Pseudolus

[dreamer_easy]

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...

Comments

[cassiphone.livejournal.com]

I was raised on a steady diet of Carry On films and other Brit 60's comedy, and am thus totally immune to any "big knockers, slave girls, nagging wife" sexism in anything British filmed between 1958 and 1972. I just file it under 'ironic' or 'of the period' and move on with my feminist sensibilities strangely intact. (fat girl humour is the only exception to this - there isn't much of that in 1960's Brit films though, and their definition of fat was very different to our current one - something very comforting about seeing all the men lust about Barbara Windsor's flesh wobbling away in a bikini)

I can see how someone without my strict childhood training would blanch in horror, though. I had a similar reaction when recently re-watching old Wonder Woman episodes (excuse me, she makes the tea for all the men, and they chuckle about how Diana Prince certainly isn't beauty pageant material?)

On the other hand, when I come against rampant sexism & destructive attitudes towards women in the Classics, I get quite irate about it!

Now have to admit I have been studying Ancient Rome for nearly 10 years and have never read Plautus. Will have to track Psuedolus down myself. Personally, I think there's a thesis in the 1960's pop culture obsession with Ancient Rome (Vestal Virgins and eunuchs really got them excited), but I have a thesis of my own to finish first. :)

Cheers,
Tansy

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

I was raised on Dave Allen and Are You Being Served? - it takes more than A Funny Thing... to make me blanch! ;-)

There's an all-too-familiar character in the movie: a fat, sexually aggressive woman. Jackie Chan, Blackadder, and many more have faced such horror!

The word "virgin" is thrown around liberally in the film, as though titillating in and of itself, which I suppose it must have been! It's interesting to compare the slave girl's reaction to being sold in the play (she weeps) and in the movie ("Take me!!!").

[jvowles.livejournal.com]

Are the brain-dead girlfriend and pecking/prudish wife REALLY inventions of the 60s and 70s? Aren't they really just variations on the same simple characters from street plays, morality tales, Punch & Judy puppet shows, etc.?

Look at how the play treats men. We have a schemer, an effeminate whiner, a horny old man, a loudmouthed jock....really, I ask you, are we supposed to expect *better* treatment of the women? At least in the musical (which I saw on Broadway with David Allen Griers!), I read the "I'm so pretty, but otherwise useless" song as social commentary, and the "prudish wife" eventually pries her wandering hubbies eyes away from the fresh meat.

The show (and I'd guess the original play) is meant to be funny because it presents a world turned upside down where the scheming slave is really in control -- it's a model for Jeeves and Wooster as much as anything else, isn't it?

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Are the brain-dead girlfriend and pecking/prudish wife REALLY inventions of the 60s and 70s?

Erm, no. Nonetheless, the characters in the movie are 60s characters, not characters from Pseudolus. I know too little to say whether nagging, sexless wives and mindless girls were staples of Roman drama. I'm pretty sure, though, that like 60s and 70s movies and TV comedy, they were made by men chiefly for men.

(I think in the naughties you could only do I'm Lovely as a piss-take!)

[jblum.livejournal.com]

I thought "I'm Lovely" *was* a piss-take even then -- the point being that these two characters don't have a brain cell between them!

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

They are well-matched in terms of intelligence, that's for sure! Michael Crawford doesn't get to sing a song about the virtues of being pretty vacant, though.

[pedanther]

For what it's worth, I can't imagine Sondheim writing anything like "I'm Lovely" and *meaning* it. (That only accounts for the lyricist, though - there's still plenty of room for the scriptwriters, director, etc. to be playing it straight.)

[zeusgirl.livejournal.com]

They're definitely not 60s or 70s inventions.

Read Lyisitrata, a Greecian comedy. All the stereotypes we see in modern farce are in there.

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Lysistrata! Should've read that years ago.

Obviously the 60s didn't invent those character types, but it's interesting to compare the sexism of different decades and eras - some of the 60s and 70s stuff is uglier just because it's sleazier than earlier efforts. My impression of 40s and 50s cinema is of less sexism, as well as different kinds of sexism.

Interestingly, flipping through the books, there are women wih dialogue in some of Plautus' other plays. The marvellously named Erotium in The Brothers Menaechmus is a gold-digger, but seems to have a reasonable head on her shoulders.

[zeusgirl.livejournal.com]

I once wrote an undergraduate essay comparing The Mask with one of Plautus' comedies... I think it was the Pot of Gold. The same kind of humour was in both.

I'm not great at comparing sexism in plays between those times. ;-)

I can talk up a storm about sexism and other "-isms" in Gilbert and Sullivan, tho...

[stephen-dedman.livejournal.com]

I've read translations of Lysistrata a few times, and seen it on stage once... with a mixed cast. Perhaps this was fortunate, because while most of the characters are stereotypes to a large degree (and the men hammed it up outrageously), Lysistrata was played almost completely straight and came across as the smartest and sanest character in the cast.

[matthewwolff.livejournal.com]

Woman were actually "allowed" to perform in the theater during Roman times, but they were looked upon as not much better than prostitutes. They were also usually masked, although so was pretty much everyone else.

[stephanielake.livejournal.com]

can we really condemm them for the sexism though - there was a post about Hartnells beliefs that said it would be wrong to use late 20th century lables like sexist and racist to describe earlier periods and cultures - that its like condemming george washington for not supporting same sex marriage or equal rights for women

[kateorman.livejournal.com]

Obviously it has to be seen in the context of the period, whether ancient Rome or the sixies; that doesn't change the fact that it is sexist. And jolly hard for me to sit through in 2005!