Dante Today

Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture

Michael Counts, Paradiso: Chapter I, immersive theater (2016)

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[…]  “Illusion is a staple in all kinds of theater, but it is doubly vital to Paradiso, a suspense thriller that is also a game. Using a structure that borrows from Dante’s Divine Comedy, it has a vibe that, in Mr. Counts’s telling, owes something to Ridley Scott’s futuristic classic Blade Runner and the TV drama Mr. Robot.

“With a plot that involves a conspiracy, it’s a narrative-driven twist on the increasingly popular escape-room genre of participatory entertainment. According to convention, a group of people is closed in a room, or sequence of rooms, with a single collective aim: to solve a series of puzzles in under an hour. Their prize is liberty — which, it’s true, will come at the end of the hour either way.” […]    –Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times, July 7, 2016

“PARADISO: Chapter 1 drops audience members (10 at a time) into a noir-ish nightmare that combines the surreal mystery of Stanley Kubrik with the stylized futuristic terror of Blade Runner into a one hour immersive theatrical Escape Room experience set in and inspired by the heart of New York’s Korea Town. Featuring a cast of dozens, highly designed sets with state-of-the-art special effects and the next generation of puzzles and mind-bending challenges, this immersive attraction is unlike anything audiences have ever seen or experienced.”    –from the Paradiso: Chapter I FAQs

Paradiso: Chapter 1 website

Contributed by Emma Pyle (Bowdoin, ’12)

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818, 1831)

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“Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.” — Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (Chapter 5)

Contributed by Kate Geraghty (Bowdoin, ’07) and Megan Alvarado (University of Texas at Austin, ’18)

As Above, So Below (2014)

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As Above So Below

The thriller film As Above, So Below features a journey to the catacombs below Paris – and a Dantesque passage.

The wall above the entry to this passage reads, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

Contributed by Erik Anderson, Hargrave Military Academy ’15

Fede Alvarez, Dante’s Inferno Movie

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Fede AlvarezFede Alvarez, Uruguayan director of Evil Dead, will be directing a live-action movie adaptation of Electronic Arts’ 2010 video game, Dante’s Inferno, for Universal Pictures.

Alvarez himself confirmed the rumors in an interview with Collider.com, in which he says:

“It sounds like that might be the next film.  We’re super excited about everything on that movie.  It’s with Universal.  Jay Basu’s the writer, he did great work on the script, we worked together on the story.  We’ve got a great script already and we’re about to start casting the film.  So it’s pretty close, pretty exciting.  Basically we’re making a film based on the biggest mythology about hell ever; the biggest poem about hell.  So it’s really something that is super exciting, and it’s not the hell you’ve seen before.  It’s completely different form whatever you think.  It’s one of those films that if you expect to see lava and caves, you’re not going to get that, it’s a completely new realm and new universe.  Horror fans will dig it, because for me it was a good transition to go from Evil Dead to go and do something that is more a big adventure, but set in hell, so of course it’s pretty hardcore just because it’s hell itself.  So it’s pretty cool.  It’s a cool movie.” — Interview with Haleigh Foutch, “Fede Alvarez Talks From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series, Working with Robert Rodriguez, Evil Dead 2, Machina, Dante’s Inferno, and More,” Collider (May 6, 2014)

See also: Dante Today’s post about the EA video game.

Contributed by Sarah Montross

How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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