Читать книгу Reception of Mesopotamia on Film - Maria de Fatima Rosa - Страница 9

It is impossible to speak about Mesopotamia and the way it was perceived by the so-called “Western civilization” without mentioning the concept of Orientalism. But even before we understand what is meant by this concept, highly analyzed within Culture Studies by the eminent professor of literature Edward Said,⁶³ we must understand how the division between these two constructs was characterized, placing the West on the one side and the East on the other. The term Orient emerged as a European conception to designate primarily Asia but also a part of North Africa.⁶⁴ By the geography it covers it is possible to understand that when it first appeared it carried a strong political connotation. Likewise, the terms Middle East and Near East, in the beginning interchangeable, appeared in the course of the nineteenth century and in the beginning of the twentieth century, in order to fragment this great Orient into different parts where distinct geopolitical interests were played commanded by the European and North-American authorities.⁶⁵ Although the term Near East, which described the region that was closest to Europe and with which it had to deal with more thoroughly, has fallen into disuse in political contexts and in the media, it is still applied today, especially in academic contexts, to designate this geographical area during the pre-Islamic period.⁶⁶ Hence our use of the term in the present volume.

A clear distinction was then drawn within this region having time as a divider, its frontier being the advent of Islam. In this sense, the Middle East, which during the twentieth century commonly referred to the region whose center was the Persian Gulf, remained a term to reference that geographical area since the seventh century AD until the present time, and, in contrast, the term Mesopotamia was adopted to designate the same area before it. So, Mesopotamia – today’s Republic of Iraq and small areas of Syria, Turkey, and Iran – was associated with dead civilizations, the Assyrians and the Babylonians, and the empires and communities that followed its demise and which contacted with it, the Persians, the Jews, the Hellenes, and the Romans, who, in a way, were the antecedents of European/Western culture itself. As Bahrani states, “This revival of a name applied to the region in the European Classical tradition came to underscore the Babylonian/Assyrian position within the Western historical narrative of civilisation as the remoter, malformed, or partially formed, roots of European culture which has its telos in the flowering of Western culture and, ultimately, the autonomous modern Western man,”⁶⁷ In fact, the European classical traditional term Mesopotamia, resuscitated in the twentieth century, was first used in Alexandrian times to name one of his satrapies, as referred to by Arian in Anabasis of Alexander.⁶⁸ Oddly enough, Mesopotamia is a foreign concept and one that is in its genesis geopolitical and Western. Notwithstanding, the Mesopotamians themselves sometimes referred to their own land as the māt bīrītim or as the bīrit nārim, according to some judicial documents,⁶⁹ that is, “the land in between” or the “between the river” respectively, concepts somewhat similar to the one the Greeks applied to the region.⁷⁰ If we take into account that the Tigris and the Euphrates structured and embodied the area, consisting of two living arteries, this fact is not surprising. The māt bīrītim would thus comprehend present Iraq and some parts of Syria.

Over time, the culture of the first civilization set in the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates – comprised by Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians – which invented the wheel, writing, laws, astrological observations, and so many other technologies,⁷¹ would be absorbed by the classical actors and the Jewish population and through them would become the core of European culture. Indeed, the Greeks, to whom the foundations of western European culture are normally attributed, had “significantly ‘mesopotamianized’ already long before the conquests of Alexander.”⁷² Interestingly, despite being reviled both by their classic heirs and by the biblical account, Assyrians and Babylonians were studied and their history thoroughly debated⁷³ because they were in fact the other that composed the self, that is, the past cultural legacy comprised of the first creations at the dawn of time that passed from the cradle of civilization to its neighboring regions like a civilizing torch.⁷⁴ And this idea takes us back to Orientalism. Since the Mesopotamian past was understood as constituting the most remote roots of Europe itself and of the Western civilization, it was claimed by these as an integral part of its mythical origin. Therefore, when Mesopotamia was first unearthed and rose from the oblivion, during the nineteenth century, it became intrinsically inseparable from the orientalist notions that were launched upon it – the West was not a mere passive agent of its discovery but an active part in its appropriation. In other words, Mesopotamia and the scientific discipline of Assyriology⁷⁵ were born hostages of the era of colonialism and imperialism and deeply imbibed in a Eurocentric logic. Europe was not only committed to colonizing the present but also the past itself.

