Faculty of Arts
- Introduction
- Learning Resources
- Preventing Plagiarism
- What Tutors Do
- Notes - FILMIC CODES
- Assignment 1
- SHOT TYPES
- Week 3
- Week 1
- Attendance
- Tutorials
- Turnitin Guidelines
- Help
- Film, Television and Media Studies
- Assignment 1 - Names
- Week 3 B
- Week 4
- Week 5
- Week 6
- Week 7
- Week 8
- Assignment 1 - Criteria and Tips
- Staff
- Week 9
- Week 10
- Week 11
- Week 12 Lecture 1
- Class Reps
- Assignment 2
- Assignment 2 - Criteria
- Reading and Independent Study
- Deadlines & extensions
- Formatting coursework
- Plagiarism
- Important dates
- using the web
Ben-Hur (William Wyler, USA, 1959, MGM)
Lecture outline by Dr Nabeel Zuberi
1.
Changes in the Hollywood Studio System in late 1940s and 1950s that shape the film text
The Paramount Decrees—end of studios owning theatres
Rise of independent producers
Actors can make non-exclusive contracts with studios and independent producers
The widespread take-up of television as a domestic audiovisual medium
Studios rent out their lots and equipment for independent producers
Studios involve themselves in television production and sell their back catalogue of films to television networks
2.
Introduction of new technologies to compete with the increase in television sets and the decline of the film industry
Emphasis on differentiating film product and the experience of film-going from television viewing.
The use of colour, Cinemascope and other widescreen formats, as well as short-lived ‘gimmick’ technologies.
Emphasis on spectacle—exotic locations, lavish costumes and action
3.
Biblical Epic as genre-- Film as spectacle
masculine genre/male melodrama
women marginalised in narrative
homosociality, homoeroticism and homosexuality in the text.
Homoerotic desire is sublimated in a ‘spiritual’ or ‘holy desire for Jesus
4.
Ben Hur as ‘historical film’
The cultural context of the 1950s
The Cold War: US Empire vs. Soviet Empire
The Biblical Epic tended to play out the Cold War contest between the ‘good, moral USA’ and ‘the bad, immoral USSR’ as a contest between the ‘good’ Jews and Christians and the ‘bad’ Egyptians or Romans.
Anti-Communism & McCarthyism
HUAC, the Blacklist and Naming Names
Ben-Hur (like Spartacus) is a liberal text that re-inflects the imperial contest of most conservative Biblical epics. It criticises the naming of names that took place during the anti-communist witch-hunts of the late 1940s and 1950s
5.
The representation of Jesus and the Passion
Contemporary anxieties about presenting too ‘feminized’ a Jesus on screen in the Biblical Epic.
The spectacle of Jesus ‘suffering for our sins’ on the cross (which is one of the most powerful and popular spectacles in the history of the world) is displaced and substituted by repeated scenes of other men suffering throughout the film. The film largely withholds the ‘visual pleasure’ of the crucifixion, an image oft repeated and central to Christian iconography.
MANY BOOKS ON THE TOPICS ABOVE ARE AVAILABLE IN THE SHORT LOAN COLLECTION UNDER THE COURSE NUMBER AND NAME.
