Ben-Hur and Gladiator: Manifest Destiny and the Contradictions of American Empire

BEN-HUR AND GLADIATOR: MANIFEST DESTINY AND THE CONTRADICTIONS OF AMERICAN EMPIRE Jon Solomon Of the several hundred films in the Ancient genre, not to mention all the rest of the thousands of popular films released in the last half century, few have been as financially successful, critically and publicly acclaimed, and influential in the popular culture as Ben-Hur (1959) and Gladiator (2000). MGM’s (second) cinematic adaptation of General Lew Wallace’s novel earned some $75 million while costing $15 million, won Best Picture and an unprecedented ten additional Academy Awards as well as the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Film, and helped to prescribe and reenergize Ancient films of the 1960s and beyond.1 Similarly, Gladiator grossed over $450 million while costing some $100 million, won Best Pic- ture and five additional Academy Awards, and has helped to engender a series of Ancients for both the big screen and television.2 By any measure employed to categorize popular Hollywood successes, Ben-Hur and Gladi- ator provide outstanding examples. At first blush it may seem as if these two landmark blockbusters share in common simply their ancient Roman settings, admirable and heroic protagonists, and spectacular action scenes. Other Ancients produced in the heyday of the 1950s and 1960s before and after Ben-Hur seem to 1 Cf. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052618/business. For domestic and international box office details, see Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale, Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010) 162–163. Action or farcical film representations of galley and chariot sequences include The Three Stooges Meet Her- cules (1962), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), Titanic (1997), Any Given Sunday (1999), and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999). 2 For an overview with bibliography, see Laurence Raw, The Ridley Scott Encyclopedia (Lanham MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009) 136–141. The television legacies are the very successful Spartacus: Blood and Sand (2010) and its sequel Spartacus: Vengeance (2010, 2012) produced by Starz. Allusions to Gladiator in feature films include Shark Tale (2004), Big- ger Than the Sky (2005), Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector (2006), Pineapple Express (2008), and Finding Bliss (2010). Both Ben-Hur and Gladiator seem to have inspired the Greek gladiatorial/chariot sequence in Bedtime Stories (2008). For a negative perspective, see John D. Christian, Gladiator: Witchcraft, Propaganda, and the Rise of the World Hero (Austin TX: RiverCrest, 2001). © Jon Solomon, 2013 | doi:10.1163/9789004241923_003 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Jon Solomon - 9789004241923 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 07:47:19PM via free access 18 jon solomon provide more obvious and closer comparisons with Gladiator.3 The reign of the Emperor Commodus provided the historical setting and central villain for Anthony Mann’s The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) long before Gladiator, and the philosophical presence of Marcus Aurelius, played by an established and aged British actor, graced several scenes in both films.4 The gladiatorial school, Republican Gracchus, and black gladiator com- panion in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960) all re-appear in Gladiator, and both Spartacus and Maximus instigate gladiator-led slave rebellions against the Roman government and are martyred in the process. In several significant ways, however, Ben-Hur presents equally if not more significant narrative parallels. Both films tell the story of a once prominent and loyal subject of the Roman Empire who falls victim to personal betrayal and politically motivated Roman villainy, loses his beloved nuclear family, is himself extra-judicially imprisoned and enslaved, kills the villain during a huge public entertainment held in a spectacular venue, and is then finally restored to his family.5 Most important is that the ultimate result of his struggles, actions, and final triumph is that he helps to revolutionize the entire Roman Empire.6 Of course the writers and director of Gladiator consciously avoided the pervasive Christian narrative track of Ben-Hur, and there is no evidence that the writers were modeling their script on the secular elements of Wallace’s story either, but the narrative arc of both films defines its protagonist hero by immersing him into a personal jeopardy that is fully resolved only when the much larger cultural and political environment has been revolutionized. In Ben-Hur the revolution within the larger cultural and political environment means the introduction of Christianity to the Roman world and its legalized acceptance and subsequent adoption three to four centuries later, the effects of which still reverberate in our own world at the out- 3 Cf. the comparisons identified in Martin L. Winkler, ed., Gladiator: Film and History (Malden MA: Blackwell, 2004) esp. 27, 65–66, 127–129, 156–158, and 169–172; for the tiger in the arena and black gladiator in Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), see 27. 