Book Review - The New Peplum:Essays on Sword and Sandal Films and Television Programs Since the 1990s

The New Peplum: Essays on Sword and Sandal Films and Television Programs Since the 1990s
Edited by Nicholas Diak

McFarland (2018)
234 pages
Paperback
ISBN 978-1476667621

The re-emergence of the historical epic in the mid-1990s was something of a surprise. I sometimes wonder if the indignation of those who failed to see it coming have lead to the now resurgent genre being largely overlooked in academic film studies. And that's even before the fact that some of the genre's best loved recent hits were made not for film, but (gasp), television, is taken into account. There are, of course, a good number of books on silent and classic peplum, some of which even cover the occasional 21st century work, but aside from the odd book on biblical films, or associated with specific movies, the newly emergent sword and sandal films are still very much in the desert.

Thankfully a new book, "The New Peplum: Essays on Sword and Sandal Films and Television Programs Since the 1990s", edited by Nicholas Diak has stepped in to fill the gap. Tackling movies such as 300, Gladiator and Hercules and TV shows such as Xena: Warrior Princess, Spartacus and Vikings, the fourteen authors combine to give a good general overview of the neo-peplum, covering both a good range of the genre's key recent works and a wide variety of approaches to discussing them.

After a foreword by David R Coon, Diak gives an introduction to the collection as a whole. He starts by searching for the best term to use to describe the works explored in the book, before deciding that "much as the term neo-noir came into currency to establish its own identity...the term neo-peplum is the most appropriate verbiage to categorize peplum films made after 1990" (5-6). He then goes on to highlight the five factors that are so distinctive of these later pepla "the advent of pepla on television; rapidly improving technology and filming techniques; trans-media storytelling in other forms such as comics, video games and music; the establishment of fan culture and communities; and the fluidity and adaptability of what constitutes a neo-peplum film" (6). He expands on each of these in turn before concluding that whilst filmmakers have failed "to recreate the success of Gladiator and 300...the proliferation of new neo-pepla on television, or that neo-peplum elements continue to be incorporated into other film genres" (such as superhero films) suggests the genre has an ongoing importance (14). The introduction ends with a brief introduction to the essays that are to follow.

The book is divided into four sections, the first of which "Crossing the Rubicon" looks at "Expanding the Neo-Peplum Boundaries". Paul Johnson gets things moving with "Adapting to New Spaces: Swords and Planets and the Neo-Peplum". In it Johnson examines three recent science fiction films, Tron Legacy (2010), John Carter (2012) and Jupiter Ascending (2015) which retain elements of the neo-pepla but which also "'de(re)compose' into new forms" (23). In particular he looks at the way the films loosely adapt classic myths such as Oedipus and The Odyssey; utilise elements of action and melodrama; echo the locations of classic peplum films; feature overdubbing; and retain in modified form the emphasis on the male body. "The key to their basis and success is adaptation, appropriation, and an ability to recombine, adjust and mutate the paradigm" (39). In so doing they "highlight an adapted continuance of the genre" (40). There's mention of the sword, sandals and monsters group of films within classic genre, but this could have been expanded more. Discussing John Carter's Tharks without mentioning Ray Harryhausen seems like a bit of a flaw to an otherwise solid opening.

Not dissimilarly, it's a little surprising that Francisci's seminal Hercules (1958) receives only a brief mention in Djoymi Baker's "Hercules: Transmedia Superhero Mythology" which examines Brett Ratner's 2014 film of the same name, but in some ways that is her point. Rather than being the preserve of a single authoritative source Baker argues that it is precisely the "way that contemporary culture refashions the myth that keeps it alive" (45). In this specific case the film and its "paratexts" (44), of which Baker gives fascinating examples, emphasise the film's link with this era's most popular genre, the superhero movie. Baker also uses a neat parallel from Singin' in the Rain (1952) to highlight how the film starts by demythologizing, but then "arcs around" to return "to the myths and filmic tradition that the film originally dismisses as nonsense" (52) and how the paratexts play their part in both demythologizing and remythologizing.

The third essay in this collection is Kevin M. Flanagan's "From Crowds to Swarms: Movement and Bodies in Neo-Peplum Films. Flanagan focuses on the role of crowds in peplum films which he considers to be "bread and butter to the genre, often underscoring the most lavish and narrative-punctuating moments in these films" (63). Yet crucially Flanagan notes that more recent films "are less interested in revising the narrative or ideological terrain of earlier films...and more concerned with pioneering new forms of bodily representation...many of these recent films invest less importance in crowd scenes of the old sort' and instead imagine mass bodies as swarms" (64). Having looked at the work of Elias Canetti and others on crowds, particularly in the ancient world and in cinema, he moves on to examine films such as 300 (2006), Gladiator (2000), Wrath of the Titans (2012) and Immortals (2011). Ultimately he finds the new technology used to create crowd scenes in neo-pepla makes them seem more malign and"echoes audience fears about new modes of warfare and protest" (75).

Section 2, which focuses on "the barriers, challenges and liberties involved when realizing old worlds as new" (15), opens with Steve Nash's "The Are No Boundaries for Our Boats: Vikings and the Westernization of the Norse Saga". Being less familiar with the sagas, songs, Skaldic verse and Eddas of the Viking world, I appreciated Nash's detailed overview of the fluid material which he argues "is characterized by one key trait: a rejection of centrality (85). This is markedly different from the more-connected biblical material and indeed the "authoritarian structures that guide traditional Western narrative practice" (80), which Nash describes as "rhizomatic" which he argues reflects the way the Vikings themselves were "obsessively preoccupied  with a rejection of fixed narratives or boundaries". It would have been nice to see a little more space given to an analysis of the Vikings (2013-present) series, however.

Nick Poulakis' "Sounds of Swords and Sandals: Music in Neo-Peplum BBC Television Docudramas" is hampered somewhat by the author's view of television as "unsophisticated" (98) and him seemingly polarising what I would argue is spectrum of truthfulness between documentary and drama.¹ Nevertheless, he makes some interesting observations about the way that music for neo-peplum docudramas often "yearns for the 'archaic,' the 'natural' and the 'exotic,' while embodying issues of postmodern nostalgia, ideological aestheticization, eclectic innovation and post-capitalist consumption" (101), resulting in a "neocolonial (aural) discourse [which] is dominant for BBC Television docudramas" (104).

