Just spotted an absolutely darling little Flash banner ad for the UK’s new ‘voluntary’ ID card programme. It starts with a cutesy little potato man popping up and saying “I’m Spartacus”, who is soon joined by another and another, and so on. You get the idea.
But then the potato men disappear (bye bye!) and are replaced by a smiley thumb print, who says “Actually, I’m Spartacus”, before whipping out his ID card as proof.
Lovely. So, for those few of you who may be unfamiliar with Stanley Kubrick’s 1960 classic Spartacus, let’s fill in the blanks.
Our smiley thumb here is Spartacus, a righteous hero of the downtrodden masses. He’s already been dragged into the cruel games of the totalitarian regime under which he has toiled for so many years and witnessed the contempt in which it holds him and his lowly kind. Not seeking glory or power, he nonetheless finds himself leading an uprising of slaves against the corruption and excess of the state.
In this particular scene, Crassus (a Roman baddy) promises a band of captured slaves they will be freed if they identify Spartacus in their midst. One by one, they each stand and claim to be Spartacus, in the hope that the thumb’s true identity will remain undiscovered and he will be freed to continue the revolution.
But, uh-oh, Thumb Spartacus has an ID card and corresponding entry on the nasty Roman biometric database.
I don’t know if you’ve ever crucified your thumb (I have, with a stapler), but it bloody hurts.
Without wishing to hammer my point home, if you’ll pardon the expression, I find it odd that the Home Office has chosen to reference this particular film. Maybe in a few weeks’ time we’ll see the little potato men doing the Two Minute Hate.
