MovieChat Forums > Titus (2000) Discussion > I'm on Tamora`s side!

I'm on Tamora`s side!

posted 9 years ago by ehaas-3
3 replies | jump to latest

Honor the memory of this great Lady and curses upon Titus Andronicus and his family of bloodthirsty murderers and scheming politicians!

We have a situation here where a vicious imperialist has been waging a decades long war of conquest. Imagine the bloodshed and destruction. This is a psychopath who loves war above all else and has encouraged the great majority of his many sons to die in battle.

OK,Rome was warlike and maybe had to expand in order to survive. Give him the benefit of the doubt for a second. Many cultures have glorified a noble death.

But wait, there's more! He really is a horrible nut job. He practices human sacrifice--condemned in Western civilization since early Greek culture. Furthermore, his victim is a nobleman who had surrendered to him.

He also tries to set himself up as the power behind the throne by becoming the emperor's main powerful supporter and son in law. But when the marriage to his daughter doesn't go off as planned and his few remaining sons disobey him, he kills one of them. Just strikes him down like it was no big deal!

I don't blame him for avenging the rape and mutilation of his daughter, but with all the shown and implied horror and carnage in the story, it's myopic to see Lavinia`s suffering as the worst thing going on here.

Tamora, on the other hand, merely had the bad luck to be the queen of a perpetually invaded nation. She must have run things very well to keep Titus and his larger, wealthier army at bay for so long.

Finally, she's defeated and dragged back to Rome as a trophy. She watches one of her sons be chopped up in a hideous ritual archaic even in those times.

Then she's given as a gift to the Roman Emperor who like an idiot gives her a great deal of power. She bravely exploited this to subvert Rome from within as much as possible, rather than simply living out her life in luxury as she could have.

Here are the usual charges against Tamora:

--She's committing adultery against the Emperor and is thus a traitor.
My answer: She chose Aaron as her lover. Her "husband", though he got sentimental about her to his detriment, is her captor and rapist. In fact Tamora and Aaron are the only examples of consensual sex in the story.

--She and Aaron encourage her remaining sons to do bad things like rape, murder and framing people for crimes.
My answer: Again, she's lived her whole life at war, has suffered a devastating defeat and is fighting back the only way she can. What's happening to Goth women under Roman rule?

--She loves Aaron and he's bad, so she must be bad.
My answer: Aaron loves her, her sons and his own son. I think his claims of being motivated by evil for evil`s sake are merely boasts made to shock moralistic hypocrites. He's a ruthless fighter like she is, but not evil.

[–] maggieameanderings 9 years ago

I'm on Tamora`s side!

You're not the only one. Impossible to see the scene where she's on her knees begging for her son's life and not feel sympathetic.

I do think that Titus deserves some payback. He and his sons are what I'd call legitimate targets as they were directly involved in the war against her people.

Personally, I draw the line at Lavinia. (Yes, she benefits indirectly from the war, but if you're going to use that standard, then everyone in a nation is guilty for every war crime that happens --- even if it's an act someone would never condone.)

And Tamora's sons were just toxic waste. To take such a sadistic pleasure in what they did to Lavinia and taunt her about it afterward ---- that is not the characteristic of a good person. Their earlier conversation made it clear they could not distinguish between love and lust.

"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind." -- Ghandi.

There's got to be a limit and, for me, the limit is Lavinia.

my website -- http://maggieameanderings.com/Archive.htm

[–] ehaas-3 9 years ago

I do think that Titus deserves some payback. He and his sons are what I'd call legitimate targets as they were directly involved in the war against her people.

Personally, I draw the line at Lavinia. (Yes, she benefits indirectly from the war, but if you're going to use that standard, then everyone in a nation is guilty for every war crime that happens --- even if it's an act someone would never condone.)

And Tamora's sons were just toxic waste. To take such a sadistic pleasure in what they did to Lavinia and taunt her about it afterward ---- that is not the characteristic of a good person. Their earlier conversation made it clear they could not distinguish between love and lust.

"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind." -- Ghandi.

Oh, sure, I agree about the wrongness of the "anything goes" approaches to resistance. Chiron and Demetrius were definitely psychopaths and I think Tamora realized how bad they were, but figured if you have a couple of poorly made bombs lying around in your arsenal that might go off at any minute, you might as well throw them into the enemy's camp and get it over with.

I have a feeling the older son was better, as she seemed less upset about eating them than seeing him killed. I know Titus killed her shortly after the big revelation, but if Shakespeare intended her love for them to be so great, he'd have had her get in a few words about how devastated she was.

The only way I could see them as a little sympathetic on an emotional level if not a moral one is if they'd had a sister or wives or girlfriends who had suffered the same fate by Roman soldiers.

But I think they're just Ted Bundy types. The mockery of Lavinia after the fact that you mention is very revealing as to their character.

There's also a part of the play where once they're back home, one of the says something about how much he enjoyed that and that he would like to "love" hundreds of Roman women in such a manner. The other one answers by essentially asking "what's stopping you?" (Shudder!)

They're also kind of stupid, as a person without a tongue or hands can still find a way to communicate even without learning an elaborate method of manipulating a stick to write in the sand. Can't she write in the sand with her feet?

Titus could have also figured it out much easier. Ask 'was it someone we know or a stranger?' 'Was it a Roman or a foreigner?' 'Was it a commoner or an aristocrat?' 'Was there more than one?' Then start listing people they've been in the general vicinity of lately who fit the description.

The "idiot ball" plot device is certainly in use here.

With Aaaron, I think he genuinely loved his and Tamora's son because he bothered to save his life. He could have killed it, somehow obtained a dead white baby(hopefully by exploiting the high infant mortality rate of the time rather than killing one) if necessary and said that she'd miscarried.

People say that he saw his son as a way to get power, but I fail to see how this would work. The Goths seem mostly loyal to the Andronici by this point and even if there was a restoration of their kingdom, I doubt Tamora's cousin or nephew who would take over the throne would be sympathetic to Aaron showing up and claiming that this kid is really Tamora's and he'll gladly serve as Lord Regent for the next 18 years. :)

I think it would be interesting to do a stage version with the whole baby subplot edited out. Spend more time on the main characters and conflict. Have Aaron stay in Rome and be a guest as Tamora's assistant at the feast/negotiations. He dies in the general chaos that ensues. Perhaps he weeps on the floor over her slain body and then jumps up at the end to fight Lucius.

But this would sadly mean that we'd be deprived of the immortal line "Villain, I have done they mother" and Aaron's impressive speeches about how much of a super-cool all purpose bad guy he is.

Thank you for your comments!

[–] 9 years ago

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