Seattle. Their books include Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation and Ancient Sex: New Essays.
Blondell applied the “Page 99 Test” to their new book, Helen of Troy in Hollywood, and reported the following:
Page 99 discusses the scene in Robert Wise's 1956 epic Helen of Troy where the Wooden Horse is welcomed into Troy. After besieging the city for ten years, the Greek army has left the Horse as a deceptive "gift" which the Trojans are foolish enough to accept. They welcome it with a wild party evoking the decadent entertainments of Roman Emperors and other tyrants in historical epic films of the period, like Quo Vadis and The Ten Commandments. On this page, I argue that this generic parallel gives the scene ominous overtones. When the drunken Trojans fall asleep, the Greeks emerge from the horse and slaughter the Trojans, whose "fatal lapse in vigilance, good judgment, and sobriety results in Troy's total destruction." In its historical and cultural context, the scene has resonances of the Cold War politics of the 1950s, in keeping with the epic genre of the period, where tyrannical Romans and Egyptians often represent the threat of communism. In the words of the science fiction classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which came out the same year), "falling asleep is dangerous."Learn more about Helen of Troy in Hollywood at the Princeton University Press website.
The Page 99 Test is effective in that it provides a good example of the book's overall methodology: the interpretation of ancient world movies and television shows in their specific cultural and political context. It is less effective in that there is no mention of Helen of Troy, the ancient mythological figure around whom the book is built. Nor does this page deal with the broader issues surrounding female beauty and desire of which Helen is emblematic in both ancient Greek myth and in cinema (as I argue in the book's introduction). A further limitation is that, in its focus on one specific moment in Hollywood history, this page gives no indication of the book's broader scope. Helen of Troy in Hollywood ranges over multiple genres in film and television from the silent period to the early twenty-first century. It discusses not just epic films like Helen of Troy (1956) and Troy (2004), but a silent movie (The Private Life of Helen of Troy), episodes of Star Trek and Xena: Warrior Princess, and a TV miniseries (Helen of Troy) from 2003, showing in each case how the figure of Helen reflects concerns about gender and femininity that are specific to the period and genre.
--Marshal Zeringue
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