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Archive 1 |
This blogpost offers a scholarly critique. It is not usable directly, as it does not count as a reliable source, but it provides plenty of pointers for any editor who needs background. [1]. BrainyBabe ( talk) 21:25, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
That blog is better than any of the other reviews. If anything is a fringe source, it was the source used by whoever was the historical consultant the film. The author of the blog relies more on the (at least close to) contemporary source of Socrates Scholasticus.
Now I think the historical accuracy needs to include that there was not a library anymore at the time in the Serapeum. If there is no virulent opposition to this idea, if it can be substantiated of course by verifiable sources, I'd be happy to try to locate some.
Here is a
sequel to the review, if anybody is interested.
For some more sourced background,
why
not
read
these
series
of
blogs
on the
subject.
By no means are blogs a good source, hence there is a need for other sources, but at least these might just indicate there are some issues.
Darth Viller (
talk) 09:13, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
Actually, St. Catherine of Alexandria was never actually ruled out as an historical person. Only described as "doubtful." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Splashen ( talk • contribs) 23:01, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Don't know where someone got the idea that Hypatia was married to Orestes in the film, simply not the case and in fact her father emphasises the fact that she could never be married to a man. Reverted sentence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.43.227.18 ( talk) 03:46, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Ok, here's the intro bit. The translation is not my own and is not ideal:
The late fourth century A.D. The Roman Empire began to crumble...Alexandria, in the province of Egypt, still retained some of its lustre, possessed of one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, the legendary lighthouse, and the biggest library known....The library was not only a cultural but a religious symbol, a place where the pagans worshiped their ancestral gods...The traditional pagan worship in the city now coexisted with the Jews, and an unstoppable religion up to now banned, Christianity.
Second part:
After taking the library, many pagans were converted to Christianity. Hypatia continued teaching and researching, while her former students held important positions in the social elite....The empire was split in two forever. Many Christians saw this as a sign of the end of the world, and decided to prepare by practicing a more holy life....The Parabolani brotherhood was charged to go through the streets and watch for Christian morality, now unbalanced by the presence of the Jews.
Third part:
The body of Hypatia was mutilated and the remains were dragged through the streets and burned in a fire. Orestes was outlawed forever and Cyril took control of the power in Alexandria. Later, Cyril was declared a Saint and Doctor of the Church. Although none of Hypatia's works remain, it is said that she was an exceptional astronomer, renown for the mathematical study of conical curves. 1200 years later, in the 17th century, astronomer Johannes Kepler described that one of those curves, the ellipse, governs the movement of the planets.
Comments? Viriditas ( talk) 02:38, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
The Amenábar quote seems to have been picked to highlight his fallacy, namely that "no good Christian should feel offended by this film." I'm not sure this best represents the issue or shows him in the best light. Viriditas ( talk) 23:01, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
(undent) Ok, sounds like a good title for the section. Why not create it now and move the content there? It can then be expanded. The Observatorio criticism certainly belongs there, but now I'm not sure the Amenábar quote should be in that section. In fact, the quote seems more appropriate for a Themes section, which is another section recommended by the film MOS. But I would further cut the sentence mentioning Jesus from the quote, since that's only relevant in context to responding to the religious criticism from the Catholic Church. What do you think? - Krasnoludek ( talk) 15:51, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Deleted on 24.3.2016:
"Some reviewers have heavily criticized Agora for historical inaccuracies, heavy artistic licenses and perceived anti-Christian bias in the movie. As one major example, the destruction of the main library is already assumed destroyed before Hypatia's death when in fact it was destroyed in the aftermath of the Islamic conquest. (Parsons The Alexandrian Library Glory of the Hellenic World)"
Reasons: "some reviewers" [which?]; "historical inaccuracies... anti-Christian bias" [already mentioned]; "destruction of main library" [false information, incorrect referencing: /info/en/?search=Destruction_of_the_Library_of_Alexandria#Decree_of_Theodosius.2C_destruction_of_the_Serapeum_in_391]
( Rosenkreutzer ( talk) 02:26, 24 March 2016 (UTC))
The Spanish Catholic Observatorio Antidifamación Religiosa (Religious Anti-Defamation Observatory) protested against the film for "promoting hatred of Christians and reinforcing false clichés about the Catholic Church." Michael Ordoña of the Los Angeles Times acknowledges that the film has been criticized for "perceived slights against Christians" but that "its lack of condemnation of specific dogma makes the film's target seem to be fundamentalism in general". Before release, the distribution company insisted on a screening of the film at the Vatican. No objections were reported and Vatican officials assisted in some of the religious depictions.
