Author: Crispinus

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Assignment for Thursday, 10.08.20

Dear Cinemythologists,

On Thursday, October 8, our unit on Heracles/Hercules comes to an end. Please do the following.

VIEWING

Streaming on Swank Digital Campus. Take notes as you see fit.

And I do mean optional. This is a video version of a lecture/paper I’ve been working on for a while now. Some of you saw a version of it at a Classics banquet last year. Here I’m trying to draw comparisons between animation and the ancient epic convention of ekphrasis. If nothing else, let it illustrate some possibilities for developing a paper topic.

READING

  • Blanshard, Alastair J. L. and Kim Shahabudin. 2011. “The Disney Version: Hercules.” Classics on Screen: Ancient Greece and Rome on Film. Chapter 9, 194–215. Bristol Classical Press.

Blanshard and Shahabudin situate Disney’s animated romp against the peplum traditions established decades earlier.

  • “The Musical” &”Evolution and Transformation of Genre.” LAM Chapter 3, pp. 100–5.

It’s time to check in again with Looking at Movies, since in today’s screen text we have not only a mythological film set in the ancient world but also a musical, per Disney practice. This reading will help us think about genre conventions as well as ways of transcending genre.

SEQUENCES

  • Graubart, Huntley, Raker.

Use the comments feature on this post to recommend a sequence to be reviewed and discussed in class.

Recommendations should contain the following:

  • A brief description of the sequence.
  • Precise starting and ending times (hh:mm:ss — hh:mm:ss).
  • A rationale as to why this sequence is worth our time.

DC

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Assignment for Tuesday, 10.06.20

Dear Cinemythologists,

On Tuesday, October 6, our unit on Heracles/Hercules comes to its penultimate film. Please do the following.

VIEWING

Streaming on Swank Digital Campus. Take notes as you see fit. This is the second of two Hercules films from 2014, and the difference is stark in just about every respect. Even as we consider the persistence of 20th-century peplum traditions, let us also think about how this film defines heroism.

ANALYSIS

Rosenblum and Whatley will continue our Analysis series. Their sequence selection is in the comments.

READING

  • Curley, Dan. 2018. “The Hero in a Thousand Pieces: Antiheros in Recent Classical Cinema.” In Augoustakis, Antony and Stacie Raucci, ed. Epic Heroes on Screen, 173–190. University of Edinburgh Press.
  • Chiu, Angeline. 2018. “Heroes and Companions in Hercules (2014).” In Augoustakis and Raucci, ed., 60–73.

I know, another reading by me. But see if it can’t help you think through the dynamics of heroism in some of the screen texts we’ve paired together — not only in this unit, but in our Perseus unit, too. Chiu, meanwhile, addresses the Very Millennial Notion of teamwork in today’s viewing.

SEQUENCES

  • Davis, Eiger.

Use the comments feature on this post to recommend a sequence to be reviewed and discussed in class.

Recommendations should contain the following:

  • A brief description of the sequence.
  • Precise starting and ending times (hh:mm:ss — hh:mm:ss).
  • A rationale as to why this sequence is worth our time.

DC

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Assignment for Thursday, 10.01.20

Dear Cinemythologists,

On Thursday, October 1, our unit on Heracles/Hercules continues. In the second half of the class, we’ll take a close look at another tragic text about the hero. In the first half, we’ll consider the meaning of muscle in visual media writ large.

READING

  • Euripides, Heracles.

Of the major Athenian playwrights, Euripides was the least popular in his own lifetime. But after his death his reputation grew, to the point where the number of his surviving works exceeds that of Sophocles and Aeschylus combined.

That said, the Heracles is among his lesser known plays. But it is well worth considering as a literary text that takes great liberties with the hero’s legend. What those liberties are and how they resonate in modern screen texts will be our focus.

VIEWING

Last spring, Gregory Spinner (Religious Studies) and I curated a Tang Museum exhibiton called FLEX, which took a hard look at muscled bodies from antiquity to modernity.

Of the videos linked above, the first introduces some of the aims and goals of the exhibition, even as it kicks off the exhibition’s permanent residency in cyberspace. The second video was part of the exhibition itself, a 20-minute montage covering 100+ years of muscle in screen media.

Watch both and take notes on anything that interests you. In the first hour of our class we’ll be joined by Professor Spinner on a virtual tour of some of the objects from the exhibition, especially those that intersect with the notions of heroism and legend in our current unit.

