Screening the Golden Ages of the Classical Tradition

Abstract

Screening the Golden Ages of the Classical Tradition explores how films and television programs have engaged with one of the most powerful myths in the Western classical tradition: that humans once lived under ideal conditions, as defined by proximity to the divine. We feel nostalgia for this imagined origin, regret at being born too late to enjoy it, and worry over why we lost it. We seek to recover that “golden age” by religious piety—or, by technological innovation, try to create our own utopia. The breach between this imagined world and lived reality renders these mythical constructs as powerful political tools. For the “golden age” concept influences how participants in the Western classical tradition view our own times by comparison, as an “iron age” whose degradation we lament and wish to escape. This “golden age” complex has manifested in the world-building activities of ancient Greek and Roman texts, from Hesiod to Suetonius, and in modernity’s hagiographic memory of certain historical societies: Periclean Athens, Thermopylae-era Sparta, and Augustan Rome. These fourteen collected essays discuss how golden age themes animate screen texts ranging from prestige projects like Gladiator and HBO’s Rome, to cult classics like Xanadu and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, to films made by auteurs including Jules Dassin’s Phaedra and the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou? Essays also examine the classical “golden age” tradition in fantasy (Game of Thrones), science fiction (Serenity), horror (The Walking Dead), war/combat (the 300 franchise, Centurion, The Eagle), and the American Western.