Marshall, George, 21
Martin, John, 36n3
masculinity, 6– 8, 12, 14, 20, 44, 47,
102, 107– 8, 113, 116– 17, 120,
126n42, 127– 40, 171, 176, 195–
205, 207– 9, 209n20, 217
M*A*S*H (1970 film), 108
M*A*S*H (1972– 86 series), 184, 190
Maura, Carmen, 57
Maurizio, Lisa, 93, 96n9, 97nn11– 12
Maxie (1985), 7, 183– 93
and Antony, 186– 87
and Cleopatra, 183– 87
and Jan, 183– 88, 191
and Maxie, 185– 89, 191– 92
and Nick, 183, 185– 86
screenwriter of, 185
and snake bra, 7, 183, 186– 92, 193n1
and uraeus, 186– 87
Maximus, 128– 32, 135, 138– 39
McCarthyism, 36n1
McDonough, Christopher M., 6
McDowell, Malcolm, 148
McRobbie, Angela, 208
Medea, 119, 159
Medusa, 32
Meeker, Ralph, 27
Menelaus, 131
Mensah, Peter, 152
Mercer, Johnny, 100– 103, 107, 109n2
Metamorphoses (Ovid), 35
methodology, 3– 5
Michaels, Lloyd, 81
Midler, Bette, 189
militat omnis amans (“every lover is a
soldier”), 108
Miller, Frank, 109n4, 114– 17, 121– 22,
126n42
Minghella, Anthony, 3
Mirren, Helen, 148– 49, 170
misogyny, 11, 27, 113– 14, 118– 19,
121– 23, 181, 229, 232– 37
Mitchell, Charles William, 233
mollitia (feminized behavior), 34, 197
monogamy, 103, 153
Monroe, Marilyn, 190
Monstertragedy (Eine Monstretragödie), 12, 19
Monty Python, 232
morality, 2, 5– 7, 21, 39, 43– 46, 48, 50,
52, 53n25, 72, 94, 127, 144– 48,
151, 154, 159– 60, 172– 73, 180–
81, 211– 13, 216, 229
“Morpho Eugenia” (Byatt), 39– 40,
52n3
Mortal Kombat (video game), 167
mother/motherhood, 18, 20, 24n49,
41, 50, 55– 61, 63– 67, 70– 71,
73– 79, 90– 92, 104, 106, 117– 18,
125n28, 127, 132, 135– 38, 214,
217, 225n27, 231, 236
Movie That Changed My Life, The, 103
Mulvey, Laura, 11, 37n18, 37n24, 91,
93– 94, 96n9, 98n42, 126n42, 170,
207
Mummy, The (Rice), 184
Murray, Jaime, 152
Muse, 70– 71, 77– 78
My Fair Lady (1964), 108
narcissism, 30, 34
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Index274
National Union of Women’s Suffrage
Societies, 214
Native American culture, 118
Natural, The (1984), 183
Nausicaa (character; Odyssey), 37n13,
39– 43, 46, 50– 51, 52n11, 62
Neilson, Julia, 234
Nero, 146– 47, 212, 219
Newes, Tilly, 12
New Line Cinema, 78
New World, The (2005), 69– 81,
82nn3– 4
and desire and loss, 76– 77
and desire and marriage, 70– 76
and the goddess, 77– 78
and the “hero of her own story,”
78– 81
Nine to Five (1980), 185
Nisbet, Gideon, 153
nostos, 55– 56, 62– 67, 67n3
Notorious (1947; Hitchcock), 37n24
objectification, 7, 13, 22, 31, 44, 64, 70,
87, 93– 95, 96n9, 167– 81, 199,
208
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), 3
Octavia, 150
Octavian, 150– 52, 204– 5, 218– 22,
224n24
Octavius, 149
Odysseus, 5, 37n13, 39– 52, 56, 61– 63,
66– 67, 78
Odyssey (Homer), 2– 3, 37n13, 39– 40,
41– 42, 48– 49, 51– 52, 52n3, 52n18,
