Sensational Violence: Brutality in Twenty-First-Century Cinematic Depictions of Roman Battles

Hannah-Marie Chidwick

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Chapter 18 Sensational Violence: Brutality in Twenty-First-Century Cinematic Depictions of Roman Battles

于Brill's Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film

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Hannah-Marie Chidwick

Hannah-Marie Chidwick
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类型:: 章节

Page Range:: 481–507

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004686823_019

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Abstract

The chapter explores the violence in post-Gladiator (2000) cinematic depictions of Roman battles. The 21st-century silver and small screens have exhibited increasing levels of bodily violence, and portrayals of ancient battles have become similarly brutal. In line with an emergent trend in Ancient History scholarship, this chapter reads battle scenes framed by modern war studies, to consider what extreme violence is doing in these narratives. Through close-readings of select battle scenes from a range of 21st-century historical films, the chapter explores how the violence of these scenes is fetishized as “action-packed” entertainment, and how this functions to uphold or create tension with the post-Vietnam viewer’s perceptions of war.

As the 21st-century West becomes increasingly removed from the realities of war-making, the violence in entertainment cinema reflects a tendency in war reporting, across media, to foreground wounding and devastation for the sake of sensationalism. The sword-and-sandal flick must now conform to expectations of battle violence fostered by landmark war films, such as Saving Private Ryan (1998). Modern historical epics convey a hyperbolic “realness” of professionalized conflict by using similar filming and editing techniques to provide a helmet-cam perspective on the chaos of war-making (Centurion 2010; Risen 2016). However, perhaps as a result of historical distance, Roman battle scenes privilege entertainment value through displays of “heroic” brutality which displace emotional distress or the processing of corpses. Instead, violent battle scenes paradoxically function to satisfy western viewer expectations of the Roman army as a civilizing force, and the Roman soldier as an exemplum of (toxic) masculinity and heteronormative ideals. The chapter explores how the audience’s collective desire for a now normalized overkill of gruesome detail corresponds with and contributes to recreations of historical battle scenes, revealing a problematic but enduring civilian (mis)understanding of military service, past and present.

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Brill's Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film

丛编： Brill's Companions to Classical Studies, 卷： 7and Brill's Companions to Classical Studies: Warfare in the Ancient Mediterranean World, 卷： 7

ISBN:: 9789004686823

出版社:: Brill

印刷出版日期:: 12 Dec 2023

Subjects
- Classical Studies
  - Classical Tradition & Reception Studies
- Literature and Cultural Studies
  - Theatre Studies

Front Matter

Part 1 Introduction

Part 2 Cinema vs. History: Testing the Accuracy of Celluloid Battles

Part 3 The Leading Men of Celluloid Armies

Part 4 Women and Military Conflict

Part 5 Western Colonialism and Racist Attitudes

Part 6 Ancient Warfare on Film and Modern Politics

Part 7 Ancient Battles for Millennial Spectators and the Impact of the Hollywood War Film

Part 8 Epilogue

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African Studies	Education	Media Studies
American Studies	History	Middle East and Islamic Studies
Ancient Near East and Egypt	Human Rights and Humanitarian Law	Musicology
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Asian Studies	International Relations	Religious Studies
Biblical Studies	Jewish Studies	Slavic and Eurasian Studies
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Book History and Cartography	Life Sciences	Theology and World Christianity
Classical Studies	Literature and Cultural Studies

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Chapter 18 Sensational Violence: Brutality in Twenty-First-Century Cinematic Depictions of Roman Battles

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Brill's Companion to Ancient Greek and Roman Warfare on Film

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