• About

Gary Devore

~ archaeologist and author

Gary Devore

Category Archives: Rome

Meat-Scenery

27 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by Gary Devore in A Murder of Crows on the Wall, Film, Hadrian's Wall, Pedius, Roman, Rome, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

mystery, publishing, Rome, writing

 

butterfly

The penultimate scene of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), a far better piece of cinema than anything associated with Mel Gibson.  If you don’t know it, learn it.

In the 19th century, photography brought the carnage of the American Civil War home to the civilian population.  Photographers captured the torn and twisted bodies of anonymous soldiers strewn across battlefields, and those images were published in newspapers and journals to show the cost of a war that would go on to kill 2% of the entire population of the country.  The barbaric violence was put on full display and changed our national perception of death.

civilwarbattlefield

During the brutal trench warfare of WWI, photography, and also increasingly the moving image, documented horrible new forms of mass death men inflicted upon men.  Poison gas and the machine gun rendered killing impersonal.  The brutal slaughter, the bloody sundering of bodies without discrimination, horrified a generation of European men.

Now such graphic violence is masturbatory fodder for men (almost always men) playing a gory video game or watching a violent movie.  Especially a fucking Mel Gibson movie.

hacksaw-ridge-banner

Anonymous men in uniform get torn apart let and right in Gibson’s new film– and most of the time in “cool” graphic ways bordering on both the sadistic and acrobatic.  Unnamed soldiers are “disposable people” and their cinematic suffering is presented without any real thought or comment other than a voyeuristic pleasure inversely proportional to any audience’s sense of compassion.  These torn-apart bodies are dehumanized on the screen (especially the non-Christian Japanese).  They are background meat-scenery.  They are not protagonists.  They are not actual humans with thoughts and emotions, or anything the camera is willing to linger on except their blood, viscera, and gore.  These men are mute but for their screams.  In the larger narrative, they don’t matter because the camera only objectifies their anguish.  The film perversely revels in their messy deaths.  Their only role is to convey whatever pious, cruel, muddled message Gibson’s harping on now (jonesing for some sort of professional comeback without, you know, actually doing any real contrition to deserve it).

This lack of compassion, or at least the failure to apply it uniformly, is a tiresome hallmark of Gibson’s directorial work.  It is also a theme in the novel I just finished.  I’ve written a murder mystery set in the ancient Roman world– a brutal world Gibson would have felt at home in.  But I didn’t want to just present corpses for my detective, already cold MacGuffins simply representing puzzles to be deciphered.  I wanted to explore what it meant to be a compassionate man in that time who understood on a deep level that there really are no “disposable people,” and only our immature selfishness deems them so.  My main character, Gaius Pedius, learns every life has value.  He realizes that every man who dies on a battlefield (or is cut down by a murderer) is the subject of his own tragedy, his own subjectified reality.  Pedius’ investigations are not just a search for justice, but a forceful rejection of men like Gibson (who exist in every age) and their bloodthirsty nihilism.

death-meleager

I’m assembling the final draft now and getting ready to begin the protracted process of querying agents to shepherd it toward publication.  Along with hopefully being an enjoyable, amusing mystery novel, I hope A Murder of Crows on the Wall can also be, in its small way, a compassionate, Humanistic counter to our modern American trend toward dehumanization and cruelty.  And anything else Gibson puts up on the screen.

 

The Death of Giordano Bruno

17 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by Gary Devore in Rome, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

bruno, Rome

Rome

I was writing today about the Campo de’Fiori in Rome (preparing a small waking guide for a friend soon to visit the city) and happened to notice that it was the 416th anniversary of the execution of Giordano Bruno, a personal hero of mine.

Bruno was originally a Dominican monk, but left the order to roam northern Europe and England, usually one step ahead of the Catholic Church who considered him a dangerous heretic. Bruno believed that the universe was divine in itself, and that such divinity was contained within every living creature. He wrote, “Nature is simply God in things,” a beautiful statement, but one that went against Catholic theology.  He also believed in such heresies as the heliocentric model of the universe where the Earth revolved around the sun.

