Cultural depictions of Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, has become a worldwide cultural icon generally associated with tactical brilliance, ambition and political power. His distinctive features and costume have made him a very recognizable figure in popular culture.

He has been portrayed in many works of fiction, his depiction varying greatly with the author's perception of the historical character. In the 1927 film Napoleon, young general Bonaparte is portrayed as a heroic visionary. On the other hand, he has been occasionally reduced to a stock character, depicted as short and bossy, sometimes comically so. The historical accuracy of Napoleon being short is questionable, but he certainly was not as short as commonly depicted.

Books

• Napoleon is an important character in Tolstoy's classic novel, War and Peace, where considerable space is devoted to Tolstoy's interpretation of his historical role. He consequently also appears in the adaptations and films of this novel, listed in the following section.

• Napoleon is a character in George Orwell's Animal Farm, being a pig who strongly resembles Joseph Stalin.

• Bernard Cornwell's novel Sharpe's Devil features a meeting between Napoleon, and the fictional Richard Sharpe.

• He is featured in the manga Eikou no Napoleon – Eroica, written by the manga artist Riyoko Ikeda.

• Napoleon features prominently in the BBC Doctor Who Past Doctor Adventure World Game, where the Second Doctor must avert a plot to change history so that Napoleon is victorious. In an alternate timeline created by the assassination of the Duke of Wellington prior to Waterloo, Napoleon is persuaded to march on to Russia after the victory of Waterloo, but he dies shortly afterwards, his empire having become so overextended that the various countries collapse back into the separate nations they were before, thus degenerating into a state of perpetual warfare (Although this situation is made worse due to the intervention of the Doctor's old enemies the Players)

• C. S. Forester's Hornblower series of novels are mostly set during the Napoleonic Wars, in particular book 9 of the series, Commodore Hornblower focusing on the French invasion of Russia and the subsequent defence of Riga from the period of 1812 onwards, and book 10 Lord Hornblower dealing with events in France up to the defeat of Napoleon by Wellington at Waterloo.

Film and television

Note: the name immediately following the title of the film is the name of the actor portraying Napoleon

• Napoleon (1918) Louis Feuillade — France/black & white/silent
• Napoleon (1920) Bud Fisher — USA/animation/short
• Napoleon (1927) Albert Dieudonné — France/black & white/epic silent, directed by Abel Gance
• A Royal Divorce (1938) Pierre Blanchar
• Désirée (1954) Marlon Brando — USA/color, directed byHenry Koster
• Napoleon (1955) — France/color, with Daniel Gélin as young general Bonaparte and Raymond Pellegrin as the older emperor, directed by Sacha Guitry
• War and Peace(1956) Herbert Lom — USA/Italian, produced by Dino De Laurentiis, directed by King Vidor
• Napoleon Bunny-Part (1956) — A Merrie Melodies short directed by Friz Freleng where Napoleon matches wits (unsuccessfully) with Bugs Bunny
• Austerlitz (1960) Pierre Mondy — France/colour, directed by Abel Gance
• War and Peace (1968) Vladislav Strzhelchik — USSR Sergei Bondarchuk
• "Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian a 2009 film features Napoleon Bonaparte as one of the villains that groups with Kahmunrah, Al Capone, and Ivan the Terrible."
• "In the TV Film Fairy OddBaby, Jorgen Von Extrangle proposes the name Napoleon to name Poof The Baby.
• Waterloo (1970) Rod Steiger — A Soviet-Italian production produced by Dino De Laurentiis and Sergei Bondarchuk. The film attempts to even-sidedly depict the Battle of Waterloo and the events that led to it, abstaining from either wholly endorsing or condemning Napoleon or the English commander, Wellington.
• Napoleon & Josephine (1987) Armand Assante — USA miniseries on ABC
• Napóleon (1989) Péter Rudolf — Hungarian TV movie
• Napoléon et l'Europe (1991) Jean-François Stévenin — French TV series
• Napoleon (2002) Christian Clavier — A&E miniseries based on series of books by Max Gallo, directed by Yves Simoneau
• Monsieur N (2003) Philippe Torreton
• Stanley Kubrick worked on a film project about Napoleon; he never made it and put all his research efforts into the Academy Award-winning film Barry Lyndon.
• In Time Bandits (1981), Ian Holm plays a height-obsessed Napoleon.
• Napoleon appears as a character in the time traveling comedy film Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, wherein he discovers a fondness for ice cream and waterslides.
• Napoleon is a recurring character, played by Verne Troyer, in the 2000 syndicated television series Jack of All Trades.
• The Yu-Gi-Oh! GX character Vice-Chancellor Bonaparte is based on the cliché Napoleon: he is short (see the debate on Napoleon's height below), pudgy, French, has a short temper, and dresses similarly to Napoleon.
• An animated caricature of Napoleon appeared as a semi-regular on the Warner Bros. series Histeria! Here, he spoke like Hervé Villechaize, who also was French and short in stature. Napoleon hates to be reminded of his short stature (in the episode "When Time Collides!", Miss Information mistakes him for a leprechaun), and he also likes to play the tambourine, which he keeps behind his coat (hence why he keeps his hand in it, as he states in "Great Heroes of France").
• A clone of Napoleon is an occasional minor character in the MTV series Clone High. He is extremely diminutive, somewhat disliked, and has a management position at T.G.I. Chili's. Abe Lincoln claims he has some kind of complex.
• Napoleon appeared in an episode of Robot Chicken as Napoleon Bonamite, a cross between Bonaparte and Napoleon Dynamite.

