Classical Myth on Screen

An examination of how screen texts in the contemporary media landscape embrace, refute, and reinvent the cultural heritage of classical antiquity, this volume looks at specific story patterns and archetypes from Greco-Roman culture that are woven into the fabric of Western narrative traditions. The contributors to this volume offer a variety of historical perspectives, highlighting key cultural relay points at which a myth is received and reformulated for a particular audience. This variety is demonstrated through the broad range of screen texts that serve as case studies representing the past hundred years: from the 1927 science fiction epic Metropolis to 2012's blockbuster The Hunger Games.

Monica S. Cyrino is Professor of Classics at the University of New Mexico, USA. She is the author of Aphrodite (2010), A Journey through Greek Mythology (2008), Big Screen Rome (2005), and the editor of Screening Love and Sex in the Ancient World (2013), and Rome, Season One: History Makes Television (2008). She has served as an academic consultant on several recent film and television productions.

Meredith E. Safran is Assistant Professor of Classics and Co-Director of the Trinity Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies at Trinity College, USA. She has written about epic motifs in the film Angels and Insects (1996) and the representation of Greek tragedy on film. She regularly teaches a survey course in classical mythology.

Introduction: Cinemyths; Monica S. Cyrino and Meredith E. Safran
PART I: THE HERO'S STRUGGLE
1. "Italian Stallion" meets "Breaker of Horses": Achilles and Hector in Rocky IV (1985); Lisl Walsh
2. The Isolated Hero: Papillon (1973), Cast Away (2000), and the Myth of Philoctetes; Scott A. Barnard
3. The Limits of Human Knowledge: Oedipal Problems in A Serious Man (2009); Osman Umurhan
4. Orpheus in a Grey Flannel Suit: George Nolfi's The Adjustment Bureau (2011); Seán Easton
PART II: FASHIONING THE FEMININE
5. Dystopian Amazons: Fantasies of Patriarchy in Le Gladiatrici (1963); Antony Augoustakis
6. Arya, Katniss, and Merida: Empowering Girls through the Amazonian Archetype; Beverly J. Graf
7. The Suspense Thriller's Pygmalion Complex: Masculine Desire in Vertigo (1958), Les Biches (1968), and Body Double (1984); Kaelie Thompson
8. Plastic Surgery: Failed Pygmalions and Decomposing Women in Les Yeux Sans Visage (1960) and Bride of Re-Animator (1989); Hunter Gardner
PART III: NEGOTIATING THE COSMIC DIVIDE
9. Savior of the Working Man: Promethean Allusions in Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927); Alex McAuley
10. Magic, Music, Race: Screening "Black Enchantment" after Black Orpheus (1959); Monica S. Cyrino
11. Re-conceiving Hercules: Reframing Divine Paternity in Hercules (2004); Meredith E. Safran
12. The Twilight of Olympus: Deicide and the End of the Greek Gods; Vince Tomasso
PART IV: CINEMYTH-MAKING
13. Of Marketing and Men: Making the Cinematic Greek Hero, 2010-2014; Stacie Raucci

14. John Cameron Mitchell's Aristophanic Cinema: Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001); Lorenzo F. Garcia, Jr.
15. Dionysus Comes to Gotham: Forces of Disorder in The Dark Knight (2008); David Bullen
16. Hypatia and Brian: Early Christianity as Greek Mythological Drama; Anise K. Strong
17. Divine Animation: Clash of the Titans (1981); Dan Curley