Costuming the other on screen

This paper considers the role of costume in the depiction of ‘barbarians’, looking Eastwards to the Persians, as seen in The 300 Spartans (1962), 300 (2006) and Alexander (2004), and then to the West, focusing on the Celts and the Germans depicted in Centurion (2010), The Eagle (2011) and Barbarians (2020–22). It examines the ways in which costuming is exploited to manipulate audience attitudes towards these peoples, who are presented as a foreign ‘other’, but with a marked contrast between them. In the case of the Persians, their colourful clothing, luxurious fabrics, hairstyles and cosmetics mark them out as spoilt, pampered and effeminate, weakened and corrupted by their own riches. The Celts, on the other hand, in Centurion and The Eagle are lacking in civilization, depicted as rough, wild, primitive peoples who lack any kind of elegance or sophistication. Thus, the Persians are over-civilized and the Celts under-civilized, in contrast to the Classical world. In Barbarians, by contrast, the Germans are the heroes and therefore more attractive in appearance than the Romans. In every case the costuming sets up expectations regarding the virtue or vice of the characters, conditioning the spectator to admire or despise the non-Classical ‘other’.