TARİHSEL EPİK FİLMLERLE RIZA ÜRETİMİ TEMSİLLERİ ÜZERİNE BİR DEĞERLENDİRME: GLADYATÖR FİLMLERİ ÖRNEĞİ
AN EVALUATION OF REPRESENTATIONS OF CONSENT PRODUCTION IN HISTORICAL EPIC FILMS: THE EXAMPLE OF GLADIATOR FILMS

Summary/Abstract: Historical epic films emotionally connect the audience to a specific sense of historicity and identity through realistic battle scenes, savior or founding hero narratives, and triumphant narratives. Beyond the pleasure afforded by cinematic aesthetics, the historical epic film genre can also convey common-sense political messages such as justified liberation struggles, legitimate leadership, and national unity. The big-budget blockbuster characteristics of historical epic films within the Hollywood film industry, coupled with their mass distribution network, further enhance their contribution to the global hegemonic narrative. This study examines the function of historical epic films in the production of consent using textual analysis, drawing on Gramsci and Althusser's concepts of consent production. The films Gladiator (Ridley Scott - 2000) and Gladiator II (Ridley Scott - 2024) were selected as examples. The analysis was conducted within the framework of mythic framing, affect, naturalization, and legitimacy production. In Gladiator (2000), consent is universalized through a discourse of legitimacy constructed through the discourse of the restoration of republican virtue. In Gladiator II (2024), it is observed that the film is constantly reproduced through spectacle industry and security discourses. Mythic frameworks, interpellations, rituals, and family motifs are used in the films to produce consent. The apparatus of oppression is a device made more visible in Gladiator II. Within the framework of Gramsci's approach to consent, the mechanism of universalization is seen to shift from the concept of virtue in the first film to the concepts of stability, security, and equality in the second film. Within the framework of Althusser's approach to consent, it is observed that consent, provided through interpellations and rituals within the scope of the state's ideological apparatus in the first film, is constructed through spectacle industry and security policies in the second film. The study concludes that the mechanism of consent operates within the same framework in Gladiator (2000) and Gladiator II (2024), but its conceptualization differs.

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