In keeping with my promise of last night, I did indeed manage to do a bit of work in Chapter 4. At this point, I’m still sketching in the broader outlines of the historical context, because I think that doing so will help me to get a stronger sense of what it is that I am trying to argue in the chapter as a whole. I’m still doing some of the primary research that I need, but I do think that I have enough basic material to make a solid start in my close analysis of the films.

I’m really trying to work out the tension I see between the spectacle of imperial zenith and the narrative patterns that inevitably connect such splendour with immanent and imminent decline. I’m looking at this phenomenon through three of the final films of the postwar cycle: Cleopatra, The Fall of the Roman Empire, and The Bible: In the Beginning. I’m not sure how well this is going to hold together in the final analysis, but I do think that are some interesting things to argue and say about the utopian longings for a more stable political world that can never really be attained.

Produced in a world that was increasingly full of political doubt and philosophical instability, these films express a form, I think, of imperial melancholy. They mourn a world that was never actually brought into being, a world that is always subjected to the relentless forces of historical change and the inexorable forward movement of time.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get as much work done on Chapter 3 as I would have liked. Family commitments intervened in those attempts, though I hope to get some bits of it done tomorrow. I would like to highlight this particular bit, though, which I think nicely sums up what I’m doing with Nero’s queerness: “He is, in other words, the embodiment of all the terrifying power of history writ large on the great stage of the cinema.”

Tomorrow looks like it’s going to be another day that’s rather tied up with obligations, so who knows how much I’m going to actually be able to get done. Hopefully, though, I can manage to get through some more portions of Chapter 3. If I keep on as I am, it should definitely be ready by the end of next week. Then I can just edit.

On we go.