One of the worst movies I watched in recent times was Coppola’s Megalopolis. It wasn’t an unwatchable piece of media but it had the double combo of bad story telling and bad politics in one. If you turn off your brain, it might even be a quite enjoyable experience with whacky characters and even whackier dialogue. That’s why it is so absurd that it definitly tries to say something about the big problems of our times.For anybody out of the loop: The movie is about the rivalry of an archtiect in the city of "New Rome" and its mayor. The architect, Cesar, wants to remodel the city with the help of some magical material he invented, the mayor wants to keep things as is (or turn the city into a casino or something, I didn’t quite get that). There is a lot of drama, characters betraying each other, murder, inter-family sex and cluuuub party scences. There is no real stringent plot and the political message manages to be both vague and very heavy handed (one guy in the course of the movie has a swastika on his forehead and in the end is strung up Mussolini style). Generally, I would say, this movie is about the genius individual and society, the depravity of the "elites", and how easily people can follow fascists (and that fascism is bad). It is basically for libertarians. So kinda dumb. I could talk a lot about this movie and how dumb it is but I wanted to talk about one specific thing. If it wasn’t clear already "New Rome" is New York City. But everything is a bit like in the roman empire. People are wearing tunics and have roman names, they hold chariot races, and they are are all bisexual. Well the wealthy at least.The point this movie is trying to make is that the class relations during the fall of the roman empire and the modern USA today are the same: A wealthy elite that lives in extravagance and is morally corrupt while the masses live in poverty and are willing to follow authoritarian populists. Since the movie was made by a liberal, the solution it proposes to this problem is, like,...one guy inventing some magical technology and saving everyone with it. Ah well!
Coming to the point of this post though: I recently watched some Hollywood slob, the sequel of Gladiator, Gladiator II. It was a very mid movie, better than Megalopolis at least. But in its worst moments it really reminded me of this other movie And it was this specific theme of the fall of an empire as a metaphor for our current times. In Gladiator, the protagonist’s (Lucius) stated goal is to create a Rome that is for everyone, but it is currently in the hands of a depraved elite. And the masses are – who would have thought – also starving and generally dissatisfied. But what I found the most interesting is the similarity in which the decline of the empire is framed: It’s a tragedy. In Megalopolis, you see roman statues crumble while a deep voice narrates to you how bad the city has become and that with the decline of the empire comes a decline in the morals and so on. In Gladiator II, Lucius wants to establish a better Rome by specifically calling back to what his grandfather, the former emperor Marcus Aurelius, planned to do. In this way, this movie is even worse than Megalopolis, since it posits the solution to the problem is getting rid of the "bad" guys that currently run Rome and replacing them with a "good" guy. At least Cesar had to rebuild the city first. In any case: the status quo needs defending. In Megalopolis, Cesar does want change, yes, but when we see the masses demanding change it is evil and on the command of a literal fascist. Cesar on the other hand is smart, and rich, so he should be in charge. These two men are already part of the (New) Roman elite but are still our heroes.
But why is it a tragedy when an empire crumbles? Why does it need saving? I think people gloss over the human suffering that sustained the Roman Empire, maybe because it is very ancient history. It was an empire build off of and sustained by slavery. To quote Emma Southon:
To start thinking about Roman slavery is to stare into an infinite abyss of deliberate human suffering. The Roman Empire is considered to be one of the genuine slave states in human history, in that, like the antebellum Southern states of America, it could not exist without slavery. Slavery was the social and economic foundation upon which the entire Roman Empire rested. [...] A general estimate (which means, of course, a total guess but a guess from someone I’d trust in a quantitative situation) is that there were between 4.8 and 8.4 million enslaved people in the Roman Empire at any time, with the city of Rome‘s population including anywhere from ten to twenty-five percent enslaved people. Millions and millions and millions of lives, each a person with a heart full of love and hate and envy and joy and aching knees and sore eyes and dreams and thoughts and desires and hopes, all of whom were owned by another person and subject to the most extraordinary violence every day.
The fall of such an empire should be cheered on! Obviously! Why should it be a problem that it is crumbling, what does this need solving. We need to do everything in our power to make it crumble even faster. An empire build on slavery, that has cut so many lives short, that pursues a course of aggresive militarism and expansion and whose ruling class does not care about the lives of anybody must fall and more importantly: will fall. And that way it may work as a methaphor.
Before I end this the bad guys in the Gladiator movie are all shown to be bisexual So both movies are also just straight up biphobic. Great stuff...