Cultural depictions of Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, has become a worldwide cultural icon symbolizing strength, genius, and military and political power. Since his death, countless towns, streets, ships, and even cartoon characters have been named after him. At the same time, however, he has become a cliché and a comic figure in popular culture. Today this caricature of Napoleon often overshadows the real historical figure.

However during the Napoleonic Wars he was taken more seriously by the English as a threatening tyrant, poised to invade their island. A nursery rhyme warned children that Bonaparte ravenously ate naughty people. His contracted last name 'Boney' became 'Bogey' and then 'bogeyman'.

The stock character of Napoleon is generally comically short, indignant, and bossy; the literal embodiment of the "petty tyrant". The historical accuracy of Napoleon being short is questionable, but he certainly was not as short as commonly depicted. He is often portrayed wearing a comically large bicorne hat, often with a big 'N' badge, and shown with one hand tucked inside his coat as in the famous portrait of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David.

Books

 * Napoleon is a character in George Orwell's Animal Farm, 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.

Film and television

 * Napoleon (1918) Louis Feuillade - France/black&white/silent
 * Napoleon (1920) Bud Fisher - USA/Animation/short
 * Napoleon (1927) Albert Dieudonné - France/black&white/epic silent Abel Gance
 * Napoleon (1955) Sacha Guitry - France/color/with Orson Welles, Raymond Pellegrin
 * War and Peace (1956) Herbert Lom - USA/Italian production Dino De Laurentiis, King Vidor
 * Austerlitz (1960) Pierre Mondy - Abel Gance
 * War and Peace (1968) - Soviet film, Sergei Bondarchuk
 * Waterloo (1970) Rod Steiger - Dino De Laurentiis/Sergei Bondarchuk, Soviet-Italian production. Film attempts to even-sidedly depict the Battle of Waterloo and the events that led to it. The film abstains 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.


 * He 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 in 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.


 * In the series Robot Chicken, Jon Heder (who played Napoleon Dynamite), voiced Napoleon Bonamite. A cross between Napoleon Dynamite's personality and Bonaparte's outfit, life, and setting.


 * 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").


 * In the famous Iranian novel, later turned into a successful TV show, My Uncle Napoleon, the main character, Daaee Jaan, loves Napoleon so much that he starts to believe he is him.


 * 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 appears in the Terry Gilliam film Time Bandits, endlessly reciting the heights of very short but highly eminent people (although whether he himself was short is the subject of some debate - see below).


 * Johnny Whitaker played the half-title role of Napoleon in Jodie Foster's first film Napoleon and Samantha (1972)

Music

 * 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 di Franco 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".


 * Napoleon XIV was the pseudonym of comic singer Jerry Samuels, who sang They're Coming to Take Me Away Ha-Haaa! from the point of view of a person about to be sent to an insane asylum.


 * French pop/rock band Phoenix recorded a song called "Napoleon Says".

Napoleon's height
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. However, because the French inch of the time equalled 2.7 centimetres, while the Imperial inch is 2.54 centimeters, some have argued he was 1.68m and others 1.58m. This equates to average height for the time or slightly shorter. Napoleon's height was put at around 5 ft 2 ins by three French sources (his valet Constant, General Gourgaud, and Francesco Antommarchi at Napoleon's autopsy) which on the French scale equals around 1.68m. Two English sources (Andrew Darling and John Foster) put his height at around 5 ft 7 ins, equivalent, on the Imperial scale, to 1.70m. This would have made him around average height for a Frenchman of the time. Nonetheless, some historians have claimed Napoleon would have been measured with a British measure at his autopsy, since he was under British control at St Helena, implying the 5 ft 2 ins is an Imperial measure, equal to about 1.58 meters. On the other hand, Francesco Antommarchi, Napoleon's personal physician, despised the English, considered their touch "polluting," and may never have used their yardstick to measure his emperor. 

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 petit 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.


 * In Asterix and the Big Fight, one of the druid Psychoanalytix’s patients has adopted Napoleon typical posture and a bicorne. The nurse comments that no one knows who he thinks he is.


 * In 1966 Napoleon topped the American charts when recording engineer Jerry Samuels renamed himself Napoleon XIV for his record "They're Coming to Take Me Away Ha-Haaa!", a song with a theme of mental illness which featured ambulance sirens in the background. He also wrote another less popular song titled "Doin' the Napoleon".


 * In the 1968 episode "The Girl Who Was Death" of the television series The Prisoner, there are several mad scientist villains who appear dressed as Napoleon.


 * In one episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, there is an insane asylum with wards of people organized by delusion—there's the Napoleon Ward, and the King Richard III Ward. In another episode, Napoleon was credited as one of many famous people (including Julius Caesar) who liked to pretend to be mice.


 * In the film Highlander III, Connor MacLeod uses a patient who believes himself to be Napoleon to escape a psychiatric ward, MacLeod pretends to be one of Napoleon's soldiers to convince him to help him.


 * In the sci-fi cartoon Futurama, Bender pretends to be a singing, banjo-playing Napoleon in order to fit in at an insane asylum in the episode Insane in the Mainframe.


 * The video game Psychonauts features an inmate named Fred Bonaparte in an insane asylum who is a direct descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte and has multiple personality disorder which was the end result of a massive inferiority complex he developed. Half of him knows of his real identity and the other half thinks he is Napoleon.

Parodies of the cliche
This cliché has itself been parodied:


 * 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.

"Napoleon" as a first name
While the popularity of "Napoleon" as a first name never equaled that of other famous conquerors such as Alexander, it does occasionally occur. Salvadoran President José Napoleón Duarte and Florida Governor Napoleon Bonaparte Broward was named after the emperor.

Fictional characters named Napoleon include Napoleon 'Bony' Bonaparte, an Australian aboriginal detective created by the writer Arthur Upfield, Napoleon Dynamite, and Napoleon Solo, a spy from the novel, film and television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E..