Retro Friday : Old posts updated (originally posted on January 23, 2015)
In 2016, I'll say this : the page has improved...somewhat...clearly because of my dedicated input. A few years ago, the page was a complete mess, now not as much but it's still very condescending and filled with errors. And they still confuse Sword & Sandal with PEPLUM, which was something I specifically mentioned to them back in the da day. Today, they correctly list the genre under PEPLUM but the confusion between the differences still persists.
I've been doing this blog since 2010, which is 6 years now. I might take a break some day but for now it's still going strong.
I was often critiqued by others that the list of films included under the PEPLUM umbrella was too wide or inclusive. I've always disagreed with them and now today, the PEPLUM page lists almost all of those films that I've been saying they were part of the genre. For example, YOR : HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE. I've always listed it as a PEPLUM even though there are sci-fi elements to it. Now the PEPLUM page has YOR listed. Aha! Victory.
Their list is still pretty much incomplete but then if you're interested in the subject you can visit my blog for answers and not the Wiki page. As an example, they still don't list Arabian Adventures of the 1940s as part of the genre, which I've been doing since day one. The sticking point for them is that, according to their way of thinking, PEPLUM means Italian or European films while films produced by Hollywood shouldn't be included. It would be too condescending for those high quality Hollywood films. The Wiki page still holds on to this erroneous, xenophobic and elitist thinking. Oh well...
There are several books out there on the subject, so some might say the slight improvements of the Wiki page were influenced by these books...well, no. Many of the books are good but not great and like I've been saying for a long time, almost all of them are incomplete. They don't list Arabian films, CONAN films or Sword & Sorcery films of the 1980s, which were often made in Italy, often with the same actors or crew from the Golden Era. The list of oversights goes on and on. Most of these books are not awful by any means (while one are downright dreadful). They just don't cover the entire subject like my blog does.
So the 'improvements' at the Wikipedia page were obviously influenced by this blog, a blog they don't want to mention anywhere as reference.
Anyway, here's the post from last year :
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If you search 'Sword and Sandal' at Google like above example and click the first link it'll bring you to the following page (below) which says PEPLUM film genre. Confusing? Not as much as before : Before the name of the page was Sword and Sandal but in the rest of the page they would only use the word PEPLUM to explain the genre. Previously the page was even more confusing but they've made a few changes (recommended by me ; see the Talk section of the page) where I told them how confusing the page says Sword & Sandal but the text only uses PEPLUM.
The page is very condescending and insulting, and full of mistakes.
It's impossible to add anything to it since the hall monitors there categorically refuse any outside input aside from those blessed by them.
The stupid part of the page is they keep saying the PEPLUM genre is cheap knock-offs of Hollywood films when the genre itself was born in Europe. Also, since the whole page is devoid of any logic, how can HERCULES starring Steve Reeves be a cheap Hollywood knock off when that film was the first Hercules film ever made in film history anywhere around the world? How can HERCULES be a knock off when films based on Greek mythology didn't even exist in Hollywood before 1958?
Some other illogical parts of the page mentioned below regarding copyrighted material.
So as a PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT to PEPLUM fans out there: Do not visit the WIKIPEDIA page on the PEPLUM genre.
If you think it's sour grapes or jealousy my blog gets over 1000 hits a day. It's still the most popular website on the internet on the PEPLUM genre. So no it's not that. A more respectful page of the PELUM would be great but alas the one currently available is nothing like that.
Repost from a previous post:
A few years ago I tried to submit my blog to the Sword and Sandal page at Wikipedia. I created an account and logged in and made a few changes and added the link to my blog. Someone monitoring the page removed all my information and said quite clearly that content found at external links have to be copyrighted. I told them that the links listed (see below in red) all fully violate that copyright clause and yet the links are still present today.
Not only that but they actually included links to video distributors whom sell public domain films but of the many titles they sell many of them are not in the public domain.
Also, I've been following the Sword and Sandal page for years now and it's obvious that whoever maintains that page gets info from this blog as the listing changed/improved continuously as my blog kept on going. I never took any info from that page as it was filled with mistakes.
Keep that in mind the next time you go to Wikipedia.
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