tl;dr Druids sacrifice humans because they are barbarians and because they are socialists, maybe?
In keeping with my interest in ideology, I wanted to quickly share a few thoughts about a show I started watching over the weekend called Britannia. A joint production between the British channel Sky and Amazon Studios, Britannia follows the first incursion of the Roman Army into the British Isles since Julius Caesar. The show is aesthetically very similar in tone to Vikings and portrays the Celtic druids as dark and ominous soothsayers/sorcerers, who listen to the voice of the gods in bacchanal, drug-induced orgies, with the occasional human sacrifice thrown in for good measure (and narrative convenience). The show very quickly falls into a rather banal rehashing of the good versus evil, demon versus god trope, with a mysterious prophecy, a little girl who is “The One”, and upon whom all hope rests.
Now I should point out that I have been a hardcore D&D nerd for over 20 years, and absolutely love these kinds of shows, despite tired tropes and oversimple god/evil plot-lines. I must admit that I have always been that guy who complains about the portrayal of druids as ancient hippie eco-nuts, with magic thrown in as an afterthought. So seeing them portrayed as dark sorcerers who wouldn’t hesitate to rip out the still-beating heart of someone, should the gods demand it, made my little nerd heart swoon. On the other hand, some of the blatant historical inaccuracies tempered my nerdphoria, and in short order I found myself devouring Wikipedia for proof of said inconsistencies. To my surprise I discovered that the tales of druidic human sacrifice come entirely from Roman historians and contemporary historians have begun to doubt the veracity of those ancient claims, and that there is no archeological evidence to support them. They hypothesized that the historical claims were calculated “fake news”, as the Romans had a vested interest in portraying all non-Romans as barbaric so that they could rationalize conquering them.
Given this, the ideology of the show is very interesting. The Romans had a vested interest in portraying the druids as uncivilized savages to reinforce their power over them. The producers of the show have kept the portrayal, but its meaning has been inverted; modern culture fetishizes violence and sex, and thus the druids’ portrayal makes them popular anti-heroes and capitalizes on the success of shows like Vikings and Game of Thrones. Identification is also inverted: the Roman historians were capitalizing on a hegemonic ideology that privileges civilization, whereas our current hegemony privileges an ideology of male violence, fetishized and sexualized.
In this inversion we also have an interesting representation of capitalism. The Roman general (who from the POV of the Celts is the literal manifestation of an earth demon) claims that Rome only desires peace and stability so as to facilitate the collection of taxes. All of the Celtic characters believe in the druidic prophecy that claims that Rome is a demon, and that the stated desire for taxes is a ruse. From their perspective (which the narration demands is our perspective) the Romans’ true goal is to murder the gods, somehow personified as a little girl, although the mystic nature of the narration obfuscates the exact nature of this relationship. There is clearly a relation here of capitalism as demonic, however it is very unclear what the alternative is (as embodied in the Celts). There is a great deal of tribalism and infighting (sounds like the Left to me all right), but the strange mix of hedonism, mysticism, and authoritarianism leaves me bewildered.
In keeping with my interest in ideology, I wanted to quickly share a few thoughts about a show I started watching over the weekend called Britannia. A joint production between the British channel Sky and Amazon Studios, Britannia follows the first incursion of the Roman Army into the British Isles since Julius Caesar. The show is aesthetically very similar in tone to Vikings and portrays the Celtic druids as dark and ominous soothsayers/sorcerers, who listen to the voice of the gods in bacchanal, drug-induced orgies, with the occasional human sacrifice thrown in for good measure (and narrative convenience). The show very quickly falls into a rather banal rehashing of the good versus evil, demon versus god trope, with a mysterious prophecy, a little girl who is “The One”, and upon whom all hope rests.
Now I should point out that I have been a hardcore D&D nerd for over 20 years, and absolutely love these kinds of shows, despite tired tropes and oversimple god/evil plot-lines. I must admit that I have always been that guy who complains about the portrayal of druids as ancient hippie eco-nuts, with magic thrown in as an afterthought. So seeing them portrayed as dark sorcerers who wouldn’t hesitate to rip out the still-beating heart of someone, should the gods demand it, made my little nerd heart swoon. On the other hand, some of the blatant historical inaccuracies tempered my nerdphoria, and in short order I found myself devouring Wikipedia for proof of said inconsistencies. To my surprise I discovered that the tales of druidic human sacrifice come entirely from Roman historians and contemporary historians have begun to doubt the veracity of those ancient claims, and that there is no archeological evidence to support them. They hypothesized that the historical claims were calculated “fake news”, as the Romans had a vested interest in portraying all non-Romans as barbaric so that they could rationalize conquering them.
Given this, the ideology of the show is very interesting. The Romans had a vested interest in portraying the druids as uncivilized savages to reinforce their power over them. The producers of the show have kept the portrayal, but its meaning has been inverted; modern culture fetishizes violence and sex, and thus the druids’ portrayal makes them popular anti-heroes and capitalizes on the success of shows like Vikings and Game of Thrones. Identification is also inverted: the Roman historians were capitalizing on a hegemonic ideology that privileges civilization, whereas our current hegemony privileges an ideology of male violence, fetishized and sexualized.
In this inversion we also have an interesting representation of capitalism. The Roman general (who from the POV of the Celts is the literal manifestation of an earth demon) claims that Rome only desires peace and stability so as to facilitate the collection of taxes. All of the Celtic characters believe in the druidic prophecy that claims that Rome is a demon, and that the stated desire for taxes is a ruse. From their perspective (which the narration demands is our perspective) the Romans’ true goal is to murder the gods, somehow personified as a little girl, although the mystic nature of the narration obfuscates the exact nature of this relationship. There is clearly a relation here of capitalism as demonic, however it is very unclear what the alternative is (as embodied in the Celts). There is a great deal of tribalism and infighting (sounds like the Left to me all right), but the strange mix of hedonism, mysticism, and authoritarianism leaves me bewildered.
It's really fascinating how contemporary conventions are projected onto the past like you've described in this show. I haven't seen Britannia, but your post reminds me of how antiquity is represented in shows like Rome or movies like Troy and 300, where historical accuracy is less important than telling a good story in a short amount of time. On one hand, shows have to adapt to contemporary conventions, otherwise the story wouldn't be legible to modern viewers. On the other, these retellings shape our understanding of the past, so we end up with a movie like Troy, where the gods don't feature as characters despite their central role in the Iliad, or 300, where the Spartans call the Athenians "boy lovers" to emphasize their militant masculinity despite the fact that the real Spartans practiced pederasty as a form of male socialization (this doesn't even get into the racist and sexist portrayals of the Persians).
ReplyDeleteI'm curious how the Romans are portrayed as capitalists through the collection of taxes, a practice which predates capitalism. The Romans loved collecting taxes and their justification for their collection from the perspective of the show is probably right. The Romans were taxing the Celts for the privilege of being invaded. Or, maybe the Romans are just imperialists, invading Britain in order to fashion new markets (an argument anthropologist David Graeber makes in his book, Debt) and the Celts are resisting this incorporation, which is being narrated as an attack on religion, something that is so interwoven into everyday life in places like Rome that it might not make sense to think of it as a separate sphere.
These retellings allow us to map contemporary problems onto the past so that we might explore them, but as you noted with the discovery that our understandings of the druids are shaped by Roman historical texts, the answers we come up with to these problems are wrapped up in existing sociocultural formations. So, Roman fake news becomes the dominant historical understanding of an entire continent for a few hundred years!