Week 3 CARRY ON CLEO Flashcards
Cleopatra & Carry on Cleo date
55 BC - 30 BC
Alliance of the 3 strongest men in the Roman politics in 60 BC - 53 BC
Pompey, Crassus, Julius Caesar (1st Triumvirate)
Julius Caesar in history
- Part of the 1st Triumvirate
- Campaigned in Gaul (France), and England (didn’t take Britain as his own, Claudius did)
- 53 BC, Crassus dies and Pompey no longer supports Caesar
- 49 BC, Caesar declares Civil War on Pompey using his army (Pompey flees to Egypt)
Julius Caesar in history with Cleopatra in history
- Cleo and her brother Ptolemy are the last of the Hellenistic Greek rulers
- Caesar is seduced by Cleo and awarded the throne, has an illegitimate son and brings Cleo back with him to Rome
- The first living Roman to have his head on the official royal coinage
- February 44 BC, he becomes perpetual dictator
- March 44th BC, he is assassinated by the senate led by Brutus and Cassius to “restore” republican, liberating it from tyranny
Mark Antony and Lepidus, Octavian (great-Nephew of Caesar) in history
- 2nd Triumvirate
- take revenge on Caesar’s assassins and divide the rule of the empire
- Lepidus gets kicked out and the two left fight in a civil war
Mark Antony and Octavian in History
- Antony meets Cleo in the East while Octavian in the West
- Antony has children with Cleo and Rome turns against him because Cleo is “evil”
- 31 BC, Octavian defeated Antony at the battle of Actium and in 30 BC attacked Alexandria
- Antony and Cleo commit suicide in Egypt and it becomes a Roman province
Octavian
- individual left to rule the Roman world and granted the title of Augustus in 27 BC
- uses Roman republic governmental power to recieve absolute power and claimed to “ restore the republic”
“Creation” of Cleopatra
- Many negative propaganda by Octavian and described as a seductress by Plutarch, Suetonius, Cassius Dio & Appian
- Shakespeare as well bases his work off of Plutarch, but she’s a doomed lover and sympathetic heroine
By the 18th C, Cleopatra shows the sexualised East, exotic, seductive (orientalising)
Cleopatra in Film
- Early cinema (1913 onwards) uses the exoticism of Cleopatra to create a femme fatale
- by the 1934 film of Cleopatra portrays a new woman (independent, smart, glamorous, vampish)
- used to sell beauty products
Escapism of Epic films
- helps escape from depression-era of the 1930s
- allows to pass censorship by setting it in the ancient times
- Hollywood gaslit the world that Cleo bathed in asses milk (actually Poppea, wife of Nero) [Same actress played both characters]
Cleopatra (1963)
- the biggest epic of them all
- 4 hours long and costs 44$ mill
- told the whole story of Cleo in a faithful historic manner
- amazing sets and actors (Elizabeth Taylor was very.. diva, adultress)
- almost put 20th century fox out of business
Carry on Cleo (1964)
- Parody of Cleopatra, low budget (and was sued lol)
- Reused the abandoned sets and costumes of Cleo
- Has lines from Shakespear
Comedy in Carry on Cleo
- Many traditional devices used (comic slaves, disguises, happy end, inversion of status)
- sex jokes and repetition, bad puns, etc.
- comic timing, exaggeration, and stereotypes
- Slapstick, Clowning
Inversion
Reversal of the normal order of words, typically for rhetorical effect or comedy (Cowardly Hangist turns into the body guard of Caesar)
Stereotype
A widely held but fixed and oversimplified image of a particular person of thing (nagging wife, cheeky stereotypical market trader - Marks and Spencer)
Parody
An imitation of the style of a particular writer, author, artist, or genre with a de,operate exaggeration for comedic effect (political figures, Rise and fall of the Roman Empire by Gibbon, Julius Caesar by Shakespeare)
Differences from Carry on Cleo and Cleopatra
- Carry on Cleo is ditsy and scramble-brained, but still motivated in a subtle method
- Cleopatra is much more direct and openly ambitious, dead-panned
Direct parody of the mute servant - Communication through sign language differences
- In Cleopatra, Julius Caesar has a mute slave
- In carry on Cleo, Cleo has a slave
Direct parody in the rug scene
- both movies have cleopatra smuggled into meeting Cleopatra by hiding in a rug to seduce Caesar
- in reality, Plutarch has written nearly the same thing, a bedding roll
British stereotypes
- Tea and crumpets (god they worship)
- British weather
- uncivilized at the time
Roman stereotypes
- buildings with columns and marble and inner decorations
- costumes: Togas, wreaths, military outfits, etc
- arch of Constantine (that wasn’t built for another 300 years)
Thr effeminate East and the barbarian West
- the west was seen as barbaric and wild, unkempt and wild compared to the East
- the East is the more artistic and philosophical Greeks, admired by the Romans
- many of the Greek arts were copied by the Romans and even replicated their homes based on classical Greek models