(undent) Now to respond to the other points, about the order of historical and scientific accuracies. You are absolutely right about the placement of the Observatory objection; it almost surely came after the Vatican screening. The ordering was just an artifact of me having pulled the Observatory stuff into that section first, and only later built up the Vatican material and the women-subjugation reading of the Bible by Cyril. And yes, the accuracy section needs a NPOV introductory paragraph explaining the overall nature of the objections and what the makers of the movie did to maintain accuracy or consciously avoid it. - Krasnoludek ( talk) 13:41, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Big scientific inaccuracy is Hypatia's discovery of eliptic shape of the Earth orbit. The orbit of Earth is near to perfect circle, with Sun in the center. Do you really think, that change of seasons is caused by Earth changing it's distance from Sun? It is possible that she could discover elliptic orbits of other planets. But to discover the slight excentricity of Earth's orbit was with high probability impossible for science of her time. -- 95.82.190.20 ( talk) 08:06, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Regarding the historical accuracy of the movie, there is a series of blog articles written by author Faith L. Justice which are very interesting:
I don't think they should be directly cited, but it's the best analysis of the historical accuracy of this movie that I've found so far. City zen ( talk) 05:03, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
We should start merging the following links into this section and discuss their importance in the film:
There's much more, of course. Viriditas ( talk) 04:23, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Agora premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival,[12] but the film was unable to find a domestic[clarification needed] distributor due to its large budget and length.
An editor added a "clarification needed" tag to this text with the attached edit summary above. Since the film is Spanish, I'm unclear why "domestic distributor" needs to be clarified. It certainly can be expanded to fill in the negotiations that took place between the time it could not find a domestic distributor and the time that it did. I thought the use of the word "domestic" here was as clear as a bell. It's not an American film. Domestic: adjective: of or relating to the home; produced in a particular country. [5] The Variety source does tend to use industry jargon, so perhaps it should be changed. Here's the original: ""Agora," costing upward of $70 million to produce, failed to find a domestic distrib after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival...." The context of that statement appears in an article about the opening in Spain as a "Spanish-backed" film and about the Spanish director, so it's very clear what they are talking about when you look at the source. But feel free to change it to something that makes more sense to you. In case it is not clear, "domestic distributor" refers to distribution in Spain, where, according to the article, the "international arm" of 20th Century Fox later picked up the rights and distributed it in Spain. This was after the film was trimmed down from its original 141 minutes and appeared at TIFF. Other sources also refer to this strange situation, where the film lacked domestic distribution rights for 5 months or so. Viriditas ( talk) 13:42, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
From its success in Spain, the film followed a country-by-country release schedule through late 2009 and the first half of 2010, opening in a most European countries, some Middle Eastern countries, Argentina, Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia.
An editor added release info back into the article again. MOS:FILM on "Release" says: "Do not include information on the film's release in every territory [6]....If other release dates are found to be notable, it may be appropriate to include them in the main body of the article." [7] So, this information should be deleted. Viriditas ( talk) 13:57, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
There's a list of consultants from the film article on es that would be interesting to add, but I haven't been able to confirm the list except for Pollard:
Any sources confirming this list would be appreciated. Viriditas ( talk) 10:29, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Critical reception section needs significant expansion, and I've added several critics for consideration in the further reading section. Viriditas ( talk) 20:55, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Looking at the movie poster supplied for the article, you will notice that the notation for A.D. is used and not CE. I think that the article should be consistent and use the connotation used in the movie poster and in the movie. sullivan9211 13:06, 9 August 2010 (CST)
A new user has been adding OR into the article and I have removed it twice now. User:Linceo claims that the observations about accuracy are important because the film is pretended to be "historical", however the lead section clearly indicates that this is a historical drama film, in other words, fiction. Linceo is welcome to use the sources listed in the article to expand this section, but OR is not appropriate. Viriditas ( talk) 10:57, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
I will address the problems with this new content line by line:
1. One problem with the historical accuracy of this film is that, according to Gibbon, Hypatia was not mercifully strangled: "On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, Hypatia was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the reader (alias Peter the Lector) and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics: her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster-shells, and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames."
