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Better-informed movie-goers pointed out that A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was inspired by the Roman playwright Plautus, so I grabbed a copy of Pseudolus, which I'm reading with much enjoyment. (There are numerous very funny breaks of the fourth wall; Pseudolus declines to explain his non-existent plan to his young master since "plays are long enough as it is".)
Now, it's tempting to excuse the sexism of Funny Thing on the grounds that it's accurate to the period, so I've got an eye out for where the play and the movie are similar or different. IIRC - and I'm no expert on classical drama! - only men were allowed to participate in the theatre; there are no speaking female roles in Pseudolus, and the audience would have been entirely male. The gaze, as they say, is very much male. Now, the film has a few female roles, but the gaze is just the same: the brain-dead girlfriend and the pecking, prudish wife are there for male viewers to enjoy, familiar characters from sitcoms et al of the sixties and seventies. Another difference is the attitude to sex slavery - in both texts it's taken for granted as part of Roman life, which is fair enough, but the play is a whole lot less positive and jolly about it, with the pimp bullying his courtesans and threatening to put them out on the street if they're insufficiently lucrative.
Back to the sofa, where Frank, Tim, and the rest of the play await...
Now, it's tempting to excuse the sexism of Funny Thing on the grounds that it's accurate to the period, so I've got an eye out for where the play and the movie are similar or different. IIRC - and I'm no expert on classical drama! - only men were allowed to participate in the theatre; there are no speaking female roles in Pseudolus, and the audience would have been entirely male. The gaze, as they say, is very much male. Now, the film has a few female roles, but the gaze is just the same: the brain-dead girlfriend and the pecking, prudish wife are there for male viewers to enjoy, familiar characters from sitcoms et al of the sixties and seventies. Another difference is the attitude to sex slavery - in both texts it's taken for granted as part of Roman life, which is fair enough, but the play is a whole lot less positive and jolly about it, with the pimp bullying his courtesans and threatening to put them out on the street if they're insufficiently lucrative.
Back to the sofa, where Frank, Tim, and the rest of the play await...
