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- Volume 8, Issue 1, 2022
Journal of Greek Media & Culture - Volume 8, Issue 1, 2022
Volume 8, Issue 1, 2022
- Articles
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James Bond in Greece: From cold warrior to strolling tourist
By David WillsThree Hellenic episodes from the long life of that globetrotting spy/tourist James Bond are considered here. From Russia With Love, the 1963 film adaption faithful to Ian Fleming’s 1957 original story, was followed by a Kingsley Amis 1968 Bond continuation novel and finally by 1981’s Roger Moore movie For Your Eyes Only. Their respective settings of north-eastern Greece, Athens and the Cyclades, and Corfu and Meteora, are discussed in terms of their representation of local culture and the status of Greece within Europe. The extent to which the changing international reputation of Greece drives or informs these adventures is charted, from concerns about political reliability in the aftermath of the Second World War through to the welcoming tourist destination of the 1980s.
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Rebetiko in diaspora: The London rebetiko scene
By James NissenOne of the most active rebetiko scenes outside Greece is in London. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at Rebetiko Carnival, engagement with the scene between 2014 and 2020, and personal interviews with key musicians, this article examines the meanings and the unique features of rebetiko in London. It shows the roles of music in forming a diasporic musical community and maintaining connections with Greece, while also forging a cosmopolitan music scene characterized by cross-cultural creativity, gender consciousness and education and outreach. It thus demonstrates that rebetiko is both recontextualized and transformed in London, nurtured by the city’s multiculturalism. This study suggests that, by considering this scene as part of an international network, rebetiko could be conceptualized as not only in diaspora but as a diaspora in itself, as a transnational thread that links widely dispersed and diverse musicians and enables them to create new cultural homes. This research thus contributes towards a growing literature on rebetiko in the Greek diaspora and reflects on wider issues relating to music in contexts of migration.
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Books in ashes and scattered writings: Fictive archive destruction in fin-de-siècle Modern Greek literature
More LessIn Greece’s most well-known thesaurus of neologisms from the late nineteenth century, two compelling terms are detected: syllogomania (‘collection frenzy’) and bibliomania (‘book frenzy’). Both very vividly illustrate the cultural landscape of fin-de-siècle Greece. The institutionalization of archives and the consolidation of the book culture were important aspects of the new-born state’s cultural politics and poetics. It is in this context that instances of literary discourse thematizing archival destruction appeared, taking the form of symbolic resistance against the canonization and institutionalization of memory. In the two texts discussed in the article, ‘Kostakis’s Manuscripts’ by Alexandra Papadopoulou (1896) and ‘Old Papers’ by Mikhail Mitsakis (1884), the laws of order, accumulation and preservation are opposed by a desire for disorder and dispersion. In the former, the manuscripts of a dead author are burnt to ashes by his girlfriend, who wishes to save them from being published. In the latter, a man scatters his writings in the wind, as a way of reactivating his memory. Both texts enact the cultural ambivalences of fin-de-siècle modernity by narrating the constant tension between, on one hand, canon and archive; and, on the other, waste and destruction. Through the destruction of fictional archives, the possibility of a counter-memory is claimed. Papadopoulou’s and Mitsakis’s claim of an overturning of the dynamics between cultural memory and oblivion can be considered as a call for questioning the laws that govern cultural memory’s circulation and for repositioning their auctorial figures in the history of Modern Greek literature.
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The reception of American and French film noir in post-war Greece, 1945–58
Authors: Leonidas Papadopoulos, Anna Poupou and Eva StefaniThe aim of this article is to examine the distribution, promotion and critical reception of American and French film noir in Greece from 1944 to 1958 and to shed light to the reasons of the belated appearance of Greek noir examples. It is based on archival research that was made in the framework of the project ‘Film noir in Greece: Reception, assimilation, and imitation of a US film genre, from the post-war period until today’ (National & Kapodistrian University of Athens), financed by the Operational Programme Human Resources Development, Education and Lifelong Learning, P.A. 2014–20. Crime thrillers that were retrospectively labelled as film noirs, were not only known and enjoyed by the Greek public from 1945 onwards, but also their conventions and imagery were used in the journalistic discourse, showing a wider diffusion to society that was not only limited to communities of cinephiles. From this perspective, we examine the vocabulary and terminology invented and established by Greek reviewers and distributors, in order to describe the key features of the films that today we classify as film noir. We discuss how emblematic films that today form the canon of film noir were received at that time, as well as the negative discourses that appear at the same time in the public sphere, especially around issues of ‘moral panic’, violence and delinquency. Furthermore, the distinction in the reception of French vs. American films enables us to apprehend the different ideological stances towards these films and to understand why French crime films were more influential in Greece than their American counterparts.
