NEW VOICES IN CLASSICAL RECEPTION STUDIES Conference Proceedings Volume Two “BENEFITS OF A CLASSICAL EDUCATION”: THE DYNAMICS OF CLASSICAL ALLUSION IN ABC’S REVENGE Dan Curley, Skidmore College (USA) INTRODUCTION This essay explores the social dynamics of classical allusion on the American television series, Revenge (ABC Television Studios, 2011–2015), a prime-time soap opera conceived in the wake of the Great Recession of 2007 and beyond.1 These allusions, which conflate classicism and classism, function as cultural capital for the show’s most elite characters, the Grayson family. To pave the way for our discussion, let us take a passing glance at a classical allusion from the movie Die Hard (Twentieth Century Fox, 1988), which lends this essay its title. The first installment of the long- running film series starring Bruce Willis, Die Hard is notable for popularizing the location-specific action movie — the location in this case being the high-rise Los Angeles headquarters of the fictional Nakatomi Corporation. The film is also notable for the breakout performance of Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber, a terrorist (so he seems at first) who hijacks Nakatomi Plaza on Christmas Eve. In an early scene, Gruber saunters through a miniature gallery of the corporation’s building projects, humming nonchalantly and appraising each model in passing. Gruber pauses before a replica of the plaza itself, which prompts him to quote from memory. “‘And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain,’” he intones, “‘he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.’” As he speaks, Nakatomi CEO Joseph Takagi (James Shigeta) is led into frame at gunpoint. Gruber chuckles to himself, then confesses to Takagi, “Benefits of a classical education.”2 Gruber’s anecdote is self-consciously erudite, and it dovetails with his well-dressed and well-spoken demeanor. Gruber stands in marked contrast not only with Willis’ all-American John McClane (and his brash, “Yippie ki-yay” attitude), but also with his own accomplices, none of whom is his equal. It is eventually revealed that Gruber has hijacked the plaza in order to steal U.S. Bearer Bonds worth millions of dollars. In response to being labeled “a common thief,” he snaps, “I am an exceptional thief!”3 — and his classical learning is part of what makes him so. However, more important than the learning itself is putting it on public display. It does not even matter that Gruber’s anecdote is a corruption of Plutarch;4 what matters is vaunting his classical education and marking himself as its beneficiary. Similarly, characters on Revenge engage in verbal and visual displays of classical erudition in order to shore up their own sense of exceptionalism. Often that sense manifests in the intersection of particular identities: wealthy, conservative, white, male, and villainous. Furthermore, the knowledge and appreciation of antiquity fits a wider pattern of privileged access to high culture, in the form of artistic and literary works both derived from classical material and ranging widely beyond it — not unlike the Great Books programs of U.S. universities, which move outwards from antiquity towards modern day through an established canon of literary worth.5 Revenge constructs an elite persona through familiarity with the canons of past and present — a persona deployed effortlessly to its own advantage. Let us now turn to the series and consider its relationship to its source material. As we will see, this material lends Revenge not only its overall storyline, but also its conceit of venerating the Classics at the highest levels of society REVENGE: CLASSICISM AND CLASSISM Created by writer-producer Mike Kelly for ABC television Studios, Revenge ran four full seasons on that network, from September 2011 to May 2015. As its title makes abundantly clear, the show was preoccupied with the attainment of vengeance. In particular, Kelly was inspired by The Count of Monte New Voices in Classical Reception Studies http://fass.open.ac.uk/research/newvoices Conference Proceedings Volume Two 17 Dan Curley “Benefits of a Classical Education” Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1844), and he endeavored to translate the novel’s intrigues from Napoleonic Paris to the post-recession Hamptons of Long Island, New York. In Dumas’ novel, a naive merchant sailor, Edmond Dantès, is falsely denounced by jealous enemies as a Bonapartist conspirator and imprisoned by a corrupt magistrate in the dread and impregnable Chateau d’If. After languishing there for 14 years, Edmond manages to escape, discover a secret Papal treasure, and reinvent himself as the mysterious and wealthy Count of Monte Cristo — under which guise he brings personal, social, and financial ruin to those who had wronged him. For Revenge, Kelly took a feminist tack. The protagonist is the mysterious and wealthy Emily Thorne, a.k.a. Amanda Clarke (played by Emily VanCamp), who enacts a long vendetta against the socialite Victoria Grayson (Madeleine Stowe). Years earlier, Victoria