The old man and the minotaur: Ernest Hemingway as fictionalized celebrity

ABSTRACT

In the twenty-first century Ernest Hemingway – journalist, best-selling author, Pulitzer Prize winner, and Nobel Laureate – despite his literary achievements, is best known for the legacy of macho posturing and adventure seeking associated with his celebrity persona, a collection of disconnected ephemera constructed out of quotes (and misquotes), images, characters, caricatures, and parodies. Building on the theoretical work done by Richard Dyer, Leo Braudy, P. David Marshall, Graeme Turner, and Chris Rojek, this paper reads the characterisations of Hemingway in Midnight in Paris, as well as episodes from four television series, to explore the development of Hemingway’s persona over the past decade into a hybrid of character, caricature, and historical celebrity. Whether offering advice on how to be more ‘manly’ or assisting a group of time-travelling crime fighters defeat a minotaur in the catacombs of Paris, the pop culture idea of Hemingway today is as a fictionalised celebrity, the result of content creators appropriating, remediating, and fictionalising an historical figure to the point where the collective understanding of the individual is as a fictional character.

KEYWORDS:

• Celebrity
• cinema
• literature
• Hemingway

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Consider how much of the popular notion of King Richard III is based on Shakespeare’s depiction of him as having a hunchback, a characterisation that was disproven after the 2012 discovery of his bones under a parking lot in Leicester, England (NYT 4 February 2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Timothy Penner

Dr. Timothy Penner is an adjunct professor in the department of English, Theatre, Film & Media at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. His research involves celebrity authors, in particular the influence of cinema and television on the public persona of Ernest Hemingway