Hello folks! I am about to apply to PhD programs again for a third and final time this year, so I am currently working on my applications. In the meantime, I am also continuing to work on the historical fiction novel that I already announced that I am writing, which is still progressing, although it is going slower than I hoped it would be at this point.
I had intended to write posts this fall discussing the reception of classical antiquity in the Netflix series Kaos and the movies Megalopolis and Gladiator II. I wrote the majority of a post about Kaos, but I never finished it and, by this point, the series has already been cancelled and I think that the public has already moved on from it, so I doubt anyone would care about my thoughts on the series at this point. Meanwhile, Megalopolis and Gladiator II both mainly involve reception of Roman history, rather than Greek, and, from what I’ve seen, both have received mostly negative reviews, so I haven’t worked up the motivation to see either of them yet, let alone write about them. If any readers are still interested in my thoughts about these pieces of reception in media, let me know in the comments below.
I am, however, very excited about seeing The Return, which is a film set for theatrical release tomorrow that is based on the second half of the Odyssey (the half after Odysseus has arrived back on Ithaka that modern adaptations rarely devote much attention to). I promise that I will post something about it after I’ve seen it, but I may not get it posted until after December 15th, which is when the first round of PhD applications are due.
Good luck! If anyone is deserving at a slot in a Ph .D program it is you.
I cannot believe that you are going through this! This is nonsense. You have more than proven yourself to be a capable scholar! What is their damn problem! Wait…I know. They are scared cowards of your scholarship!
I would love to read anything you have to say about Kaos! I enjoyed the translation of ancient myth into a modern milieu–lots of potential for fascinating commentary on human rights and relationships, politics, bureaucracy, you name it. I’m sad it’s been cancelled, but I could see the first season becoming one of the shows I return to once a year, or times when it seems appropriate to consider how death interpenetrates life.
I’d also be happy with any commentary on The Return. I recently re-discovered the Zenpencils interpretation of Cavafy’s poem “Ithaka” and that’s got me excited for the movie.
I had mixed feelings about Kaos, as I’ve said in reply to other commenters. I liked some aspects of it, but I disliked others.
One of my biggest criticisms is that it had too much focus on grand plot while all the characters with whom the audience is supposed to sympathize felt underdeveloped (to me). For instance, Orpheus and Riddy’s relationship was a major driving aspect of the plot, but the show never explains how or why they fell in love in the first place or why Orpheus still loves her, but she doesn’t love him back. We’re simply told that this is the case in the first episode. Meanwhile, we learn almost nothing about Caeneus’s mortal life until late. The show never really gives viewers much to sympathize with Ari at all and her whole story arc is mostly a series of convoluted and contrived revelations to suit the plot. I think the show would have been much better if it had greatly reduced the number of parallel storylines, focused more on a smaller number of central characters, and developed those characters to a much greater extent.
One of my other criticisms is that Kaos felt very culturally inauthentic, especially in the area of religion. It depicts a religion centered around the Greek gods that is absolutely barbaric, but also bears almost no resemblance to actual, historical ancient Greek religious practices. The religion in the show bore more resemblance to a bizarre, twisted version of western Catholicism than anything actually ancient Greek.
One thing about ancient Greek religion that the show missed, for instance, is that its focus wasn’t on showing love and adoration for the gods, but rather about negotiating with gods whom most people regarded as being, in many contexts, capricious and unfriendly to human interests. In the show, we see almost nothing of the kind of bargaining with the gods that was standard practice for the historical ancient Greeks. Thus, the show depicts the gods as tyrannically imposing religion on humans, whereas a more accurate portrayal of Greek polytheism would show it as arising organically as a result of humans trying to deal with gods who they know are capricious and whom they don’t fully trust. As a result, the show erases or at least greatly minimizes the way in which the idea of human agency fundamentally shaped Greek religion. The result is, among other things, a worldbuilding loss and, I think, a loss of nuance.
I wish you very success in applying again. In my judgement, you would be an ideal candidate for graduate classical studies, anywhere!