Sticking with television, Valerie Estelle Frankel tackles two of neo-pepla's best known shows in "Hercules, Xena and Genre: The Methodology Behind the Mashup". Frankel explores the ways in which the two shows subvert and "co-opt the ancient myths...while re-imagining them" (130), rather than being "bound by the constraints of history or traditional myth" (116). Frankel enthusiastically highlights the playful nature of the two series as well as the way both series bend the stories which they toy with towards "modern sensibilities" (130). Hercules does this by "recasting its heroes as figures of the nineties" (118) most notably its "truly sensitive Hercules who cries and listens to women" (116); Xena presented a feminist vision of history "in which women can be anything they wish" (115), as well as taking "a major step for gay rights" (124). I've only ever seen snippets of Xena, but Frankel has persuaded me I ought to see more.²

The book's third section - which looks at "The Glories of Rome" - opens with two chapters looking at the Starz TV network's series Spartacus. Hannah Mueller gives a detailed analysis of the series' "representation of emotion, violence and sex" in "Male Nudity, Violence and the Disruption of Voyeuristic Pleasure" (136), noting how its "camera does not significantly distinguish between male and female bodies" (138), rather what matters is how "control over the gaze mirrors the imbalance of power" (138). Like Mueller, Jerry B. Pierce ("Sex Lies and Denarii") discuss at length the shows portrayal of sex, violence and "moral depravity" (159). He notes the way the series contrasts the "duplicitous, crassly exploitative, and morally flawed" Romans (169), with the "reliable, trustworthy and altruistic" slaves (170), noting that whilst in general the series repeats the "expected tropes of ancient Rome...of corruption, exploitation, and immorality" (174), one key difference is that it "normalizes queer³ relations by divesting them of their previous deviant overtones" (175).

Staying with Rome, Kevin J. Wetmore moves away from Italy during the time of the republic to Britain during the later years of the empire in "In the Green Zone with the Ninth Legion". The chapter's subtitle - "The Post Iraq Roman Film" nicely sums up its content, which looks three recent films, The Last Legion (2007), Centurion (2010) and The Eagle (2011). Wetmore notes how in contrast to the way the classic epic "present Rome and her soldiers as modeled after Nazis, fascists and/or communists" (178), these later films demonstrate a "reversal of this construction" (179). Whilst the "corrupt ruling class" still remains (181), the heroes of these films are the ordinary soldiers who are presented as "Honorable warriors fighting a save, religiously-driven, inhuman enemy (191). Thus all three films, released after the start of the invasion of Iraq, "align with a construction of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan" (182), demonstrating "echoes of Iraq" through their reconstruction of Roman Britain (186).

Part Four, "Sculpted in Marble" looks at the issue of "Gender and Representation". In "Laughing at the Body: The Imitation of Masculinity in Peplum Parody Films", Tatiana Prorokova examines three parodies of the genre, namely Mel Brooks' A History of the World: Part 1 (1981), Meet the Spartans (2008) and Hail, Caesar! (2016). In particular Prorokova focuses on how these films parody the portrayal of masculinity in many neo-pepla finding they take one of two opposite paths. Either they depict the male body as "physically untrained" or with "exaggerated strength and almost unbelievable invulnerability" (205). A particularly welcome focus of the chapter is the manner in which Spartans pushes the genre's idealising of the male body into portraying it as "an absolutely artificial, plastic object" (204).

The final essay in this volume is Haydee Smith's "Queering the Quest: Neo-Peplum and the Neo-Femme in Xena: Warrior Princess".⁴ The particular focus here is the show's "elusive lesbian subtexts" and how it "critiques the constructed nature of romantic relationships, expected gender roles, and the aesthetics of culturally coded gender presentations" (208). Smith explores the idea of Xena as a "neo-femme icon" and the strategies of "performing feminine mimicry, disguising oneself with passing privilege, and queerly retelling social stories about hegemonic feminine gender roles" (210). The show never explicitly outs its two female leads and Smith sees this as a strength: "Whether or not the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle is lesbian, it is undeniably queer; the queer nature of such a bond offers almost limitless possibilities" (214), and portray "the progressive potential of queer readings (215). Ultimately Smith concludes "Xena's aesthetic, strength, and sexuality defy feminine/masculine demarcations and reconfigure gender roles and regulations" (216).

Smith's chapter segues nicely into an afterword by one of Xena writers and producers Steven L. Sears. It's an entertaining end to an enjoyable volume which does a great deal towards putting study of the neo-peplum on a more even footing academically with some of the more fashionable genres. Highlights for me were Flanagan's observations on the changing nature of crowd scenes and Frankel's advocacy for Xena, whilst Diak's introduction makes a number of great, general points in a relatively short space of time.

As ever with these things they can only cover so much. Obviously my personal  preference would have been for a chapter or two on some of the more recent biblical pepla, but that might have upset a very nicely balanced collection of essays which Diak has collated, and that part of the market is already served by several good books whose extensiveness compensates for their broader time frame.

It was good as well to see at least a reference to Indian peplum (14) which, again, there was not quite room for, but which might get included in future works on the subject should they ever be commissioned. I do hope they will be, because on the evidence of this volume, they deserve to be.

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1 - Whilst this may be true in general, I would argue that Rossellini's historical dramas such as The Rise of Louis XIVth is more sophisticated than the vast majority of offerings at the cinema and more factually accurate than many documentaries. Certainly compared to cinematic documentaries such as Supersize Me or Bowling for Columbine, Rossellini's TV dramas are both better art and less biased.
2 - In particular the third episode of season 2 - "The Giant Killer" where "Xena sets up the David and Goliath battle by counselling the Israelite hero in the weak spots Goliath is hiding well as human politics (sic.) (126)
3 - Whilst I recognise that some find the term "queer" to be offensive, many, have sought to redeem, reclaim and refine the term more positively. Recognising that it is a commonly used term in academic film studies, frequently by scholars who identify as LGBT, I have retained it here where it forms part of a direct quotation.
4 - as note 3 above

Birdsong vs the Biblical Epic

Two years after The Nativity Story and Spanish/Catalan director Albert Serra produced El cant dels ocells (Birdsong). In contrast to The Nativity Story which sought to position itself as a new, family friendly take on the epic in the hope of reproducing the success of The Passion of the Christ, Birdsong deliberately took almost the opposite approach. Just as Pasolini's Il vangelo secondo Matteo opposed 50s and 60s Biblical Epics such as King of Kings, so Birdsong can be seen as an antidote to the excesses of The Passion. Rather than the cast of thousands Birdsong  had a cast of just six. Instead of excessive, lavish sets the film is nearly all filmed outside on deserted landscapes. There are no moral victories, promises of sex, or analogies between the past and the future, indeed the line between the two is somewhat blurred. Birdsong is essentially an anti-epic.

