Regicidal Gladiator Man Beard

Gladiator has much to teach us about Man Beards. The movie offers many things from the Man Beard list, including beards, fag-stomping, irrational exuberance, putting women in their place, and regicide. I think its most important lesson for us is that regicide is only manly if conducted in accordance with other Man Beard principles.

Let us first examine the plot.

Maximus, armored in a gritty Battle Beard, leads his men to victory in Germania with "strength and honor."

Knowing his white beard's strength is waning, Marcus Aurelius chooses Maximus as heir to his throne.

Prince Commodus uses trickery to become king, by secretly killing the Caesar and claiming his father's throne. Commodus feels inadequate in his beardlessness and wants to do his own sister.

Meanwhile Maximus is trained to be a gladiator by Proximo, whose beard is a resonating symbol of his old man strength.

Eventually Gladiator Maximum lures Emperor Commodus into the arena and easily kills him despite receiving a lethal cheap shot backstage.

We see that both Maximus and Commodus commit regicide. Yet only Maximus is a true Man Beard because he excelled in other areas of manhood while Commodus is a miserable man-failure.

I'll concede that Commodus gets the better of Maximus when it comes to irrational exuberance, wanting to be loved by the people so much that he rushes into a duel with a highly trained killing machine. But Commodus is so inferior in every other way that he will never be seriously considered for Man Beard status.

A big problem for Commodus is that he is a huge queer. Only queers have incestuous longings. How could he possibly fag-stomp if he's a fag himself? Maximus not only stomps that queer, but he does it while simultaneously committing regicide, making his regicidal act far more impressive.

Commodus' next issue is that he is a snivelling little pussy. Setting aside the fact that she was his sister, if you are the Emperor of Rome, and you want to get it on with a bitch, you make it happen. If she doesn't want to do it, you remind her that you're the man and then you put that woman in her place. Commodus just giggled and sulked like a scolded child. Maximus knew exactly what he wanted from her, knew exactly how to put that bitch in her place.

But most importantly, Maximus always offered a respectable Man Beard. From the unkempt Battle Beard in the opening scene to his neatly-trimmed Show Beard for the final stroke, the Spaniard's face was always adorned with hair. Commodus could barely manage a 5 o'clock shadow in an age without the Mach 3 razor. Pathetic.

Men don't like being told what to do, so they hate authority figures. There is no greater way to express that disdain than killing a king. But Gladiator teaches us that only when performed in conjunction with other manly things does regicide truly become the sport of Man Beards.

(By the way I heard that Russell Crowe has testicles the size of tangerines.)