BMCR 2009.03.09, Arthur J. Pomeroy, 'Then It Was Destroyed by the Volcano'

Arthur J. Pomeroy, 'Then It Was Destroyed by the Volcano'. The Ancient
World in Film and on Television.  London:  Duckworth, 2008.  Pp. viii,
152.  ISBN 9780715630266.  L14.99; $27.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Maarten De Pourcq, K.U. Leuven, Belgium
([email protected])
Word count:  2117 words
-------------------------------
To read a print-formatted version of this review, see
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2009/2009-03-09.html
To comment on this review, see
http://www.bmcreview.org/2009/03/20090309.html
-------------------------------

In the last decade scholarship on the reception of antiquity in modern
media has grown into an important strand of Classics, not without
questioning the very classical nature of the latter. As the discipline
of Classics has traditionally been at odds with itself since its main
object of research, the ancient world, demands a multi- and even
interdisciplinary approach, reception of antiquity has only increased
this methodological stress. A classicist nowadays is expected to be
initiated not only in the 'classical' human sciences like history,
philosophy, philology and archaeology, but has to become acquainted
with sometimes highly conceptual and rapidly evolving disciplines such
as literary theory, anthropology, sociology and cultural studies.
Especially the study of what is termed 'popular culture' gave rise to a
strong defensive reaction among classicists, which made the field of
Classics end up in the famous educational 'culture wars' at the
Anglo-American academia. Maria Wyke, whose work has been seminal to
film studies in Classics, opens her 1999 essay 'Ancient Rome and the
traditions of film history' by pointing at this very crux: "Films set
in ancient Rome have often drawn the laughter, if not the outright
contempt, of classicists. Why should classicists bother themselves with
the inanities of such pompous, ephemeral farce when they have such
rich, timeless materials to work with? And, if any book on such films
by a classicist has first to confront the potential scorn of their own
discipline, what possible utility would such a work have for serious
scholars of history in film?" [[1]]. Books on popular media by
classicists face a double task: they must work to denaturalize the
distinction between high and low culture in order to do justice to the
various modern receptions of antiquity, of which classical scholarship
is just one parcel, albeit a privileged one.

In his first book-length study on the reception of the ancient world on
the screen, Arthur Pomeroy does not mention Wyke's essay but his
approach raises the same issues. From his background as a social
historian, contemplating not only the classical moments and monuments
but also investigating the socio-cultural dynamics of an era, he aims
at averting the impasse of high and low culture not merely by
confronting modern film with the primary sources from antiquity, but
also by tracing the cinematic history of each ancient theme. His
research starts from the conviction that antiquity cannot be looked
upon as the primordial benchmark for evaluating, let alone
understanding films or television serials.

1-6: Introduction

The study anthologizes several earlier papers and articles of the
author, for the greater part about film. Pomeroy situates his work in
the area of reception studies. Yet, he notes that scholars have paid
but little  attention to modern media like television and film, as they
chose to focus on literature, art history and philosophy. [[2]] The
goal of Pomeroy's work is "to show why the ancient world has been and
continues to be important to the modern by studying different themes in
its film and television presentations" and by placing "these depictions
of the past in a social and cultural context" (p.1). The study explores
ancient themes in movies and television serials produced by Hollywood
and by various national cinemas and broadcasting houses (esp. Italy,
Greece, France, India and Japan). One criterion for the selection of
the corpus was the general availability of the visual material, which
is indeed a primordial concern for most scholars involved in Classics
who only have libraries at hand. The book offers relevant film stills.
Regrettably, most of the plates are coarse-grained.