This 'anti-epic' style is typical of Serra's broader body of work, "a cinema of gentle observation and slow demeanour, in which eccentric characters incarnated by non-professional actors bring new dimensions to well-known fictional and religious archetypes". (Delgado 2013: 12) Two years earlier he had produced a similarly sparse version of the Don Quixote story Honor de Cavelleria (2006) and his 2013 film Història de la meva mort (Story of my Death) similarly drained the stories of Cassanova and Dracula of their melodramatic excesses.

Serra's work is just one example of "a new kind of cinema that exists on the margins of the Spanish film industry, to question its premises." (Javier 2014: 95-96) Javier suggests that films such as this "create images that seem to resist the recent explosion of our current 'multi-screen' reality. As opposed to the 'excess image' dominating screens in the contemporary world, this cinema opts wholeheartedly for simplicity and restraint". (2014: 96) Nowhere does this movement contrast more greatly that with the excess of the Biblical Epic.

The most obvious indicator of this is Serra's long, static takes, reminiscent of the style of Roberto Rossellini's later films. Rossellini held that by minimising artificial, and potentially manipulative, editing, not only created more genuine films, but it also reminds the viewer that what they are watching is just a reconstruction, not the real thing. Such long static takes, beautiful compositions and minimal soundtrack make the viewing the film not unlike that of viewing paintings in a gallery. Serra treat his audience to incredible image after incredible image, somehow investing each with great meaning from very little.

Instead of putting the film in context and recounting all the events surrounding Jesus' birth, or even just covering the complete story of the magi's journey, Serra "reduces the symbolic journey of the Three Wise Men to the characters' simple wanderings through stark mountainous areas or across wide open plains where they are mere blots on the landscape and, on many occasions, actually disappear from view". (Javier 2014: 97). Such a portrayal of these "solitary wanderings undermine narrative momentum, inviting the viewer to contemplate, in silent long takes, images of the empty landscape he traverses" (De Luca 2012: 194). The "temporal elongation of the shot surpasses by far the demands of the story". (2013: 193)

Indeed, so low key is the film's aesthetic that the story's most iconic moment can almost creep up on the viewer without them really noticing. When the kings finally find the Christ child there is no crowd of curious onlookers. The holy family are on their own; their visitors lacking in an entourage. This is s a genuine moment of earthly royalty encountering divine royalty without the pantomime that usually accompanies such encounters. Serra produces "a moment of pure reverence, highlighted by the film's only instance of non-diegetic music, when the three men finally prostrate themselves before the mother and child, and the family's private life takes on monumental significance." (O'Brien 2011: 109-110)

It is this moment that most captures "the tradition of Dreyer, Rossellini [and] Pasolini" as the director intended. (Hughes) It's an understated moment that rather than relying on pomp, ceremony, a powerful soundtrack and over-wrought acting performances is built on the slow realism of al that has gone before it. It not only brings to mind the climaxes of Dreyer's Ordet (The Word, 1955), Rossellini's Viaggio in Italia (Journey to Italy, 1954) and the moment when Christ is removed from the cross in Pasolini's Il vangelo secondo Matteo (Gospel According to Matthew, 1964), but extends the tradition.

Part of the reason this strategy is successful is the way it humanises the three kings, going further than even Pasolini dared. They hide from the rain, put their quest on hold to go for a swim and they even seem to get lost at one point. They even bicker over which way to go, each trying to nudge the others into making the decision so they can escape blame if the plan fails. Yet despite this, the film still leaves them shrouded in mystery. We know not what motivates them and drives them on their pilgrimage, yet somehow the characters are very engaging.

Serra also sees something "absurd" in the characters' mission.

All of the ideology, what Jesus means, we added later. We’re talking about the pioneers. Just three men who probably feel stupid, you know? They don’t know why they are going to see this child, or where they’re going, or how long it will take. They’re following a star to find a small child in order to adore him. (Hughes 2009)

This forms an interesting contrast with the approach in The Nativity Story. Both films seek to inject humour by portraying three men who have come to be known as wise, acting like ordinary people. Yet in Birdsong this is done without revealing a great deal about who these men are or stripping away the mystery; in contrast, in The Nativity Story, everything is explained, the characters are given names, backstories and motivations, yet both the humour and the attempt to draw parallels between us and them falls flat.

Just two years, then, after New Line had produced the first Nativity epic, this film becomes the first Nativity 'anti-epic'. A tendency that would be repeated twice more in the following decade in Little Baby Jesus of Flandr (2010) and Le Fils de Joseph (Son of Joseph, 2016).

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Delgado, Maria. M. (2013), 'Introduction', in M. M. Delgado and R. W. Fiddian (eds.), Spanish Cinema 1973-2000: Auteurism, Politics, Landscape and Memory, 1-20, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

De Luca, Tiago. (2012), 'Realism of the Senses: A Tendency in Contemporary World Cinema' in Lúcia Nagib, Chris Perriam, Rajinder Dudrah (eds.) Theorizing World Cinema,183-206, London: I.B Tauris.

Hughes, Darren (2009), 'Albert Serra Interviewed on El Cant dels ocells (Birdsong)', Senses of Cinema. Available online: http://sensesofcinema.com/2009/conversations-on-film/albert-serra-interview/(accessed 22/4/2017).

Moral, Javier. (2014), 'Behind the Enigma Construct: A Certain Trend in Spanish Cinema' in Duncan Wheeler, Fernando Canet (eds.), (Re)viewing Creative, Critical and Commercial Practices in Contemporary Spanish Cinema, 93-104, Bristol: Intellect Books.

O'Brien, Catherine. (2011), The Celluloid Madonna: from Scripture to Screen. London, U.K. : Wallflower Press.

O'Brien, Catherine (2016) 'Women in the Cinematic Gospels'. In: Burnette-Bletsch, Rhonda, (ed.) The Bible in Motion : a Handbook of the Bible and its Reception in Film, vol. 2, 449-462, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter.

Cleopatra (1934) and What it Says about DeMille

Whilst Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra (1934) may not quite be a biblical film it's worth of a few words of consideration here not only because it features at least one biblical character (Herod the Great), but also because it's one DeMille's string of ancient world films with at least connotations of the biblical epic and it's really rather revealing.

The biblical links, such as they are pretty much come down to a brief cameo by Herod the Great in the second half of the film. The first half looks at Cleopatra's relationship with Julius Caesar and is brought to a halt by his murder at the senate. There are a couple of shots here that look like they may have influenced by Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Julius Caesar (1953), miost notably the ones where Brando's Mark Antony address the crowd. (Though it's possible they both depend on an independent source such as a painting).

