CC 365 ● Skidmore College ● Fall 2020
A gentle reminder that Quiz 4, on our Trojan Saga unit, is due via email on Friday, November 27, at noon (EST).
Originally, it was due on the previous Sunday, but it’s too stressful to have something due on move-out weekend. Hopefully, the day after Thanksgiving will prove more conducive to your thinking; or to turn it in earlier, if you can.
Please visit our Quizzes page for complete guidelines, and remember to follow the formatting requirements.
DC
Dear Cinemythologists,
On Thursday, November 19, our unit on the Trojan War concludes. Please do the following.
VIEWING
Streaming on Swank Digital Campus. Take notes as you see fit.
The Coens have notoriously claimed that they did NOT consult Homer closely when making this film. We can argue about whether or not we believe this claim. Regardless, O Brother offers a somewhat different approach to adapting classical myth: a subterranean approach, some would call it, in which the story world is set outside antiquity.
!! CONTENT ADVISORY !! The film features a blackface “gag” as the protagonists interrupt a KKK rally; this, in turn, throws the film’s racial politics into sharp relief. One issue we’ll need to discuss is the place of so-called Classical Heritage outside of white, patriarchal systems.
READING
This exhaustive discussion of the film’s resonances with Homer’s epic ought to get us started, and then some. (Fun fact: Dr. Siegel is my co-author on that long-delayed myth on screen textbook I’m writing.)
In this interactive essay (perhaps best viewed on a laptop), Harris provides a taxonomy on blackface in contemporary screen media. Today’s film receives discussion, and that discussion might help us come to terms with the “accidental” blackface scene (Harris’ term) in O Brother.
SEQUENCES
Use the comments feature on this post to recommend a sequence to be reviewed and discussed in class.
Recommendations should contain the following:
DC
Dear Cinemythologists,
On Tuesday, October 27, our unit on the Trojan War continues. Since we’ll be transitioning to the period after the war, the assignment will be all reading, no viewing.
READING
In a perfect world, we would have time to read all of the Odyssey, which is about the fraught return of Odysseus from Troy to his homeland of Ithaca. Like, the Iliad, the Odyssey spans a brief period of time, about a month or so in “real time,” with much of Odysseus’ ten-year journey told in flashback.
In class we’ll look at screen texts based on Homer’s “other” epic.
DC
Dear Cinemythologists,
On Thursday, November 12, our unit on the Trojan War continues. Please do the following.
VIEWING
Streaming on Swank Digital Campus. Take notes as you see fit. This film is a close adaptation of a tragedy by Euripides — so much so that he should have been credited for the screenplay. In class, we’ll review selections from the play, but I won’t ask you to read it in advance.
ANALYSIS
Bernstein and Padala will conclude our Analysis series. Their sequence selection is in the comments.
READING
McDonald discusses the use of the camera as a means of enacting Iphigenia’s victimhood.
SEQUENCES
Use the comments feature on this post to recommend a sequence to be reviewed and discussed in class.
Recommendations should contain the following:
DC
Dear Cinemythologists,
On Tuesday, November 10, we continue our unit on the Trojan War, and with an emphasis on the so-called small screen. Please do the following.
VIEWING
Streaming on Netflix. Take notes as you see fit, perhaps on what becomes possible when the Trojan Saga is turned into serial television, versus a movie. We can’t watch it all, so here we’ll focus on events precipitating the Trojan War and on events on the periphery of the Iliad.
!!CONTENT ADVISORY!! Depictions of sexuality (throughout) and rape (in Ep. 4).
READING
We’ve alluded to the Epic Cycle, a massive collocation of epic hexameter poetry. whose origins lie in the Bronze Age, and which were given textual shape in the 8th century and onwards. Here’s an article (via Oxford Reference) that describes all of the poems in the Cycle. Of these, the Cypria has the most bearing on Episode 1 of TFOAC.
TFOAC‘s casting of Black actors to play Zeus and Achilles (Hakeem Kae-Kazim and David Gyasi, respectively) raised some hackles. This piece describes the controversy and offers commentary by prominent classicists, who break down the historical whitewashing of the Classics.
SEQUENCES
Use the comments feature on this post to recommend a sequence to be reviewed and discussed in class.
Recommendations should contain the following:
DC
Dear Cinemythologists,
On Thursday, October 29, our unit on the Trojan War continues. Please do the following.
VIEWING
Streaming on Swank Digital Campus. Take notes as you see fit. This is our first real introduction to the big-budget Hollywood screen epic, and our readings today will reflect that fact.
ANALYSIS
Gross and Jefferson will continue our Analysis series. Their sequence selection is in the comments.
READING
Today’s readings begin focused on Helen of Troy, but quickly zoom out toward considerations of genre and the film-making process.
Nisbet, in a brief overview of today’s viewing, demonstrates why the film remains relevant after almost 70 years.
This excerpt, from the inaugural chapter of Llewellyn-Jones’ book (which is fast becoming a seminal work on the Hollywood screen epic), will set tone for our discussions of screen epic.
Chapter 5 of Looking at Movies is devoted to mise-en-scène (roughly translated as “staging”), a term which encompasses all of the elements we see in any given shot or sequence, from set design, costuming, make up, lighting and more. So many of these elements define the screen epic, so it’s appropriate that we take a deeper dive into their history and practice.
SEQUENCES
Use the comments feature on this post to recommend a sequence to be reviewed and discussed in class.
Recommendations should contain the following:
DC
Dear Cinemythologists,
On Tuesday, October 27, our fourth and final unit, on the Trojan War, officially begins. As is customary, we’ll begin with primary sources: all reading, no viewing.
READING
In a perfect world, we would have time to read all of the Iliad, which is the primary text about the Trojan War — though it is hardly all-encompassing. In fact, the poem’s focus is on an argument that rages among the Greek forces for roughly seven weeks in the tenth year of the conflict. You won’t find the abduction of Helen or the Trojan Horse here. What you will find is an epic about honor and the morality of war, about mortals and gods, and about a city not yet beaten down into the dust.
In subsequent classes we’ll consider the larger sweep of the Trojan War and the texts in which that sweep is best represented.
But not today. Today, we’ll let Homer do the talking. These books will not only introduce the poem’s main characters but also the epic scope that would inspire later poets and artists — the lives of human beings set against a great cataclysm.
This optional, bare-bones summary of the Iliad by Prof. David J. Mastronarde (Berkeley) will help fill in the gaps left by our selective reading of the poem.
In class we’ll discuss themes of Homer’s epic as well as its impact on screen texts.
DC