4 Marcus Aurelius is played by Alec Guiness (age 50) in The Fall of the Roman Empire and by Richard Harris (age 70) in Gladiator. The gladiatorial schools belong to Batiatus (Peter Ustinov) and Proximo (Oliver Reed). Gracchus is portrayed by Charles Laughton and Derek Jacobi. The black companions are Draba (Woody Strode) and Juba (Djimon Hounsou). 5 Literally “in this life or the next,” in that the various drafts of the Gladiator script differ in their treatment of the protagonist’s nuclear family. 6 For the attempt by the producers of Spartacus (1960) at making an equivalent, albeit ahistorical, claim, see Duncan L. Cooper, “Dalton Trumbo vs, Stanley Kubrick: The Histori- cal Meaning of Spartacus,” in Martin L. Winkler, ed., Spartacus: Film and History (Malden MA: Blackwell, 2007) 56–64. Jon Solomon - 9789004241923 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 07:47:19PM via free access ben-hur and gladiator 19 set of the third millennium. In Gladiator the revolution within the larger cultural and political environment means the end of tyrannical rule and the re-introduction of institutionalized trans-regional republican government, which did not take place until, and quite indirectly, the establishment of the American and French republics in the late eighteenth century, the effects of which also still reverberate in our own world. It is a statement of fact to say that Christianity and non-tyrannical forms of government have become prominent in our contemporary world, and it has often been argued further by their proponents, as we will see in our discussion of Manifest Destiny, that Christianity and democratic forms of governments have become and should remain dominant in Western cultures and ideally replace all others.7 The historical establishment and ultimate triumph of Christianity and democracy, two of the signature cultural and political aspects of our contemporary world, may describe one of the most important reasons for the success of these two films which, along with their plausible historicity, admirable heroic protagonists, and spectacular action sequences, realisti- cally recreate before the eyes of their mostly Christian, mostly democratic viewers the ancient origins of the modern world they inhabit and – with a number of relatively minor complaints and even major protests – embrace as civilization itself. This does not mean that any but a small part of the huge and varied audience that watches these films is at the time necessar- ily conscious of either the historical importance of what transpires at the end of the film or the institutional nature of the modern world. Film, as a popular art form, and this applies in particular to extremely successful com- mercial films, both reflects and reinforces the audience’s general consensus. And the filmmakers themselves usually belong to this same consensus, expressing it in their product and consciously marketing it to the audience. During the processes of filming and viewing Ben-Hur and Gladiator, the filmmakers and the general public were sending and receiving this cultural and political consensus, leading to general acceptance and great success. In this sense both these films represent modern realizations of Aris- totelian peripeteia and catharsis compounded with a happy, in fact, tri- umphant ending. They both introduce to the audience a charismatic and successful protagonist, vividly submerge him (and them) into a hell of maltreatment and mortal peril, and resurrect him (and them) to the level 7 Cf. the discussion of “a secular utopian ideology of universal democracy” in William Pfaff, The Irony of Manifest Destiny: The Tragedy of America’s Foreign Policy (New York: Walker & Company, 2010) xi. Jon Solomon - 9789004241923 Downloaded from Brill.com09/28/2021 07:47:19PM via free access 20 jon solomon of heroic victor. The power of the illusion of drama, enhanced greatly by the mechanical, technical, and sensory powers of cinema, combined with the high expectation levels generated by publicity, advertisements, reviews, and less formal communications (“buzz”), realizes the plausible historical story so effectively that a huge percentage of the audience (tens of millions of people) in a relatively short time span find themselves over- whelmed, as if they themselves have participated in the hero’s journey and participated in fomenting the revolution. But this glorious conclusion could not resonate thoroughly and pervasively with a very broad audience unless the politics of the film did so as well. A telling counterexample is Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), which attracted record box office receipts and was, commercially at least, the most successful documentary ever produced, earning over $220 million while costing only $6 million.8 That was during the summer of 2004. But despite winning over two dozen critical awards, by the following January it was not even nominated for an Academy Award because the politics of its already limited demographics no longer resonated with a sufficient number of voting members, i.e., a general consensus, of the Academy.

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