55– 56, 59– 64, 66, 78, 86, 89
Oedipal complex, 136– 37, 141n16, 205
Oliver, Kelly, 199, 201– 4, 207
Olympias, 132, 136, 138, 140n15
Olympus, 26
Omen, The (1976), 93
Omen, The (2006), 93
One Hour to Madness and Joy (Whitman), 76
One Million Years B.C. (1967), 211,
215– 16, 224n20
On Generation (Hippocrates), 18
orgasm, 34, 85– 95
orgies, 1, 6– 7, 113, 143– 54, 154n5, 9,
155nn19– 20, 178, 181, 198
and audience identification, 153– 54
Roman, 145– 53
Osiris, 218, 220, 224n24
Ovid, 34– 35, 87, 105– 8
Pabst, G. W., 2, 4, 11– 22, 22n7, 23n8,
23n10, 23n19, 24
Pache, Corinne, 5
Padel, Ruth, 87, 96n10
Palmolive ads, 189
Pandora, 2, 4, 11– 22, 23n27, 28, 30,
24n34, 25– 36, 36n4, 36n8, 37n14,
37nn18– 19, 37n24
and Hesiod, 11
jar of, 17– 18
Panofsky, Dora, 24n34, 36n8
Panofsky, Erwin, 24n34, 36n8
Paranormal Activity (2009), 5, 85, 92
and Diane, 85, 92
and Katie, 85, 92
and Micah, 85, 92
Paranormal Activity 2 (2010), 91– 92
Paranormal Activity 3 (2011), 91– 92
Paris, 131
Parke, H. W., 97n12
Patinkin, Mandy, 183, 185
patriarchy, 7, 11– 12, 18, 41, 44– 45, 49,
51, 53n32, 64, 72, 79, 95, 96n9,
116, 127– 28, 168– 69, 177, 196,
201, 203, 207, 229, 234
Patroclus, 129, 134, 140n8, 141n11, 161
Patton (1970), 108
Paul, Joanna, 8, 164
Pax Romana, 99
Peitho (Persuasion), 26
Penelope (character; Odyssey), 42, 44,
48– 49, 56, 61– 62, 66
Penthouse magazine, 148
Penthouse Pets, 148, 170
Penwill, John, 38n32
Persephone, 50, 64
Phaeacians, 5, 39– 47, 49, 52n4, 62, 66
Phaedrus (Plato), 86
Pharsalia (Lucan), 87– 88
Philip, 136, 138, 140n15
Philippics (Cicero), 196– 98, 209
2.3, 197– 98, 209
5.9, 198
Pierce, Jerry B., 6
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Index 275
Pillow Talk (1959), 107
Plath, Sylvia, 104
Plato, 86, 203
Plutarch, 99– 103, 105, 108, 114, 116–
18, 122, 125nn16– 17, 185, 187
plutonium, 38n32
Pocahontas, 5, 69– 81, 81n2, 82n14,
82n27
Polanski, Roman, 97n23
Poltergeist (1982), 91– 92
and Carol Anne, 91– 92
and Diane, 91– 92
Pomeroy, Sarah, 116, 118, 125n21
pornography, 94– 95, 144, 153, 155n20,
167– 71, 176, 180– 81, 184
Portillo, Blanca, 56
Poseidon, 47, 49, 51
possession, 85– 96, 96n2
in the ancient world, 86– 89
defined, 96n2
in film, 89– 94
post- 9/11 world, 95
Powell, Jane, 103
Powhatan, 69, 73– 74, 81
Prasutagus, 212
Prehistoric Women (1967), 211, 215– 16
presidential election, US (2008), 95
Princess Leia, 189– 91
Private Gladiator (2001), 144– 45
Prometheus, 4, 15– 17, 25– 28, 30– 32,
34– 35, 36n4, 36n11, 37n19,
38nn30– 31
Prometheus (1998), 26
Prometheus Bound (Aeschylus), 26,
30– 31
Prose, Francine, 103, 107
Protestantism, 231– 32
Psycho (1960), 34, 93
Psycho (1998), 93
Ptolemy, 128, 133, 235
Purcell, Henry, 37n13
Purefoy, James, 150
