Course Details

While to date at least the sands of Egypt have not yielded up any films from the ancient world, mythology has been a subject of modern cinema from its beginnings in the late 1800s, including various versions of Sophocles’ immortal Oedipus Rex. Screen writers and directors have largely assumed the role of story telling and, as story tellers, they return again and again to the ancient Greek and Roman myths, as the recent release of _Clash of the Titans_ can attest. In this course, we will look at films that take up mythological subjects and either represent them in a reimagined and reconstructed antiquity or set them in post-classical times. In one case, a classic Western–and the model for a number of more recent films, including the Star Wars trilogies–though based on a twentieth century novel, nonetheless instantiates the fundamental characteristics of a myth. This movie will become the jump off point for seeing film as encompassing mythic narrative structures in general.

Students will be asked to read ancient versions of myths and watch modern cinematic versions, comparing and contrasting to uncover what the ancient authors were looking for and how their literary descendants rearticulated their stories. There will be two exams: midterm and final. And the final projects? (1) Identifying, viewing, and describing how a film on a non-mythic topic possesses an underlying mythological narrative structure. (2) The scripting or filming of an ancient myth. That is, students will either describe in a 10-15 page paper the movie they would make, inspired by the films seen in class, or create their own film. Warning: students who have taken the non-Honors version of this course in the past have reported that their friends and family refuse to watch movies with them.