Antony (long-time DeMille collaborator Henry Wilcoxon) arrives in Egypt and is quickly met by Cleopatra (Claudette Colbert) who pulls out all the stops to try and impress him. It's not quite an orgy scene as per Sign of the Cross (1932), but it fulfils more or less the same function. More of that later. Whatever her methods Cleopatra manages to ensnare Mark Antony which begins to become a problem in Rome as Octavian accrues more power and then Herod arrives. It's perhaps hardly surprising. This was a rare romantic leading role for Wilcoxon whereas Colbert was, by then a big star.

After The Sign of the Cross and her Oscar-winning performance in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (Columbia, 1934), Claudette Colbert was considered ideal for the role of CLeopatra, and no-one else was seriously considered. But the glorified ingenue of two years before was now a bona fide superstar, and Colbert's new status would create problems on the set during production. (Birchard 2004: 277)

We know from Josephus that Herod's not only knew Antony, but also had to utilise his political manoeuvring skills to the best of his ability during his benefactor's demise. DeMille condenses this into just a few short scenes. Herod arrives as the guest of Cleopatra (with whom he shared the rights to extracting asphalt from the Dead Sea) and immediately passes on a message from Rome that she ought to consider poisoning her lover. Cleopatra is appalled. It's a surprise, then, when Herod appears in the next scene with Mark Antony and tells him the whole thing. On the surface he is offering reassurance that Cleopatra would never dream of such a thing, but of course he's attempting to sow seeds of doubt in their relationship. It's notable that Cleopatra is marginally less horrified when one of her courtiers suggests shortly afterwards that it would probably be best for the nation if she did as Octavian asked.

Of course none of this is in the Bible - happening thirty years before Jesus' death, but it's not inconsistent of the man who seems so desperate to cling onto power that Matthew portrays him as murdering the infants of an entire village in order to eliminate threats to his throne. Interestingly Herod does not feature in either the Theda Bara/William Fox's silent Cleopatra (1917) which was difficult to come by even in DeMille's day (Birchard 2004: 277) or the 1963 Liz Taylor and Richard Burton version (which proved to be one of the death knells of the epic genre in general. DeMille's film was a big success).

For DeMille fans however there's a great deal of interest here, particularly in that not-quite-an-orgy scene. As Lindsay says, "no-one did an orgy like DeMille" (2015: 75). When Mark Antony arrives Cleopatra welcomes him aboard her boat. There then begins a series of seductions, starting with a half-hearted solo effort. When this fails to improve his mood she coyly confesses that she is dressed "to lure you in" and resorts to a more ego stroking "of course you're too clever to fall for all this routine".

To show her supposed naivety she outlines her "plan" and shows him all that she had lined up including half naked women writhing around on top of an ox. Then a giant net is hauled upon her ship supposedly containing clams, but actually including more semi-clad women bearing clams full of jewels and when Cleopatra, and then Antony, start flinging the jewels around scantily clad servants of both sexes roll around on the floor to get hold of them. Shortly afterwards women dressed as leopards from the waist up appear, roll around on top of one another and start to cartwheel thorough flaming hoops.

All of this is done in a knowing 'this wouldn't possibly work on a soldier such as you' type of way, perhaps best summed up by the conversation between the two of them:

Mark Antony: I hope that you know that I know you want me to do this.
Cleoptra: Dear Antony, I hope you think I know that you know I know
(they giggle together)

What's interesting about this knowing scene is that what Cleopatra is seeking to do to Mark Antony mirror what DeMille is trying to do to his audience, namely titillate them whilst giving lip service to their supposed immovability to such tacky, seductive fare.

The key difference between this film and others that are usually bracketed alongside of it is the moral message that DeMille usually tacks on. In his biblical films the orgy scenes are usually used as to contrast with the behaviour of the godly. It's a fairly transparent device which has been much commented on - use sex to sell the movie and then tag on a moral message to deflect the criticism. But "if one is paying attention, the sex and sadism in The Ten Commandments is almost unbelievable for a film with such strong Sunday school credentials" (Lindsay 2015: 75)

What I can't quite decide is if DeMille's work here is less acceptable, because without that redemptive message then really various scenes here are just mild porn; or more acceptable, because at least they're not fundamentally hypocritical.

You'll have noticed a couple of references above to Richard Lindsay's book "Hollywood Biblical Epics: Camp Spectacle and Queer Style from the Silent Era to the Modern Day" which I have just finished reading and so naturally it informed some of my thoughts about DeMille, specifically this film.

Lindsay argues that scenes such as these were "perhaps reflecting his own predilections" (Lindsay 2015: 38). To his mind both "DeMille and Gibson are 'queer' in the sense that their sexual desires, as revealed on screen, do not conform to traditional notions of sexuality as defined by traditional Christian communities." (2015: xxviii). Whereas most commentators tend to take a cynical view that DeMille was just trying to sell sex and dressing it up Lindsay is convinced "DeMille truly believed in the power of the Ten Commandments and the figure of Moses as a moral force for good..." (2015: 61), but that he was a truly conflicted individual.

"The camp content of his films has often been interpreted as an expression of the conflict between his Victorian piety and his interest in BDSM...practised with a "harem" of women outside his marriage. The misogyny, sadism, and overwrought melodrama of his epics seems to follow naturally from his own passions...so blatant a part of every DeMille film." (Lindsay 2015: 38)

For Lindsay, DeMille is perhaps best summed up in the sequence from towards the end of The Ten Commandments where "defining the conflicted impulses of his entire body of work, he cuts between Moses on the Mountain receiving the Law and the sexed-up orgy" (2015: 75)

I think this film is the most blatant indication of DeMille's desires, not just because of this one scene, but in the way the male gaze is so overwhelming in every scene. As Cleopatra, DeMille has Claudette Colbert (who "was ill during most of the production") dressed in a series of ridiculously over-sexualised and revealing costumes. (Higham 1973: 176-77).The audience is repeatedly encouraged to gaze on Colbert as Julius Caesar and Mark Antony did.

It's also interesting because, shorn of the biblical element a number of DeMille's auteurist touches become more apparent, the line from Logan's Magdalene, through Colbert's Poppea and Lamarr's Delilah to Baxter's Nefertiri is complete. Each of these glamorous women is frequently photographed in loose but scant flowing costumes, surrounded by supposedly men who lose their power in her presence. We get vast palaces. We get jewels. We get leopards as pets, or servants clad in leopard skin.

And of course usually we get another "DeMille signature--scenes of naked women in bathtubs". (Lindsay 2015: 9) Yet strangely, despite the fact that sources as far back as Pliny and Cassius Dio have suggested that Cleopatra used to bathe in asses' milk, this is the one thing that DeMille doesn't show here, perhaps because showing Colbert in a milk bath had already got him into hot water.