Pygmalion (mythology), 34
Pythia, 86– 89, 97n12, 97n16
Queen of the Damned (2002), 191
Quo Vadis (1951), 99, 147
and Lygia, 147
and Marcus, 147
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), 38
Raimi, Sam, 177
rape, 3, 6, 48, 57– 58, 62– 64, 86– 95,
97n23, 99– 107, 119, 136, 140n15,
148, 159, 168– 70, 178– 81, 212,
222, 230, 238
“divine,” 97n23
and raptus, 103
Rape of the Sabine Women, 3, 6, 99–
106, 238
rapture, 94
Raucci, Stacie, 6– 7
Resnick, Patricia, 185
Return of the Jedi (1983), 189– 91
Rheingold (Wagner), 71
Rice, Anne, 184, 191
Richlin, Amy, 107
Robson, Eddie, 38n27
Rodgers, Gaby, 27– 28
Rolfe, John, 70, 78– 80
Rolfe, Rebecca, 80, 82n2
Rolling Stone magazine (Italian), 149
Roman Holiday (1953), 99
Roman orgy. See orgies
Rome (HBO- BBC series), 7– 8, 122,
149– 51, 155n19, 157, 176– 77,
192, 195– 209
and Egyptians, 150– 51
and fatherhood, 201– 7
and the male gaze, 207– 9
and Roman political invective, 196– 98
and virility, 198– 200
Rome characters
Agrippa, 150– 51, 201– 2
Atia, 169
Caesar, 198, 202– 3, 208
Caesarion, 202, 204– 5
Cleopatra, 150– 51, 201– 3
Livia, 150
Lucius Vorenus, 151, 204– 5, 208
Maecenas, 151
Marc Antony, 150– 51, 169, 195– 209
Niobe, 204
Octavia, 150, 155n20, 201– 2, 205– 6
Octavian, 150– 52, 204– 5, 218
Pullo, 204, 208
Servilia, 169
Romulus, 100– 101, 106
Rosemary’s Baby (1968), 97n23
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Index276
Rossetti, Christina, 31, 37n13
Roxane, 135– 37
Royalle, Candida, 169– 71, 176
Royster, Francesca, 184
Rubin, Gayle, 168– 69
Rylance, Mark, 45, 48
Sabine Women, 3, 6, 99– 106, 238
sadism, 95, 207
sadomasochistic, 204, 233
Safran, Meredith, 5
Samantha Jones (character; Sex and the City), 169
Sappho, 5, 69– 81, 82nn3– 4, 234
Sarris, Andrew, 143
Sartre, Maurice, 229
Sayings of Spartan Women (Plutarch),
114– 24, 125n16
Scheib, Richard, 185
Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 102
Schwartz, Russell, 78
scopophilia, 85– 86, 91– 92
Scott, A. O., 121, 239
Scott, Ridley, 143
Segal, Lynne, 129
Selous, Henry Courtney, 214
Serapeum, 236– 37, 239, 241n27
Serpent of the Nile (1953), 201
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), 6,
99– 109
and Adam Pontipee, 99– 104
Sex and the City (1998– 2004), 169, 171
“sexual productivity,” 19– 21
Sharrock, Alison, 34, 36n11, 107
She (1965), 211, 215– 16
Shining, The (1980), 93
Shrek (2001), 107
Sibyl, 86– 87, 89, 96n3, 97n12
Sign of the Cross, The (1932), 146
and Ancaria, 146
and Marcus Superbus, 146
and Mercia, 146– 47
Silvae (Statius), 87
Simon, John, 143
Singy, Patrick, 154n9
Skinner, Marilyn, 78
slaves/slavery, 3, 7, 13– 14, 88, 104,
123, 132, 152– 53, 155n19, 157– 64,
167– 69, 171– 80, 190– 91, 205,
208, 215, 218– 23, 227, 229– 30
