What actor should play this person in a movie about their life? In my classes on ancient Judaism, I ask students this question a lot. It’s a phenomenon called fancasting – where fans suggest actors who should play characters in their favorite book series or in other media. You can find examples of fancasting across the internet – on Reddit, Goodreads, and Twitter, among other social media sites. And while students enjoy connecting these ancient figures with modern celebrity actors, fancasting in the classroom serves a number of broader pedagogical purposes.
Fancasting can help students think about these ancient figures as real. When students read ancient texts by Josephus, for example, especially in the relatively old translations available, they spend their academic energy mostly trying to understand the content of what he’s saying. It can be hard for them to think about the person who wrote these texts as a flesh-and-blood human who lived, breathed, slept, and married (four times!). Asking students to propose real actors – whose personal lives are often splashed across the tabloids – to play him in a movie brings the attention back to Josephus himself, and opens the door to broader conversations about who Josephus was and his own goals and biases in writing these narratives.
Fancasting thus makes students think about the complexities of ancient people’s personalities as seen through their writings or the writings about them. After assigning some of Josephus’ own writings and Malka Simkovich’s chapter about him in her 2018 book Discovering Second Temple Literature: The Scriptures and Stories and Shaped Early Judaism, I put students in small groups and asked them to come up with a pitch for who should play Josephus in a movie. They had to identify an actor (either an actual actor, or a role that they have played) that they felt would be appropriate, and come up with an argument as to why that person should play the ancient Jewish historian. They then had to present their pitch to the rest of the class.
Their answers were wonderful, and also highlighted different aspects of what we might know about Josephus. One group suggested Michael Scott, the extremely awkward and self-serving boss with a heart of gold played by Steve Carrell in the television series The Office. Another group offered Captain Jack Sparrow (a character played by Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise) as a possibility, the ridiculous pirate captain who is adaptable to whatever life throws at him and manages to survive all kinds of fantastical experiences. One group suggested a parallel between Josephus and Scar from the Lion King, a driven character who is willing to sacrifice others to achieve his own goals. In class, I noted that these latter two suggestions also point to the homosociality and complex ideas of gender inherent in much of Josephus’ life. Several groups offered the names of older actors whose faces really say that they have lived, such as Liam Neeson, George Clooney, and Russell Crowe. Finally, another group suggested Lin Manuel Miranda’s Alexander Hamilton, a driven man, an immigrant in a new country, writing his way into history. We then connected each of these suggestions to different events or experiences in Josephus’ own life. This discussion was fun and engaging, but it also generated a robust picture of what we can know about Josephus and led into a rich conversation about how much we can actually trust his accounts of historical events.
Fancasting can bring to light aspects of who these ancient peoples seemed to be that might otherwise have escaped popular notice. When I asked students to fancast Berenice, the daughter of Herod Agrippa and co-ruler of Judea during the Great Revolt, someone suggested the Iranian-American actress Shohreh Aghdashloo. They cited her gravitas, her beauty, and also her age. Berenice was not a young woman during the tumultuous events of the 60s and 70s, and in fact, her age may have played a part in the Roman Senate’s resistance to her relationship with Titus. Most modern media depictions of Berenice depict her as a young woman, which you can see by googling images from the multiple operas and ballets about her love affair with Titus. Yet through fancasting, students were able to think critically about what ancient sources really say about Berenice, and what she might have actually been like behind those sources.
Many of my students have grown up with fancasting, and so they are aware that no one actor is going to embody everything they know about a fictional character or a historical figure. The act of fancasting can illuminate particular aspects of these ancient people, but students are able to reflect on both similarities and differences between the modern actors and the historical figures. They are able to use fancasting as a tool to critically explore issues of race, gender, and – as in the example of Scar above – even species.
I’ll be honest – fancasting is fun. It allows students to use their imaginations and creativity in small groups and as a class. Fancasting activates students’ prior knowledge of celebrities and media and can encourage even the quietest student to speak. It can be done as a five minute “check-in” with students or as part of a larger scaffolded group activity over an entire class period. In these days of teaching through Zoom, students can screenshare and integrate all kinds of visuals into their fancast pitches, sharing their ideas with their classmates in an engaging way. But fancasting is also a visceral reminder to students that – like modern movies – the ancient world was filled with drama, romance, horror, and laugh-out-loud comedy.
Sara Ronis is an associate professor of theology at St. Mary's University TX.