Having said all that, I want to end this piece with a nice take on this aspect of DeMille's work from a series of posts on Twitter by Fritzi Kramer (@MoviesSilently) which compares DeMille's supposed shortcomings with his predecessor D.W. Griffith.

Most people assume that his mixture of faith & sleaze was entirely calculating. His background says otherwise. DeMille is an almost perfect split between his flamboyant actress/agent mother & his bookish lay minister father. He was immersed in theater. But his great treat was when his father (who died young) would read to him from the bible in evenings. DeMille's religious beliefs were not exactly in the mainstream but they were from the heart. The conflict between faith & trash was very real for him. He loved both.

So when people like Lillian Gish & DW Griffith deliver these snotty little slams indicating that DeMille was a hypocrite, it's annoying. DeMille's faith was genuine but it was in conflict with his adoration of spectacle & frank love of trash. That's what makes him interesting. He approaches religious subjects from a place of knowledge, he just has an off-kilter take. And leopard skin. Oh did he love ladies in leopard. I relate to DeMille because I have similar internal conflicts & I find his way of dealing with his to be fascinating.

Also, his healthy relationship with his mother is probably responsible for his very woman-centric creative team in the silent era. If you want to see what DeMille could do when he had a mask of anonymity, do check out Chicago. The film is snappy, saucy & spicy. DeMille knew his way around a fast-paced crowd-pleaser. I guess the point of all this is that I wish people would give DeMille the same benefit of the doubt they give other directors. DW Griffith makes rapey films glamorizing the KKK & he gets every excuse under the sun. DeMille likes sexy shoes & the bible. I can tell you which one I would be more comfortable taking an elevator ride with.

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Birchard, Robert S. "Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood". (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004).
Higham, Charles "Cecil B. DeMille, an Uncensored Biography". (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973).
Lindsay, Richard "Hollywood Biblical Epics: Camp Spectacle and Queer Style from the Silent Era to the Modern Day". (Denver, CO: Praeger, 2015).

The Characteristics of the Biblical Epic: Part 2 - Defining Attributes

This is the third in a series looking at the Biblical Epic Genre
In my last post in this series I was looking at the criteria that various scholars have come up with to help classify the biblical epic. In this post I'm going to draw up my own "list" before going on, in the next post, to explain why this approach isn't really particularly useful. Given that, then, this post might be a rough around the edges. Anyway here are a few characteristics that tend to be present in almost all of the Biblical Epics.

Adapting a Biblical Narrative
This one is so obvious that I almost just left a sarcastic remark, but I do think a few points are worth making here. Firstly, that this is by no means the sole qualification. There is more to a biblical epic than it being based on one of the biblical narratives. It follows then, that not all Bible films let alone all 'biblical films' are Biblical Epics. Jesus of Montreal (1989) is clearly a biblical film, but no-one would classify it as an epic.

At the other end of the scale there's also the question of how much biblical content is required to classify an epic as 'biblical'. My own definition is that it should be a dramatisation of one or more characters who appear in the biblical narratives. At the thin end of the wedge this would include The Silver Chalice (1954), but exclude Spartacus despite the prologue's attempts to link to the story of Jesus.

The Moral Victory
It seems to me that one aspect of the Biblical Epic that sets it apart as a genre from other sub-genres of Historical Epics is the inevitable moral victory. Sometimes this coincides with a more quantifiable victory as in The Ten Commandments (1956) and Samson and Delilah (1949), but oftentimes the hero may lose in the eyes of "the world" but from a moral, or indeed a historical, point of view they are a winner. Such examples include The Robe (1953) where in the final moments Marcellus completes his moral transformation, but is sent for execution; nearly all of the Jesus films where Jesus is executed, but stays true to his cause; and David and Bathsheba (1951) where David ends the film significantly weakened in the eyes of his people, but nevertheless restored in the eyes of God. This perhaps reflects Michael Wood's point that the true hero of these films is God rather than his human agency. Ultimately, no matter how things turn out for the film's protagonists, the audience knows from its historically-privileged position that they are on the side that will prove to be victorious in the long run.

The 'Moral Victory' theme can also be read as a response to the nihilistic pessimism of Film Noir, a genre where the leading characters are frequently unwilling or unable to make the right choices and where the pull towards wrong is, at times, seemingly inescapable. In Biblical Epics 'good' always pulls through, with the leading characters, at least making the 'right' moral choices.

Analogy and shared pasts
Closely linked to the above is the manner in which biblical epics seek to draw analogies with the modern day, either representing the events of that day in such a way to draw parallels with this day or suggesting the roots of Israel have much in common with the shared past of America. Whilst the famous example of the former is the presence of cold war themes in The Ten Commandments (1956), this film is also an example of the latter as the Israelites leaving Egypt is narrated in terms that would not be out of place accompanying the story of the Pilgrim Fathers leaving to found America. Another common example is the suggestion that Israel then and America now have both lost their way and need to turn back to God before disaster strikes. The message is that just as doing right in the ages depicted lead to a better future (which vindicated their actions in their 'present') if modern day Americans will make the right choices then they too will be on the right side of history.

Sex/no sex
One of the most common ways these films attempt illustrate the lack of godliness is in many characters' more liberal attitude to sex, often, um, climaxing in an orgy scene. This trait is most distinct in the 50s epics due to the curious relationship the epics had with the production code. One the one hand the code was more lenient with the Biblical Epics than with any other genre. Their view seems to have been that the amount of flesh on display, the portrayal of orgies and the loose morals of many of the characters is tempered by both the films' moral message and their historical verisimilitude. On the other hand however the code did prevent the films from depicting any actual sex. Participants in the orgies kept their underwear on and the leading characters never really got to consummate their love. Add to this, of course, the fact that in all of the Jesus epics (bar Last Temptation and many of the other epics the central character is seemingly celibate. In this way, then, there is a paradox between the promise of movie sex - a promise the films' marketing teams were all to happy to use to aid promotion - and the amount that actually occurred. In essence, in the Biblical Epics, sex is something that happens to other people. Even in Solomon and Sheba (1959) the two leads' attempt to sneak off to a quiet spot in the middle of the orgy to try and consummate their relationship is foiled by God destructing his own temple to prevent them.

Self-seriousness
There is an incredible earnestness about Biblical Epics. Whether it's the tone of the narrator's voice, or written into the characters faces, these films seemingly take themselves incredibly seriously. It is perhaps the main reason why the genre is so ripe for parody by those no longer held by its spell.

