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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 8, No. 8
Publication Date: August 25, 2021
DOI:10.14738/assrj.88.10722. Saldanha-Álvarez, J. M. (2021). "The Same Way You Became Cesar." Rome, Power, Literature and Cinema. Advances in Social
Sciences Research Journal, 8(8). 484-507.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
"The Same Way You Became Cesar." Rome, Power, Literature and
Cinema
José Maurício Saldanha-Álvarez
Media and Cultural
Studies Department. Federal Fluminense University
ABSTRACT
In this essay, we debate the image of the Roman Empire represented in films
produced by mainstream Hollywood cinema whose Jewish-Christian ideological
matrix placed Rome as the image of evil opposed to the good image in the North
American version. In contrast, we will analyze Fellini's film Satyricon, which,
distancing itself from the conventions of the historical film produced during the
Cold War, created a dreamlike image of Rome and its Empire. Secondly, we will see
the historical context of Petronius' work is situated at the end of the reign of
Emperor Nero. At the time, diversified sexuality presented man's power as a phallic
power, which penetrates and rapes as a strategy of supremacy. The Emperor is an
actor-governor employing wiles and violence to reach the throne and maintain
himself there. Petronius portrays the emergence of a new female sensuality whose
morals oscillated between Vestal's virginal purity, the wife's pudititas and sexual
bestiality. While Fellini's film recreates the cultural environment of the classical
world shaped by literature and the image of the city of Rome as Cosmopolis or
Anthopolis. The ambiguous characters move freely and incessantly through the
corners of the Roman Empire. The struggle for power and the representations of
pagan religiosity show human beings surrendered to their own cunning as a
strategy for survival and overcoming existential evils. In conclusion, we will see that
both works, Petronius' Satyrica and Fellini's Satyricon, present themselves with
their independent and intertwined narratives, composing the account of a journey
like the Odyssey, metaphor of the incompleteness of human life and the
ephemerality of the sexual pleasure and the transience of power.
Key-Words: Empire, sex, politics, war, literature.
INTRODUCTION
Common sense fueled by two thousand years of rejection of the Roman Empire by Christian
confessions represented Rome as degenerate and authoritarian. Her culture was pagan,
depraved, and sexually perverted. Cold War ideology is present in some historical films about
the Roman Empire made by major Hollywood studios. Reproducing the oppression of
McCarthyist persecutions in America between 1945 and 1952, the film's narrative strategies
adopted a Manichean vision of God standing on the side of virtuous America, while the Roman
Empire represented the atheistic Soviet Union. [1] In The Robe, when Emperor Caligula, with
effeminate gestures, infiltrates a spy among Christians, criticism of McCarthyist persecutions is
perceived as the Roman Empire's violence against Christians echoed police brutality against
African Americans fighting for civil rights.
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Saldanha-Álvarez, J. M. (2021). "The Same Way You Became Cesar." Rome, Power, Literature and Cinema. Advances in Social Sciences Research
Journal, 8(8). 484-507.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.88.10722
Higashi analyzed the remake of the film The Ten Commandments of Cecil B. de Mille from 1956.
It is an innovative and sensational film representation and consumer product produced in the
context of the Cold War. Cecil B. de Mille was a successful director during these "troubled
times," and their films were technically well-crafted narratives. Crowds of Free World
aficionados saw in these movies. Messages of spiritual renewal, blending evangelical
Christianity and American myths such as Manifest Destiny [2]. Critic Michael Moore wrote that
while Lawrence Olivier was filming Shakespeare, Mille preferred to film God [3]. In the Ten
Commandments, the ideological character of the narrative is evident in the personal
presentation that the director made of his film. By employing Cold War rhetoric, your target is
not the Roman Empire. Cecil B. De Mille attacks the villain. Pharaoh Ramses was head of a pagan
repressive machine. Already Moses is the acclaimed leader of the chosen people, free from
pagan oppression to be ruled by God [4].
In the film Quo Vadis, a voice-over, at the opening of the film, he stated that the power of the
Roman Empire generated corruption. Some American historians demonstrate a distorted and
unscientific view of Roman power while newspapers condemned the Roman Empire for its sins,
sexual deviations, and anti-Christian policy. Film productions emphasized the supposed Roman
spiritual void to be filled by Christianity, anachronistically suggesting that Emperor
Constantine, was on "our side", being a Christian [5].
