I watched half of the premiere for Spartacus: Blood and Sand last night. I didn’t get any further because I’m just not that into it: the storyline is not at all original— to be fair, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the show to shine until the stage has been set for political machinations— and the CGI is horrible. At some point I’ll finish watching the premiere, and may even continue to watch the series, just because a red-headed Xena Lucy Lawless seems to be on the cast.
As I expected, there were several pointless sex scenes. It was the kind of sex that in better shows, is implied and not shown, not because of prudishness, but simply because its presence doesn’t add to the show. It caught my attention that the legate performed cunnilingus on his wife; if I recall correctly, the Romans looked down on oral sex. I’m sure there were other more important historical inaccuracies, but that one popped out at me. I looked up the Roman attitude towards oral sex, just to be sure, but I couldn’t find a definitive statement about the time period Spartacus is set in: but at least in the time period of Pompeii, oral sex was definitely socially taboo.
The whole Roman-attitude-towards-sex thought stream got me thinking about the song “Origin of Love” from the soundtrack to Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It’s a musical adaptation of a speech Aristophanes gave in Plato’s Symposium (which takes liberties); and yes, I’m aware that makes this Greek, not Roman.
Here’re animated versions of the song and the speech it’s based on:
Possibly relevant posts:
- I’m a bad black person too (8/26/2008)
- inbetweeness (8/24/2010)
- Meet Sade (if you haven’t already) (2/25/2010)