It can be argued that humour, or it's absence, is one of the aspects of a genre that is most embedded, but also most overlooked. Take, for example all the action movies where the hero makes a "pun" after he has just killed an opponent. In the cold light of day this would seem an unlikely response, but it's a way of reminding the audience that this character is simultaneously both like them and not like them. In Biblical Epics seemingly the opposite is true. Aside from the occasional wry comment, usually by one of the campier characters the majority of the audience is unlikely to identify with, the genre is extremely self-serious. Consider the puns James Bond would have made on witnessing just one of the ten plagues of Egypt, for example. The fact that there is very little joking around or attempts at humour is a mechanism for reminding the audience, lest they forget, of the extreme importance of the events they are witnessing. These are not mere stories, they intended to be earth-shattering events of huge significance.

Even the Roman-Christian epics, where the nature of the films and their heroes is closest to the action movie, lack this sense of humour. Strangely, then, the two recent epics that have attempted to inject some humour by their leading characters have both been Jesus films. As with the action films the humour in both Jesus (1999) and The Passion of the Christ (2004) signifies that the character, in this case Jesus, is both like and unlike the audience. On the one hand he likes a water fight, or to share a laugh about a kitchen table (Emphasising Jesus's humanity), but at the same time these happen in-between extreme incidents that emphasise Jesus' otherness (his divinity). Perhaps this breaking of genre codes explains my own reaction to these attempts at humour. To me they simultaneous feel both like a brief breath of fresh air yet rather awkward and our-of-place.

The other kind of self-seriousness these films exhibit is almost a kind of opposite. Critics of the genre in general, or a specific film in general frequently cite terrible, "corny" lines of dialogue. Usually the question they ask is "How can anyone say that with a straight face?". "How?" indeed. The answer again seems to be that these overblown, overly earnest lines, are again examples where normal reactions ought to be suspended. These are not just stories, the filmmakers are at pains to remind us, they are accounts about the very birth of civilisation/salvation.

Camp
Linked to the above point about corny dialogue, and that about the characters that are permitted to make humorous comments is the fact that another of the key distinctives of many Biblical Epics is camp. This is very much at the foremost of my mind at the moment as I'm reading Richard Lindsay's "Hollywood Biblical Epics: Camp Spectacle and Queer Style from the Silent Era to the Modern Day". Lindsay cites Susan Sontag's descriptions of camp as "Failed seriousness" (p.xxix) and the "love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration" (p.xxx) before adding something Sontag excludes, namely that camp "is often specifically queer, but it need not be exclusively queer" (p.xxxi, emphasis his). Ultimately he agrees with Philip Core's definition of "camp as an expression of what is simultaneously hidden and revealed about the personality"(p.xxx).

Even to those unfamiliar with academic definitions of camp, it is fairly plain that it is a feature of most of the major Biblical Epics from Mary Magdalene's zebra-powered chariot in The King of Kings, to Jay Robinson's portrayal of Caligula in The Robe to the underlying scorned-lover motivation behind Boyd's depiction of Messala in Ben-Hur, through to Richard Gere dancing in his underpants in 1985's King David. But it's even present in The Passion of the Christ a point that is, at first, surprising and then rather obvious. As Lindsay puts it "The androgynous Satan figure and the gay Herod figure suggest the kind of decadent society that would put the Son of God to death" (p.46).

Indeed Biblical Epics are not just about the existence of camp, but usually camp of the kind of wrong in the world which, one way or another, God is intent on rectifying. Thus ultimately Magdalene covers up her gold bikini, the smug sneer is wiped of Caligula's face and Satan descends into hell; camp orgies are terminated by "acts of God" such as earthquakes and lightning and huge pagan temples and idols crumble into the dust. It's a mark against the genre that the 'more-godly' world at the end of these films is usually one that is more heterosexual.

Excess
Closely linked to the above is the degree and the sense of excess in the Biblical Epics. As Wood explains "(o)nly epics, I think, insist on our thinking so much about money while we are in the cinema. Every gesture, every set piece bespeaks fantastic excess." (p.169) However, this excess is not simply about good storytelling or attractive marketing it also serves to bolster the film's moral message. This is closely tied to the points made above about "Moral Victory" and "Camp". Often the epics' excess is a way of signifying decadence, or the might of the empire against which God's people are to stand against. However, perhaps, it receives its fullest expression in the large scale destruction that occurs at the end of many Biblical Epics. Wood again ((178-182):

...the idea of waste in these movies receives its fullest expression here...Here are costly sets, carefully built constructions, going up in smoke or toppling down in ruins, the very feats of engineering we have just been admiring are now thrown away. This is visible expense, like the crowd of extras, only more startling. This is money being burned...It is pure excess, a ritual expression of lack of need...Having all that cash to throw away is a sign of (apparent) financial health. But actually throwing it away is a sign of moral health, a sign that you are not hampered by your riches...I don't think this is a reaction against a past of puritan prescriptions. It is rather the oblique expression of a faith. Here is God's plenty...to save money or gasoline or energy is to doubt the profusion of Gods gifts...For many modern Americans worldly goods are so abundant that that it becomes a form of scandal to want to hang on to any of them for very long.

Of course 'Excess' is not just linked to destruction in the Epics it's often used to underscore the supposed momentousness of the events that are being depicted. The moment of Exodus in both versions of The Ten Commandments, the Hallelujah Chorus in The Greatest Story Ever Told and the ark in the various epic adaptations of the Noah story.

Divine Activity
One of the key factors that distinguishes the Biblical Epics from other historical epics is the presence of divine intervention. This takes different forms in different films. Whilst Grace describes this as "the miracles and the sense of the nearness of the heavenly realm" (p.13) this varies depending on the type of story which is being adapted. As a description it best fits the Roman-Christian Epics where Peter sees a vision (Quo Vadis?), Marcellus is haunted (The Robe) and Miriam and Tirzah are healed (Ben-Hur). However, in the Old Testament Epics "nearness of the heavenly realm" seems a little cosy compared to the acts of judgement and destruction which typify God's decisive action in the film. In the Jesus films it is not so much about a connection to another "realm" as the presence of God made man and walking among mortals.

What is striking is that whilst divine activity is far from unique amongst ancient writings, very few other historical epics (at least within the Hollywood tradition) include such incidents, without moving into the fantasy genre where the aspects of self-seriousness and contemporary resonance are also absent. To put it another way, only the only form of divine activity that Hollywood cinema takes seriously is that which affirms Judeo-Christian belief. More recently characters have been allowed to believe in other gods - there were mentions of the supernatural in the early twenty-first century epics Gladiator (2000) and Troy (2004) - but in such cases their faith remains strictly a personal affair. The divine does not appear to have a decisive effect on the lives of mortals.

