The arrival of summer means I’m
getting out more, but, with the “re-opening” proceeding at a crawl, “out”
mostly means just outside my own house – and an occasional trip to the local
lumberyard. Repairs are unending, as with most middle-age homes (and people),
so there is always something to do. This weekend I’m repairing the wooden staircase
leading to the garage attic. A lot of my time after dusk continues to be spent
on books and TV, however. Few alternative activities are preferable to those at a
social distance of two meters. For other stay-at-homes, I can recommend one
recent read and one recent watch.
Carthage Must Be Destroyed by Richard
Miles
The adage “history is written by the
winners” is not entirely true. The winners get only the first draft. Later
generations (including descendants of winners) tend to indulge in revisionism.
In the case of Carthage, however, the winner’s history is pretty much all we
have in the way of literary sources. Aside from some stela inscriptions there
is virtually no literary record from the Carthaginian point of view. The
reason, of course, is that the Romans calculatedly obliterated Carthage. They
razed the city completely to the ground, destroyed its records and monuments,
seized its territory, and sold the 50,000 or so survivors of the final siege
into slavery. There was no one left to write a losers’ history. Total
destruction is still sometimes called a Carthaginian peace. Carthage eventually
was re-founded but as a fully Roman city, which only emphasized the totality
of the former extinguishment.
There are, at least, very good Greek
and Roman historians who wrote about Carthage and Punic civilization. “Punic”
is derived from “Phoenician.” Carthage, in present day Tunisia, was founded in
the 9th century BCE by colonizers from the Phoenician city of Tyre.
At the height of its empire, Carthage dominated the western Mediterranean with
its merchant and military fleets. It controlled territories in North Africa,
Spain, Sicily, and Sardinia while monopolizing sea trade beyond the Strait of
Gibraltar to northern Europe and west Africa. Between 264 BCE and 146 BCE Carthage
fought three desperate wars of survival with Rome. Polybius, a Greek aide to
Roman general Scipio Aemilianus, wrote a chilling eyewitness account of the final
fall of Carthage in the Third Punic War.
Unsurprisingly, Greco-Roman sources,
despite their merit, are uniformly biased against the Carthaginians even when
respectful of their military achievements. For this reason Richard Miles’ competent
modern treatment of Carthaginian civilization is welcome. (His title, of
course, is from Cato’s refrain Carthago
delenda est.) Miles supplements Greek and Roman sources with archaeological
evidence. He provides insight not only into historical events, but into social
structure, customs, and religion, and how they evolved over centuries. In part
because of the long contact of Punic civilization in peace and war with western
Greeks, religion in particular diverged from its Phoenician origins; the demigod
Melqart, for example, blended with Heracles. Miles offers as comprehensive and
even-handed a view of Carthage as can be accommodated in (including notes) 500
pages.
Banshee (Cinemax)
The Cinemax series Banshee ran from 2013 to 2016. I did not
then and do not now subscribe to Cinemax. Among the premium channel’s limited
audience at the time, however, the show was a hit. I heard of it back then but knew
nothing about it. I’d since forgotten even having heard of it until a couple weeks
ago when I put a link in the text of a blog post (See That Other Richard below) to the music video for the Nickelback
song Rockstar; the video
contains cameos by numerous celebs, among them Eliza Dushku (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Tru Calling,
Dollhouse). In the way that one thing leads to another, I idly checked IMDB
for her more recent projects and saw the final season of Banshee on the list. A click on the link to the show revealed exceptionally
high customer ratings. By way of this roundabout series of links and clicks I
soon found myself ordering a discounted Blu-ray set of the show.
Banshee often is briefly described as a crime
drama, and it is that, but the description gives insufficient hint of the show's weirdness. There are some satires that are played so completely
straight that many viewers are apt miss the satire (e.g. Starship Troopers and John
Wick). The ones that work tend to win cult followings. Banshee is played intensely straight and
it has a cult following. “Preposterous” is too gentle a term for Banshee, but the show is the very definition
of a guilty pleasure.
We meet the nameless central
character (played by Anthony Starr) at the end of his 15-year prison term for a jewel heist gone wrong. During his incarceration he refused to give up to authorities the name of his partner and
love-interest Anastasia (Ivana Milicevic) who had escaped from the scene of the crime. Upon his
release he looks up an old associate, a cross-dressing uber-hacker named Job (Hoon
Lee), in order to find Anastasia. Anastasia now goes by the name of Carrie
Hopewell and lives in the small town of Banshee Pennsylvania; she is hiding there
not from the police but from a ruthless Ukrainian mobster who goes by the
nickname Rabbit. Rabbit is her father and she has daddy issues. Rabbit hasn’t
forgiven her for that failed jewel job in which he knows she and her lover planned
to betray him. Carrie is married to the Banshee DA who knows nothing of her
real past. She has a rebellious teen daughter and a younger son with health
problems.
After cinematic-level violence with
Rabbit’s goons in New York, Anthony Starr’s character travels to Banshee and
stops for a drink at a bar owned by long-retired fighter Sugar Bates (Frankie
Faison). Also at the bar is a loner from Oregon named Lucas Hood who is coming
to town to be the new sheriff. (Local corruption induced the mayor to call in
an outsider for the job.) A fight breaks out between the prospective sheriff
and two thugs in which all three are killed, so naturally the protagonist takes
Hood’s ID and decides to impersonate Lucas Hood and to be sworn in as Sheriff. His
hacker pal Job can supply the necessary adjustments to official records. “Hood”
and Sugar bury the bodies from the bar in the woods. He still can be close to
Carrie/Anastasia this way. “Lucas Hood” acts as sheriff in a rough-and-ready fashion,
yet continues to execute elaborate crimes on the side. He is not just a criminal
psychopath though. He is a Nietzschean anti-hero with his own rigorous ethics
that simply bear no relation to the law.
If there weren’t women among the
writers I’d wonder if the creators all had Mailer-esque
masculinity issues, but there are. So, apparently the testosterone-filled
scripts are a considered choice. In Banshee there is a lapsed Amish crime lord who
stops at nothing to get what he wants, rampant sexual hijinks (including by wayward
Amish), kickass female characters with fighting skills and guns (sans misandry this is a male fantasy), ethnic
gangs (native Americans, Columbian drug traffickers, and Neo-Nazis) with
automatic weapons, corrupt military men (also with automatic weapons), and even
a Satanist serial killer. There is gory violence and soap-opera-style intrigue.
Nudity and sex (often between unexpected characters) are as graphic
as they possibly can be and still be aired on Cinemax rather than on an outright
porn channel. The result of all this is ridiculous yet addictive. One component
of the show’s addictive qualities is the one serious theme running throughout
the series: a search for personal identity. Some characters submerse themselves
in a predigested group identity (ethnic, religious, familial, or philosophical)
while others more thoughtfully reinvent themselves as individuals even when
that means breaking from the past, from upbringing, and from family.
My reaction to the first episode was
“What the hell?” The reader’s response to it is likely to be the same. However,
give the show a chance for a couple more episodes. Just accept the craziness.
If you’re like most viewers (myself among them), you’ll then keep returning to Banshee until the Season 4 finale.
Banshee Trailer
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