This ruler was far from peaceful and meek, employing the same violence that the pagan Gaius
Julius Caesar used in capturing imperial power. Constantine, victorious in the civil war and
supported by his legions, reinforced the new model of imperial power by employing a rigid
formalism in palace etiquette. After Christianity dominated the imperial political environment,
it relentlessly pursued Greco-Roman paganism by destroying books, centers of knowledge,
pagan shrines, and the Olympic Games, eliminating philosophers like Hypatia of Alexandria.
METHODS
A Literature Review
With his film Satyricon, Fellini discarded 2000 years of Christian prejudice by elaborating a
fragmentary, incomplete and dreamlike representation of Rome. Mixed with pagan beliefs it
constructed a possible historical truth [6]. Cecil B. de Mille in the prologue of the Ten
Commandments appears in person, according to Higashi “not only to attest to the historical
veracity of the film, but to link the biblical past of the Cold War” [7]. We are tempted to define
Fellini's film as “postmodernist” if we take into account Rosenstone's opinion that a
postmodernist historical film allows for an “approach the past with humor, parody absurdist,
surrealist, dadaesque, and her irreverent attitudes” [8].
The methodology used in the elaboration of a historical film is a complex epistemological task.
In it a specific historical approach plays a crucial role. For example, Cecil B. Mille's Ten
Commandments show the connection between the celebrated director and leading prominent
historians who rejected historical relativism influencing films in WW 2 and during the Cold War
[9].
The cognitive limits of the historical film were defined by Marc Ferro, for whom a historical film
analyzes the time of its production more than the time it portrays on the screen [10]. Peter
Sorlin emphasizes that a historical film is not a scientific work. Film produces entertainment
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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 8, Issue 8, August-2021
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and not science or the truth [11]. In this direction, Maria Wyke demonstrates that the 1959 film
Ben-Hur, directed by Wyler, presents a distorted vision of the Roman Empire. Shifting the axis
of sacred history from Judaism to Christianity, the film takes Jesus Christ from Golgotha to
Hollywood [12]. On the other hand, the book The Persistence of History, organized by Sobchak,
brings unavoidable essays such as those by Higashi and Rosenstone, where they analyze the
important support of history and historians guiding the production of films as ideological tools.
For Rosenstone, professional historians hardly take a post-modern thematic approach like
some filmmakers whose films “have become our chief means of telling each other about de
world” [13].
For Roland Barthes (1915-1980), the anachronistic perception of the Roman Empire,
circulating in the 1950s, used arbitrary signs as representative emblems of a depraved society.
In the films of “toga and sandals”, the bizarre bangs of hair that fell over the foreheads of the
protagonists defined as an aberrant and bastard sign. This hair ornament created a distorted
image of Rome[14].
Michael Moore notes on the other hand, in these mainstrean films, Americans are presented as
full of life, while the British are decadent like the corrupt Romans. But Jews and Christians are
heralds of a fabulous future. Moore still highlights a peculiar division of labor in these historical
and biblical films, where American actors play Christian heroes while Europeans play villains.
Every production like Cleopatra, Quo Vadis or Ben-Hur triggered a welcome commodification
by producing a huge menu of merchandise associated with movie stars and stars [15].
Maria Wyke debates America's Roman roots as a counterpoint to falsified images. The United
States, since the nation's founding, has forged its identity as a country made up of
heterogeneous immigrants. They accepted to participate and integrate under a set of myths,
rituals and historical discourses, conjunction as a cultural tool would ensure their legitimacy
before Europeans. George Washington himself strove to “romanize American history” and his
self-image as a statesman. He represented the pater patria, cultivating typical characteristics of
the Roman republican virtues such as frugality, self-sacrifice and military leadership like the
Romans Cincinnatus Cato or Fabius [16].
On the other hand, the British and their monarch were brutal exploiting despots of the "Roman
provinces." Later, these “Romanitas” from Washington clashed with the Christian convictions
that were increasingly ingrained in the country. A remarkable new parallel between the United
States and the Roman Empire emerged in the popular novel written by the Union General
William Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. In it, a Jewish aristocrat converts to Christianity,
transforming America into the new Holy Land.
Deciphering the Satyricon
This essay has reviewed the traditional bibliography and recent theses, illuminating the
proposed debate. We used many interviews to translate the thinking and strategies adopted by
the Italian filmmaker. Like Constanze Constatin who interviewed Fellini inquiring about his
original cinematographic practices, while Bert Cardullo analyzed the Italian director's aesthetic
by comparing it with that of other European directors. As for Hava Aldouby, Fellini was so
connected to the painting that the film's final scene is stiffened like a fresco from Pompeii. For
his part, Bernard Malamud debates mainstream cinema and the America of the McCarthyist era.