Visiting the Colosseum in Rome was a strange confluence of cultures and cultural reactions. It is a building in which the worst organized atrocities have likely ever been perpetrated outside the realm of total war. Although a cultural icon, it is often taken as such for reasons I consider highly suspect. Walking around the ruins, people are happily snapping pictures of themselves overlooking the remnants of the underground cells for the damned slave or beast that were covered by the killing floor of the Colosseum stage. My reaction was one of pathos, and it brought about reflection on the somber irony. In its highest days, the people gathered to revel in the spectacle of death.
Today, people are still coming to Rome in the millions to snap ecstatic pictures of themselves overlooking the ruined monument to the most vicious indulgences the human creature allows itself. The difference between the ancient and modern attendee is the same as that which modernity has brought to the meat industry: instead of watching your meat being slaughtered, it is neatly packaged well out of your sight—in the case of the Colosseum, by the hands of passing time. For both modern and ancient peoples, the labian amphitheater still serves its intended purpose: within that arched, elliptical orifice of horrors, public arousal at the obscene is permissible.
The lessons of Rome are but one incarnation, albeit perhaps the most comprehensive portfolio, of the only lessons to be learned about the worst parts of our nature. When men allow themselves to sleep, they wake up to a world that is not the stuff of their dreams, and far more vicious and cruel. The Colosseum is the ghost of Caesar in Shakespeare—though put down one day it awaits to meet us again.
The grand stage of spectacle in the United States is the screen. Whether television or computer, through it we can allow ourselves to see death, carnage, and destruction without holding ourselves personally responsible for the state of our culture and the role we play by taking our seat. My wife pointed out a quote that perfectly defines how amoral our colosseum spectacles have become:
In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over. — Dan Hodges
What else do we need to watch torn apart to make black men being gunned down by police officers a yawn between bites of popcorn? Today, it fits somewhere between the Christians being thrown to the lions in the morning and the most favored gladiatorial contests that round out a day of games.
In Rome itself, they have not entirely forgotten. How could they? The ruins of their forefathers are in their backyard. For instance, Roma Termini—the main train station in Rome—sells its tickets at kiosks that warn with every transaction to be aware of pickpockets. In fact, much or Italian society is infested with petty criminalities and con games visited upon unwitting tourists. I was particularly disgusted by an ordinary man in his mid-twenties, under no obvious financial strain, who one-quarter volunteered, three-quarters took my wife’s luggage down and up the stairs of the train platform against our protestations, and then had the nerve to demand money. My wife, being a more tender soul than me in light of this false chivalry, gave him a few Euros to quiet him up so we could move on. He then put his hand on her as we started to walk away and said I had to give him money too. I told him “no” and we moved on, when what I really wanted to do was write it on my knuckles and drill it into the memory portion of his brain. Perhaps Robyn has civilized me after all.
This being the third or fourth time some variation of pickpocketing or fleecing had been visited upon either us or a friend, I took some time to reflect on in while riding the train. Generally speaking, incivilities in this particular vein are highly despised in our culture, largely because of the grotesquerie of the frank, unashamed obviousness of the attempt. In the US we at least expect a good show for our wallet. A well-constructed pyramid scheme makes for an excellent few days of news, whereas the aforementioned is worth a few seconds of slimy character contribution to an infamous reality show character. In short, we detest petty crime precisely because of the principles upon which we’ve build our society: there’s no money in it.
However, of all the spectacles offered in the colosseum of the screen, the American lusts most for the erection that is the gladius. Whereas a good street scam may be worth a blurb on a website, a murder could gratify a week of media prudery. Even better than that is racial killing. Even better than that is a string of racial killings involving police officers, which is exactly what we have now. We watch. We talk. We argue like mites tasting bits of dander about which breed of animal it fell from despite our pathetic ignorance, and gawk with entitlement at the iPhone videos of dying men and bloody streets. But whether we profess outrage or schadenfreude, they are birthed from the same canal of desire that is the ruined pudendum of the Colosseum.
Yes, perhaps we are disgusted by the Italians and the senselessness of relatively profitless street crime, but what do they think of us? We have no bus station kiosks warning visitors to be on the lookout for people carrying handguns because we take their presence for granted. We ascribe normality to it because the blistering, humid heat in the Colosseum has made us apathetic, and our gluttony of carnal indulgence porcine. A thousand times more worth of disgust is upon our heads though, because we act as though we occupy high ground. Guns have become a symbol of our hubris, not our rights, and to use a document so noble as the Constitution as a rag for our hypocritical ejaculate is to dispose of our Dante and Cicero as if it were common graffiti.
Caesar’s ghost has risen again in our society, and we have already met him on the battlefield of Philippi and turned ourselves towards the fray in spite of it. As long as we desire the Colosseum we will be given it, as whether a paying customer is seeking a pimp or a pen, they will always find it.