As Said pointed out, “The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture,”⁷⁶ and this assumption made “Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient”⁷⁷ by scaling the relation between West and East in terms of superiority and inferiority. After all, as Valerie Kennedy notes, the “imperial project emphasized the sense of Western superiority to Oriental cultures that already characterized 18th-century Western conceptualizations of the East and that is described by Said as the view that Westerners are ‘rational, peaceful, liberal, logical, capable of holding real values, [and] without natural suspicion,’ while those from the East are ‘none of these things.’“⁷⁸ By extension, these notions were projected over the past. The people of ancient Assyria and Babylonia lived in an embryonic form of society, a sort of pre-form civilization, leading a malformed political life, commanded by despotic and idolatrous rulers who defended and instilled brutal moral values. Hence, just as the Ottoman society needed to be saved by the West from its barbarism, so the past needed to be rescued from its moral decay.

As soon as the first discoveries were unearthed in the soil of ancient Assyria, the Western idea,⁷⁹ the dream⁸⁰ of Assyria that the Greco-Roman texts and the Old Testament had nurtured for centuries and which now materialized, took shape. These discoveries, automatically considered an integral part of the European heritage, could only be scrutinized and appropriated, transported to the museums of London, Paris, and Berlin, where they could attest to the public, in what is a remarkable imperialistic discourse, the political dominion of the European nations and their conquests of today and of yesterday. Did not Rudyard Kipling recall, celebrating Queen Victoria’s jubilee in an exquisite poem in 1897, the glory of England by associating it with its Mesopotamian past? – “Far-called, our navies melt away;/On dune and headland sinks the fire:/Lo, all our pomp of yesterday/Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!/Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,/Lest we forget—lest we forget!”⁸¹ said the writer.

Nowadays, as we witness the destruction of monuments, cities, and artifacts of the ancient Near East, as Paul Collins pointed out, we are inundated with messages of horror and disbelief. This response is not just related to the brutality of the acts of profanity, but above all to the fact that those monuments and relics are perceived as part of the roots of modern Europe.⁸² Summarizing, Mesopotamia as seen until today, especially in popular culture, cannot be dissociated from the orientalist notions that claimed it as an inferior civilization, deserving to be condemned and in need of rescue, but above all as an integral part of the mythical European roots.

So, having this land as the central theme of our analysis and taking into account its almost total forgetfulness by academics who approach reception of antiquity in cinema, we set out with our study taking the following assumptions into account: the orientalist notions to which Mesopotamia was unable to escape, its dependence on classical and biblical narratives, and the scope of reception studies that will enable us to interpret the message underlying the film and its impact.

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In order to assert itself, cinema needed to compete with other forms of cultural expression of the nineteenth century. Since its genesis, it has thus been forced to affirm itself culturally and artistically through communion and interaction with canonical arts such as photography, painting, sculpture, opera, and literature.⁸³ We cannot say, however, that it was a mere mimicry, but instead a true and necessary dialectic that led to its legitimation among European and American audiences. It is in this sense that we must return to the past before entering the cinematographic universe of the twentieth century. The tragedies, paintings, and operas produced about Mesopotamia for centuries were among the influences that cinema collected to convey the reality of the past. Besides, the cinema was also influenced by the archaeological discoveries in the Mediterranean and in the Near East in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This wave of new cultural and material finds needed an authentication that only a realistic reproduction like the one that cinema could offer was able to grant. In this context, the predilection of the early days of cinema for antiquity is partly explained.

