Boston Globe Staff
Date: 07/11/1982
One of the nagging worries about television - ask any parent - is that it withers the desire to read, especially in children. No doubt about it, what we read and how much we read are affected somehow by television. The medium is no more than 30 years old, and already as influential a part of our culture as work, school or church. Yet we're still unsure about how it alters our lives, including our reading habits. Often television deters us from books. On the other hand, sometimes it stimulates us to read. In 1977, for example, an esteemed bit of literature was broadcast on public television: "I Claudius," by Robert Graves.
Prior to the telecast, sales of the book, for the most part, were limited to college campuses, where professors appended it to those infernal lists of required reading that plagued us all as students. Within four weeks after the introduction of "I, Claudius," the series, however, "I, Claudius," the book, was at the top of the best-seller lists for paperback fiction in the United States, and as Alistair Cooke, host of Masterpiece Theatre, put it, that cannot be a bad thing.
Now, five years after its introduction on public television, "I, Claudius" returns on commercial television this week as WSBK-TV (Channel 38) in Boston presents the entire 13-hour series over six consecutive nights, beginning Monday at 8 o'clock. "I, Claudius" stars John Hurt, Brian Blessed, and, in the title role, the British actor, Derek Jacobi, who has delivered stunning performances in the past two years on American television, first as Hamlet and then as Hitler in "Inside the Third Reich."
Let's begin, though, by addressing the most conspicuous features of "I, Claudius," the sex and violence. There are now three versions of "I, Claudius." The original and spiciest was shown in England in 1975, after truncating a grisly two minute scene in which Caligula disembowels his pregnant sister, slavering over gobs of the murdered embryo, a surprising lapse in British good taste. The version broadcast on PBS was edited a bit more to reduce the sex and violence, and the third version, which will be shown this week, has been edited even further to make it more acceptable for syndication on commercial television, although there remain scenes violent and sexual enough to worry not only the Rev. Donald Wildmon, but also executives at Ch. 38. Ten days ago, they were still wrestling with the notion of additional editing.
About the story: Graves introduces the tale by imagining that the aged Claudius, having written his memoirs of the empire, meets with the oracle Sibyl, who assures him that his work will lie hidden for 1900 years or near, and then be revealed to an astonished world. The cast is difficult to follow at times, "I, Claudius" being an account of the Roman empire during 78 years, from the Age of Augustus in 24 B.C. through the reigns of Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius in 54 A.D. Anyone who endured the agonies of Latin I, II, III and IV will have a leg up in sorting out ancient Rome's literary, military and political characters who weave their way in and out of "I, Claudius."
This is a story of love and hate, of passion and perversity, of the endless cruelties and clashes between the emperors and the private citizens of Rome, all with their own ambitions, vices and idiosyncracies. Host of the syndicated version is not Alistair Cooke, but Anne Bancroft. "The incredible thing about I, Claudius,' " she says, "is that everything you are about to see for the next 13 episodes really happened. It's all true, and you will be more and more astonished as each story unfolds. "I Claudius" is more than routine television, drawn as it is from two celebrated works of literature, "I, Claudius" and "Claudius, the God," both by Graves, and based on the historial writings of Suetonius and Pliny. Making the decisions for Ch. 38 about what to cut is the general manager, Daniel Berkery. "The presumption," he said the other day, "is that we are not going to cut anything, but we are going to look at it carefully to make sure it doesn't violate community standards." Berkery does not sound like a loose man with the scissors.
"There are only three scenes in films that shocked me," he said. "One was the opening rape scene in Death Wish.' Another was the homosexual rape in Deliverance,' and the third was the Russian roulette scene in The Deer Hunter.'
"We know there's an audience out there for this work. We think it's small, but we might be surprised. Running I, Claudius' is part of an overall strategy for Ch. 38 to position ourselves in the Boston market," he said. "This is a station that runs Gorilla at Large,' the 3-D movie, and then we come back the next week with I, Claudius.'
"Lord knows it's not that we're schizophrenic, but we want to show that we're not just a station that runs sports and syndicated material." "With I, Claudius' though, we felt it was appropriate for the Boston market because of the level of education and sophistication here. This town has, if you will, the ring of the Athens of America. "If I were running a station in Memphis, Tenn., I might think twice about running I, Claudius.' "
Boston's sophistication notwithstanding, there are likely to be howls of protest, not about the violence, but rather the sex. The British are not as tight-cast as we Americans about nudity and four-letter words. That is why the British version and in some scenes the public broadcasting version included orgies in full sight and full undress, sexual couplings filmed in ceiling mirrors, and an emperor's daughter competing with a famous prostitute in the ritual exhaustion of males of the imperial court. The orgy scenes are among the most graphic ever shown on American television. Well, we've come a long way in 19 centuries.
We've outlawed murder, more or less, although the sex in ancient Rome is pretty much the same sex that can be found in Boston's Combat Zone or New York's Times Square or along the beach in Santa Monica. Indeed, sometimes we've got the Romans beat thumbs down since we've got sex on credit cards, a swing now, pay later phenomenon. When "I Claudius" comes to commercial television, though, what do we worry about? Not the violent gladiator games, nor the garrotings nor the beheadings nor the other violent acts.
No, cruelty is something we understand. Sex is another matter. Graphic murder on television is one thing, graphic sex or even frontal nudity, as it's called, is quite another. Let us turn our faces away from sex on television, then. Block our ears against the same four-lettered words our daughters use in everyday conversation, and above all else, let us shield our eyes from the naked breast.
Blindness, after all, is in the eye of the beholder.