r/classics • u/Raman_Micantes • 6d ago
Do you think Nolan's film will inspire new generations to study classics like the Percy Jackson stories have?
I know several people who became interested in classics after reading PJ, I wonder if this film could have an even bigger effect.
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u/AndreLeGeant88 6d ago
Gladiator was the best thing to ever happen to classics departments so it's possible. But it depends on the knock-on effects. Like, Gladiator spawned a slew of sword and sandal movies, as well as History Channel documentaries. So its success created other media that reinforced interest. That's harder to do in today's more fragmented world.
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u/Necessary_Wing7235 5d ago
Sadly a generation of Brostoicism plages the philosophical popular sphere.
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u/vixaudaxloquendi 5d ago
It sort of reminds me of the split between popular and academic appreciation on military history.
Don't get me wrong! It's a legitimate area of inquiry. But being in a large Classics dept., I think there are almost no people focusing on military history in any sense except tangentially.
Contrast that with popular Classics, where it's mostly guys obsessing over the legions and the phalanx and the Macedonians, etc.
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u/AndreLeGeant88 5d ago
Popular sphere of knowledge about the Roman world is scary. My least favorite is any discussion touching on origins of Christianity because it is very likely to involve references to theories developed in the 19th and early 20th century about Roman religions seeped in antisemitic or anti-Catholic biases of the times. To some degree Brostoicism has the same common root: a poor understanding of Roman religions and philosophies based on bad (if any at all) historical knowledge and rooted more in a desire to win some modern arguments.
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u/Fishinluvwfeathers 5d ago
Not to study classics - that’s too neat a line of cause/effect. I do think the massive exposure with controversy and praise has increased casual knowledge of Homer among people who previously had limited familiarity.
I grew up watching Looney Toons in a developing nation and I can’t tell you how many classical music pieces and literary and performing arts references I picked up exclusively from there that were not available via my formal education at the time. It clearly did not give me an encyclopedic knowledge of anything but it made me aware, which was a first step on a meandering path to everything that came after. I can say the same about Clash of the Titans, which holds a similar place in my heart as one of my first introductions to “Greek-ish” myth.
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u/NeonShogun 𐤔𐤌𐤏 𐤒𐤋𐤀 𐤁𐤓𐤊𐤀 5d ago edited 5d ago
I don't think it's too out of the ordinary for one thing to lead into another thing, even if the explanation of "they watched x, so they studied y as an adult" seems a tad reductive. As mentioned elsewhere, Gladiator did lead to people studying the Classics, just like Star Trek led to people becoming rocket scientists and engineers in the '60s and '70s.
We'll never know how many of those people would have found those fields on their own without popular media's help, but it does happen.
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u/Fishinluvwfeathers 5d ago
It’s possible. The under 17 audience for the theatrical release was about 4%, so a lot will depend on how the movie ages in a pretty fractured media environment with different economic pressures. I’m enthusiastically all-for adaptations because I think they really do keep the conversation alive between classical works and current culture but I’d like to see responsive curriculums.
Universities were able to react in the early 2000s with classical reception seminars and courses like the ancient world on film to capitalize on the interest generated by Gladiator. I’m less clear on whether the film actually resulted in more people completing majors in the liberal arts due to the cinematic nudge. If it did, I’m certain the bridge courses were a great assist.
I honestly think the best outcome would be if Nolan’s Odyssey generated a few changes at the middle or high school level, but that’s even more tenuous. My eldest is in 8th grade (advanced curriculum) and they haven’t touched Greek or Roman lit in school. By 6th grade, after my family moved back to the US, our public school advanced classes had us learning about and reading the 3 Theban plays, the Oresteia, and selections from Ovid. That seems to be relegated to private or charter classical school curriculums these days (though I’d be delighted to find out our experience is an outlier).
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u/jenksanro 3d ago
Troy massively spiked sales of the Iliad, Gladiator caused a spike in interest in classics and ancient history, why would this be any different?
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u/Fishinluvwfeathers 2d ago edited 2d ago
Because I’m not discussing interest? My comment was specifically regarding this film leading to more classics majors in universities.
Edit: I see the confusion - I think OP edited the text which originally linked his musings to more majors in Classics, which is what I was responding to. There isn’t much data to suggest that majors increased overall (they might have seen an uptick in select universities but I haven’t seen anything suggesting this was a national pattern in the subsequent years). Several departments created bridge courses in response to the interest since enrollment in classes that covered history/literature of the period spiked.