Please re-consider posting your thought on Kaos: I marvveed at it and would welcome your views.
thank you,
Thank you for the kind words!
I had mixed feelings about Kaos. I liked some aspects of it, but disliked other aspects, which is part of why my post about it was taking so long to write.
Too bad you feel you did not finish your post on “Kaos” when you feel it was relevant (for the record, I’d be interested in your thoughts on this series despite of barely having heard of it!). Have you decided to focus mainly on classical reception in media for the blog? I wish you good luck with the PhD applications, of course
Agreed. Are you sure you never want to finish the Kaos post?
I’m not sure I “never” want to finish it. I just wasn’t sure if it was worth finishing at this point, since I wasn’t sure if people would be interested. I have many posts I’ve started writing or written most of, but never finished.
I may still finish the post about Kaos if people are still interested in it. I haven’t decided to focus on reception per se, but classical reception in media is always a topic that generates interest for the general public, so I generally try to cover it when there are prominent examples of it.
Thank you for the well wishes!
Oh, I’m sure people will be interested.
That’s the danger with Netflix these days: you’re lucky if a show gets a second season. Still, I would like to read your thoughts on Kaos, and Megalopolis and Gladiator II. If you have time between your PhD applications and writing your novel of course.
Good luck with your applications, Spencer! I really hope the universities you’re applying to will be smarter this time around than they were when you applied before.
Yeah, Kaos was cancelled only a month after they released the first season. I didn’t even have a chance to finish my article about it.
I had mixed feelings about the show; there were some things I liked and some things I didn’t.
Thank you for the kind words! I really appreciate them. To be honest, I’ve been feeling lost and full of doubt about my abilities, my decisions, and my overall direction in life this year.
Why do you think you’ve haven’t been able to get a PhD yet?
I can tell you with absolute certainty that you should not doubt your abilities! Not only is your breadth of knowledge and research capabilities impressive, your ability to communicate it effectively to a wide audience is invaluable. I know we’ve had this conversation before and you’ve pointed out that PhD programs see your public outreach as irrelevant at best and a waste of time at worst. But the full-scale anti-intellectual crusade of the political right, from the relentless harassment of Dr. Ally Louks by misogynists who didn’t understand her thesis, to conservatives salivating over the prospect of DOGE laying off scores of government-funded scientists, show just how essential your public-facing work is to the survival of the humanities and academia. Maybe the institutions won’t appreciate that until it’s too late, but I hope you do.
Of course, I can only comment for now on your public blogposts since that’s what most of us have access to, but I also look forward to reading your academic publications on Cybele and your novel when it comes out!
Good luck, and I hope to see your Gladiator and Megalapolis soon!
I hope you don’t mind me asking, but I would be interested in you reviewing some historical novels or video games in the same way as you do for movies & TV. The Vespasian Series, The Forgotten Legion, and Age of Mythology are interesting to say the least.
About Kaos, I don’t think its cancellation matters. I only heard about it today from this article. I find all of your analyses of popular culture fascinating. I often go through your debunking category. If you think your Kaos post will be useful in educating people about Ancient Greek history, I recommend posting it anyway.
Best of luck with your doctorate.
I really think a mind like yours deserves to have a chance to explore a PhD.
As to your unfinished blogs posts, could you adapt what you have into a casual ‘And Other Thoughts’ segment where we know you won’t be giving us an ‘essay’ but more a list of ideas/observations/talking points, so that what you have doesn’t go to waste, and posting won’t eat up more of your precious time?
Fingers crossed for you!
I’d like to second jill’s post…”talking points” would prompt we commentators to join in the discussion and that could be fun and interesting.
Please review Gladiator 2. “Megapolis” and “Chaos”. I read all your posts regularly and always look forward to your movie reviews. They are especially interesting to me. Please do reviews!
Good luck with your applications!! I wish you the best. You take care of your business and we all will happily wait while sending you good PhD application vibes.
Hey Spencer it’s Alex Mann! I’ve still been following you here because I think you are a great historian. I think you’d be happy to know I have moved left a fair bit over the past few years.
