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Apr. 9th, 2011 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* "The issue of being shocked, appalled and horrified." (contains triggers): http://www.sparkindarkness.com/2011/04/issue-of-being-shocked-appalled-and.html
* Dead to Me was fluffy pleasure right through. I'm on to a short story collection needs returning soon.
* Being Human: I thought they were going to sell out, and they didn't. I expect there's going to be a lot of screaming over this finale. As someone who loves the show and the characters, this was absolutely how it needed to go. It was intense and it hurt, but it was right and I was begging them to do it by the end.
* The thing people forget is how young Nero and Caligula were when handed control of the Empire. How many teenagers have the self discipline and self control to handle that degree of wealth and power? Yet Nero was Emperor at Seventeen. Look how badly adults handle the sort of wealth and power our current system gives to folks like the Koch brothers. Now imagine they had direct political control of an Empire stretching from Palestine and Egypt to Spain and Britain and the complete lack of any legal authority to put a check on whatever desires they had. Now give them the celebrity of a rock star and have people tell them they are Gods on earth. Of course it went badly. Caligula was in his mid-twenties, but had a protracted high fever that very likely caused brain damage. Before the long high fever he was about average for an Emperor, afterwards he was very clearly mentally ill and lacking entirely in impulse control or an ability to see how his actions might have consequences. The really extreme things you hear about like the incest and the horse senator are after the fever damaged his brain.
Fictional depictions of them seldom capture their youth and context. Instead of a brutal teenaged thug and a brain damaged twentisomething who's father was murdered by another relative for being too competent and raised by a mother still furious over that assassination, during the dangerous and bloody palace intrigues under Tiberius, and spent formative years imprisoned with his sisters; you generally get a middle aged lecher and a gay stereotype.
I am not saying we should white wash their characters. I am saying we should depict them as they were instead of falling back on comic stereotypes. Nero was a scary bastard. He reigned 14 years or so, and yes, towards the end he was overweight and middle aged, but when is the last time you saw an image of him as emperor at seventeen, roving the city at night with his entourage, beating up citizens for fun? when is the last time you saw Caligula, darling of the troops, or Caligula trying desperately to put the government back together after it had been gutted by the purges and strife of the previous reign, only to suffer serious brain injury that sent him and the government spiraling out of control.
It just seems lazy to me that all we see are the same depictions that carry none of the real horror and nuance.
* Dead to Me was fluffy pleasure right through. I'm on to a short story collection needs returning soon.
* Being Human: I thought they were going to sell out, and they didn't. I expect there's going to be a lot of screaming over this finale. As someone who loves the show and the characters, this was absolutely how it needed to go. It was intense and it hurt, but it was right and I was begging them to do it by the end.
* The thing people forget is how young Nero and Caligula were when handed control of the Empire. How many teenagers have the self discipline and self control to handle that degree of wealth and power? Yet Nero was Emperor at Seventeen. Look how badly adults handle the sort of wealth and power our current system gives to folks like the Koch brothers. Now imagine they had direct political control of an Empire stretching from Palestine and Egypt to Spain and Britain and the complete lack of any legal authority to put a check on whatever desires they had. Now give them the celebrity of a rock star and have people tell them they are Gods on earth. Of course it went badly. Caligula was in his mid-twenties, but had a protracted high fever that very likely caused brain damage. Before the long high fever he was about average for an Emperor, afterwards he was very clearly mentally ill and lacking entirely in impulse control or an ability to see how his actions might have consequences. The really extreme things you hear about like the incest and the horse senator are after the fever damaged his brain.
Fictional depictions of them seldom capture their youth and context. Instead of a brutal teenaged thug and a brain damaged twentisomething who's father was murdered by another relative for being too competent and raised by a mother still furious over that assassination, during the dangerous and bloody palace intrigues under Tiberius, and spent formative years imprisoned with his sisters; you generally get a middle aged lecher and a gay stereotype.
I am not saying we should white wash their characters. I am saying we should depict them as they were instead of falling back on comic stereotypes. Nero was a scary bastard. He reigned 14 years or so, and yes, towards the end he was overweight and middle aged, but when is the last time you saw an image of him as emperor at seventeen, roving the city at night with his entourage, beating up citizens for fun? when is the last time you saw Caligula, darling of the troops, or Caligula trying desperately to put the government back together after it had been gutted by the purges and strife of the previous reign, only to suffer serious brain injury that sent him and the government spiraling out of control.
It just seems lazy to me that all we see are the same depictions that carry none of the real horror and nuance.