Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Filippo Carlà-Uhink is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Potsdam, Germany.An enjoyable study of both the cultural phenomenon of the theme park and the ways in which the idea of ‘ancient Greece’ finds its way into contemporary visual culture.
Greece & Rome
This is the first book-length study of Greek mythology as theme park entertainment in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It shows not only that certain themes and visual cues have global reach, but also that individual parks reflect local conditions – cultural, economic, and political.
- Dunstan Lowe, Senior Lecturer in Latin Literature, University of Kent, UK,
Theme park studies is a growing field in social and cultural studies. Nonetheless, until now little attention has been dedicated to the choice of the themes represented in the parks and the strategies of their representation. This is particularly interesting when the theme is a historical one, for example ancient Greece. Which elements of classical Greece find their way into a theme park and how are they chosen and represented? What is the “entertainment” element in ancient Greek history, culture and myth, which allows its presence in commercial structures aiming to people’s fun? How does the representation of Greece change against different cultural backgrounds, e.g. in different European countries, in the USA, in China?
This book frames a discussion of these representations within the current debates about immersive spaces, uses of history and postmodern aesthetics, and analyses how ancient Greece has been represented and made “enjoyable” in seven different theme parks across the world, providing an original and ground-breaking contribution to theme park studies and classical reception.
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
1. Representing History in the Theme Park: The Case of Ancient Greece
2. German Philhellenism in the Theme Park
3. Spain, Ancient Greece, and the Land of Myths
4. Ancient Greece, the United States of America and the Theme Park
5. The Far East, Ancient Greece, and the Theme Park
6. Ancient Greece in France – The World of a Gallic Warrior
7. Greece – In the Form of a Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
This series broadens our understanding of the receptions of antiquity in the visual and performing arts. A particular focus is on the 20th and 21st centuries and on various media, such as films, comics, video games, advertising, digital media, design, fashion, music performances and theme parks, as well as on multi-, inter- and transmedial forms of reception, challenging traditional, and still very widespread, assumptions that distinguish ‘high’ from ‘popular culture’. While the focus of the series is placed on Mediterranean antiquity, it also considers the receptions of ancient times from all regions of global history.
The series is the product of a continuous dialogue between scholars on the one side, and ‘producers’ of classical reception – painters, sculptors, photographers, architects and designers – on the other, who write about their mechanisms of appropriation of the ancient world. Through its broad range of topics and editorial forms, IMAGINES represents an established and internationally recognized publication platform for studies on how ancient cultures, people and events were and are represented and performed all over the world.