"Gladiator"
Starring Russell Crowe
155 minutes
Rated R
1999

Here's an old movie about days of yore with a strong likelihood of being 
reactionary--glorifying kings and fighting over causes that are today no longer 
progressive.

In "Gladiator," it so happens that the emperor is evil incarnate. The viewer 
learns accurately how politicians manipulate the public by watching Commodus 
become emperor. Evenso, the father of evil emperor Commodus, Marcus Aurelius 
(sometimes referred to as Caesar in the movie) comes off looking better.

In doing research on the actual Roman history behind this movie, MIM found the 
standard view that the emperor depicted was a decadent man, who led Rome into a 
restoration of the gladiating abolished by his father. We see Commodus killing 
his father, receiving blame for bribery of corrupt officials, imprisoning his 
sister, considering raping her for children of proper royal blood, putting on 
bigger and bigger gladiator fights to the death, setting up crooked fights and 
having no time for detailed policy study--all of which may remind the people of 
Nepal in 2005 fighting their god-king of some members of the royal family. Yet 
at the same time, we should know that within a certain logic of an emperor's 
family, it was all very possible--and thus attributable to the flawed political 
system and not the individual. 

Not concerned with greater affairs of the state, the emperor himself took part 
in the fighting as a gladiator to win the public's acclaim. There is some 
justification for depicting Commodus this way in actual Roman history.

Historians have tended to argue that Rome's expansion and disciplining of the 
so-called barbarians was progressive. Hence, the appearance of a joker like 
Commodus has pointed historians to the collapse of the Roman Empire and a 
descent into pre-civilized life. The hero and soon-to-be-slave played by Russell 
Crowe "Maximus" says: "I've seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal, 
cruel and dark." He refers to Rome as the light.

MIM is queasy about the impact of this film on real life, because Anglo 
imperialism has no progressive role to play in relation to any supposed 
barbarians today. Probably the last chance for a serious emperor to bring 
progress was Napoleon. Today the imperialists themselves are stagnating and have 
nothing new to bring to the table except the latest pornographic trend sought by 
the Charles Graners and Lynndie Englands torturing Iraqis.

It takes us very little imagination to turn this movie upside-down in our minds. 
The opening scenes show the supposedly good king directing battle against the 
so-called barbarians of Germania and other places. Afterwards, the victorious 
emperor says, "For 25 years, I have conquered and spilled blood . . . I've known 
four years without war. . . . I've brought the sword, nothing more."

In the movie, Commodus rubbed it in his sister's face that their father said his 
wars "accomplished nothing." In real life, the supposedly evil son Commodus 
ended the wars with the Franks and Germans. In that respect, MIM cannot help 
wondering about the great merit of the father compared with the son. Commodus 
killed within the royal family first and then his own people while making peace 
with the rest of the world. While doing so, he gave his people what they wanted. 
It's hard to avoid concluding that Commodus took part in relatively trivial 
violence while avoiding larger violence that historians do not note him for. 
Thousands died on both sides in a single day of battle at the beginning of the 
movie when Marcus Aurelius was still in charge.

To rewrite this movie slightly in emphasis without changing a fact, we could
say that you are Commodus. You do not approve your father's war in Germania
and you do not deign to show up at the front for it. Your stupid sister does
not care a whit about men dying at a front. Anyway, she's in love with the 
general, who is an apolitical tool of your father. So you are outnumbered,
but you snuff out a civil war by arresting the general and then proceed
to entertain the public. You know well that the public questions your manliness
and the masculinity of Rome itself with you as king, so you stage 
gladiator fights. The public marvels at this instead of reports from a front
somewhere. When your enemies gather a last assault, you offer to fight in the
ring yourself to settle any outstanding questions on the public's mind.
Through all of these maneuvers, you get the empire out of war during your rule.
You deserve a medal, at least if you could do the same thing today.

Under Commodus's rule, the public ate up the entertainment provided by forcing 
men to fight wild animals and/or other men to the death. In fact, the gladiator 
fights point to something about the nature of humyn entertainment that MIM 
considers in the same light as Playboy magazine. If we may say so, there is 
something even more pornographic about gladiating than Playboy magazine. Both 
focus on the qualities of the body to entertain the public.

So for us at MIM, pornography is not something supposedly natural. It involves 
the body but it is every bit as contrived as gladiating. If "Gladiator" enables 
any portion of the public to see outside current pornography and grasp it as a 
whole, then we can count the movie as a big addition to our culture, all the 
moreso given the serious acting performances in many roles. Perhaps seeing how 
entertainment tastes change over time can help people to see through the nature 
of their own pornography. If on the other hand, gladiating in this movie stirs 
something more timeless, it may just resuscitate older forms of pornography. Our 
one basis for hope is that to create the kind of pornography we see in this 
movie, there had to be slavery, a mode of production that seems inefficient 
today. Slavery is what makes gladiating of this sort possible and if it is in 
disfavor, it is on account of the economic dynamics of history Marx spoke of 
that change the mode of production. Given the emphasis on days of yore and the 
potential for a wrong understanding of the supposed glories of gladiating, MIM 
would recommend this movie only for situations under proletarian
advisement.