Abstract | Keywords | Export | Availability | Bookmark

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

"This book explores the representation of Helen of Troy in Hollywood film and television, with a particular focus on her defining features: transcendent beauty and transgressive erotic agency. The first chapter, on early Hollywood, sets the scene by explaining the importance of ideas about Greek beauty at the beginning of cinema and highlighting some of the problems that continue to bedevil this topic, especially "realism" and the representation of supreme beauty. Blondell argues that the problem of Helen is baked into Hollywood from the start. In subsequent chapters Blondell examines specific screen adaptations in which Helen is featured. Each of these case studies locates a particular work in its historical, cultural, and generic context, as a framework for addressing the ways in which it approaches a range of interlocking questions about beauty, its representation, and the cinematic uses of myth. The second chapter is devoted to the sole Helenic feature film of the silent period, Alexander Korda's Private Life of Helen of Troy (1927). Part II moves to the big screen epic, pairing one film from each of the two great waves of ancient world epic spanning the latter half of the 20th century: Robert Wise's 1956 epic Helen of Troy and Wolfgang Petersen's more recent extravaganza, Troy (2004). In Part III she turns to television, with a chapter on episodic tele-fantasy followed by a study of the 2003 miniseries Helen of Troy. In some of these works Helen is the central character (or "hero"); in others she is at the periphery of a masculine adventure. But in all of them she represents the threat of superhuman beauty as an inheritance from classical Greece"--

Mythology, Greek, on television. --- Mythology, Greek, in motion pictures. --- Helen, --- On television. --- In motion pictures. --- Achilles and Patroclus. --- Acting. --- Advertising. --- Alien invasion. --- Amber Heard. --- American Girl. --- American Pop. --- Ancient Greece. --- Ancient Greek art. --- Animation. --- Anita Loos. --- Ava Gardner. --- Bette Davis. --- Brad Pitt. --- Breen (Star Trek). --- Bride. --- Britney Spears. --- Cinema of the United States. --- Close-up. --- Clothing. --- Clytemnestra. --- Concubinage. --- Cosmetics. --- Costume designer. --- Costume. --- Courtship. --- Demetrius and the Gladiators. --- Elaan of Troyius. --- Elopement (marriage). --- Episode. --- Euripides. --- Exoticism. --- Fan magazine. --- Fashion. --- Feature film. --- Femininity. --- Feminism. --- Femme fatale. --- Flapper. --- Frat House. --- Gender bender. --- Grace Kelly. --- Grace Lee (director). --- Greek alphabet. --- Greek mythology. --- Greta Garbo. --- Helen O'Loy. --- Helen of Troy. --- Her Story (video game). --- Hollywood Romance. --- Hollywood Star. --- Jean Harlow. --- Jennifer Aniston. --- Joan Crawford. --- Kim Kardashian. --- Kim Novak. --- Life Show. --- Marilyn Monroe. --- Marlene Dietrich. --- Messalina. --- Model (person). --- Mordaunt Hall. --- Movie star. --- Musical theatre. --- Mythology. --- Trojan War.