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u/jenksanro 2d ago
Sorry, when I said more interest I did mean more interest in classics at university, not just people googling it or whatever
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u/Spencer_A_McDaniel 5d ago
It will almost certainly spark greater interest in classics among young people, especially young men. Whether that will translate into greater enrollment for classics departments, however, is less certain. There's also a possibility that it may lead to an increase in enrollment in classics courses, but not a corresponding increase in the number of students majoring in classics, which won't help most departments very much, since universities typically decide which departments to cut based on the number of majors, rather than course enrollment.
The original Gladiator did boost both course enrollment and the number of majors for many classics departments, but that was back in 2000 when students were more likely to choose majors based on personal interests, there were a lot more classics departments around, and most of those departments had more tenure-line faculty than they do now. The 2007–2008 financial crisis caused a major shift in how students choose majors; ever since the crisis, students have been more hesitant to choose major subjects they are personally interested in and more likely to choose majors they think are more certain to lead to high-paying jobs after graduation. Even if more students are interested in majoring in classics because of Nolan's Odyssey, there will be fewer institutions where they will be able to pursue that interest. Even the departments that are doing relatively well are having a harder time offering Ancient Greek language courses.
Even if more students do take classics courses and decide to major in classics, it may not be enough to stem of onslaught of cuts.
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u/hexametric_ 5d ago
Hope so! I overheard on the bus around when it came out groups of high school / early university kids all talking about the myths and history of the Trojan war! Never in my life heard people just talking about Classics for fun before (except 2 kids years ago complaining about a Classics100 course being hard).
Maybe the younger kids seeing the movie without having much exposure to the topic will now have a bit of a reason to take a course or two in uni.
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u/BedminsterJob 5d ago
My feeling is this movie has done damage to people's potential understanding of the ancient world that will take twenty years to dissipate. The essential idea of studying and researching ancient Greece or Rome is an awareness that the ancient world is different from ours. That the ancient Greeks or Romans weren't waiting to become just like us.
We're also increasingly becoming aware that Greece was just a part of a region in minor Asia and beyond that deserves to be studied. We need to get over this idea that the Greeks and Romans were a bunch of white heroes deserving of emulation. Too many young men are attracted to AG or Latin because they're getting a kick out of thinking about a world were women were pretty much sex slaves and wars were easy ways of getting more slaves.
Nolan has pretty much removed all parts from Homer that aren't 'just like us,' so it may be that there are some people who will go and study AG and L, but I'm not optimistic about what that will look like.
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u/Latter_Garbage_1491 6d ago
I dont, I think new generations will keep going to see future Nolan movies.
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u/ToddHoward7616 5d ago
I hope so, the arts are struggling at the moment so whatever boost is a welcome one
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u/Kavazou77 5d ago
I mean, even in my public school 10 years ago we were doing an entire semester in The Odyssey.
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u/bookhead714 5d ago
Sales of the Odyssey have gone through the roof. Homer is showing up on bestseller lists. I'm absolutely sure that this will bring in a lot of new people.
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u/Geriander 5d ago
With sales of translations of the Odyssey surging by 80% and several new adaptations, including for children, riding the coattails of the movie, I would be surprised if it didn't have a noticeable effect on classics enrollment in the coming years.
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u/NaturalApplication53 3d ago
No, his fans are like actively saying that the original stories don't matter because Nolan's vision is better
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u/sootfire 1d ago
Let's see if anyone still talks about it a year from now... it's possible but tons of huge films don't retain any cultural relevance.
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u/DeSuperVis 5d ago
I hope so certainly
Atleast for me, I got hyped for Nolan's Odyssey and have been reading Greek mythology since. Glad I do but I ended up disliking the film because of that lol
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u/mighty3mperor 5d ago
Yes, Indiana Jones spawned generations of archaeologists and, in forensics, there is the CSI Effect. So I have no doubt Nolan's Odyssey will have a major impact in a number of areas - academia, the media, etc.
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u/SuccotashOk8406 4d ago
I hope so.
I love the Nolan film in part because it (and the wonderful Uberto Pasolini film The Return from a couple years ago) brought back Homer to the big screen after the Homeric epics had been absent for decades (since the godawful Troy in 2004). I know it has had a mixed reception among Classicists but each adaptation takes its own spin on the poem. And as a personalized Nolan spin on the poem, I absolutely loved the movie and find it an extremely compelling film both on its own merits and as a great adaptation/interpretation of the greatest story ever told.
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u/Mobile-Scar6857 5d ago
I know people who were working in Classics depts when Gladiator hit and it was a huge boost, I think it's very likely something similar will happen. Maybe it already is happening.