Holy Pop Culture, Batman!

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Gladiator II, Monkeys and Trump

Gladiator II, Monkeys and Trump

On pretending, ambition and that insane Cabinet

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JR. Forasteros
Feb 07, 2025
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Holy Pop Culture, Batman!
Holy Pop Culture, Batman!
Gladiator II, Monkeys and Trump
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Gladiator II was not a great movie. I’m not sure it was even a good movie; when a master like Ridley Scott makes a bad movie, it’s still so quality it’s hard to tell. But - other than Denzel’s delightfully queer performance, there was one moment I found captivating. Toward the end of the film, the Emperor Caracalla (Fred Hechinger) must appoint a new consul of Rome. Caracalla is, to put it mildly, unqualified to govern. But this doesn’t stop him from appointing his pet monkey, Dundas, to the applause (first halting, but soon thunderous) of the Senate.

The scene plays for comedy, and Scott shot it well before the re-election of Donald Trump (the film released on November 22, 2024, less than three weeks after Trump won a second term). Scott shot the scene well before Trump publicized his various picks for Cabinet - picks so hilariously dangerous and/or unqualified it felt like a prank.

But then, just like in Gladiator II, the confirmations started rolling in, with the only one close enough to require Vice President Vance to step in being that on Pete Hegseth who, in addition to being a Christian Nationalist, faces sexual assault allegations and a record of public drunkenness (which according to the Bible disqualifies a person for leadership in either the Church or State, but Christian Nationalists care very little for what the Bible says).

The Senate’s confirmation of Dundas the monkey became an accidental parable. In the film, it serves to highlight a theme that runs through both Gladiator films (about the nature of power). Now it is a warning for us, as we watch our own Senate confirm these apes (apologies to actual apes, who manage their own communities more effectively).

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Don’t Monkey Around with Politics

Rome became a republic in 509 BCE, after a group of aristocrats (led by Lucius Junius Brutus, ancestor of Marcus Junius Brutus, who led the assassination of Julius Caesar). For more than 450 years - longer than Europeans have lived in North America, three legislative bodies shared rule of Rome. The most important were the Senate and the Consilium Plebus (Council of Plebs). Senators had no official legislative power. They were appointed by consuls or nominated by emperors. Consuls were more-or-less prime ministers; they were elected by another legislative body (the Comitia Centuriata, comprised of former soldiers). Rome established the Council of Plebs to give representation to the plebian (non-aristocratic) classes.

By 44 BCE (when a group of Senators assassinated Caesar), imperial growth had rendered Rome’s political organization untenable. Infighting among Senators and among the various classes and political interests created a context in which a single strong ruler could seize absolute power - which is what Caesar’s nephew Octavian did, declaring himself to be Caesar Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. Augustus called himself Rome’s Princeps Civitatis, the ‘first citizen’, thereby maintain the fiction of the Republic.

Gladiator II is set in 211 CE, nearly 250 years after Augustus declared himself the emperor. By this point, the Consilium Pelbus and Comitia Centuriata are gone; only the Senate remains to give the illusion that Rome is still a republic.

This fiction is at the heart of the first Gladiator. At the beginning of the film, Marcus Aurelius asks Maximus about the “dream of Rome.”1 He insists that Rome should be a republic again, that it’s Maximus’ job to restore power to the people.

For a sequel to make any sense (and even so, Gladiator II barely does), of course Maximus had to fail. It’s decades after Maximus killed Commodus, and now Rome has sibling emperors who are as bad if not worse: monkey-loving Caracalla and his elder brother Geta (Joseph Quinn). There’s much more handwringing about how Rome is a republic or should be a republic or how republics should be great again. But the Senate does nothing. Other than applaud Caracalla’s unhinged appointment of Dundas the monkey.

The Senate has always been a performance to convince the people of Rome - and the Senators themselves - that Rome is just. But Caracalla's buffoonery reveals the play to be a farce more concerned with the protection of Senatorial power than the safety, security and prosperity of the Roman people.

It’s unclear if Rome was ever a true republic. It’s certain that at least from Caesar’s time forward, it wasn’t. But the people - including the Senators - needed to believe Rome is a republic. It was the useful lie that enabled them to bow to a tyrant.

In her terrific book on murder in Ancient Rome (called A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), historian Emma Southon writes,

The Roman world was a monarchy and history was being made in bedrooms. But you have to remember that we have the benefit of hindsight and for the significant proportion of Roman imperial history, they were pretending that they didn’t have a monarchy. They most highly praised those emperors who pretended the hardest and put on a really good performance of letting the Senate believe that they had any impact on anything, and they most highly condemned those emperors who couldn’t be bothered pretending and just acted like monarchs.

That’s right: the emperors who got assassinated were the ones who didn’t go along with the farce. As long as they made some noises about the democratic process, the Senate was happy to confirm their every whim. As long as they got to pretend they had a choice, they were happy.

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The Farce of the US Senate

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