The Twilight of Olympus
Deicide and the End of the Greek Gods
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20087379 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Vincent Tomasso (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Pages | 147-157 |
| Publication date | 2015-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Classical Myth on Screen (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan US (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1057/9781137486035_13 |
| OpenAlex | W2476149866 |
| ISBN | 9781137486035 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
The divinities of ancient Greece have been a staple of cinema from at least as early as Aphrodite's appearance in the Italian silent short film La Caduta di Troia (1911), and they have continued to appear regularly in films based on ancient Greek myths.1 Other screen texts have reinforced the importance of the Greek gods in modern popular culture, from the God of War video game series (2005-), to the Percy Jackson film franchise (The Lightning Thief, 2010; Sea of Monsters, 2013), to the television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995–1999) and Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001). But the Greek gods are also part of antiquity's "radical alterity";2 that is, screen texts use the gods to mark out how different ancient Greece was from the modern West through their arrogance and fickleness. This vision of divinity is problematic for modern Western audiences whose cultures are heavily influenced by Christian ideas, and so some screen texts of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries foretell Olympus' demise.3 This chapter analyzes inflections of the "twilight of the Greek gods" motif in films and television programs, to make sense of what they communicate about how the West wants to view the legacy of classical antiquity.4 KeywordsClassical TraditionClassical AntiquityTelevision SeriesStar TrekRadical AlterityThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves
Ancient Greek · Ancient history · Art · Demise · Divinity · Literature · Media studies · Movie theater · Mythology · Sociology · Television series · Theology · Twilight · Classical Antiquity Studies · Classics · Contemporary and Historical Greek Studies · Historical and Architectural Studies · History · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2016 - 2023 (8) |
| Highly cited | No |