{"title":"Axis Occupation and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus: Artistic Production under Fascism (1941–1942)","authors":"Vasileios Balaskas","doi":"10.1353/mgs.2023.0002","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:During the first two years of the Occupation of Greece by the Axis powers (1941–1942), the Odeon of Herodes Atticus had a symbolic place within fascist ideology. Legislative reform and a cultural revival of the ancient monument played a crucial role in the artistic expression of the occupying forces. Productions of Greek companies were tightly controlled by the Italian and German authorities, and fascist military personnel attended many of them. At the same time, German and Italian artists collaborated with Greek productions, staged their own events, and broadcast them to their homeland through radio transmission. It was, however, the German film Fronttheater (1942) that epitomized the fascist appropriation of the Roman Odeon as a monumental site of spectacle where war and fiction were inextricably interwoven. The film exhibited how the occupying powers enforced and exercised their cultural authority in Athens. In this regard, the fascist myth of ancestral rebirth transformed civic spaces into sites of spectacular politics.","PeriodicalId":43810,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF MODERN GREEK STUDIES","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"JOURNAL OF MODERN GREEK STUDIES","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mgs.2023.0002","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:During the first two years of the Occupation of Greece by the Axis powers (1941–1942), the Odeon of Herodes Atticus had a symbolic place within fascist ideology. Legislative reform and a cultural revival of the ancient monument played a crucial role in the artistic expression of the occupying forces. Productions of Greek companies were tightly controlled by the Italian and German authorities, and fascist military personnel attended many of them. At the same time, German and Italian artists collaborated with Greek productions, staged their own events, and broadcast them to their homeland through radio transmission. It was, however, the German film Fronttheater (1942) that epitomized the fascist appropriation of the Roman Odeon as a monumental site of spectacle where war and fiction were inextricably interwoven. The film exhibited how the occupying powers enforced and exercised their cultural authority in Athens. In this regard, the fascist myth of ancestral rebirth transformed civic spaces into sites of spectacular politics.
期刊介绍:
Praised as "a magnificent scholarly journal" by Choice magazine, the Journal of Modern Greek Studies is the only scholarly periodical to focus exclusively on modern Greece. The Journal publishes critical analyses of Greek social, cultural, and political affairs, covering the period from the late Byzantine Empire to the present. Contributors include internationally recognized scholars in the fields of history, literature, anthropology, political science, Byzantine studies, and modern Greece.