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Having said all of this, I'm no longer sure having lists of genre characteristics is particularly helpful. When I started researching this series of posts I was very much hoping to come up with a list of criteria that would more or less indicate which films were part of the genre and which weren't. However as I have looked into more I have learned that not only is such a process widely practised it is also rather problematic. The reason I went down this path in the first place is because two of the early pieces I read, many years ago now, did offer such list based classifications. The first was in the very first general film studies text I read, Warren Buckland's "Teach Yourself Film Studies" where the author briefly examines Film Noir and lists seven of Noir's main attributes.

The second was in Gaye Ortiz and Clive Marsh's "Explorations in Theology and Film: An Introduction" which is now 20 years old and which has not dated as well as some of its contemporaries. The chapter in question was Robert Banks' "The Drama of Salvation in George Stevens's Shane" which started by listing the key characteristics of the Western. Both pieces very much caught my attention and have acted as doorways to discovering two genres that I have a real love for. Nevertheless, I've only read one subsequent piece of scholarship on these genres that attempts genre classification by list, and crucially I was not able to rediscover it to mention it here.

Anyway, this approach is not generally favoured by most authors on genre studies. One of the main reasons for this is that such lists are inevitably part of a self-fulfilling circle. If I define a genre, I do so with reference to a particular list of films that qualify for that genre, but if I start with a list of films and seek to draw out their shared characteristics then the question arises as to on what basis these particular films were selected in the first place. There's more I could say on this, but for a footnote this has already gone on quite a lot and I should probably press on and wrap it up.

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- Banks, Robert (1997) “The Drama of Salvation in George Stevens’s Shane,” in Explorations in Theology and Film, Marsh & Ortiz (eds.), Oxford: Blackwell, 59-65
- Buckland, Warren (1998) "Teach Yourself Film Studies", London: Hodder & Stoughton.
- Grace, Pamela. (2009) The Religious Film:Christianity and the Hagiopic, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
- Lindsay, Richard A. (2015), Hollywood Biblical Epics: Camp Spectacle and Queer Style from the Silent Era to the Modern Day, Santa Barbara, California/Denver, Colorado: Praeger.
- Wood, Michael. ([1975] 1989) America in the Movies, New York: Columbia University Press

The Characteristics of the Biblical Epic: Part 1 - What the Experts Say

This is the second in a series looking at the Biblical Epic Genre
In my last post in this series I was looking at the arguments for and against there being a Biblical Epic genre. In this posts I want to consider what the defining characteristics of that genre might be if it is to be accepted that said genre exists.

Wood (1989: 173) describes how the "ancient world of the epics was a huge, many-faceted metaphor for Hollywood itself" and how the heroes of these films are not Moses or Ben-Hur, but DeMille and Wyler. For him one of the key characteristics is the "myth of excess" (1989: 174). He also lists several others:

"The basic elements of the epic seem to run from the minor ones like the music....to relatively major ones like certain sturdy , straight-faced acting styles to absolutely essential elements like the big scenes (the orgy, the ceremonial entry into the city, the great battle, the individual combat, and where possible, a miracle or two) and the big, earthshaking themes." (Wood 1989: 175).

Wood is writing about the epic genre in general however, rather than the Biblical Epic specifically so some of these may be less essential than others.

Like Wood, Grace (2009) is also concerned with a broader genre, only in her case it is the "Hagiopic" (a religious biopic which could be set in a relatively modern era such as 1943's The Song of Bernadette) rather than the (historical) epic. She lists "several of the most striking characteristics of the traditional hagiopic" as follows:

"...the typical locations, characters, and sounds; the genre-specific interweaving of chronological tome and a sense of eternity; the concern with suffering; the miracles and the sense of the nearness of the heavenly realm; the nostalgia for an earlier era; and the depiction of persecution and painful death of an innocent person. There are also generic narrative patterns. One typical narrative element involves sceptics, doubters, or cynical characters, who make snide comments about religious belief near the beginning of the film, only to be proved wrong at the end..." Grace (2009: 13)

In contrast Babington and Evans (1993: 4) take a different approach, dividing the genre into "three sub-types of film: the Old Testament Epic; The Christ Film; and the Roman/Christian Epic" they do also note a few characteristics that cover all three genres. For example, "every production is a 'unique', costly, much-advertised affair" (1993: 6). Related to that is that "the genre only exists in the superlative mode" (1993: 6). One further characteristic were the "pressures towards conformity and ecumenical blandness" (1993: 8).

They also note the contradictory attitudes of fascination and repulsion towards the (supposedly) heightened sexual content and the manner in which, typically, neither of which is ultimately fulfilled (1993: 11). This is similar to the more frequently discussed technique, popularised by DeMille, of dressing up the wolf of a greater amount of sexual content, in the sheep's clothing of a pious moral message and biblical content.

Ultimately Babington and Evans list the following as the key characteristics of each of these sub-genres:

The Old Testament Epic
Culture heroes/villains, (50)
Contemporary allusion, (53)
American matters [i.e. parallels], (55)
The battle of the gods , (57)
Patterns of scepticism, (58)
Spectacle (60)
Law and Orgy (65)

The Christ Film
Miracles, (103)
The Resurrection, (105
The Jews, (105)
The women, (107)

The Roman/Christian Epic
Shadow of the Galilean [i.e. Jesus Cameo only], (179)
Prologues to what is possible, (181)
Prologue into plot, (185)
Christianity & Romantic love, (197)
The Disappearing Jew, (199)
Earthly powers, (202)

There isn't really space here to go into the definitions of each of these, but it's worth pointing out how different these characteristics are of these more specific sub-genres.

In his recent work "Hollywood Biblical Epics" (2015) Richard Lindsay is mainly concerned with the one obvious characteristic of biblical epics that no-one else seems to mention – camp.

"...a good story, a romance of biblical proportions, push the boundaries of spectacle and special effects, let them see the events of biblical history played out on the big screen as a grand pageant --furthermore, in the hypnotic-suggestive state of movie watching..." Lindsay (2015: xxi-xxii)

There's also this summary from later in the book.

