). How Has Television Replaced The Monumental Statues Of Ancient Roman Leaders? Which Medium Do You Think Is More Powerful? Television/Film Or Ancient Art?
...play. “In a society without newspapers or photographs,
public statuary was an important source of information and communication. A whole category of battle and heroic sculpture filled the citizenry’s need for information on conquests made by Roman armies.” (Mandel)
The roman emperors had their sculptors to ‘capture’ in the form of art to remind its people of how important they were in society. Similar to the Hollywood culture, where photographers take millions of pictures of the elite in Hollywood, important people in that era, was being sculptured. There are also tons of statues and cravings of the emperor’s family members – since they were now considered public figure.
I personally believe that television is more important as it not only capture the physical appearance of a person, it also captures the soul of the person. I say this because you can roughly tell how a person is feeling by the look of his or her eyes. How can you tell what the statue was feeling when it is made out of glass or stone? Sure, the expressions help, but the eyes hide no lies.
Also, sculpting is a form of work that transmit from a person’s perceptive. So let say the sculptor view the emperor as a ferocious war monger with bulging biceps and triceps. His thoughts and idea will be transfer into his work. How sure are we that he made an accurate, un bias piece of art? Yes, it is true that the “Roman belief that a completely accurate depiction of a person contributed to that person’s immortality after death. An accurate picture had the power to appease the ghost of the dead person and so could protect the living” (Mandel) but how bout the feelings of the person being sculptured?
Television and film on the other hand cannot hide the emotions of its subject. The body could lie, but the eyes and voices cannot. It documents things and events as it is. For...
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