Therefore, in the first part of the book, our analysis will focus on the artistic and literary interpretations of Mesopotamia that would deeply inspire cinematographic productions. We aim to understand how the history and culture of Mesopotamia were understood from the time of its first reception, with the Greeks and the Old Testament, until the present. The Classics and the biblical account offer the first idea of the land between the rivers. As we will have the opportunity to see, the idea forged during this time would persist over time, and so history and myth would be forever tied and undistinguishable. The first chapter will show how ancient legends emerged, what was their purpose, and how their romanticism prevailed in the imagination of the Westerner. During the twentieth century it was not necessary to speak of the historical kings of antiquity, but of the folklore tradition of men and women of power that the classical era produced. Indeed, what was important was to emphasize the stereotype of the other that Mesopotamia always represented to the so-called “West.” The second chapter will deal with the Early Modern period and the literary works and musicalized operas that scaled during this era concerning Mesopotamia. Drama was the key during this time, with the emergence of tragic heroes and heroines who distinguished themselves by the moral and political values ​​(fair or not) they defended. Tragic death and punishment were two aspects discussed and introduced in these artistic creations, which would also later be the subject of debate in the cinema. The final chapter of this section deals with the height of Mesopotamia’s archaeological rediscovery. There is a significant difference between what was thought of Mesopotamia before and after the excavations. However, in general terms, the notions formed over millennia persisted. Above all, art introduced new elements that would also be evident on cinema screens and that transmitted for the first time a more realistic image of this civilization. All these different aspects were, in some way, collected by film producers and screenwriters.

The second part of our book will focus on the analysis of the films themselves. To this end, we decided to divide the study into several chapters that deal with different aspects of this civilization. in Chapter 6, we will study the architecture and landscape of Mesopotamia, focusing on three different poles: the palace, the temple, and the tower. The interest is to understand how each of them has a message to convey about the society and the governing elite. In fact, in a certain way, in the architecture, in its grandeur, aesthetics, and construction, is mirrored the civilization, and as such it constitutes a discursive prop of cinema, carrying a message that should be absorbed by the viewer. In Chapter 7, the political, religious, and social life of the land between the rivers will be the focus. The interplay between the government and the population, as well as the relationship between priesthood and monarchy, gives us clues as to the reasons that led to Mesopotamia’s final downfall. What matters most is to understand the character’s behavior. And in this regard the fascist conduct of the Mesopotamian monarchs transported the viewers of the mid-1950s, for instance, to the recent past. At the same time, the idolatrous behavior of the high priests demonstrated this civilization’s lack of a strong religious moral. It is thus necessary to understand the political and religious message that cinema had to offer about antiquity and how it exposed the anxieties of its own time, both about faith and about leadership. In Chapter 8, the fundamental point of analysis will be the representation of women and their role. The portrayal of women on screen accompanied the development of the movements of female emancipation and the reservations society had in relation to these. The idea of ​​a subversive Oriental woman and an obedient Western one helped to understand the degenerative character of Mesopotamia, in what might be considered an implicit orientalist message. Judith and Semiramis helped to expose this contrast, as well as the goddess Ishtar and the rituals performed in her honor. All contributed to the idea that the Mesopotamian woman was in need of saving and correction, an aspect that reflected society itself.

Hence, we have opted for an analysis of film content and not of production. Nevertheless, Chapter 4 will be dedicated to the study of the cinematographic centers, especially Hollywood and Cinecittà, of how they dealt with the political and social transformations that occurred throughout the twentieth century, and how they constrained or not their creations.⁸⁴ As we know, Mesopotamia, Babylon, and the characters associated with them have the extraordinary ability to easily metamorphose, assuming themselves as a linguistic resource, camouflaging themselves in different-style figures often used to express situations that are alien to them, but in which they are reviewed. Thus, either we find them as a metaphor, as a euphemism, or as an allegory. This will also be a focal point of our analysis, especially with regard to such films that we categorized earlier as Mesopotamia in film and which will be covered in Chapter 5. Indeed, out of Mesopotamia came the biblical metaphor “whore of Babylon” applied to many contexts and visible in various cinematographic productions. Everything that was evil was likely to have emerged from the land between the rivers. Evil, consummated in the figure of the Devil or the Antichrist, is one of the aspects that will be studied and that underline very well the twentieth-century conception on Mesopotamia.

To finalize, we include Chapter 9, named “Farewell Babylon, Farewell Nineveh,” which, in addition to summarizing some of the ideas presented throughout the work, addresses how the fall of Babylon and Assyria has always been associated with the excesses of their population and monarchs, and the consequent divine punishment that fell upon them. Through this final chapter, we also intend to highlight how Mesopotamia has always been presented in the cinema as the other, both from a cultural (expressing an implicit orientalism) and from a religious point of view (its polytheism opposing the European and American Judeo-Christian matrix). Cinema was, in fact, marked by these two perspectives: the Westernism that was in its blood and the idea of its salvific faith.