Eventually, the Inquisition caught up with him in Venice. He was imprisoned in Rome for several years before being condemned to death. After the sentence was read, Bruno said, “You judges who condemn me make the pronouncement with much more fear than I who receive it.” Bruno was executed in the Camp de’Fiori on 17 February, 1600. He was gagged, bound naked to a stake and set on fire.

After 1600, the square was regularly used as a place of execution. Many people, criminals and heretics, met their fates here, either by being burnt or hung.  Today, the picturesque square, the only major square in Rome that does not have a church in it, is dominated by an imposing statue of Giordano Bruno.

I can recommend a good book about Bruno and his times: The Pope and the Heretic by Michael White.

209 CE – A Year of Murder

25 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by Gary Devore in A Murder of Crows on the Wall, Archaeology, Hadrian's Wall, Roman, Rome, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Sir_Lawrence_Alma-Tadema,_English_(born_Netherlands)_-_A_Reading_from_Homer_-_Google_Art_Project

I’ve finished the entire working draft of my next novel that is set during the year 209.  It is a historical murder mystery with a cast of Romans, Greeks, and native Britons. It is called A Murder of Crows on the Wall, a title that references both the fact it takes place along Hadrian’s Wall in northern England and involves initiates of the mystery cult of the god Mithras (who were called ‘crows’).

For the past year, my head has been in the third century CE, specifically the autumn of 209.  It’s been interesting to see what focusing upon that one period of history has brought up creatively.

Getting the novel finished has been a long process, but I’m so happy it’s finally done.  In the coming weeks I’ll post some thoughts here about the novel’s setting, characters, and theme, and also about the process of writing this historical murder mystery.  The next step is to solicit beta readers and ultimately agents and publishers.  Join me in my historical journey!

(More information about A Murder of Crows on the Wall can be found at garydevore.com/crows/)

 

Torture and the Ancient Romans

14 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by Gary Devore in Film, Rome, torture

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Film, Rome, torture

romepre
A new article of mine about torture and its (changing) depiction in films about the ancient Romans has been published on The Awl: Now We Are Rome: Ancient Roman torture on film, and modern American torture in the news

I look specifically at “The Sign of the Cross” (1932), “The Fall of the Roman Empire” (1964) and HBO’s “Rome” (2005 & 2007). I also discuss the history of torture both in Rome and the US, and specifically about our troubling representation of torture in movies.

Official Author Site

» garydevore.com «

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

The new novel from Gary Devore

Walking Tours of Ancient Rome: A Secular Guidebook to the Eternal City

RSS Feed

RSS Feed RSS - Posts

Follow Me on Pinterest

Recent

  • Why I’m Enjoying Fallout 76
  • The First Gay Romance of Fallout 76
  • The Narrative Failures of Far Cry 5

Archive List

Tags

2013 ads A Murder of Crows on the Wall aphrodite apollo apotheosis archaeology art Assassins Creed Bethesda bethlehem broadchurch christianity class crows demeter dionysus Elder Scrolls Online eurovision fallout 4 Fallout 76 Film forts games gay gay characters gaymer gayming gigantomachy graffiti guild wars 2 hades Hadrian's Wall HBO hera Herculaneum hermes inspiration kickstarter links marcus aurelius matt alber meditations mst3k music mystery New Hampshire pan pantheon Pompeii poseidon publishing redesign roman romans Rome samnites satyricon sexuality skyrim soundtrack state of decay straight characters television textbook the secret world Tolstoy trailer updates vegetarianism video video games videos website writing

Topics

  • A Murder of Crows on the Wall
    • Hadrian's Wall
    • Pedius
  • Academia
  • Apotheosis
  • Archaeology
  • Art
  • Eurovision
  • Film
    • Satyricon
  • Food
  • Games
  • Gigantomachy
  • LGBT
  • Links
  • Misc
  • Music
  • New Hampshire
  • Pantheon
    • Aphrodite
    • Apollo
    • Ares
    • Artemis
    • Athena
    • Demeter
    • Dionysus
    • Hades
    • Hera
    • Hermes
    • Poseidon
  • Pantheon Soundtrack
  • Pompeii
  • Roman
  • Rome
  • skyrim
  • soundtrack
  • Television
  • Textbook
  • torture
  • Uncategorized
  • Website
  • Writing

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×
    Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
    To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy