Catullus and Pop Culture

Every year I read a selection of Catullus' poetry with my year 10 class(es), and as part of their assessment I get them to do a presentation comparing one of Catullus poems to a film or song (or anything of their choosing really), to show how the themes and emotions of his poetry are expressed these days.

Here are some of the comparisons they made this year:

Catullus 3 is like Mufasa and Simba from The Lion King

Catullus 5 is like Don’t Matter, by Akon

Catullus 8 is like Gives You Hell, by All American Rejects and  Accustomed to her Face from My Fair Lady

Catullus 51 is like Edward from Big Fish and Lancelot from First Knight

Catullus 70 is like Hayley and Dillon from Modern Family, White Noise by the Living End and Your Love is a Lie, by Simple Plan

Catullus 72 is like Not Me, Not I, by Delta Goodrem and Gives You Hell, by All American Rejects

Catullus 85 is like Cher from Clueless, 7 Things by Miley Cyrus, Hate that I Love You by Rihanna and Love the Way You Lie by Eminem (featuring Rihanna, poor woman)

Catullus 86 is like Beauty in Ugly, by Jason Mraz, Nothin’ on You by B.o.B. and Stay Beautiful by Taylor Swift

Catullus 92 is like Cher and Josh from Clueless and Kevin and Jane from 27 Dresses

Obviously some of the comparisons work better than others. I've added a poll on the right of the ones I thought worked best that you can vote for over the next couple of weeks. If you think one of the comparisons that hasn't made it to the poll worked better, leave me a comment.

your favourite author

I've added a poll to my blog to let you vote for your favourite Roman author (you have to scroll down a bit to see it). I've only included the authors I've studied this year with my senior classes: Virgil, Cicero, Catullus, Horace and Ovid. If you vote, leave me a comment explaining who you voted for and why.

I had a similar poll set up ages ago, I don't remember what the figures were, but you can read a brief bio of each author as well as some of the comments here.

A new poll

My new poll is inspired by my visit to the theatre last week. The selection is fairly arbitrary, based upon my short-list of favourites from Ovid's Metamorphoses, and what I've read with my classes over the past year and a half. If I've left your favourite out write me a comment.

You can also watch some short cartoons based on some of these myths (and others) at this site.

I will be in New Zealand for the next week and a bit, and so won't have any new posts for a while.

Your favourite author

My new poll (thanks to all who voted in the last one) is in honour of my year 11 class, who are doing their exams at the moment. The five authors listed are those which we’ve studied during the course of the year. Feel free to vote- if you’re not sure who some of the authors are, here’s a quick bio of each one.

Ovid: a poet who found it hard to take much seriously. If Ovid were around today, he’d be the class clown with a brilliant wit, and would delight particularly in making fun of Catullus. All the girls would like him, but he would probably get a reputation as a bit of a player.

Virgil: Virgil wrote what is probably Rome’s greatest work of literature. He writes in a beautifully concise way, and is capable of evoking vivid images and powerful emotions with the shortest of phrases. If he attended St George Girls’ he would be the teacher’s pet and do Extension 2 English.

Livy: Livy wrote history, and lots of it. 142 books in fact. He, when he wrote, with an idea having been begun, in order to express it, long and complicated sentences, which seem to take forever to get to the point, whatever that was, and which make you forget what he was talking about in the first place, would use. Livy is the kind of guy who asks for another writing booklet before you’ve even finished reading the question.

Cicero: In my opinion Cicero is one of the smartest guys ever. Unfortunately he had a bit of an attitude problem. He would be the kind of guy who never stops telling you how good he is, and would probably dob in his friends for smoking at the train station.

Lucretius: A bit of an enigma, Lucretius wrote a philosophical poem about the nature of the universe. He would have been the quiet guy at school, who grows dreadlocks, goes to uni and takes nine years to do an arts degree. He would probably have enjoyed watching What the bleep do we know.

Catullus: if Catullus were around today, he’d wear a lot of black and would probably look something like this. He was an intense kind of guy, who fell hard for another man’s wife, and wrote a bunch of poems about the agony and the ecstasy of love.

[I realise you can't actually vote for Catullus in the poll, but I thought he was worth including anyway]