Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
“The lawyer, played by Jim Carrey is having a terrible day and when he meets the witness he will be questioning in court later that afternoon, the guy asks, ‘how ya doin?’ and Fletcher Reed (played by Carrey) responds, ‘I’ve slipped into the 7th circle of hell how does it look like im doing!!!'” –Yoni Shemesh
Contributed by Yoni Shemesh (Bowdoin, ’09)
“DANTE’S INFERNO has been kicking around the cultural playground for over 700 years. But it has never before been interpreted with exquisitely hand-drawn paper puppets, brought to life using purely hand-made special effects. Until now. Rediscover this literary classic, retold in a kind of apocalyptic graphic novel meets Victoria-era toy theater. Dante’s Hell is brought to lurid 3-dimensional, high-definition life in a darkly comedic travelogue of the underworld–set against an all-too-familiar urban backdrop of used car lots, gated communities, strip malls, and the U.S. Capitol, and populated with a contemporary cast of reprobates, including famous (and infamous) politicians, presidents, popes, pimps, and the Prince of Darkness himself.” —Dante Film
“THE last time that the artist Sandow Birk found himself concerned about responses from Muslims was in 2006. He was developing a film using puppets, inspired by his illustrations for a three-volume English-language version of Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy,’ when riots broke out over the Danish newspaper cartoons representing Muhammad.
The outcry prompted Mr. Birk’s film team to reconsider its own representation of the prophet. ‘We had Muhammad in our film because he was in Dante’s poem,’ he said. ‘Dante put him in ‘Inferno’ as someone who supposedly created schisms.’ He argued at the time for respecting Dante’s treatment of Muhammad, as artists like Gustave Doré had done before him.
But the film’s producers were spooked, and Muhammad disappeared from the film. ‘I thought it was wrong to act out of fear,’ Mr. Birk said from his studio here.
‘But I was upset for another reason too,’ he admitted. His film collaborators didn’t know at the time, but quietly — privately — he had already embarked on another potentially controversial project: an effort to make by hand what he called a ‘personal Koran.’ [. . .] –Jori Finkel, The New York Times, August 28, 2009
See Also: the “Dante’s Inferno” Trailer
See Also: Sandow Birk’s Illustrations of the “Divine Comedy” (2006)
Contributed by Zac Milner (Bowdoin, ’07)
“The movie adaptation of Todd McFarlane’s mega-cult comic! Al Simmons is a hitman who works for the government. One day, someone sets him up and he gets killed. Of course, he goes to Hell, where Malebolgia – the Devil himself – offers him a deal. Al will come back to life with a certain amount of “energy”, but when it runs out, he will return to Hell as a Hellspawn, and help in the war against Heaven. Al accepts the offer, because of the love for his wife Wanda, but when he arrives to Earth he sees that the Devil has cheated him… His face is horribly distorted, his body covered with a living suit, and the worst of all; he finds Wanda married with his best friend. Shattered, the Spawn starts wandering in New York’s alleys.” [. . .] –Chris Makrozahopoulos, IMDb
“About one hour into the movie they go to a strip club to kill Ron Jeremy’s character. The door leading into the dancer’s room reads ‘Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.'” –Charlie Russell-Schlesinger
Contributed by Charlie Russell-Schlesinger (Bowdoin, ’08)
“A five year project which involved adapting the text of the entire “Divine Comedy” into contemporary slang and setting the action in contemporary urban America. The project resulted in three, limited edition books, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Each book contained more than 60 original lithographs and was published by Trillium Press in San Francisco.” —Sandow Birk
See also: Sandow Birk’s film “Dante’s Inferno” (2007)
