Historical dramas - a brief flirtation with media studies

For the past couple of days I have been engaged in what can only be described as an aspect of media studies - that much-dismissed "academic" subject. Principally, I have been looking at various presentations of the life of Anne Boleyn. There have been several TV shows about her - at least two series under the title The Six Wives of Henry VIII, such as the David Starkey series from 2001. There have been various dramatizations, such as The Tudors, which I haven't seen but which often seemed to get poor comments in reviews and various earlier versions. And she has been the subject of quite a number of biographies.

And then there are the two movies I have watched this week - The Other Boleyn Girl (again)and Anne of a Thousand Days, the latter in glorious technicolour from 1969. It is only by being immersed in so many different portrayals so quickly that you can see how very different these portrayals really are. Quite eye-opening I thought.


On a slightly different theme, I read a few weeks back about a new TV dramatization of the life of Spartacus (Spartacus: Blood and Sand). This stars Lucy Lawless of Xena fame and is styled in the manner of the movie, 300. The article said that it was extremely violent, but also very explicit - the next stage in the trend established by the series Rome a few years back. Though not yet on TV here, it is on elsewhere and episodes have appeared on various internet sites. I have seen the first three so far. It is clear that this is quite a different portrayal than Kurt Douglas years ago!

I am particularly taken by the character of Ilithyia, the second female lead. She is the bored, young wife of a senator and daughter of someone very important. She is clearly very taken by the gladiators and exhibits a remarkable blood lust. That she speaks in a posh English accent is also quite erotic. I am very keen to see how her character develops over the coming weeks.

Ilithyia, played by Viva Bianca, in Spartacus: Blood and Sand