Smith, Bruce R., 200
Smith, Chloe, 177
Smith, John, 5, 69– 81, 82n27
snake bra, 7, 183, 186– 92, 193n1
Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937), 103
Snyder, Zack, 2, 6, 90, 113– 24, 124n8
See also 300“sobbing women,” 99– 102
Soranus, 18
“soul fuck,” 85– 96
Sound of Music, The (1959), 108
Sparta, 113
Spartacus (1960; Kubrick), 157– 58,
164, 165n3, 172
Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010 series),
7, 152, 157– 65, 167– 81
and conjugal love, 158– 65
and domesticated loved, 161– 62
and dreams, 159
and pornography, 170– 71
and rape, 178– 80
and Roman matronae, 162
and sex and violence, 167– 81
and sex scenes, 176– 78
Spartacus: Blood and Sand characters
Ashur, 162, 175, 178
Aurelia, 160
Barca, 160– 62, 176
Batiatus, 157– 60, 162, 173– 76,
178– 80
Crassus, 162
Crixus, 158– 59, 162– 64, 174– 76, 178
Gaia, 152, 165n7
Glaber, 159, 162
Ilithyia, 158, 162– 63, 170, 173– 75,
180
Licinia, 162
Lucretia, 152, 158, 162– 63, 165n7,
173– 80
Mira, 158, 163– 64, 175
Naevia, 158– 59, 163– 64, 174– 76,
178– 79
Numerius, 162– 63
Oenomaus, 152
Pietros, 160– 62, 176, 178
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Index 277
Sura, 157– 60, 162– 64, 170, 176
Varro, 152, 158– 63, 179
Spartacus: Gods of the Arena (2011), 161
and Auctus, 161
and Barca, 161
Spartan Reflections (2001; Cartledge),
124
Spartans, 3, 6, 89– 90, 113– 24, 129– 30,
132
Spartan women, 113– 18, 123, 125n16
Spielberg, Steven, 38n29
Spillane, Mickey, 4, 25, 28– 30, 33, 35,
38n27
See also Kiss Me DeadlyStarz network, 2, 7, 152, 161, 167, 174,
177– 78, 180– 81
Statius, 87
Stephens, Susan, 235
Stevenson, Adlai, 104
Stigmata (1999), 94
Stone, Oliver, 6, 123, 127– 40, 235
Stranglers of Bombay, The (1960), 215
Strong, Anise K., 7
Sucker Punch (2011), 121
Sweeney Todd, 63
Tacitus, 98n41, 165n5, 212– 14, 219,
223n1, 223n6, 225n26
Talk to Her (2002), 58
Tancharoen, Maurissa, 177
Tandy, David, 47– 48
Tapert, Robert, 177
Taylor, Elizabeth, 184, 188
Taylor, Robert, 147
Teiresias, 86, 89, 51
Telemachus, 45, 67
Te Maioha, Antonio, 161
Tenuta, Judy, 184
Terror of the Tongs (1961), 215
Theogony (Hesiod), 11, 15– 17, 20, 22n2,
23n27, 28, 26
Theoklymenos (character; Odyssey), 89
Thermopylae, battle of (480 B.C.), 3,
113– 14, 116, 118– 20, 127, 167
Thetis, 52n19
Thomson, David, 34, 37n17
“Those Sobbin’ Women” (song),
99– 100
Three Coins in a Fountain (1954), 99
300 (2007), 2, 6, 90– 91, 113– 24,
124n8, 126n42, 126n46, 127– 30,
132, 139, 140n2, 167, 170, 227
and Cleomenes, 115– 16
and Dilios, 115
and Ephors, 89– 90
and Gorgo, 113– 24, 124n8, 125n15,
227
and Leonidas, 89– 90, 116– 21, 128–
30, 132, 138– 39, 227
and Theron, 114, 119– 21
and Xerxes, 113– 14, 117
300 (graphic novel; Miller), 114– 15