and her husband, Conrad (Henry Czerny), conspired to imprison and murder David Clarke (James Tupper), Emily/Amanda’s father, when she was a child. David was framed for an act of domestic terrorism: the downing of Flight 197 (airline unspecified) and the resulting deaths of all 247 passengers and personnel. His conviction meant that Emily/Amanda was shuttled through the foster care system, where she endured years of physical and psychological abuse, and later into the juvenile corrections system. Murdered in prison, David bequeathed his journals to his daughter, along with an enormous fortune, which she has used to reinvent herself as glamorous Emily Thorne and to seek retribution. In terms of genre, Revenge is a canny blend of espionage thriller and soap opera. On the thriller side, Emily Thorne is perpetually engaged in acts of surveillance and sabotage. Like Edmond Dantès, who was educated by the Abbé Faria while imprisoned, she has her own teacher, a Japanese Sensei named Takeda, whose training in the art of vengeance has endowed Emily with the ninja-like skills necessary to realize her agenda. On the soap-opera side, Revenge revels in family drama, beautiful people, corporate takeovers, luxurious homes, class conflict, catfights, sex — all staples of prime-time soaps like Dallas (Lorimar Productions, 1978–1991; Warner Horizon Television, 2012–2014), which is arguably the most famous exemplar of the genre. Just as Dallas was set in lucrative Texas oil country, the ultra-wealthy Hamptons of Revenge are a fertile backdrop for all of the above motifs.6 The show’s status as soap-opera is worth emphasizing, because genre is where Revenge is most faithful to Monte Cristo, which originally ran as a serial in French newspapers. Edmond’s vengeance requires that his fantastic alter ego infiltrate the most exclusive circles of Parisian society and exploit his enemies’ loves and hates, successes and failures. Hence family drama, corporate intrigue, class conflict, and all the rest are plentiful, if not the reason for the novel itself, and they translate readily into prime-time soap opera of the 21st-century.7 Revenge also inherits from Monte Cristo the intersection of classicism and classism. Although it opens many doors, the seemingly unlimited wealth of Dumas’ hero goes only so far. To pass as an aristocrat, Edmond must also exhibit the classical erudition to which his affluence would have entitled him. Such erudition abides at the very pinnacle of French aristocracy, in the philological passions of King Louis XVIII. In chapter 10, a courtier comes to Tuileries Palace to warn the king of the imminent Bonapartist insurrection that will lead to the Hundred Days of Napoleon’s return from exile. Louis, however, is shown hard at work reading Horace’s Odes in the original Latin and making meticulous marginal annotations on poem 1.15 (the Paris and Helen ode). This task occupies his full attention, such that he defers the courtier’s news until he can complete his “delightful note” on the poem. Moreover, even as Louis hears the report, he interrupts with snippets of Horatian verse, as well as allusions to Vergil’s Aeneid and Plutarch’s Life of Scipio.8 Dumas’ monarch is a consummate scholar, leading a life of (in ancient Greek) scholé, the leisure or opportunity that makes possible sustained intellectual pursuits. Although Louis is an extreme case, his erudition suggests not only the cachet of classical learning among the aristocracy, but also the resources necessary to acquire it. Fortunately, Edmond has vast resources and, as he demonstrates, considerable aptitude as well. In chapter 64, he entertains his friends and enemies with fish imported simultaneously from St. Petersburg and Naples. To justify this extravagance, the Count compares himself to the general and gastronome, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, as well as to one of Rome’s most notorious emperors: “I am like Nero,” he says, “cupitor impossibilium” (one who desires the impossible).9 Furthermore, he regales his guests with an account of the dying mullet — how it changes colors in a dazzling array of hues, a phenomenon described in both Seneca and Pliny,10 the latter of whom the Count references by name.11 Edmond’s dinner and repartee recall the opulent feast of Trimalchio, the outrageously rich freedman of Petronius’ Satyricon.12 But while Trimalchio’s ignorance New Voices in Classical Reception Studies http://fass.open.ac.uk/research/newvoices Conference Proceedings Volume Two 18 Dan Curley “Benefits of a Classical Education” betrays his pretensions to sophistication — he claims, for example, to have read Homer and yet offers a wildly untraditional account of the Trojan Horse involving Daedalus and Niobe13 — Edmond exhibits refinement born of discipline and study. “It is a fine thing to be rich,” observes a guest. “And to have ideas,” adds another.14 On Revenge, the value the Graysons attach to the Classics takes various forms, not least of which is their predilection for collecting and displaying ancient sculpture.