Although, as dd pointed out, principally with an idea toward flogging it toward one particular guy: Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Divi Filius Imperator Princeps.
When you are trying to flog it to a mass audience of billions you get... different weirdnesses than hagiographic emperor-worship: you get... the attempt to take the Christianity out of Narnia... you get... the semi-indigeneity-ecoworship of "Pocahontas"... you get... Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie (a magnificent actress who did a fantastic job in "Girl, Interrupted") with digitally-enhanced breasts...
Then again, there is *nothing* about blood and gore that Shakespeare could have learned from "Reservoir Dogs": consider the last scene of Hamlet. And the seduction and abandonment--the mental rape--of Queen Dido in the "Aeneid" has always seemed to me to be... profoundly unhealthy... glorification of brutality toward the (relatively) powerless...
Brad DeLong