Machiavelli Goes to the Movies, Understanding ‘The Prince’
through Television and Film, Eric T. Kasper and Troy A. Kozma (2.5)
Unfortunately the title of this book turned out to be more
intriguing than the book itself. I stumbled into it at the University library
and thought ‘what a great idea’. The chapter titles such as: ‘Pick a Side and
Stick to Your Decisions in Politics: The Contender, Harry Potter, and House of
Cards’ sounded like such a great joining of Machiavellian philosophy with
modern films and TV. The book spawned from papers written by the two authors,
both professors in Poli-sci and Philosophy at University of Wisconsin campuses.
They used the TV show, ‘Breaking Bad’ to illustrate concepts from Machiavelli’s
book, ‘The Prince’. They decided to broaden their scope with regards to other
TV shows and films. I think the main negative of the book is the dry nature.
Anyone who has read ‘The Prince’ knows that while many of its topics are
exciting and provoking, it’s told in a chapter-by-chapter ‘how-to’ manner. This
book follows that pattern to a fault. I also found some of the comparisons a
bit of a stretch. While it was easy to see that ‘Annihilate While Taking Power’
would use Michael Corleone in ‘The Godfather’ as a perfect example (as he killed
the Mafioso’s who tried to kill his father and killed all the family heads the
day he took over for his father), it is harder to see the connection between ‘Miserliness
is Better than Liberality’ and ‘Ghostbusters’. If you are a fan of Machiavelli,
maybe you will read this and understand the connection. If not, you can take my
word for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment