{"id":27573,"date":"2021-11-15T05:23:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T05:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=27573"},"modified":"2021-11-16T19:57:12","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T19:57:12","slug":"the-ancient-history-of-adding-insult-to-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-ancient-history-of-adding-insult-to-injury\/","title":{"rendered":"The ancient history of adding insult to injury"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Andrew M. McClellan<\/a>, San Diego State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At one point in the latest James Bond installment, \u201cNo Time To Die<\/a>,\u201d the henchman Primo has the upper hand on 007. But Bond has a wristwatch that can trigger an electromegnetic pulse keyed to local circuitry. Primo, conveniently, has a biomechanical eye, so when Bond activates his watch next to Primo\u2019s head, it explodes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bond\u2019s gadgeteer, Q, radios in, and Bond delivers the rhetorical goods: \u201cI showed him your watch. It blew his mind.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sort of witty quip after killing someone isn\u2019t unique to the Bond franchise. From \u201cDirty Harry<\/a>\u201d to \u201cDjango Unchained<\/a>,\u201d they\u2019ve become staples of the action film genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Audiences might assume action films invented these one-liners. But as I\u2019ve demonstrated in my work<\/a> researching ancient Greco-Roman epic poetry, the origin of this sort of rhetorical violence goes back thousands of years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A perverse eulogy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The one-liner is in many ways the calling card of action films. The motif took off in the 1960s and peaked in the mid-1980s and early 1990s. Today you\u2019ll see occasional nods to the tradition in films like \u201cNo Time To Die.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier James Bonds also delivered post-kill zingers. In \u201cThunderball<\/a>,\u201d Sean Connery\u2019s Bond spears a foe with a harpoon gun, then jokes: \u201cI think he got the point.\u201d After \u201cLive and Let Die<\/a>\u201d villain Dr. Kananga balloons and explodes from ingesting a gas pellet, Roger Moore\u2019s Bond gloats, \u201cHe always did have an inflated opinion of himself.\u201d https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MWSGpO3akhk?wmode=transparent&start=0 Roger Moore\u2019s James Bond delivers a classic post-kill zinger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These one-liners had become de rigueur by the 1990s. In \u201cUniversal Soldier<\/a>,\u201d Jean-Claude Van Damme\u2019s Luc Deveraux kills Andrew Scott by feeding him through a woodchipper that hurls bits and pieces of his corpse through the air. Deveraux\u2019s companion asks where Scott is, to which Deveraux laconically replies, \u201cAround.\u201d And after killing Screwface in \u201cMarked for Death<\/a>,\u201d John Hatcher, played by Steven Seagal, discovers there\u2019s another Screwface \u2013 or, rather, that twins have been running the criminal organization he\u2019s fighting. Hatcher then executes the second Screwface in one of the most violent, prolonged death scenes in film history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hatcher catches his breath, before muttering, \u201cI hope they weren\u2019t triplets.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Arnold Schwarzenegger, who rose to fame during the golden era of action films in the 1980s<\/a>, was the king of one-liners<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCommando<\/a>\u201d ends with John Matrix, played by Schwarzenegger, impaling the villainous Bennett with a massive metal pipe that travels through Bennett and, inexplicably, into a boiler. The blast of steam travels back through Bennett and out the end of the pipe. Surveying the carnage, Matrix quips: \u201cLet off some steam, Bennett.\u201d In \u201cPredator<\/a>,\u201d Schwarzenegger\u2019s character pins an enemy to a wall with a knife, inviting him to \u201cstick around.\u201d And in \u201cThe Running Man<\/a>,\u201d he chainsaws his adversary Buzzsaw vertically, crotch up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked what happened to Buzzsaw, he reports: \u201cHe had to split.\u201d https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/19R2fDXCzcM?wmode=transparent&start=0 Arnold Schwarzenegger, virtuoso of verbal daggers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The quips literally add insult to injury, defaming the victim immediately after their demise, emblazoning the death with a caption, like a perverse eulogy. Film heroes deliver the best taunts because their rhetorical skill is linked to their physical prowess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This might seem incongruous. But the link between martial and rhetorical skill goes back to Western literature\u2019s beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u2018vaunts\u2019 of the ancient epics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ancient epic poems are, in many ways, the antecedents to today\u2019s action flicks; they were the violent, thrilling blockbusters of their era.