7-12: 1. The Actress and the Playwright

The first chapter starts with an interview with the actress Joan
Collins in Playboy, in which she readily compares the AIDS crisis in
the 1980s with the decline of Rome: "It's like the Roman Empire. Wasn't
everybody running around just covered in syphilis? And then it was
destroyed by the volcano." (p.7) Apart from proving that one can indeed
read Playboy for the interviews, Pomeroy shows how ancient Rome still
functions as a vessel for modern preoccupations and imaginations. It
also indicates the ambivalent role of popular media in constructing
images of Rome, since Collins was profoundly involved with modern and
popular media rather than with ancient and scholarly sources. Pomeroy
argues that many receptions of antiquity in popular film and television
are determined by the cinematic corpus itself, that is, by previous
adaptations within the genre. Yet, since the ancient past still offers
models for the present, it should trigger the interest of classicists,
even if their corpus is not the primordial source of these receptions.
One could argue that the very appropriation of antiquity by modern
media reinforces the classical value of antiquity as well as the
usefulness of classical studies.

13-28: 2. Hymns to the Ancient World in (the) Buffyverse

The first case study of the book is also the most complicated one, as
it sets out to combine a difficult object, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a
long-running television serial that began in the 1990s, with a
programmatic approach, raising the problem of studying recent popular
culture as a classicist. The title of the chapter tries to foreground
the import of antiquity within the broad intertextual network that is
activated by this postmodern television series, but the results of the
reception analysis are rather scant. Two points are of particular
interest here. Firstly, it is argued that the high school series is
involved with antiquity, as classical languages and ancient history are
still part of high school education. Because of its respected position
in education policy, the presence of classics and antiquity in the high
school genre is of sociological interest. Secondly, the Latin language
is a traditional feature of the horror genre, due to its archaic
solemnity. Mainly for this generic reason, it is frequently parodied in
the postmodern vampire trash format. Pomeroy concludes the chapter by
raising the question "whether the ancient world is a privileged source
of cultural capital, or, more democratically, is but one choice in a
multicultural world. The Classicist who ventures into this field with
displays of hard-earned expertise runs the risk of beginning as trendy
and ending as bore of the week." (p.28) Notwithstanding this lesson,
Pomeroy unwearingly pursues his task as a classicist by unravelling the
reception histories of different ancient themes in the next chapters.

29-59: 3. The Peplum and Other Animals

This chapter records the history of the 'sandal-and-sword epic', a
popular camp genre that has mainly been practised in the 1950s and
1960s in Italy. Two subgenres, the gladiator film and the 'peplum' (or
superhero film, mostly figuring Hercules), are discussed at length.
Although the ancient past provides the setting of these films,
historical and archaeological data are mainly used to authenticate the
exotic nature of the story. Most of these films function within the
genre and rely on previous adaptations of antiquity, either in cinema,
drama or literature, instead of on ancient sources. There are some
echoes of social criticism in this genre, but as these movies were
mainly destined for a working class audience, they generally celebrate
the value of labour in the figure of the muscleman in order to reassure
its audience: "The emphasis in such films on the protection of the weak
from overpowering forces struck a nerve with the underprivileged and
exploited." (p.37) At the end of the chapter, Pomeroy offers a new
definition of the 'peplum' to avoid the generic blur that has been
created by previous scholars: a peplum is "an exotic action drama in a
technologically limited setting, involving a clear conflict between
good and evil" (p.58). Curiously, this new definition implies that
there is no specific need for antiquity to create a 'peplum'. This need
would only have been the case in Italy, where the ancient material was
at hand and where it could be employed to enter into competition with
the superheroes of American film industry, such as Superman and Tarzan.
One could wonder, however, why we should use a term derived from
antiquity to cover such a wide-ranging genre.

61-93: 4. The Odyssey, High and Low

This chapter offers a comprehensive and enthralling discussion of the
various receptions of the Odyssey in cinematic history. It addresses a
various range of films, from spaghetti westerns (Duccio Tessari's The
Return of Ringo) over Hollywood productions (O Brother Where Art Thou
from the Coen Brothers) to art-house films (Jean-Luc Godard's Le
Me/pris). Due to the classical status of Homer, the Odyssey has a long
tradition of reception in film, but the epos is deemed less attractive
than the Iliadic episodes. In popular media the Odyssey is mostly
echoed in road movies. Art-house cinema has tackled the classical
status of the material to question the fusion of the classical past
with the present. A case in point is the work of Theo Angelopoulos, who
has associated the diaspora of the Greek and Balkan people with the
Odyssey. Pomeroy thoroughly analyzes the cinematography of this most
prominent Greek filmmaker, focussing on the tragic themes that define
modern Greek history and which Angelopoulos relates to its ancient
heritage.

