Dante Post 2: To modernize, or not to modernize?

When I first heard that the version of "Dante's Inferno" that we were watching was made with puppets, I honestly did not know what to expect. What I got, however, was a film that was as controversially entertaining as it was meaningful. This movie has a dual purpose that it accomplishes skillfully: to modernize this old tale for the increased understanding of viewers and to serve as satire. Though the satire is very important, what captured my attention the most about the movie was the modernization of various circles. I was left wondering why the directors chose to update certain punishments and leave others the same as in Dante's original work.

While the souls in hell are modernized in each area, their punishments remain mostly the same or similar to the punishments in the book. The major changes occurred in the second and eighth circles, in which the souls of the lustful and the fraudulent were housed. The most striking differences were that instead of being blown around in the wind, in the movie, the lustful souls were condemned to have sex forever and that fraud was punished differently in the film; it was reprimanded in some ways more gruesomely, such as the insider traders, and in some ways more humorously, such as the lobbyists. It seems to me that the filmmakers chose these specific updates to fit in with modern culture, as well as to support the liberal ideals of the film. For example, having sex forever is not nearly so terrible as being blown in a hurricane for eternity. Lust, though still somewhat taboo, is a much more prevalent and accepted trait in humanity today than it would have been in Dante's time, as can clearly be seen by watching almost any modern television show. Because modern culture has embraced lust so thoroughly, it makes sense that the punishment for it would be less severe in a modern Inferno than in its fourteenth-century counterpart.

The punishments for the fraudulent have a distinctly liberal edge to them. This can be seen most clearly in the Malebolge Business building. In this area, those who took part in fraudulent, corrupt business are punished in ways that fit their crimes, such as those who "cooked the books" being roasted on a spit over burning books. These "rich man's sins" receive much harsher punishment than most of the others, arguably even worse than those frozen in Lake Cocytus. Also, while the punishment for the flatterers is worse in the poem, there is a certain liberal justice achieved in watching the lobbyists being forced to dance around the Capitol for eternity. While I do not necessarily disagree with the filmmakers, the punishments for the rich capitalists certainly do seem worse and more humiliating than any of the others, most likely due to the liberal opinions of the directors. The modern views of society and the liberal views of the filmmakers towards certain sins are clearly present in this film and they help to create a politically controversial movie that Dante himself would have been proud of, given how political and controversial his poem was at the time. Therefore, the causes of the updated punishments in the second and eighth circles are the modernized, liberal views of the filmmakers and society itself.