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Abstract
Canonical interpretations and representations of Rome appear to be dependent on its image as the 'Eternal City'. This article presents these images as a dominant narrative that guides the 'archive' of the city's images. Drawing on theoretical concepts that threaten the constitution of such an archive, this article reads queer images of Rome as disturbances that go against the 'eternal' archiving principle. With reference to Roman Holiday, it illustrates the close intertwining of eternality in Rome with heteronormativity and reproductive futurity. This connection allows the reading of queer texts and images, such as Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho and Pier Paolo Pasolini's novel Petrolio, as what we call 'Roman fever', that is, the deactivation of 'eternality' as the central driver of Rome's archive.
Keywords: archive fever, cinematic Rome, Coliseum, eternality, Pier Paolo Pasolini, queer theory, reproductive futurism, Roman Holiday
- Which of the cities did Your Highness enjoy the most?
- Each, in its own way, was unforgettable. It would be difficult to... Rome!
By all means, Rome. I will cherish my visit here in memory as long as I live.
Princess Ann, Roman Holiday
In one of the more famous sequences of Roman Holiday (William Wyler, 1953), American journalist Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck) guides Anya Smith/Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn) around Rome on a moped, taking in the most famous and identifiable of the city's monuments, with photographer Irving Radovitch (Eddie Albert) in tow. The tour moves chronologically from classical Rome's Coliseum, Theatre of Marcellus and the Mouth of Truth, to the Renaissance Villa Medici, Baroque Spanish Steps and the imposing Monument to Victor Emmanuel II. The unmistakable imagery of this 'holiday' in the Italian capital conforms with a typical notion of Rome as that quintessential urban palimpsest that allows us to trace and unpick our way back through two and a half millennia of history. And yet, rather than existing as partially erased fragments upon a broader, reworked palimpsest that has its own contemporary use, the remnants of Rome's history are depicted as dominant and synecdochic, and all that lies between is elided in the nimble and cavalier cuts of the film's montage. In other words, the complexity of Rome's multistable palimpsest is here made static. As such Wyler's film...