ugh! Empire: pollice recto
Jul. 13th, 2005 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerI just watched one episode of the ABC series "Empire". And I think I can definitely say that it was probably the most egregious waste of 45 minutes of my life in recent memory.
Again, I never understand why people in Hollywood feel they have to invent history, when real history has so much exciting detail. But that's just what these folks have done. And it's typical, hackneyed, mindless psuedo-historical garbage, too. I've seen Renaissance Festivals that had more history in them, which is a pretty searing indictment. Octavian kidnapped and made to work in a mine as a slave? An assassin who uses wolves and hawks and snakes to kill people ("he was trained to defeat his enemies in the arena with beasts" yeah, I'm sure that gladiators stood still to have snakes bite them...) and wears skins (and a headband to hold back his shaggy hair, that's de rigeur). A Republican Roman general shooting a recurve longbow from horseback? Mark Anthony having a party and then poisoning everyone (including Octavian) by arranging to have them bitten by asps? Oh, for crying out loud, what a lot of trash!
Other marvelous anachronisms include Octavian "coming up with" the idea that Rome should conquer and colonize the rest of the world (as if this hadn't been happening for decades at this point), Octavian demanding that the Senate recognize him as governor of "Germannia" (there was no Roman province of Germannia until over a hundred years later and, oh, Octavian *wooed* the Senate--he didn't *demand* anything, ever when he effectively became ruler of Rome), and everyone acting as if the *name* Caesar had already become a title (it hadn't, and didn't for another, oh century). Then there's the whole matter of the politics being depicted as the Senate being a bunch of weak and quavering "politicians" versus whoever the head general was (is this really a commentary on how Hollywood sees modern America?); of course, in reality, the civil war was being fought among political and personal factions, each of which had its representatives in the Senate, which (since, hello, there *was* no empire yet) was still the primary governing structure of Rome.
The writing is formulaic, the acting is mostly wooden and worthy of a late 1970s fantasy movie, and the costuming and physical culture veer from barely acceptable to frightful (in fact, a lot of them are probably left over from a 1970s fantasy movie too). Some of it is ahistorical, most of it is just nonsensical, and all of it is tripe.
I'm really disappointed with the New Yorker for recommending this. I would have hoped they had better taste. I certainly would never have watched something "historical" produced by America network television otherwise. Now I know better than to trust them in future. :-p
Again, I never understand why people in Hollywood feel they have to invent history, when real history has so much exciting detail. But that's just what these folks have done. And it's typical, hackneyed, mindless psuedo-historical garbage, too. I've seen Renaissance Festivals that had more history in them, which is a pretty searing indictment. Octavian kidnapped and made to work in a mine as a slave? An assassin who uses wolves and hawks and snakes to kill people ("he was trained to defeat his enemies in the arena with beasts" yeah, I'm sure that gladiators stood still to have snakes bite them...) and wears skins (and a headband to hold back his shaggy hair, that's de rigeur). A Republican Roman general shooting a recurve longbow from horseback? Mark Anthony having a party and then poisoning everyone (including Octavian) by arranging to have them bitten by asps? Oh, for crying out loud, what a lot of trash!
Other marvelous anachronisms include Octavian "coming up with" the idea that Rome should conquer and colonize the rest of the world (as if this hadn't been happening for decades at this point), Octavian demanding that the Senate recognize him as governor of "Germannia" (there was no Roman province of Germannia until over a hundred years later and, oh, Octavian *wooed* the Senate--he didn't *demand* anything, ever when he effectively became ruler of Rome), and everyone acting as if the *name* Caesar had already become a title (it hadn't, and didn't for another, oh century). Then there's the whole matter of the politics being depicted as the Senate being a bunch of weak and quavering "politicians" versus whoever the head general was (is this really a commentary on how Hollywood sees modern America?); of course, in reality, the civil war was being fought among political and personal factions, each of which had its representatives in the Senate, which (since, hello, there *was* no empire yet) was still the primary governing structure of Rome.
The writing is formulaic, the acting is mostly wooden and worthy of a late 1970s fantasy movie, and the costuming and physical culture veer from barely acceptable to frightful (in fact, a lot of them are probably left over from a 1970s fantasy movie too). Some of it is ahistorical, most of it is just nonsensical, and all of it is tripe.
I'm really disappointed with the New Yorker for recommending this. I would have hoped they had better taste. I certainly would never have watched something "historical" produced by America network television otherwise. Now I know better than to trust them in future. :-p
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no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 10:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 12:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 12:41 pm (UTC)I never understand why people in Hollywood feel they have to invent history, when real history has so much exciting detail.
Yes.
In an odd way, that's one of the things that bothered me about the recent LOTR movies.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 12:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-14 07:43 pm (UTC)"Steven was born in Texas in 1956 and graduated with high honors from the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied history and Classics."
http://www.stevensaylor.com/bio.html
The picture of him with the legionaries from the Legio II Augusta outside a Waterstones would have Peter in ecstacies.