2. Moreover, the scientific questions raised by Hypatia are absurd and unfounded, in fact the elliptic orbits were discovered by Kepler in 1609, only by mean of Brahe data.
3. Finally, although the movie highlights Hipatia's history as a reflection on the relationship between religion and science, contemporary historians of science say the political struggle in which Hypatia got caught up was not related with scientific ideas. In the words of David Lindberg, "her death had everything to do with local politics and virtually nothing to do with science". [1]
Dear Erik, I strongly echo to your suggestion: as you particularly mentioned about the desire " to use references that analyze history and film independent of us", I have provided, with the book of Evans, a first step. You should not delete my words, but continue by adding other solid references. James Evans who wrote this book is an expert: he is associate editor of the Journal for the History of Astronomy. His book has a numerous of elogious comments: "... the History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy... The Bredth coverage is encyclopedic, from Babylonians and Greeks, .. through Arabic astronomers of the middle ages, to Copernic and Kepler." M.N. Swerdlow, Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago. This is why I decide to put the information that you have deleted. Please be constructive. Don't delete very good reference and continue what you proposed.-- Linceo ( talk) 07:50, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
References
This article could be much improved if it explained the historical inaccuracies in the film. A comprehensive review of the topic is this article, which focuses on how the fictional licenses of the movie were designed to convey a specific message regarding science and religion. -- Leinad-Z ( talk) 16:08, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
On the whole, this is a sad situation: David C. Lindberg, (which is probably the major living scholar on the topic of medieval science), clearly states that "[Hypatia's] death had everything to do with local politics and virtually nothing to do with science".( See here, in page 9) But apparently this information cannot be in the article since Lindberg was not specifically referring to the film. Meanwhile, there are some reviews (such as the one I mentioned) specifically criticizing this and other inaccuracies, but it appears that they can't be used as well. -- Leinad-Z ( talk) 17:53, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 |
This blogpost offers a scholarly critique. It is not usable directly, as it does not count as a reliable source, but it provides plenty of pointers for any editor who needs background. [1]. BrainyBabe ( talk) 21:25, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
That blog is better than any of the other reviews. If anything is a fringe source, it was the source used by whoever was the historical consultant the film. The author of the blog relies more on the (at least close to) contemporary source of Socrates Scholasticus.
Now I think the historical accuracy needs to include that there was not a library anymore at the time in the Serapeum. If there is no virulent opposition to this idea, if it can be substantiated of course by verifiable sources, I'd be happy to try to locate some.
Here is a
sequel to the review, if anybody is interested.
For some more sourced background,
why
not
read
these
series
of
blogs
on the
subject.
By no means are blogs a good source, hence there is a need for other sources, but at least these might just indicate there are some issues.
Darth Viller (
talk) 09:13, 26 July 2010 (UTC)
Actually, St. Catherine of Alexandria was never actually ruled out as an historical person. Only described as "doubtful." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Splashen ( talk • contribs) 23:01, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Don't know where someone got the idea that Hypatia was married to Orestes in the film, simply not the case and in fact her father emphasises the fact that she could never be married to a man. Reverted sentence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.43.227.18 ( talk) 03:46, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Ok, here's the intro bit. The translation is not my own and is not ideal:
The late fourth century A.D. The Roman Empire began to crumble...Alexandria, in the province of Egypt, still retained some of its lustre, possessed of one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, the legendary lighthouse, and the biggest library known....The library was not only a cultural but a religious symbol, a place where the pagans worshiped their ancestral gods...The traditional pagan worship in the city now coexisted with the Jews, and an unstoppable religion up to now banned, Christianity.
Second part:
After taking the library, many pagans were converted to Christianity. Hypatia continued teaching and researching, while her former students held important positions in the social elite....The empire was split in two forever. Many Christians saw this as a sign of the end of the world, and decided to prepare by practicing a more holy life....The Parabolani brotherhood was charged to go through the streets and watch for Christian morality, now unbalanced by the presence of the Jews.
