“. . .Is there a better place for expression than art? Whether releasing anger, oozing sexuality or spilling sorrow via an artistic means or simply ingesting someone else’s version of it and laughing uproariously, a creative outlet is our healthy friend. As I sat in my Dante’s Inferno class less than 24 hours after seeing Horrible Bosses, I couldn’t help but laugh at how Dante, too, was doing just that in the 1300s–using his poetry gift to banish real people to eternal punishment in “the hurricane of Hell in perpetual motion.”
Dante doesn’t just send people to one big place called Hell, he parses according to the level of sin, whether or not they wronged him personally, and even singles some of them out for an extra dose of suffering. That it is methodical and medieval makes it all the more riveting.
The rest of us wind up rooting, projecting our own frustrations and ill will onto characters in a book or on screen. We rub our hands together and lick our chops at seeing where people eventually ‘go’ or how they’ll be categorized. In Horrible Bosses, there are sins of greed and carnal yearnings by the one-dimensional bosses, intent to murder by the average-guy employees and even an in-between — the hit man played by Jamie Foxx who steals but isn’t what he portrays himself to be.” [. . .] –Nancy Colasurdo, Fox Business, July 6, 2011
Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
How to Cite
Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.
