Representations of Antiquity in Film - From Griffith to Grindhouse - Kevin M. McGeough
The Judean People’s Front and Jesus’s Mod Tour Bus: Musicals and Comedies Set in the Ancient World
Representations of Antiquity in Film - From Griffith to Grindhouse - Kevin M. McGeough
Kevin M. McGeough [+]
University of Lethbridge
Kevin M. McGeough is Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Geography & Environment at the University of Lethbridge and holds a Board of Governor’s Research
Chair in Archaeological Theory and Reception. Having excavated in Israel, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, and Canada, McGeough is currently co-director of excavations at Busayra in Jordan and Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump UNESCO World Heritage Site in Canada. He has been the editor of The Annual of ASOR and ASOR’s Archaeological Report Series as well as the chair of ASOR’s publications program. Now co-editor of the Alberta Archaeological Review, he is currently researching the reception of Near
Eastern Archaeology in a variety of media, including a three-volume book on archaeological reception in the Victorian era, The Ancient Near East in the Nineteenth
Century (2015) and a 2025 popular book on the interpretation of the Ark of the
Covenant over the past 2,000 years (Readers of the Lost Ark). His 2022 book on
cinema, Representations of Antiquity in Film: From Griffith to Grindhouse is a treatment of how the ancient world is presented in movies.
Description
Moving away from the epic tradition, Chapter 5 examines comedic and subversive treatments of the ancient world in film. It discusses vaudeville traditions in comedic musicals about ancient Rome and traces this through to Jesus Christ Superstar. It relates this to British comedic traditions such as the Carry On series and Monty Python’s Life of Brian also discussing American satire in Mel Brooks’ films and more recent attempts (like Meet the Spartans).