In Rome, gladiatorial combat and orgies were the mainstay of entertainment. While in the modern era public entertainment was cleansed in favour of music, sport, theatre and so forth. Now once again, the internet offers the diversions of the Colloseum to anyone who wishes to be so entertained. You want to see people killed, decapitated, raped, tortured? It is all there.

Where is this new uncharted space taking our entertainment and our morality? Should we see a return to the explicit desires of the ancients as a deeply troubling challenge to our culture that should be reined in and controlled to contain exploitation and human misery? Or is it a welcome overturning of a repressed and hypocritical culture?

Book Now