In a prior post, you wrote about Holocaust denial and how shocking it was. I scored a minor victory (which I cannot make public) and the worst deniers were removed. The platform is taking steps towards helping.
However, Holocaust Denial is now popular- very popular. It’s mainstream. Piers Morgan’s show is hosting them, Candace Owens is insane, and so on. I could use allies.
Holocaust denial requires a serious delusion as it happened only ~80 years back and the more recent the events, the easier it is to find primary sources.
Good luck with the Phd applications!
PS I would be down for the Kaos review maybe but how about evolution of Greek equipment? Too many just know the Classical look with the Corinthian helm.
Thanks for the good luck wishes! I may write something about Greek military equipment at some point. I’ve thought about writing a post about ancient Greek clothing at some point as well.
Keep trying for a PHD, don’t give up!
Thanks! I am going to keep trying.
Thanks!
Good luck with your PhD applications! Where are you applying this time around? It’s always good to add a few extra applications for safety – not that you’ll need it!
I wish you the best of luck with your PhD applications.
I have followed Tales of Times Forgotten for a few years, but have not commented yet. I would be really interested in a post on “Kaos” – I have not finished it yet, but have really enjoyed it for its audacity. I feel like your comment above where you described your reservations about the program and the shortcomings of characterization are well thought out; you mention that “In the show, we see almost nothing of the kind of bargaining with the gods that was standard practice for the historical ancient Greeks.” That would make a good starting point, and could be interesting for a lot of readers of the blog. I never thought about the bargaining aspect before (thought in hindsight it is obvious).
Thanks again for all you do.
Being a Jeff Goldblum fan, I was all set to love Kaos, but didn’t even finish the first episode.
Random observation (hey, it’s Christmas soon, although Jesus probably wasn’t born then, or in 1 BC for that matter): I wish we knew the original authors of the canonical gospels (probably not their traditional apostle authors), and what titles their original authors and audiences would have known them by. Alas, such information may well be lost forever. Likewise the Torah, much of the rest of the Bible, the “Homeric” epics, and many other ancient writings. This is why everyone should sign and date their works (usually).
Most likely the original authors and readers of the gospels simply called the gospel that their particular community used “the gospel” since most communities in the early days probably only had one and had no need to distinguish it from others. Ioustinos Martys, writing in the 150s CE, refers to the gospels collectively as “memoirs of the apostles” without giving them specific titles.
Yeah, reading the gospels together, requiring specific names for each of them, must’ve come later when the New Testament canon was formed. Even so, the gospel’s authors’ names may sadly be lost forever, but they probably weren’t Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. Assuming the authors of Matthew and Luke’s gospels based it on Mark, I wonder what they would have called it, since obviously it wasn’t “the gospel” to them. Surely they’d need a way to distinguish their new works from their source material. Then there’s Q, which (assuming its existence) is now lost (although I think most of Q is in Matthew and/or Luke) and which never got a canonical name at all.
Of course, we know just as little about the authors of many other ancient texts. The Iliad and Odyssey probably had different authors, but for all we know neither was named “Homer”.
Had the books of the Bible been written with the larger collection in mind (most of not all weren’t), I’m sure they’d have been different, although I’m not sure how. Same for the Epic Cycle. In both cases, multiple works were grouped together despite often contradicting each other – to use modern terminology, they may be separate continuities.
I do believe that the Oresteia by Aeschylus is considered a trilogy, and the plays were all by the same person, so are there any contradictions between them? In ancient Mediterranean society (your specialty), how common was it for authors to write multiple clearly connected works?
I’m one of the few people who both saw and enjoyed Megalopolis. And ever since I saw it, I’ve been waiting for you or Brett Deverex (or hopefully both) to go through how it uses Roman history and iconography.
Basically every character is named after a famous Roman, and the centrepiece of the first act is an over the top Colosseum scene. It’s an entire movie using the overused ‘America as Rome’ metaphor in interesting ways, and I really want a serious scholar to dissect that.