Journal of Greek Media & Culture - Current Issue

This article examines actor Anestis Vlachos, who in Greek cinema of the 1950s and 1960s was frequently cast as a troubled villain. Moving beyond prevailing notions of desirability and glamour and drawing primarily on textual analysis, it argues that Vlachos can be understood as a cult star whose non-normative appeal emerges from the idiosyncratic ways he constructed a screen persona of villainy, torment and Otherness across diverse generic, artistic and production contexts. It explores how this persona, deeply grounded in corporeality, embodied anxiety, failed masculinity and repressed sexual desire, offering a layered cinematic representation not only of the transgressive, but also of the primitive, the repressed, the desperate and the instinctive. By engaging with both thematic and performance concerns, the article develops a typology of the characters Vlachos portrayed, highlighting the performative traits that define his iconic screen identity and the cult qualities that arise from them.

Melina Mercouri has often attracted scholarly interest as regards the construction and development of her public image as a star. The origins of her stardom are to be found in her role in Mihalis Cacoyiannis Stella, a film that paved the way for her international career as an actress, and in the role of Ilya in Jules Dassin’s Never on Sunday that established her as a symbol of contemporary Greece. The type of dynamic woman she represented became the core trait in most cinematic characters she performed. In association with her role as a ‘cultural ambassador’ of contemporary Greece they became the prominent characteristics of the public image she promoted in her political career in the 1970s and 1980s. Focusing on I was born Greek, my intention is to discuss how Mercouri in her autobiographical text presents and reworks the key elements of her image as an actress and incorporates them in her identity as a political activist. Her autobiography is a reference text that she ‘quotes’, when, as a politician, she performs and readjusts her star image in the 1970s and 1980s. My discussion is informed by the recent emphasis on performativity and agency regarding women’s – and in particular actresses’ – autobiographical writing and the construction of stardom.

In 1980s Greece, the spread of home video technology catalysed the emergence of a prolific direct-to-video industry that reconfigured media production and audience engagement outside the traditional film and television industries. This article explores the careers of Stamatis Gardelis and Michalis Mosios, two male stars representative of the VHS era, whose personas became sites for negotiating masculinity, class and ethnocultural identity within a shifting sociopolitical landscape. Gardelis, an emerging young actor, transitioned into VHS romantic comedies and embodied a form of masculinity marked by emotional awkwardness and ironic detachment. Mosios, in contrast, achieved stardom through his portrayal of Tamtakos, a Roma comic figure whose exaggerated performance style oscillated between ethnic affirmation and ironic self-parody. The article draws on star studies, cultural theory and media historiography to examine how direct-to-video productions cultivated their own affective economies of recognition. Far from being a degraded cultural form, Greek VHS films generated distinct modes of stardom rooted in repetition, familiarity and social proximity. The analysis offers a critical lens into how popular media can articulate broader tensions around modernity, marginality and belonging.

In this article, I examine the mediatic images with which Sakis Rouvas, the biggest male pop music star in Greece, built his stardom. His charismatic profile is an ideological text based on the one hand on a creative mixture of western references, authenticity and professionalism and on the other hand, on the performative expression of gender and sexual discourses that circulated in Greek society in the 1990s and early 2000s. I look into his television appearances and music videos to locate his participation in discourses about modernization, his authenticity as an everyday, humble and inexperienced young man, and his evolution into a hardworking professional. I also examine the images of masculinity and sexuality on which Sakis Rouvas’s stardom is set and play an important role in differentiating him from other male singers of the period. Capitalizing on the fertile ground and the transformations in Greek society, Sakis Rouvas became the image of a Greek ‘New Man’ building on an ambiguous, but non-threatening, desirable sexuality for young audiences, especially young females, while at the same time absorbing emerging homoerotic identities and participating in their concealment.

In recent years, numerous high-profile celebrities with substantial cultural and financial influence have faced allegations of misconduct, abuse and sexual harassment. Among them is Petros Filippidis, a prominent Greek actor and director whose career has spanned several decades since the 1980s. Filippidis became a central figure in Greece’s #MeToo movement after multiple female colleagues accused him of sexual harassment. These accusations led to, among other consequences, his exclusion from theatrical productions and (temporary) removal from television broadcasts, culminating in his brief but highly publicized imprisonment on charges of attempted rape. His case, much like others on an international scale, signals a cultural shift in how celebrity scandals are addressed, particularly through the lens of social media. Drawing on recent scholarship around cancel culture and its proliferation on digital platforms, this article examines how YouTube users engage with narratives surrounding Filippidis’s accusations. The resulting metadiscourses, often extending beyond cancellation, prompt a reassessment of the celebrity’s public persona, past artistic contributions and the audience’s relationship with them. A netnographic analysis of diverse viewpoints expressed on YouTube conveys broader societal debates on moral and aesthetic values, comic innocence and contested understandings of gender and authority, highlighting tensions over who is entitled to voice criticism publicly and who has the legitimacy to suppress or contain it. The analysis also underscores how these online expressions are deeply embedded within prevailing power dynamics, involving a wide range of actors, each with differing interpretations of cancel culture and distinct political agendas.

Review of: Istories sto metaihmio: Modernismos kai pragmatikotita sti metapolemiki elliniki techni (Stories on the Verge: Modernism and Reality in Greek Post-War Art), Elena Hamalidi (2022)

Athens: Melissa Publishing House, 320 pp.,

ISBN 978-9-60204-425-4, p/bk, EUR 55.00