Carry on Caesar

Abstract

Abstract The variations on broadly fixed formulas used to represent such characters as the one portraying the Roman emperor, Julius Caesar, are all the more conspicuous for their, sometimes, almost imperceptible nuances. This article will illustrate some meaningful examples of filmic Caesars, focusing on the linguistic representation of this character, often handled as a stock character. The larger definition of stock characters, which includes but is not limited to stereotypes, encompasses a set of both visual and linguistic formulaic features which depend on identity constructions or social positions, to put it in Quantz’s terms (2015). The character Julius Caesar is often made to follow what film historians have called a general ‘linguistic paradigm’, by which British actors with posh accents, in post-war Hollywood epics of the 1950s, are frequently cast as wicked Roman tyrants or simply as members of the establishment opposed by the ‘hero’ of the tale. Departures from a schema can be however just as revealing in order to pinpoint recurrent themes, and they will be explored by focusing on the comic rendition of Caesar as interpreted by Kenneth Williams in the 1964 British comedy Carry on Cleo, and on the analysis of its outrageously racist and sexist Italian translation.