300 Spartans, The (1962), 116
Thuggee cult, 215
Tiberius, 98n41
Titan, 26, 35, 36n3, 185, 228, 240n2
Toland, John, 233
Tomasso, Vincent, 6
Topper (1937), 185
Torchwood: Miracle Day (2011), 177
Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal’s Caligula, 148– 49
Trojan War, 39, 66, 131
Troy (2004), 127– 31, 139, 140n2
True Blood, 153
Truman, Harry, 101
Tudors, The, 176– 77
uranium, 38n32
Ustinov, Peter, 172
Vajda, Ladislaus, 12
Valentino, Rudolph, 184
vamps, 7, 185– 87, 189– 90, 192, 212,
215
Venice Biennale (2005), 149
Venus, 79, 241n19
Vergil, 69, 78– 79, 82n3, 83n29, 86– 89,
95
Vernant, Jean- Pierre, 27
Versace, Donatella, 149– 50
Vestal Virgin, 149
Vezzoli, Francesco, 149
Victorians, 29, 36n3, 40, 42, 50, 53n30,
189, 224n16
Vidal, Gore, 148– 49
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Index278
Viking Queen, The (1967), 8, 211– 23
and “barbarian queen,” 211– 12
and Boudicca’s revolt, 212– 13
and the breastplate, 217– 23
and building Boadicea, 213– 16
and Iceni tribe, 212– 13, 216– 17,
220– 21, 223n3, 224n12
Viking Queen, The characters
Justinian, 217– 23, 224n24
King Priam, 217, 219, 224n24,
225n27
Maelgan, 219– 21
Octavian, 218– 22, 224n24
Salina, 217– 23
Virgin Mary, 93
“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
(Mulvey), 93
Voltaire, 233
Volver (2006; Almodóvar), 5, 55– 67
and Agustina, 56– 57, 61– 62
and Emilio, 61
and Irene, 56– 57, 62– 66
and Paco, 57, 61– 64
and Paula (aunt), 56, 62– 63
and Paula (daughter), 56– 57, 60,
62– 65
and Raimunda, 56– 57, 59– 66
and Sole, 56– 57, 60, 63, 65
von Newlinsky, Michael, 13
voyeurism, 87, 91– 92, 94, 148, 153,
175
Wagner, Richard, 71
Walker, Polly, 155, 169
Walter (character; The Woman in White), 29
Washington Post, 167
Wedekind, Frank, 11– 12, 14, 18– 21,
22nn3– 4
Weisz, Rachel, 228– 29, 231, 233, 235
Welch, Raquel, 215– 16
Wenzel, Diana, 184
Werewocomoco, 73
West, Dominic, 119– 20
Whedon, Jed, 177
Whitfield, Andy, 152
Whitman, Walt, 76
Whitney Museum (New York), 149
Williams, Linda, 94
Winkler, John J., 67n2, 140n13,
154nn4– 5, 165nn2– 3
Witchboard (1986), 91
Wolfman, The (1941 and 2010), 93
Woman in White, The (Collins), 29
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), 57– 58
Woods, Simon, 150
Works and Days (Hesiod), 11– 12, 15– 18,
22n2, 23n27, 26, 35
World According to Garp, The (1982), 183
World War I, 189
World War II, 104
Wormell, D. E. W., 97n12
Wyke, Maria, 98n41, 144, 154
Xena: Warrior Princess (1995– 2001),
122, 177, 181, 191, 214, 224n12
Xerxes, 113– 14, 117, 132, 135
Yentl (1983), 185
Zeitlin, Froma, 27, 37n18
Zeus, 15– 17, 26, 28, 33, 38n31, 48, 50–
51, 52n19, 53n28, 64, 78
Zweig, Bella, 118
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