Third part:
The body of Hypatia was mutilated and the remains were dragged through the streets and burned in a fire. Orestes was outlawed forever and Cyril took control of the power in Alexandria. Later, Cyril was declared a Saint and Doctor of the Church. Although none of Hypatia's works remain, it is said that she was an exceptional astronomer, renown for the mathematical study of conical curves. 1200 years later, in the 17th century, astronomer Johannes Kepler described that one of those curves, the ellipse, governs the movement of the planets.
Comments? Viriditas ( talk) 02:38, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
The Amenábar quote seems to have been picked to highlight his fallacy, namely that "no good Christian should feel offended by this film." I'm not sure this best represents the issue or shows him in the best light. Viriditas ( talk) 23:01, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
(undent) Ok, sounds like a good title for the section. Why not create it now and move the content there? It can then be expanded. The Observatorio criticism certainly belongs there, but now I'm not sure the Amenábar quote should be in that section. In fact, the quote seems more appropriate for a Themes section, which is another section recommended by the film MOS. But I would further cut the sentence mentioning Jesus from the quote, since that's only relevant in context to responding to the religious criticism from the Catholic Church. What do you think? - Krasnoludek ( talk) 15:51, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
Deleted on 24.3.2016:
"Some reviewers have heavily criticized Agora for historical inaccuracies, heavy artistic licenses and perceived anti-Christian bias in the movie. As one major example, the destruction of the main library is already assumed destroyed before Hypatia's death when in fact it was destroyed in the aftermath of the Islamic conquest. (Parsons The Alexandrian Library Glory of the Hellenic World)"
Reasons: "some reviewers" [which?]; "historical inaccuracies... anti-Christian bias" [already mentioned]; "destruction of main library" [false information, incorrect referencing: /info/en/?search=Destruction_of_the_Library_of_Alexandria#Decree_of_Theodosius.2C_destruction_of_the_Serapeum_in_391]
( Rosenkreutzer ( talk) 02:26, 24 March 2016 (UTC))
The Spanish Catholic Observatorio Antidifamación Religiosa (Religious Anti-Defamation Observatory) protested against the film for "promoting hatred of Christians and reinforcing false clichés about the Catholic Church." Michael Ordoña of the Los Angeles Times acknowledges that the film has been criticized for "perceived slights against Christians" but that "its lack of condemnation of specific dogma makes the film's target seem to be fundamentalism in general". Before release, the distribution company insisted on a screening of the film at the Vatican. No objections were reported and Vatican officials assisted in some of the religious depictions.
(undent) Now to respond to the other points, about the order of historical and scientific accuracies. You are absolutely right about the placement of the Observatory objection; it almost surely came after the Vatican screening. The ordering was just an artifact of me having pulled the Observatory stuff into that section first, and only later built up the Vatican material and the women-subjugation reading of the Bible by Cyril. And yes, the accuracy section needs a NPOV introductory paragraph explaining the overall nature of the objections and what the makers of the movie did to maintain accuracy or consciously avoid it. - Krasnoludek ( talk) 13:41, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Big scientific inaccuracy is Hypatia's discovery of eliptic shape of the Earth orbit. The orbit of Earth is near to perfect circle, with Sun in the center. Do you really think, that change of seasons is caused by Earth changing it's distance from Sun? It is possible that she could discover elliptic orbits of other planets. But to discover the slight excentricity of Earth's orbit was with high probability impossible for science of her time. -- 95.82.190.20 ( talk) 08:06, 24 July 2010 (UTC)
Regarding the historical accuracy of the movie, there is a series of blog articles written by author Faith L. Justice which are very interesting:
I don't think they should be directly cited, but it's the best analysis of the historical accuracy of this movie that I've found so far. City zen ( talk) 05:03, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
We should start merging the following links into this section and discuss their importance in the film:
There's much more, of course. Viriditas ( talk) 04:23, 7 June 2010 (UTC)
Agora premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival,[12] but the film was unable to find a domestic[clarification needed] distributor due to its large budget and length.