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Homer\u2019s heroes in the \u201cIliad<\/a>,\u201d written sometime between 750 and 700 B.C., are not just deft fighters but also adroit talkers. Achilles, for example, is lauded as both the best fighter and the best speaker among the Greeks at Troy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The parameters of ancient epic duels mirror action film fights. When two warriors square off, they taunt each other. When one warrior wins, typically the victory is punctuated by a witty defamatory \u201cvaunt<\/a>\u201d that signals the champion\u2019s prowess and the loser\u2019s now-verified inadequacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Virgil\u2019s \u201cAeneid<\/a>,\u201d Turnus avoids damage from a spear cast by the young warrior Pallas thanks to his thick shield. After hurling a spear of his own that pierces Pallas, Turnus boasts of the performance of his weapon by comparison. The taunt is soaked in sexual innuendo: \u201cSee whether my weapon can penetrate better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turnus later sneers over the slain Eumedes, whose throat he\u2019s severed: \u201cHey, Trojan, the Western land you hoped to conquer, measure it with your corpse.\u201d Since Eumedes sought to colonize parts of modern-day Italy, he would have surveyed the land for settlements; Turnus sardonically suggests using his dead body as a measuring stick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Warrior<\/a>
A 1688 engraving depicts Turnus taking Pallas\u2019 sword belt after killing him. Bavarian State Library<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the \u201cIliad,\u201d Polydamas spears Prothoenor in the shoulder. He falls and dies, whereupon Polydamas jokes that the spear will be useful to lean on \u201clike a staff when he descends to the underworld.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At another point in the \u201cIliad,\u201d Patroclus kills the Trojan charioteer Cebriones by smashing his face with a stone. The force of the strike ejects Cebriones\u2019 eyes from their sockets; they hit the ground, and Cebriones follows them headfirst onto the battlefield. The bizarre situation elicits Patroclus\u2019 zesty bon mot: \u201cWhat a spring the man has! Nice dive! Think of the oysters he could come up with if he were out at sea \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this vaunt-cum-metaphor, Cebriones\u2019 eyes, which he \u201cchases\u201d into the sand, have become precious pearls in the oysters he\u2019s imagined to be hunting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Breaking the fourth wall<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What value does wit hold in genres defined by brute strength?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Never mind the fact that a corpse is hardly a suitable target for clever punchlines. The jokes are for the audience, and it\u2019s as close as the genre gets to breaking the fourth wall. Viewers are attuned to these witticisms not simply because they are funny, but because they\u2019re self-consciously ridiculous. They help distance the audience<\/a> from the often horrific levels of violence on display.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Over 115,000 readers rely on The Conversation\u2019s newsletter to understand the world.<\/em> Sign up today<\/a>.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Epic poetry has traditionally held a highbrow status in literary criticism, while action films are regarded as puerile and brutish. These designations collapse at the level of rhetorical violence. In truth, epics like the \u201cIliad\u201d skew more \u201caction film\u201d than most literati would like to admit, and vice versa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The larger-than-life heroes from John Matrix to James Bond are ultimately the silver screen progeny of warrior-poets from antiquity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew M. McClellan<\/a>, Lecturer in Classics and Humanities, San Diego State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andrew M. McClellan, San Diego State University At one point in the latest James Bond installment, \u201cNo Time To Die,\u201d the henchman Primo has the upper hand on 007. But Bond has a wristwatch that can trigger an electromegnetic pulse keyed to local circuitry. Primo, conveniently, has a biomechanical eye, so when Bond activates his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":27574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,8025],"tags":[10825,3350,10822,10823,4586,336,10824,2225,2033],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27573"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27576,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27573\/revisions\/27576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}