| Popis: |
We would like to ask ourselves whether the serial form leads us to rethink the terms of the debate between surrealism and mimesis. Is the question of reality the same in cinema and in a TV series? The series Rome (HBO, 2005–7) contributes to a genre with realist pretensions: the Peplum or epic in the United States. From one art to the other, does the genre modify its relationship with the real? It appears that, from the film to the series, realism and space-time are constantly confronted with generic requirements. Each realist genre constitutes its own plausibility. In this perspective, a series is not more “true” than a film, and historical reality is always more or less deformed in service of the fiction. Only the choice operated in the historical material is changed — from an art of events to an art of the everyday. The topos of the gladiatorial combat, for example, receives an entirely different treatment on the big screen and the small screen. In Gladiator, it is an exceptional event, which takes place in the Coliseum, and is attended by the emperor and his court. In Rome, it is a common way of dispensing justice. The combat takes place in a temporary wooden structure, and only the commoners are present. Films and series make their choice within the historical material according two different logics: grand evenemential history for the first; the daily lives of common people for the second. Finally, this new cutting of the real concurs with the recent evolution of the historical discipline. |
