When Maximus Decimus Meridius steps out onto the sands of the Mauretanian arena in one of the early fight scenes in Gladiator, he is taunted by a baying spectators and showered with rose petals from above. It is a characteristically clever piece of direction from Ridley Scott, and forces the viewer to contrast the gentle beauty of nature, love and marriage, as represented by the pink petals, with the insatiable brutality of the human condition, as personified by the maddened crowd. Maximus goes on to kill a series of gladiators in increasingly bloody fashion, before throwing his sword at the rich senatorial types quaffing wine from the arena balcony, which is basically the classical equivalent of a corporate box at Stamford Bridge. “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED? ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?” he screams, as a hush descends over the arena. It’s one of the more powerful moments in mainstream cinema, and exemplifies the inner rage of a man forced to do unspeakably violent things to survive.
While Gladiator is possibly a bit harsh on the Romans – there is an academic school of thought which maintains that gladiatorial combat was nowhere near as bloody or lethal as we imagine – it’s certainly an evocative portrayal of human bloodsport. However sanguinary the Roman arena was in reality, there have certainly been times in human history when men have killed each other for the purpose of entertainment. That’s not really cool anymore, thankfully, and contemporary societies have almost entirely done away with the practise of people maiming each other for fun.
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So how have we replaced that ancient tradition? With Robot Wars, obviously.
In a world that has done away with gladiatorial combat, Robot Wars is the acceptable face of human bloodsport. We might consider ourselves a bit more civilised than the toga-wearing sociopaths of antiquity, but we still want to watch terrible savagery in a purpose-built arena, and we still want to cheer at the sight of indiscriminate carnage. There’s an ethical conundrum here, and we’ve solved it by replacing human beings with anthropomorphic robots. Unlike human beings, robots do not feel pain, or have families, or turn our stomachs when they are brutally hacked to pieces. Unlike human beings, robots can be fully repaired even when they’ve been torn to shreds by an industrial power saw, and the process is almost entirely guilt-free.
That’s why robots are the ideal candidates for playing out our exceedingly dark and violent desires. That’s one of the reasons that Robot Wars is such a great programme, and one of the reasons that we’re so fucking excited to see it return to our television screens later this month.
Robot Wars is back, baby! Via the BBC
Glad as we are to see Robot Wars making a comeback, we’re a bit disappointed to see that it’s going to be limited to something similar to its original format. The robots will still be stand-in combatants, with Sir Killalot, Matilda, Shunt and co. playing the part of substitue gladiators. The thing is, while human bloodsport has been consigned to the gruesome dustbin of history, there are many other bloodsports that remain popular today. Bullfighting is legal in Spain and parts of South America, fox hunting still has plenty of advocates in Britain, and illegal cockfighting and bear baiting go quietly unchecked in other parts of the world.
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As such, someone seems to have missed a trick ahead of Robot Wars’ comeback. If the programme is the acceptable face of gladiatorial combat, why not extend it to other forms of bloodsport, too? Matadors could test themselves against giant, machinated robot bulls. Huntsmen could pit themselves against automated foxes. There could be robot horse racing, robot dog fighting, robot octopus wrestling, even. Almost any controversial sport could be preserved in perpetuity by the introduction of robots and, more importantly, everyone would have a lot more fun.
This is basically a dry run of robots replacing animals in bloodsport, from a recording of the fourth series of Robot Wars
Seriously, consider the joys of robot fox hunting for a moment. Imagine a dad-and-lad team from Woking outwitting the entirety of the Berkeley Hunt, high-fiving as their super-fast robot fox flashes across the countryside like metallic lightning. Craig Charles is there, howling with Scouse joy, swearing his head off at the befuddled David Cameron lookalikes and their frolicking hounds. There are no downsides to robot fox hunting; it’s great exercise for the dogs, it maintains the social aspect of the hunt and, most importantly, nothing has to be ripped limb from limb for it to be a roaring success.
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Some might counter that, in an ideal world, we shouldn’t feel the need to practise brutality in any shape or form. We don’t live in an ideal world, unfortunately, and a considerable number of people are adamant that it’s their god-given right to witness horrific dismemberment. Those people don’t generally like to put it so bluntly, of course, and so will couch their sadism in terms of tradition, heritage and long-held habit. Thankfully, there’s nothing more traditional than using humanity’s genius inventions to do senseless violence. That’s where Robot Wars comes in, and hopefully replaces bloodsport once and for all.