DC

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Assignment for Tuesday, 09.29.20

Dear Cinemythologists,

On Tuesday, September 29, our unit on Heracles/Hercules continues. Please do the following.

VIEWING

Streaming on Swank Digital Campus. Take notes as you see fit. This is one of two Hercules films from 2014, and we’ll want to see how the peplum traditions established in the mid-20th century carry over into the 21st.

ANALYSIS

Huntley and Savage will continue our Analysis series. Their sequence selection is in the comments.

READING

  • O’Brien, Daniel. 2014. “Hercules Rebooted.” Classical Masculinity and the Spectacular Body on Film: The Mighty Sons of Hercules. Chapter 4, 95–99. Palgrave-Macmillan.

O’Brien updates us on Hercules screen texts at the end of the old milennium and into the new, stopping with today’s viewing.

The reading is brief to allow time for you to work on milestone 1 (Thesis) of the Semester Project.

SEQUENCES

  • Gross, Raker.

Use the comments feature on this post to recommend a sequence to be reviewed and discussed in class.

Recommendations should contain the following:

  • A brief description of the sequence.
  • Precise starting and ending times (hh:mm:ss — hh:mm:ss).
  • A rationale as to why this sequence is worth our time.

DC

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Assignment for Thursday, 09.24.20

Dear Cinemythologists,

On Thursday, September 24, our unit on Heracles/Hercules continues. Please do the following.

VIEWING

  • Hercules (Le fatiche di Ercole) (Pietro Francisci, 1958)

Streaming on Amazon Prime. Take notes as you see fit. The film is dubbed from the Italian, so there will be a disconnect between the characters’ mouths and their voices. (And that is not the voice of Steve Reeves under any circumstances.)

As you will have learned from our introduction to peplum, this film is epoch-making in many ways — difficult as it might be to appreciate them in the 21st century.

ANALYSIS

Speaking of epoch-making, our Analysis enterprise gets underway today with Graubart and Ricci presenting their video on a sequence from Hercules.

READING

  • Blanshard, Alastair J. L. and Kim Shahabudin. 2011. “Peplum Traditions: Hercules.” Classics on Screen: Ancient Greece and Rome on Film. Chapter 3, 58–76. Bristol Classical Press.

Blanshard and Shahabudin take our ongoing discussion on peplum a step further by focusing on the place of Hercules in the cinematic tradition.

SEQUENCES

  • Jefferson, Pettit.

Use the comments feature on this post to recommend a sequence to be reviewed and discussed in class.

Recommendations should contain the following:

  • A brief description of the sequence.
  • Precise starting and ending times (hh:mm:ss — hh:mm:ss).
  • A rationale as to why this sequence is worth our time.

DC

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Assignment for Tuesday, 09.22.20

Dear Cinemythologists,

On Tuesday, September 22, our second unit, on Heracles/Hercules, officially begins. As is customary, we’ll begin with some primary sources: all reading, no viewing (apart from some optional videos in our Classical World series).

READING

  • “Apollodorus” on Heracles.

This is an excerpt from the Bibliotheca or Library of Greek myth, an ancient encyclopedia dedicated to cataloguing and sorting out the vast body of legends and lore associated with the Greco-Roman world. The author was thought to have been the famous scholar, Apollodorus of Athens (2nd century BCE), but the work is now thought to date to the 2nd century CE — hence “Apollodorus” in scare quotes.

Although you won’t need to know every last detail about Heracles’ life and career, you should try to appreciate the sheer quantity of his exploits, and what that quantity might mean. In class we’ll use “Apollodorus” as the basis for generating a rough outline of the hero’s legend, as we did for Perseus.

Sophocles, the premier playwright of Athens in the 5th-century BCE, presents a tragic episode from late in Heracles’ life. If you’ve never read a Greek play before, the dynamic between the speeches of the actors and the songs of the Chorus (which you should not ignore) will likely seem odd and artificial.

Nevertheless, this tragedy affords us an excellent point of comparison with the all-inclusive, encyclopedic approach of “Apollodorus.” In particular, consider the genre itself. What should a tragedy about Heracles focus on? Also pay attention to how Sophocles navigates the vast trajectory of Heracles’ career. What does he place in the past? In the future?

NOTE: You can read the translation in your browser, or download a PDF.

