Citings & Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture
The Simpsons’ “Treehouse of Horror IV” (S05E05): after losing his soul to the devil in a bargain over a donut, Homer is subjected to punishments in Hell’s “Ironic Punishments Division,” where the demon in charge of force-feeding him donuts is astonished at his capacity.
See a clip from the episode on YouTube.
See also the action figure released by MacFarlane Toys (pictured below).
“In the 1300s, Dante described only nine circles of hell in the underworld. Since then? No new updates. Thankfully, Go to Hells picks up where Dante left off, providing readers with a much-needed expanded edition of the Inferno. Included in this volume-in-verse are helpful descriptions and illustrations of the contemporary hell circles that have cropped up since Dante’s times. The guiding maxim of Go to Hells? We all know that the devil is in the details. So when you tell someone to go to hell, you should be as specific as possible. Covering everything from Movie Talkers and Loud Typers to Reply All-ers and those guilty of chronic PDA, Go to Hells provides all the details the savvy crank needs to keep pace with the new and ever-more-irksome irritations of the modern world.” — Amazon.com
See Parker Molloy’s review of the book on upworthy.com.
And check out the video trailer for the book on YouTube.
Episode 5 of the first season of the HBO original series Westworld is called “Contrapasso.”
To read about key moments from the episode, see this October 30, 2016, blogpost on The Hollywood Reporter (beware of spoilers!).
“Though Dante cataloged many forms of diabolical torture in his Inferno, a guided tour of hell, he somehow missed out on what could well be the most excruciating eternal punishment of all. I mean (ominous organ chords, please) the staff meeting that never, ever ends.” –Ben Brantley, “Review: ‘Miles for Mary,’ a Sendup of the Interminable Meeting From Hell,” New York Times, October 9, 2016
Columbia Law professor Robert A. Ferguson published a study of the theory informing American systems of punishment in penal institutions. Calling for a new model that emphasizes correction over condemnation, Ferguson writes, “Punishment is a reflexive response to misbehavior, and punishers in their anger are always spontaneously at the ready. Rehabilitation requires thought, a plan, work, and the willingness to probe slow changes in more mundane objects of attrition. It will always be easier to ask for punishment than to institute a treatment program in a prison system where punishment comes first. The answer, to the extent that we can give one, lies in something separate, something either beyond or after punishment.
“The Divine Comedy is a limited guide, but it does reveal the pernicious parameters in the psychology of punishment and gives a response to them. [. . .] Criminal justice has gone astray, lost in a dark wood of its own making. It is time, more than time, to find a way out.” — Robert A. Ferguson, Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment, 249.
From David Cole’s review in the New York Times: “[Ferguson] insists that the only way out is to reconceptualize punishment. Invoking the circles of hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy, Ferguson argues that we need to reorient our prisons away from punishment and debasement and instead model them on Purgatorio, where individuals are restored to heaven through the care and love of others.” — David Cole, “Punitive Damage,” New York Times Sunday Book Review (May 16, 2014)
