“philip never saw babylon”: 360-degree vision and the historical epic in the digital era kirsten moana thompson

Roland Barthes described CinemaScope, the exciting new widescreen technology of the 1950s with its “stretched-out frontality” as akin to putting the spectator on the Balcony of History, at arm’s length to the widescreen image.1 Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004) literalizes this spatialization of history in Ptolemy’s prologue.2 Following an opening fl ashback to Alexander’s death, the fi lm begins with Ptolemy (Anthony Hopkins), as an old man, standing on his balcony and gazing out over the city of Alexandria, as he dictates the story of Alexander the Great. Like the fi lm itself, Ptolemy’s balcony offers panoramic vistas, as we gaze with him out onto the Alexandrine harbor, with its theamata or “spectacular sight,” the famous Lighthouse of Pharos.3 As Ptolemy refl ects on Alexander, he refers to him as a “Colossus,” thus linking the great general with another theamata, the Colossus of Rhodes, and, by extension, suggesting that the subject and form of Alexander will also be a wondrous spectacle.