The Cinematic Eighteenth Century: History, Culture, and Adaptation

207 Pages·2018·1.73 MB·English

by  Srividhya Swaminathan

The Cinematic Eighteenth Century
This collection explores how film and television depict the complex and
diverse milieu of the eighteenth century as a literary, historical, and cul-
tural space. Topics range from adaptations of Austen’s Sense and Sensi-
bility and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (The Martian) to historical fiction
on the subjects of slavery (Belle), piracy (Crossbones and Black Sails),
monarchy (The Madness of King George and The Libertine), print cul-
ture (Blackadder and National Treasure), and the role of women (Marie
Antoinette, The Duchess, and Outlander). This interdisciplinary col-
lection draws from film theory and literary theory to discuss how film
and television allows for critical revisioning as well as revising of the
cultural concepts in literary and extra-literary writing about the histor-
ical period.
Srividhya Swaminathan is Professor of English at LIU Brooklyn, USA.
Her primary field of research is the rhetoric of eighteenth-century slav-
ery studies and social movements. Her monograph, Debating the Slave
Trade (Ashgate 2009) and co-edited collection, Invoking Slavery in the
Eighteenth-Century British Imagination (Ashgate 2013) engage with
slavery in a transatlantic context.
Steven W. Thomas is Associate Professor of English at Wagner College,
USA, where he teaches American literature, theory, and film studies. He
has published several scholarly essays about the transatlantic eighteenth
century, and in 2016, he was a Fulbright Scholar in the graduate film
program at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia.
Routledge Advances in Film Studies
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.
46 The Other in Contemporary Migrant Cinema
Imagining a New Europe?
Guido Rings
47 Horror Film and Affect
Towards a Corporeal Model of Viewership
Xavier Aldana Reyes
48 India’s New Independent Cinema
Rise of the Hybrid
Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram
49 Early Race Filmmaking in America
Edited by Barbara Tepa Lupack
50 Film Text Analysis
New Perspectives on the Analysis of Filmic Meaning
Edited by Janina Wildfeuer and John A. Bateman
51 The Camera-Eye Metaphor in Cinema
Christian Quendler
52 Surveillance in Asian Cinema
Under Eastern Eyes
Edited by Karen Fang
53 US Youth Films and Popular Music
Identity, Genre, and Musical Agency
Tim McNelis
54 The Cinematic Eighteenth Century
History, Culture, and Adaptation
Edited by Srividhya Swaminathan and Steven W. Thomas
The Cinematic Eighteenth
Century
History, Culture, and Adaptation
Edited by Srividhya Swaminathan
and Steven W. Thomas
First published 2018
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2018 Taylor & Francis
The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
CIP data has been applied for.
ISBN: 978-1-138-63399-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-20691-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Representing and Repositioning
the Eighteenth Century on Screen 1
1 Fashionable Failures: Ghosting Female Desires
on the Big Screen 12
ULA LUkSzO kLEIN
2 Portrait of the Queen as a Celebrity: Marie Antoinette
on Screen, a Disappearing Act (1934–2012) 28
DOROTHéE POLANz
3 The King on the Screen 44
ELIzABETH kRAFT
4 “I have you in my eye, sir”: The Spectacle of Kingship
in The Madness of King George 58
JENNIFER PRESTON WILSON
5 Blackadder: Satirizing the Century of Satire 72
SARAH B. STEIN AND ROBERT VORk
6 Disney’s National Treasure, the Declaration
of Independence, and the Erasure of Print from
the American Revolution 87
COLIN T. RAMSEY
7 How to Be a Woman in the Highlands: A Feminist
Portrayal of Scotland in Outlander 103
COURTNEY A. HOFFMAN
vi Contents
8 The King of Mars: The Martian’s Scientific Empire
and Robinson Crusoe 118
kYLE PIVETTI
9 The New Cinematic Piracy: Crossbones and Black Sails 139
SRIVIDHYA SWAMINATHAN
10 Sex, Sisterhood, and the Cinema: Sense and Sensibility(s)
in Conversation 154
JODI L. WYETT
11 Cinematic Slavery and the Romance of Belle 170
STEVEN W. THOMAS
List of Contributors 187
Index 191
List of Figures
1.1 Marie Antoinette frequently features the character
of the queen (Dunst) alone against the opulent
background of Versailles. 17
1.2 Sidonie (Seydoux) faces Marie Antoinette (kruger) after
changing into the dress of the Duchesse de Polignac.
Even at this moment, the queen can only speak of her
love for the duchesse, not Sidonie. 20
1.3 Bess (Atwell) seduces Georgiana (knightley) from
behind in the name of Charles Grey. 22
8.1 The Martian theatrical poster. 125
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank John O’Neill, the Edmund A. LeFevre Professor
of English Emeritus at Hamilton College, for successfully running the
panel Eighteenth Century on Film since 2008 at the American Society for
Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference. Now ASECS regularly includes
several panels on film, a trend begun at the regional conferences. This
continued interest inspired our collection, and we hope the scholarly and
pedagogical work in film studies at ASECS continues. We would like to
thank our contributors for their efforts on behalf of this collection. We
would also like to thank the many readers who commented on the essays
and offered their valuable expertise. Finally, we would like to thank the
four reviewers who read and provided comments on our initial proposal.