"I am defining the biblical epic more broadly as films that are American in origin, were released in movie theatres, that are treated historically (not as parody, satire, or paraphrase of biblical text), which feature biblical characters, and are set in the period of the Old Testament, the time of Christ, or immediately after Christ." Lindsay (2015: 55)

Lindsay also cites the work of Douglas K. Mikkelson (2004) on the "silver screen gospels", most notably The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). Mikkelson lists three criteria for such films:

1 - "The film's main focus is to present a dramatized biography of Jesus in his historical time and place"
2 - "The film is based on one or more of the New Testament Gospels"
3 - The film must have been "released as a major motion picture or a major television movie"

Surprisingly the only author I'm aware of who tries to systematically lay out the main criteria is Adele Reinhartz in her chapter "The Biblical Epic" in last year's "The Bible in Motion" (2016: 179-182). She lists the following four characteristics:

1 - Scope and Scale,
2 - Allusionism,
3 - Romance, and
4 - Markers of Biblical Authenticity

She then takes a closer look at two further "features", "adapting the Bible to film" and “'then as now,' that is, the use of the past to reflect on the present" (2016: 184) where she examines the treatment of: gender, science and medicine, civil rights, cold war America, communism, atheism and idolatry, and epic religion.

In a future post I'm going to propose my own criteria, based on the wealth of ideas above but also my own thoughts on the matter.

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- Babington, Bruce, and Peter William Evans. (1993), Biblical Epics: Sacred Narrative in the Hollywood Cinema, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
- Grace, Pamela. (2009) The Religious Film:Christianity and the Hagiopic, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
- Lindsay, Richard A. (2015), Hollywood Biblical Epics: Camp Spectacle and Queer Style from the Silent Era to the Modern Day, Santa Barbara, California/Denver, Colorado: Praeger.
- Mikkelson, Douglas K. (2004) "The Greatest Story Ever Told": A Silver-Screen Gospel". Lanham, MD ; Oxford: University Press of America
- Reinhartz, Adele (2016), 'The Biblical Epic', in Rhonda Burnette-Bletsch (ed.), The Bible in Motion: A Handbook of Biblical Reception in Film, vol. 1, 175-92, Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter
- Wood, Michael. ([1975] 1989) America in the Movies, New York: Columbia University Press

Is There a 'Biblical Epic' Genre?

This is the first in a series looking at the Biblical Epic genre
I want to look at the question of if there is a 'Biblical Epic' genre? It's a question where it's tempting to jump to snap answers, but on closer inspection the issues blur a little. Certainly if the genre 'Biblical Epic' exists then the case is less clear cut than, say the 'Musical' genre, but that shouldn't necessarily mean that the answer to the question is a 'no'. After all, every genre is a little fuzzy around the edges. So I'm going to discuss some of the possible reasons why this might not be a legitimate genre and then mop up a few other points from there.

Biblical epics are grouped together because of their common source, rather than on the basis of cinematic common ground
I can certainly see the appeal of this point however I think three points should be made in response. Firstly, that whilst this objection might hold for all biblical films, the biblical epic is a smaller subset of that overall group. Godspell is clearly a biblical film, but many would argue that it is not a biblical epic. Secondly, whilst this genre is unique in this respect, many other genres share a common conglomeration of sources. Musicals are largely adaptions of Broadway shows. War films are usually based on the accounts of those who fought in these modern conflicts. Films Noir often come from 'pulp fiction' novels. Admittedly this is not quite the same, but neither is the point entirely irrelevant. Finally, whilst biblical epics do share the common ground of the biblical narratives, often what sprouts from it has been uprooted and replanted several times before it reaches us. Ben-Hur, to name but one example, is undoubtedly a biblical epic, but its links to the gospels are very slight indeed. Really it's an adaptation of nineteenth century historical fiction.

Biblical epics are really just a sub-division of historical epics
...but then they are just a sub-division of all historical films (i.e. films not set in the present or future) and yet the differences between a 40s-era romance and a biblical epic are clearly considerable. It's true that these things can divide and divide - Babington and Evans, for example, divide the biblical epic into three further sub-groupings - however this is relatively consistent with genre theory which focuses on what different films hold in common and what audience expectations are. The audience for 300 would not have the same appetite for The Nativity Story (2006) as they would for Robin Hood (2010) for example. Their expectations from what each of those films would deliver is quite different.

Overlap with other genres
It can be argued that certain biblical epics also clearly meet the criteria for another genre. Jesus Christ, Superstar is a musical. Various adaptations of Noah qualify as disaster movies. The observation has been made several times that The Passion of the Christ is heavily reliant on the horror genre.

However, this is not unique to the biblical epic genre. There are various westerns that are also musicals. The crossover between the woman's picture and film noir is frequently discussed, not to mention all those science fiction disaster movies. So this is just what we would expect, often resulting in some of the films around the fringes of one particular genre meeting the criteria for another.

What arguments are there in favour of a biblical epic genre?
The classic understanding of genre is that whilst the auteur theory centres around the filmmakers' perspective, genre theory is all to do with the audience. Genres function as a signpost for the potential audience to quickly understand the kind of film they are likely to see. A film of a particular genre will meet certain expectations. Some of these expectations might be subverted, but essentially the audience will broadly know what to expect. As James Monaco (2000: 300), looking back at the fifties and sixties when genres and biblical epics were both in their heyday, puts it:

The elements were well known: there was a litany to each popular genre. Part of their pleasure lay in seeing how those basic elements would be treated this time around.¹

If this is, indeed, the key point then clearly biblical epics meet this criterion. Fans of biblical epics know the kind of thing they are going to get. Indeed, if anything it was the genre's failure to adapt and subvert itself that lead to the 'death' of the genre in the late sixties.

The other classic definition of genre is that it is essentially a gathering together of a group of films with common characteristics. This essentially cuts both ways. On the one hand if this was the sole criterion then a certain group of films could indeed be grouped together and called a biblical epic, or whatever someone wanted. However this can also be seen as a weakness as it does rather undermine the whole premise. If there is little more to genre than a subjective grouping of films based on perceived similarities, then what exactly is the point? Suffice to say, that this is where the second element comes in, that of audience expectations and marketeers' shorthand. Indeed some argue that the point of genres is their predictability. "(T)here are a limited and predictable range of features; where characters and events are more predictable and where our expectations are more likely to be fulfilled" (Phillips 1999: 166).

In a future post I'm going to look at what some of those characteristics might be for the biblical epic genre and later still I hope to look at a few more modern biblical epics to see if the genre characteristics of the traditional epics still hold in the twenty-first century.

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- Monaco, James ([1981] 2000), How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, Multimedia, Third Edition, New York: Oxford University Press
- Phillips, Patrick ([1996] 1999), 'Genre, Star and Auteur - Critical Approaches to Hollywood Cinema' in Jill Nelmes (ed.), An Introduction to Film Studies, Second Edition, 161-208, New York: Routledge