#hell unearthed

Beatrice beseeches Virgil to rescue Dante from his bewilderment and terror in the dark woods.

She was born in 1266 and lived in Florence in Dante’s time. She was a member of the Portinari family and Dante tells us in his work the Vita Nuova - The New Life - that he fell in love with her when they were 8 and 9 respectively having met at a May Day party at her father’s house in Florence.

Dante then idolised her in his writing and she became a Muse or inspiration for him. She died when she was only 24 and Dante gives her blessed status through his writing.

In the Divine Comedy she is both a saint and a beautiful woman. She represents happiness, grace and virtue and acts as Man’s guide to redemption.

The other women, Dante meets in Hell are Francesca in the circle of the lustful for her unrestrained passion for Paolo when she was married to his ugly brother; Manto, the witch who founded Mantua; Myrrha who impersonated another woman in order to legitimise her incestuous relationship with her father.

In order to redress the balance in the sexes, I have found a number of women sinners - mainly pimps, serial cheats, excessive spenders, spies or double agents - read into that what you will. You can find out more by scanning here:

the author has a few moments of explaining her process and complimenting Dante's understanding of justice that jumped out to me and made me laugh because I do not hold Dante in particularly high regard when it comes to morals or ethics. Do I think Divine Comedy has an indelible historical and artistic influence? Yes. But I also think it's important to view "masterpieces" that form the bedrock of established moral justice with a healthy sense of contempt for the part those ideas have played in bringing the state of the world to *gestures to everything*.

Praising Dante by mentioning his influence on the construction of Western judicial legislation is an overtly political line to walk because those legal frameworks are not famous for being ethical, reasonable, and/or logical. I'd be happy to cop to the idea that Dante invented the first famous self-insert, RPF fanfic, set up a lot of great Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, and definitely helped Hozier with the structure of his last album but I refuse to allow the thought flourish that he is an unimpeachable moral authority.

uncritically repeating the Gandhi rhetoric claiming he was a spiritually elevated person when his history of sexism, anti-Blackness is a choice that really places this adaptation in a politicised place

david bowie being in limbo for publicly following different religions and not various allegations of sexual violence is also a decision to continue to perpetuate a certain public image of these figures that is not wholly based on their actions

the political commentary is superficial and pro-West without even the nuance of Dante's original work that criticised the imperial aspirations of Florence. The "kidnapper portion" that identifies individual criminal cases like the Lindbergh kidnapping but not ones like the atrocities of the settler colonial Residential Schools or of the ways that missionary work and schooling was used to erase Aboriginal culture and separate children from their families and culture in Australia - is just one of the moments that just made me feel completely alienated from this adaptation.

it feels like there is something not entirely right when trying to fit some of these sins into the structure of the Divine Comedy. the attempt to include specific crimes of gender-based violence like genital mutilation is not handled well - it actually feels like a dog whistle when attached to a cultural story including arranged marriage - as though forced/early marriage does not also happen in Christian traditions.

There's just too many places when the choice of sin illustrates how determined the author is to ignore glaring modern examples if the case criticises the hegemonic power structure.

John Paul Getty III was the grandson of the oil tycoon, J. Paul Getty. The grandfather was once the richest person in the world but he was also renowned for being a cheapskate.

Following his parents’ divorce in 1964, John Paul Getty III moved to Rome as a young teenager with his father. His stepmother died of a heroin overdose in 1971 and, although his father returned to England, he remained in the city by himself. 

In 1973, aged 16, John Paul Getty III was kidnapped by the ‘Ndrangheta, a mafia organisation based in Calabria. A ransom note was sent to his mother demanding $17 million.

The family doubted the verity of the kidnapping as not only was John Paul errant and rebellious, but he had previously joked that he would fake his own kidnapping in order to extract money from his rich grandfather.

William married Maud in 1166 when she was just 11 and they lived under the rules of the English kings Henry, Richard and John.

William earned the wrath of the Welsh when he committed the Abergavenny murders in 1175, tricking various Welsh princes and leaders to come to a conciliatory dinner and having them murdered by his men.

In 1199, William fought alongside Richard I at Châlus in France when the king was mortally wounded. He supported King John’s claim to the throne and became a court favourite. John gifted him with land and castles, and it is thought that he may have tasked William with the murder of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany.

However, he soon fell out of favour with the king who claimed he owed money from his estates to the Crown and he seized William’s estates across England and Wales.

Maud made no secret of the fact that she believed John had given instructions to murder Arthur and the pair of them were hunted down. William fled to Ireland and then to France disguised as a beggar to evade King John’s capture.

Maud, however, was not so lucky. She was imprisoned with their eldest son, William, in the dungeons at Corfe Castle in Dorset where they starved to death.