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Modernization noir in Greek cinema of the 1990s and early 2000s: New topographies and temporal tensions
More LessThe focus of this article is the examination of the Greek crime film during the 1990s and early 2000s. The main question concerns if and how certain crime narratives from the 1990s and early 2000s responded to ideological discourse of ‘modernization’ that prevailed at the time. The analysis of three films (Apo tin akri tis polis, O hamenos ta perni ola and Sti skia tou Lemmy Kosion) with neo-noir features, unveils a field of representations produced in contrast to the period’s mainstream discourse of uplifting transformation, which was closely linked to Greece’s entry to the Eurozone and to the preparations for the Olympic Games. These films provide a critique of the city’s transformation into a metropolis, and of the subsequent transmutation of its societal tapestry not only within a European environment but also within the cultural logic of late capitalism. The ‘modernization noir’, as named in the article, includes two narrative trends: the first negotiates the arrival of new ethnicities, which transform the city and produce new hierarchies and topographies; the second self-consciously uses the genre in its ‘neo’ phase to comment on the transition between old and new.
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- Book Reviews
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The Conquered: Byzantium and America on the Cusp of Modernity, Eleni Kefala (2020)
By James MortonReview of: The Conquered: Byzantium and America on the Cusp of Modernity, Eleni Kefala (2020)
Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 166 pp.,
ISBN 978-0-88402-476-7, h/bk, $25.00/£20.95/€22.50
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Argonautes kai Syntrofoi: Opseis you Logotechnikou Pediou sti Dekaetia tou ‘30 (‘Argonauts and companions: Aspects of the literary field in the 1930s’), Christina Dounia (2021)
More LessReview of: Argonautes kai Syntrofoi: Opseis you Logotechnikou Pediou sti Dekaetia tou ‘30 (‘Argonauts and companions: Aspects of the literary field in the 1930s’), Christina Dounia (2021)
Athens: Estia, 408 pp.,
ISBN 978-9-60051-804-7, p/bk, €19.00
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Inter–Esse: Themata kai Ermineutikes Proseggiseis sti Neoelliniki Logotehnia (‘Inter–Esse: Themes and interpretative approaches to modern Greek literature’), Sophia Iakovidou (2020)
More LessReview of: Inter–Esse: Themata kai Ermineutikes Proseggiseis sti Neoelliniki Logotehnia (‘Inter–Esse: Themes and interpretative approaches to modern Greek literature’), Sophia Iakovidou (2020)
Athens: Gutenberg, 451 pp.,
ISBN 978-9-60012-148-3, p/bk, €23.00
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Languages of Resistance, Transformation and Futurity in Mediterranean Crisis-Scapes: From Crisis to Critique, Maria Boletsi, Janna Houwen and Liesbeth Minnaard (eds) (2021)
More LessReview of: Languages of Resistance, Transformation and Futurity in Mediterranean Crisis-Scapes: From Crisis to Critique, Maria Boletsi, Janna Houwen and Liesbeth Minnaard (eds) (2021)
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 312 pp.,
ISBN 978-3-03036-414-4, h/bk, €114.39,
ISBN 978-3-03036-417-5, p/bk, €83.19,
ISBN 978-3-03036-415-1, e-book, €93.08
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- Visual Essay
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Rebranding the nation: Performances of 1821
More LessThis visual essay discusses some of the performances celebrating the bicentenary of the Greek War of Independence. Ranging from historical reenactments to deconstructive appropriations and ironic adaptations, the performative renderings of 1821 challenged the tangibility of the past and the nation’s cultural expectations, creating an intriguing landscape of conflicted interests.
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