95-111: 5. Alexander the Hero

The figure of Alexander the Great gave rise to a very rich reception
history, since "he is a controversial figure (as he was in his own era)
whose depiction varies not only according to the times during which he
is portrayed and differences in national cinema, but also in response
to historical and novelistic treatments of his reign." (p.95) After a
synopsis of Alexander's life, Pomeroy provides a more traditional
reception analysis by focusing on the selection of the historical
material by the filmmaker and on the possible motives for their
selective approaches. In the main, these selections are said to have
been based on either practical (technical and financial) reasons or on
an overarching ideological message. Robert Rossen's Alexander the Great
(1956) proclaims a socialism by depicting how individualism leads to
social decline. Oliver Stone's Alexander (2004), so Pomeroy argues,
fails to provide the hero of liberalism that Stone would initially have
been looking for: "[H]is liberalism is undermined by the orientalist
fantasy of a Westerner discovering his sexuality in the East while
providing leadership for the disorganised natives. [...] It is unlikely
that a cinema that seeks to appeal to an international market can offer
an Alexander that does not betray the contradictions of liberal
aspirations and imperial ambitions." (p.103)

The Western and Eastern classical traditions differ in their appraisal
of Alexander the Great. For the West, Alexander is the powerful
disseminator of Hellenic culture; for the East, he is the brute
destroyer of Iranian civilization. Pomeroy also discusses a selection
of Eastern depictions of Alexander the Great in which the military hero
is turned back against Western imperialism. In Sohrab Modi's Sikandar
(1941), Roxanne and Porus are the real heroes of the story, as they
embody the Eastern values of love and martial honour that are lacking
in Alexander. The Japanese animation Reign: the Conqueror (1999; dir.
Yoshinori Kanemori) depicts a futurist world in which Alexander
represents a boundless energy threatening the universe. Pomeroy
concludes that "for the modern world remembrance of the ancient Greek
and Roman worlds need not simply function as a warning, but suggests
the possibility of fresh creation, locally and globally." (p.111)

113-114: 6. 'It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World'--except for Xena and
Buffy

In the brief conclusion Pomeroy takes a look ahead at the future role
of antiquity on the screen. The increasing use of computer graphics may
help to overcome certain limitations that have withdrawn film makers
from trying to recreate the ancient world. Even if antiquity would
become retro rather than classical for future audiences, it will
continue to provide artists with models and archetypes. These
antiquities can be either idealized or subverted: "Still, the need to
break from the past shows the continuing strength of the ancient world
in the popular imagination" (p.114).

This book offers most valuable historical information on the evolutions
of each ancient theme within cinematic history. Pomeroy brings an
impressive filmography to the task, which firmly authorizes his
arguments and the historical outlines he maps. He does not resort to
more specialist approaches, such as film semiotics, or from dealing
with reception theory. This makes the study less methodologically
engaging but very accessible. At times, Pomeroy focuses too strongly on
enumerating data rather than developing more substantial analysis, but
his efforts to disclose an understudied field cannot be underestimated.
Studying antiquity in popular culture is steadily becoming a new field
of study, as can be seen by the 2009 anthology edited by Dunstan Lowe
and Kim Shahabudin: Classics for All: Reworking Antiquity in Mass
Culture. This volcano is clearly no longer asleep.

------------------
Notes:


1.   See Maria Wyke, "Ancient Rome and the traditions of film history."
Screening the past 6 (1999):
h
t
tp://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr0499/mwfr6b.htm
(
h
t
t
p://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr0499/mwfr6b.htm)
. Significantly, the article has been published in a journal on film
history and is not included in the author's bibliography on L'Anne/e
Philologique.

2.   It should be noted, however, that a separate section of the
Blackwell Companion to Classical Receptions (2007) is devoted to film.