If you are new to Athenian tragedy, these videos (part of our flipped classroom in CC 200: The Classical World) will provide some orientation into the performative and civic context of the genre. Of course, entries in the the Oxford Reference database would do just as well.

In class we’ll discuss these versions of the Heracles legend, and then take a tour of how the hero appears on screen.

DC

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Assignment for Thursday, 09.17.20

Dear Cinemythologists,

On Thursday, September 17, our survey of Perseus movies comes to a close, even as we look ahead to our unit on Hercules. No viewing for today, only reading.

READING

  • Ogden, Daniel. 2008. “Medusa and the Gorgons.” Perseus (chapter 3), 34–66. London and New York: Routledge.

We’ve had a chance to discuss Perseus in some detail. Ogden’s chapter will start our conversation on Perseus’ arch-nemesis.

  • Chapman, David. 2002. “In the Beginning…” Retro Stud: Muscle Movie Posters from around the World (chapter 1), 4–37. Portland, OR: Collectors Press.

Chapman, through a bright and breezy survey of classic movie posters, will introduce us to peplum, the movie genre in which we most often find Hercules and other Greco-Roman heroes. Put it this way: All peplums are sword-and-sandal movies, but not all sword-and-sandal movies are peplum.

In class we’ll survey visual representations of Medusa and her fellow Gorgons from antiquity to modernity. And we’ll bid Perseus farewell by surveying some scenes from the 1963 classic, Perseo l’invincibile, which will also introduce us to the conventions of peplum.

DC

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Assignment for Tuesday, 09.15.20

Dear Cinemythologists,

On Tuesday, September 15, our unit on Perseus on screen comes to a head. Please do the following.

VIEWING

Streaming on Amazon Prime. Take notes as you see fit. You might consider how the movie treats some of the characters we’ve seen before, such as Medusa and Hades.

READING

  • McWeeny, Drew. 2010. Interview with Chris Columbus and Craig Titely. (Originally posted on hitfix.com.)

Insights into the intentions of the film’s creative team.

Paule makes the case for the inherent racism of the first PJ novel; let’s see whether Paule’s ideas apply to the first entry in the abortive film series.

NOTE: This essay appeared in the journal Eidolon, which is devoted to (as its tagline reads) “Classics without fragility.” Given that the novels are much cherished by many young adults today, please try to maintain an open mind, or at least a sense of detachment, while reading and discussing this piece.

SEQUENCES

  • Graubart, Padala, Ricci.

Use the comments feature on this post to recommend a sequence to be reviewed and discussed in class.

Recommendations should contain the following:

  • A brief description of the sequence.
  • Precise starting and ending times (hh:mm:ss — hh:mm:ss).
  • A rationale as to why this sequence is worth our time.

DC

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Assignment for Thursday, 09.10.20

Dear Cinemythologists,

On Thursday, September 10, we continue our unit on Perseus on screen. Please do the following.

VIEWING

  • Clash of the Titans (Louis Leterrier, 2010)

The film is streaming on Swank Digital Campus. Take notes as you see fit. You might contemplate how this remake responds to the original from the standpoint of narrative, theme, and/or technology.

READING

  • Curley, Dan. 2015. “Divine Animation: Clash of the Titans (1981).” In Monica S. Cyrino and Meredith E. Safran, ed. Classical Myth on Screen, 207–17. Palgrave-Macmillan.

Since I’ll be evaluating your writing this semester, it’s only fair that you evaluate some of mine. See what, if anything, my take on animation in the original Clash and its remake lends to your appreciation of either film.

  • Tomasso, Vincent. 2015. “The Twilight of Olympus: Deicide and the End of the Greek Gods.” In Monica S. Cyrino and Meredith E. Safran, ed. Classical Myth on Screen, 147–57. Palgrave-Macmillan.

Tomasso’s essay (from the same volume) will get us further along in our ongoing discussion of how modern media wrangles with Greek deities and their immortality. Value added: Tomasso surveys a variety of screen texts from the 1960s onward.

SEQUENCES

  • Bernstein, Knepper, Whatley.

Use the comments feature on this post to recommend a sequence to be reviewed and discussed in class.

Recommendations should contain the following:

  • A brief description of the sequence.
  • Precise starting and ending times (hh:mm:ss — hh:mm:ss).
  • A rationale as to why this sequence is worth our time.

DC

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