Sun Jul 03, 2005
SUMMER BOMB
ABC'S EMPIRE
If you are looking for an authentic slice of the the original Roman Empire, you won’t find it in the new ABC series, EMPIRE.
Once Hollywood gets its mitts on a Classical Theme, it destroys the original, substituting and infusing it with a dose of pandering modernity. Pandering to whom? Why the lowest common taste of today’s public, of course, with a dollop of gratuitous sex and violence to tempt milord and milady away from their favorite cable line up.
Trouble is, in many cases, had the brain-dead hollywoodies made any kind of effort to read what Roman writers themselves had to say about certain of their earlier emperors, it would provide scandal and rumor so salacious, so rotten that even the jaded modern producers would have to exercise self-censorship long before air time.
The ABC effort is typical. It views like a soap-opera. I watched the initial two hours and was completely bored by the treatment of the circumstances surrounding the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. Historical events are twisted to fit, I assume, time available between commercial breaks.
The aftermath of that Senatorial murder is a good example. According to Caesar’s biographer and William Shakespeare, who relied heavily of Suetonius’ LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS, there were two speeches at the Dictator’s funeral. The first by his beloved almost son, Junius Brutus, the snake who betrayed him, and the other by Marcus Antonius (a young Marlon Brando in the ‘50’s movie whose viewing still substitutes for high school reading assignments). The latter oration (Shakespeare’s, “Friends, Romans, and Countrymen, lend me your ears”.) so inflamed the urban mob that the conspirators, Caesar’s murderers, were forced to flee from Rome where they were defeated a year or so later in Greece by a coalition army led by the battle-hardened Antonius and the inexperienced Octavian,
ABC’s version is a thoroughly muddled affair. I won’t watch the ensuing episodes and suggest you do not as well.
Tomorrow yours truly will spend a good part of the day exercising his Second Amendment rights. Nothing quite like a trip to our rifle/pistol range with some like-minded friends. These are not ‘gun nuts’ in the sense that his rotundity Edward Kennedy might use the phrase, but people very much like myself filled with wisdom, discernment, and an appreciation of our American traditions.
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