Music and songs

• The Tori Amos song "Josephine" from her 1999 album To Venus and Back is sung from the viewpoint of Napoleon during his unsuccessful invasion of Russia.
• The Mark Knopfler song "Done with Bonaparte" from his 1996 album Golden Heart is sung from the viewpoint of a soldier in Napoleon's army. The song recalls the soldier's many battles serving in Napoleon's Grande Armee.
• The Ani DiFranco song "Napoleon" satirizes the desire to continuously "conquer"; more specifically musicians who sign with big labels, thus employing "an army of suits" in order to "make a killing" rather than just "make a living".
• Swedish Pop group ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest 1974 with the song "Waterloo," which uses the battle as a metaphor for a person surrendering to love similar to how Napoleon surrendered at Waterloo.
• The song "Viva la Vida" by Coldplay is loosely based on Napoleon's reign.
• During the Napoleonic Wars, a nursery rhyme warned children that Bonaparte ravenously ate naughty people.
• Bright Eyes recorded a song called "Napoleon's Hat" for Lagniappe, an album released by Saddle Creek Records to raise funds for the Red Cross' Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.
• The Charlie Sexton song "Impressed" references Napoleon and Josephine (from Pictures for Pleasure)

Computer and Video Games

The campaigns of Napoleon have been depicted in the sixth installment of the Total War (series) series Napoleon: Total War. Player have a chance to follow Napoleon's Italian, Egyptian or Russian campaigns.

Other references in popular culture

• Psychonauts, a video game developed by Double Fine Productions, features a level in which the player is to aid the future kin of Napoleon Bonaparte in a board game which was based on the battle of Waterloo.

Napoleon's height

A caricature depicting a diminutive Napoleon

British propaganda of the time depicted Napoleon as of smaller than average height (see contemporary caricature right) and the image of him as a small man persists in modern Britain. His actual height was about 1.7m (5 feet 7 inches), average height for the time or slightly taller. Confusion has sometimes arisen because of different values for the French inch (pouce) of the time (2.7 cm) and for the Imperial inch (2.54 cm).

Napoleon's nickname of le petit caporal has added to the confusion, as some non-Francophones have mistakenly interpreted petit by its literal meaning of "small". In fact, it is an affectionate term reflecting on his camaraderie with ordinary soldiers. Petit ami and petite amie are French for "boyfriend" and "girlfriend", and mon petit chou ["my little cabbage"] is a term of affection.

Napoleon also surrounded himself with the soldiers of his elite guard, who were usually six feet or taller.

Whether truly short or not, Napoleon's name has been lent to the Napoleon complex, a colloquial term describing an alleged type of inferiority complex which is said to affect some people who are physically short. The term is used more generally to describe people who are driven by a perceived handicap to overcompensate in other aspects of their lives.

Napoleonic delusions of grandeur

Napoleon Bonaparte is one of the most famous humans in the Western world. As delusional patients sometimes believe themselves to be an important or grandiose figure (see Delusion), he was a notable object of such delusions.

This idea has often been used in popular culture:

• In the 1922 film Mixed Nuts, Stan Laurel plays a book salesman whose only volume for sale is a biography of Napoleon. When the character receives a blow to the head, he comes to believe that he is Napoleon and is subsequently admitted to a mental institution.

This cliché has itself been parodied:

• The award-winning video game Psychonauts features a mental patient locked in an obsessive mindgame with Napoleon, who is fighting for his mind.

• In the Bugs Bunny film Napoleon Bunny Part, the actual Napoleon is dragged away by psychiatric attendants, who believe he is delusional.

• In The Emperor's New Clothes, Ian Holm plays Napoleon who stumbles into the grounds of an asylum and finds himself surrounded by other "Napoleons" - he cannot reveal his identity for fear of being grouped with the deluded. Holm also played a less-than-serious Napoleon in the 1981 film Time Bandits.

• The Discworld novel Making Money features a character who believes himself to be Lord Vetinari, imitating Vetinari's mannerisms and entertaining delusions of grandeur. It is later revealed that the local hospital has an entire ward for people with the same delusion, where they engage in competitions to determine who is the "real" Vetinari.

• In a episode of cult 1960s British TV sci-fi show The Prisoner called The Girl Who Was Death, which unusually for the series was a light-hearted comedy tale parodying the spy thriller genre, the villain believed he was Napoleon and acted accordingly, at one point asking protagonist Number 6 (Patrick McGoohan): "Are you the Duke of Wellington?".

References

fr:Légende napoléonienne