An editor added a "clarification needed" tag to this text with the attached edit summary above. Since the film is Spanish, I'm unclear why "domestic distributor" needs to be clarified. It certainly can be expanded to fill in the negotiations that took place between the time it could not find a domestic distributor and the time that it did. I thought the use of the word "domestic" here was as clear as a bell. It's not an American film. Domestic: adjective: of or relating to the home; produced in a particular country. [5] The Variety source does tend to use industry jargon, so perhaps it should be changed. Here's the original: ""Agora," costing upward of $70 million to produce, failed to find a domestic distrib after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival...." The context of that statement appears in an article about the opening in Spain as a "Spanish-backed" film and about the Spanish director, so it's very clear what they are talking about when you look at the source. But feel free to change it to something that makes more sense to you. In case it is not clear, "domestic distributor" refers to distribution in Spain, where, according to the article, the "international arm" of 20th Century Fox later picked up the rights and distributed it in Spain. This was after the film was trimmed down from its original 141 minutes and appeared at TIFF. Other sources also refer to this strange situation, where the film lacked domestic distribution rights for 5 months or so. Viriditas ( talk) 13:42, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
From its success in Spain, the film followed a country-by-country release schedule through late 2009 and the first half of 2010, opening in a most European countries, some Middle Eastern countries, Argentina, Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia.
An editor added release info back into the article again. MOS:FILM on "Release" says: "Do not include information on the film's release in every territory [6]....If other release dates are found to be notable, it may be appropriate to include them in the main body of the article." [7] So, this information should be deleted. Viriditas ( talk) 13:57, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
There's a list of consultants from the film article on es that would be interesting to add, but I haven't been able to confirm the list except for Pollard:
Any sources confirming this list would be appreciated. Viriditas ( talk) 10:29, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
Critical reception section needs significant expansion, and I've added several critics for consideration in the further reading section. Viriditas ( talk) 20:55, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
Looking at the movie poster supplied for the article, you will notice that the notation for A.D. is used and not CE. I think that the article should be consistent and use the connotation used in the movie poster and in the movie. sullivan9211 13:06, 9 August 2010 (CST)
A new user has been adding OR into the article and I have removed it twice now. User:Linceo claims that the observations about accuracy are important because the film is pretended to be "historical", however the lead section clearly indicates that this is a historical drama film, in other words, fiction. Linceo is welcome to use the sources listed in the article to expand this section, but OR is not appropriate. Viriditas ( talk) 10:57, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
I will address the problems with this new content line by line:
1. One problem with the historical accuracy of this film is that, according to Gibbon, Hypatia was not mercifully strangled: "On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, Hypatia was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the reader (alias Peter the Lector) and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics: her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp oyster-shells, and her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames."
2. Moreover, the scientific questions raised by Hypatia are absurd and unfounded, in fact the elliptic orbits were discovered by Kepler in 1609, only by mean of Brahe data.
3. Finally, although the movie highlights Hipatia's history as a reflection on the relationship between religion and science, contemporary historians of science say the political struggle in which Hypatia got caught up was not related with scientific ideas. In the words of David Lindberg, "her death had everything to do with local politics and virtually nothing to do with science". [1]
Dear Erik, I strongly echo to your suggestion: as you particularly mentioned about the desire " to use references that analyze history and film independent of us", I have provided, with the book of Evans, a first step. You should not delete my words, but continue by adding other solid references. James Evans who wrote this book is an expert: he is associate editor of the Journal for the History of Astronomy. His book has a numerous of elogious comments: "... the History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy... The Bredth coverage is encyclopedic, from Babylonians and Greeks, .. through Arabic astronomers of the middle ages, to Copernic and Kepler." M.N. Swerdlow, Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago. This is why I decide to put the information that you have deleted. Please be constructive. Don't delete very good reference and continue what you proposed.-- Linceo ( talk) 07:50, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
References
This article could be much improved if it explained the historical inaccuracies in the film. A comprehensive review of the topic is this article, which focuses on how the fictional licenses of the movie were designed to convey a specific message regarding science and religion. -- Leinad-Z ( talk) 16:08, 10 February 2011 (UTC)
On the whole, this is a sad situation: David C. Lindberg, (which is probably the major living scholar on the topic of medieval science), clearly states that "[Hypatia's] death had everything to do with local politics and virtually nothing to do with science".( See here, in page 9) But apparently this information cannot be in the article since Lindberg was not specifically referring to the film. Meanwhile, there are some reviews (such as the one I mentioned) specifically criticizing this and other inaccuracies, but it appears that they can't be used as well. -- Leinad-Z ( talk) 17:53, 10 February 2011 (UTC)